As we see more and more bots on Lemmy World every day, it’s about time we publish a set of rules for bots and bot-owners.

So here goes:

  • Bots shall not be used for any kind of advertising.

  • The bot accounts must be clearly marked as a bot. Both in the bio and by marking the account as a bot.

  • The owner of the bot and contact details must be mentioned in the bot’s bio.

  • Bots are only allowed to post in communities they have the explicit permission from the community’s owners to do so.

  • Bots from other instances that post in Lemmy World communities must follow the same rules.

  • Bots shall not just be posting Reddit content.

  • Bots shall not be “spammy”, as in multiple posts per minute.

  • Breaking any of these rules will result in a ban for the Bot and, if required, its owner.

  • Commands must use the bots mention as prefix, and not a text prefix like !help

These rules will be updated when needed.

  • JJROKCZ
    2•1 year ago

    Good compromise but I don’t know if the traffic load impact of a pm is much different from a comment. I imagine the server load induced by either is roughly the same

    • ChlorineAddict
      5•1 year ago

      Sending the content wouldn’t be much different, but serving the content would be vastly reduced if it only appeared in one user’s inbox vs being displayed to everyone who visits the thread.

    • @MBM
      1•1 year ago

      I didn’t think it was about server load so much as just user experience (no comment sections filled with bots)