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:
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Bots shall not be used for any kind of advertising.
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The bot accounts must be clearly marked as a bot. Both in the bio and by marking the account as a bot.
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The owner of the bot and contact details must be mentioned in the bot’s bio.
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Bots are only allowed to post in communities they have the explicit permission from the community’s owners to do so.
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Bots from other instances that post in Lemmy World communities must follow the same rules.
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Bots shall not just be posting Reddit content.
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Bots shall not be “spammy”, as in multiple posts per minute.
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Breaking any of these rules will result in a ban for the Bot and, if required, its owner.
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Commands must use the bots mention as prefix, and not a text prefix like !help
These rules will be updated when needed.
I’d prefer no exceptions. Don’t give an inch.
Rules are created to ensure that they work for people. If there is a set of rules to make it better for people, and it doesn’t, they may need a tweak.
Now you sound like the chief problems with the justice system in the US. We don’t need to be terrible.
Exceptions should be made on a case by case basis for common sense rationales. Spirit of the law, not letter of the law. This way if someone “technically” doesn’t violate the rules but is still violating the spirit of it - they’ve gotta go. An example would be contact details and ownership info that points to someone who may or may not exist but the contact info actually goes nowhere when you reach out because they never respond to anyone. Bots that just repost content from other sites like twatter and livejournal and reddit technically don’t fall under not just reddit but still violate the spirit of “do not just repost shit from elsewhere with bots”. The imagination of the masses is all that limits the scenarios so common sense needs to apply imo.
At the same time there will be useful options that technically violate. Something like a remindme bot might hit faster than 1/minute. Some kind of minigame bot that only replies to prompts in a certain sub for just that use case is another scenario. Automoderator replies for incredibly popular subs will probably break 1/min rules if people post faster than 1/min, for instance. Again… common sense!