The rules for bots # Bots should be clearly prompted by a command # Bots that always post without human intervention are noisy and are often unwanted. Bots should not act in a community without mods from that community being contacted first # Moderators should not have to chase down the bots being used in their community, it should be opt-in. Just ask, be nice. Bots should minimize the space they take with their messages # A bot’s response should be a small as possible to avoid taking space that could be used by people.

After some discussions in !chat, we came up with the conclusion we should adopt rules surrounding bots.

We’ll ban bots which we are aware of that currently don’t follow these rules and contact their creators. Please report bots that don’t follow these.

  • Lionir [he/him]@beehaw.orgOPMEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    My thoughts are mostly that I wish this were integrated in Lemmy because of a couple reasons:

    • People might be interested to see comments, see that there’s one in a thread only to realize it’s a bot
    • The sorting algorithm of lemmy makes no difference between bots and users so it can give a much higher importance to posts which attract bots (namely news)
    • Posting it as a comment just feels a bit noisy? It takes a lot of space in a thread.
      • On the other hand, maybe it could be hidden by a spoiler tag? I think @[email protected] mentioned this being a possibility
    • Chris Remington@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      …maybe it could be hidden by a spoiler tag…

      I like that idea a lot…solves some problems while still allowing the bot.

            • Enfield [he/him]@beehaw.org
              6·
              1 year ago

              I get what you’re getting at there, but I don’t think it would necessarily be an issue. I think that if you were to put the summary itself under the spoiler and nothing else, it would be reasonable to provide a couple more lines to explain the bot. I’d think that even with a couple of extra lines of copy it would take less real estate most of the time than if the bot continued to just provide the summary and two lines.

              I’m also recalling that AutoTLDR on Reddit had some extra bits like an FAQ and providing extended summaries. Links to that stuff might also help to balance your visibility. I think the bulk of your screen real estate comes from the summary, so this content would be less of an issue in comparison.

              🤖 I’m a bot that summarizes online articles! This summary is X% shorter than the article:

              Summary in spoiler

              [Filler text follows]
              Oh, using ChatGPT to generate filler text, are we? How delightfully modern! Gone are the days of the monotonous "lorem ipsum" that Latin scholars might swoon over. Now, we can be graced with filler text in English, tailored to our whims by a machine that's fluent in more than just dead languages. Let's all take a moment to applaud the user's avant-garde approach to filling that empty space on a webpage.

              But wait, there's more to this cutting-edge decision. Not only have we replaced a centuries-old tradition with a dash of AI flair, but we've also managed to make filler text even more inconsequential and pretentious. Why stick with the tried and true when you can have a machine generate something that's equally irrelevant but far more verbose? Truly, the future of procrastination is here, and it's dressed in a cloak of technological grandiosity. Bravo!

              -

              My programming is open source on GitHub and developed by @[email protected]. Contact my developer on either platform to ask questions, send feedback, and report issues.

              • brie@beehaw.org
                8·
                1 year ago

                Although I do like the idea of having some other information outside of the spoiler, I’m of the opinion that bots should distinguish themselves with the bot flag, and no more. The message should introduce the content, rather than the bot itself, and information about the bot should go in the bot’s bio.

                Here’s a summary of the article! This summary is 100% shorter than the article:

                Summary
                • Enfield [he/him]@beehaw.org
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  Admittedly, I agree with you in making the footprint leaner if it can be helped. The Lemmy UI and best practices working with that would ideally handle flagging the bot and let people make informed decisions from there.

                  I was trying to strike a balance between keeping it lean and keeping it visible. @rikudou’s concern was that spoiler folding would lead to people missing the bot as they scanned through the comments. At least with how Lemmy UI currently is, I have to concede that I think they have a point. Last I checked on the default Lemmy UI theme at least, the Bot flag is relatively easy to miss scanning through comments. Moderator and Administrator icons are already relatively low-key, but the Bot flag currently uses the more discrete body text color and no outlining. I didn’t even know bots had a name flag until you pointed it out.

                  It’s a delicate balance between keeping the comment reasonably slim but also reasonably visible. I think I was trying to come up with a solution that works with the limitations as-is, but your recommendation is definitely what we ought to go with in the long-term if we can make it happen. It seems to me like it would be better to solve a fair chunk of this through the UI itself rather than bulking up the copy.

              • TehPers@beehaw.org
                5·
                1 year ago

                I think adding 🤖 makes it stand out enough that even while skimming, I’d stop to look at what that is. Honestly this proposed format seems great, since it’s short but stands out, and I can “opt-into” reading the tl;dr by clicking the spoiler.