Saw a suspicious post resurrecting a 5 month old thread, and after a few back and forths:
https://linux.community/comment/3453531
I don’t understand why you are treating me like a robot. However, I can help with the Fibonacci sequence. Here is a Python 3 function to calculate it:
I’m torn, its nice to have activity in the fediverse, but I’m not convinced bots are the right way to go about it. Opinions on the future of engagement bots?
I don’t think bots are a good way to boost engagement, but I don’t think all bots should be banned either.
In The Other Place, I enjoyed labeled bots which performed a clear function or service, and replied only in specific circumstances, such as when they were summoned or a key phrase was mentioned.
Examples: stabbot, more JPEG auto, metric converter.
Can you think of any other examples of “useful bots”?
I could swear there was a community link fixer bot, which is pretty useful for people reading comments, trying to click a link to a community, and getting an error. Bot has the correct link as a reply.
Community-specific bots can be quite helpful. NameThatSong on Reddit had a bot that would run your post through song recognizer bots if your post had audio, to try to help the poster identify the song. I found it useful. I should probably figure out how to make a similar bot for [email protected] someday.
Yup, there is: @[email protected]
Post scheduler: https://schedule.lemmings.world/
Some people are engaging with the weekly posts on [email protected] (sadly having federation issues) that are in theory using a bot, but in practice mods have been manually making the post. But people engaged when it was actually the bot posting too.
[email protected], [email protected] definitely have weekly posts that get interacted with. [email protected] used to, they are not regularly posted anymore, but when they are people interact. However, on all those communities, as far as I know (I think the post scheduler posts with your account so for all I know the bot could post it?), humans are making the bog-standard “what is going on in your community/active communities/what are you playing this week?” posts and I wonder if the fact a human is posting is what is driving the engagement there.
the remind me in X days bot!
It may not have been useful, but the gandolf and gronk bots provided many entertainment. My joyful emotion was used, at least
Definitely! Entertainment absolutely qualifies as valid “utility”, especially in the less serious meme communities.