With lemmy.world having published their own set of bot guidelines I figured I should make some here as well to get some parity

The rules are less strict than lemmy.worlds rules within the confines of programming.dev but for communities in instances outside programming.dev default to the lemmy.world rules unless told otherwise

Bot Guidelines:

1. Mark Bots as Bots Bot accounts should be marked that they are a bot using the checkbox in the user settings. This includes any automation in an account (if you automate part of your personal account, put what the automation is in your bio so people know)
2. Put contact info The owner of the bot and some way to contact them must be in the bot's bio (unless its an automated personal account, in that case the account itself it the way to contact)
3. Use mentions as prefix If a bot has commands it should use its mention as a prefix. (This will allow different bots to use the same commands without interfering with each other)
4. Dont spam Bots should not spam posts or comments. (If a bot command has been used its fine to do a response but dont drown out non bot posts in the local new sort.) Certain cases are unavoidable such as if you want to get a bot posting weekly threads in different communities at the same time but in those cases please contact me first to get it approved
5. Allow mods to opt in Bots participating in a community should be opt in so communities can choose what bots they want. If you want a bot to be allowed in a community please contact the moderators of that community first. EXCEPTION: If a bot is deemed to be a well behaving bot that brings net good to the instance it can override this rule as long as it has been approved by an admin. This can include things such as a tldr bot, remindme bot, link fixer bot, piped link converter bot, etc. If a bot has overriden rule 5 with this exception community moderators should still be able to opt out of the bot

These rules should bring us up to parity with lemmy.world along with allowing a bit more leeway within the instance since there has been some nice bots getting made that I dont want unfairly punished

If you have a bot you want whitelisted for the entire instance for the rule 5 exception feel free to dm me here or on matrix

And if anyone has any suggestions for changes to these rules feel free to comment them. They can be adjusted as needed if any issues with them come up

Hi there!

Since the last time the LemmyWebhook package gained quite a few new capabilities so I've decided it's time for another post.

Quick intro to the package: It adds support for webhooks to Lemmy, meaning you can get notified of events to automatically react to, instead of having to poll for everything, often using multiple http requests. Everything is done in a quite efficient way which avoids hitting your database as much as possible and if it does, it only uses queries on primary key. You can also (optionally) make it available to other users who can then run their bots on your instance only on the permissions you allow them, meaning if you only grant them access to post events, they don't also get access to new user events.

So, what's new?

• When you listen for an update event, you get the previous version of data in addition to the current one, meaning you can directly compare what has changed
• New function for getting parent comment id have been added, with this you can for example detect if someone is replying to your bot
• You can now listen for community subscribe/unsubscribe event

As usual, let me know what you think, feel free to offer suggestions or ask questions.

I’ve updated @Mistral@lemmings.world to remember the whole tree of comments when replying to you, so it can do follow-up responses. You still have to mention it on every message, though. Example in the comments.

How does one make a Lemmy bot? A couple of communities I moderate could benefit from a bot to post regular threads based on a template or respond to comments which contain key phrases.

How and where are Lemmy bots hosted? What language are they written in? I have some basic coding experience with Python/Bash/C++, but am not sure where to start when it comes to something like this.

Are there any good step-by-step guides for building a Lemmy bot?

Crossposting what I found in another community, original text below:

If you’d like to test it download it here

GitHub repo releases

Try it out & feel free to report any bugs.

Testing aims to eliminate bugs and enhance user experience before app hits the market.

Should you have any questions post it below, on Github or send an email: diego.beraldin+raccoon4lemmy@gmail.com

App includes mod tools. Happy testing!

In case you are interested and willing to participate, drop the dev a direct message or email above. Since Google allows only to access closed tests, they need to add the email address you use in Google Play to the tester group.