RE: Steem Robot Manifesto: The Rules of Botting
Thanks for the post @jasonmcz. Lots of bot posts lately! I'll weigh in.
Rule #1: A Steem robot must provide real value to the Steem community.
I do not agree that it should be about the money you get. Cheetah gets more downvotes than upvotes. A bot can provide value in other ways.
Rule #2: A Steem robot should value quality over quantity.
This one needs to be smacked into the forheads of some bots. And that includes jeeves, which spammed people who didn't want it. It should only follow those who want it, and assume by default people do not.
Rule #3: Conversational Steem robots shouldn't start conversations.
I definitely agree with this one, and this is exactly why calva got auto downvoted until it stopped spamming.
Rule #4: Your bot should provide value to the readers, not the author.
This is an important one as well. The author wants to read reader responses, not bot responses.
Rule #5: Your bot should announce itself as a bot.
Agreed. In addition, for most bots it should not even announce itself, and only follow those who want it.
Rule #6: Don't judge for the entire community.
This is subjective. I always take feedback seriously about cheetah, but it will first and formost follow my own philosophy. There is no one that said plagiarism doesn't belong on steemit. I said I don't want it, and I tag (not flag) people who do it.
It just so happens that many people agree with me.
Reading the rule #1, I have to agree with you on that although @cheetah is sorta like a unicorn among the array of bots. I've seen authors downvoting cheetah, not the commenter nor the bot, just because Cheetah posted the original link of the blog that it detected from the internet..
@jasonmcz There are also those of us who will downvote cheetah when she gets it wrong as a way of signaling to the owner that attention is needed on that post. It's a courtesy for them that saves them getting a huge backlog of complaints.
@anyx if you ever see me flag @cheetah that's the only reason. I also upvote cheetah when she gets it right.
I've taken to flagging any bot that isn't contributing to the conversation and then putting it on mute so I don't have to see it again.
I personally am a big fan of cheetah! =)
Also great post, brings about great discussion points. so thanks.
I agree with @anyx on #rule 1 tho. A bot can (and maybe even should aspire to) provide value in other ways. Now also interesting to discuss is what we mean by 'value' maybe?
As for the last rule of subjectivity, it is interesting, cos especially some bots, as in the case of cheetah, are essentially an extension of their human's moral-values/drives/motivations.. the more the bots have a unique 'persona' the less generalized comments would get I think. people would make more targeted remarks, I'd suspect. I also agree with upvote/downvote being reserved for human interaction. Unless someone by some machine learning magic one day comes up with a smart-ass bot who actually has a taste and curiosity of it's own. =D
Subscribe-able bot service is a good idea (follow). Plus summon on demand.
yep @abit! We launched our bot again! check it out!