Trending Builds section should be not be present.

[CraniumViolence]

I feel like everything around merging the 'Trending Builds' advertising feature was a mistake.

The biggest issue is of course that this is thinly veiled advertising for a for profit website. The site has active advertisements and directly profits off other people's content that it scrapes. Path of Building should probably not be funneling money directly to a random entity with a default feature.

The content that it scrapes is also another problem. The site being advertised is clearly just scraping youtube channels and posts on reddit to get builds, this is pretty blatantly seen in the presence of a video that has a whopping 0DPS being one of the first visible builds when looking at the page in Path of Building.

In general that the list of builds is a mix of misreported DPS with clickbait, youtube oriented titles and a literal link to something that isn't a build doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in the feature, and that's ignoring a lot of other issues I have with the presentation in general.

The list of builds also does not have a way to access where the build originates, the preview button takes you to pobarchives.com and you have to actively scroll down to find the video, which has already exposed you to said advertising.

You also cannot ever turn off 'Similar Builds' as a button, it simply displays forever without being able to try and find builds. I feel like this is also a poor feature in general as 'similar builds' is very vague and doesn't really present enough information on why something is similar at all.

The feature in general is putting a lot of power in the hands of a single entity running a for profit, closed source website that allows people to actively pay to advertise their builds which the layperson will 100% assume is directly affiliated with Path of Building.

As an aside, the operators of the site itself are also actively running a reddit bot that actively attempts to redirect people away from an open source, non-profit, ad-free site (pobb.in) to his own for profit, closed source site that fulfils functionally the same role.

I find it very hard to believe anything about the implementation of this feature was done with any goal other directly feeding people to a very specific website, this seems doubly obvious with the request for the site to be 'default' in the original pull request.

I'm genuinely baffled how anyone thought merging it was a good idea and feel like this implies a need for greater controls on what gets merged into the actual app in general.

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They're scrubbing said reddit bot posts now, so for posterity here is a screencap of what the unsolicited reply looked like.
)

[tom33333]

It is worth noting, that to about ~1 hour ago, one of the Patreon perks literally was:

Your builds will be favoured in search.

Which has now disappeared after i made a reddit comment mentioning it. Sadly i don't have a screenshot of it. While the perk is gone, it would be interesting to know if the functionality is gone too, and if there are any plans to maybe bring it back in the future.

Ghazzy was looking at the patreon on stream at a time where the favoured part was still in:

[imthenats]

Well it used to load, now it is not loading. So, wish granted ?

[nitorikawashiro1]

It is worth noting too that this site does not ask build creators for permission or consent to upload their builds.

As you can see on any build page, it doesn't ask permission and just lets build creators claim their stuff afterwards, requiring a path of exile account, reddit, or patreon login to do so.

I do not think a site which doesn't even ask consent or permission for its content should be a core feature for Path of Building.

[MstrGrth]

Well it used to load, now it is not loading. So, wish granted ?

I do not know if its Path of Building stopping it or issues with PoB Archives itself. The website occasionally 404s

[caseymoe]

Any builds that are there because of Patreon should have a giant ass border around them saying "SPONSORED"

[kwjanssen]

I've opened a PR to address this issue. In addition to the concerns above, adding a dependency to 3rd parties not affiliated with GGG is probably unwise from a development perspective. The trending feature is already not working properly because the site is essentially being ddos'd by everyone using POB.

[igloo15]

I think the feature itself is good but linking specifically to POB Archives is the problem. There should be an open api spec that works with POB that any website could implement to get builds to show up. Then there should be an option to add websites to POB to pull the builds. I can imagine the dropdown box where PoB Archive is listed having several sites listed. Maybe a manage button next to it to add sites with the default being no sites.

That way if you want to still use PoB Archives despite the problematic issues with the site you could add it.

[Wires77]

I think the feature itself is good but linking specifically to POB Archives is the problem. There should be an open api spec that works with POB that any website could implement to get builds to show up. Then there should be an option to add websites to POB to pull the builds. I can imagine the dropdown box where PoB Archive is listed having several sites listed. Maybe a manage button next to it to add sites with the default being no sites.

That way if you want to still use PoB Archives despite the problematic issues with the site you could add it.

This exists. PoB Archives implements this class to be in that dropdown: https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/blob/dev/src/Classes/ExtBuildListProvider.lua

Other websites can do the same, similar to how the website dropdown works on the Import tab

[puttehi]

This exists. PoB Archives implements this class to be in that dropdown: https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/blob/dev/src/Classes/ExtBuildListProvider.lua

Other websites can do the same, similar to how the website dropdown works on the Import tab

That is the inverse. Now API maintainers would have to contribute to PoB, and maintain the PoB implementation. With the proposed API spec, PoB would not change, and users would just add an API to the list to pull from (and the other ends maintainers would never have to touch PoB).

Apart from that, isn't pulling data from external APIs kind of spooky in any case, whatever the implementation, you never know what kind of nasty things people start pushing to the PoB userbase, like say, someone purchasing an advertisement in an implemented website to promote their discounted OF, or just random hate speech? That brings a moderation requirement for PoB.

(Especially if the sites are implemented in PoB, i.e. part of the release, vs. users opting in by adding the sites manually as they wish, to see whatever they decide).

[igloo15]

I think the feature itself is good but linking specifically to POB Archives is the problem. There should be an open api spec that works with POB that any website could implement to get builds to show up. Then there should be an option to add websites to POB to pull the builds. I can imagine the dropdown box where PoB Archive is listed having several sites listed. Maybe a manage button next to it to add sites with the default being no sites.
That way if you want to still use PoB Archives despite the problematic issues with the site you could add it.

This exists. PoB Archives implements this class to be in that dropdown: https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/blob/dev/src/Classes/ExtBuildListProvider.lua

Other websites can do the same, similar to how the website dropdown works on the Import tab

Adding a class to PoB isn't an OpenAPI spec. I am thinking of an API that returns json that is then consumed by PoB to create the build list.

So a json schema and set of standard apis need to be documented then a generic scrapper that uses those to pull data

[IonDrako]

This should really be opt in rather than on by default and should be user driven and not something added by default like with the archive situation. User driven as in users specifically adding a site or what have you they want to get build resources from there rather than having preset unrelated profit driven sites immediately shown or linked without the user wanting to engage with said sites or be linked to them. The similar builds button also should not be on by default.