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Introducing Link - A new bot for community suggestions (programming.dev)
submitted 7 months ago by Ategon@programming.dev to c/meta@programming.dev
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Hey everyone, I just finished up a new bot for the instance called Link

This bot aims to give suggestions for other communities in the instance to post to to start populating the more specific topic communities. It currently is triggered just off of keywords it finds in post titles.

This should help people find other communities after they post to !programming@programming.dev and encourage cross-posting in the instance since thats recommended (and standard lemmy behaviour is to show crossposts as one post in the post feed)

I added some of the communities in the instance and will go through and add in the rest of them shortly

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[-] anonymoose@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Great idea :)

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Leaving my 0.02$ here:

Please don't deploy this bot. It's annoying, it contributes nothing to actually create interesting content for the community to engage, and in fact its main output is spam.

It does more harm than good. Please don't.

I'd add that if the idea was any good then instead of spamming people left and right, it would suffice to crosspost stuff on target communities.

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I can't stress enough how annoying and ill thought out this bot is. I've seen the bot react to posts to !programming@programming.dev pointing to !postgresql@programming.dev , and then react to posts to !postgresql@programming.dev to point to !performance@programming.dev. What's the end goal here? Spam all communities with requests to cross-post stuff to all communities under the sun?

If the goal is to kill Lemmy as a usable service, you're doing a good job.

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The article on c/programming was about postgresql and the article on c/postgresql was about performance. Both were articles that could be crossposted to those communities and both are communities that need some more activity so the bot just lets the author and people who enjoy that post know about a community they may not otherwise know about.

Based on firing without me tweaking it to remove that case its fired twice in the past two days, once today and once yesterday out of all of the posts posted to the instance which is barely anything and is nowhere close to spam. There was 46 posts in the instance total today and 85 in the past two days. Its also one comment that can easily be ignored and will be buried by other comments due to how lemmy's default comment sort works with putting newer comments at the top

If you severely dislike the bot you can block it and you will no longer see those comments

I leave this comment ulrik gave you

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The article on c/programming was about postgresql and the article on c/postgresql was about performance.

It really doesn't matter. It's really not about the article. It's about the high volume of spam that you are trying to generate on programming.dev communities without creating any value at all. I mean, your bot is not cross-posting content: it's spamming communities to get someone else to do the work.

Here's the latest screwup that your bot is creating (link):

The !nodejs@programming.dev community currently lists 3 active users per month, and your bot spammed it on each new post sent to it asking those 3 active users to cross-post stuff to multiple communities. This is nuts.

Again, please stop with all the spamming. Your bot is the single most damaging thing done to programming.dev since its been launched.

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

for node.js it seems like it was triggering on the .js which I just went through and removed so it should get barely any triggers now unless you explicitly mention something

for that community message it sent you posted an article about graphql and about performance

I made it not crosspost by default so I can tweak things and so people are guided for future posts. (and to prevent false positives while im tweaking things). Im purposely tweaking it to fire less and less and like I said im aiming to get it to fire on 2% of the posts

again, block the bot if you dont want it

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

for node.js it seems like it was triggering (...)

The problem is not how the bot is triggered. The problem is that the bot is broken by design. Its main output is spamming Lemmy instances with posts that add no value at all.

I mean, haven't you even noticed that in some communities your bot is posting more messages than the number of daily visitors?

What exactly do you plan to achieve with this?

Please shut down your bot.

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

which communities? And triggering is relevant since by reducing how its triggered it reduces the about the comments it posts or as you like to call them spam

Ive responded so many times at this point saying why its not spam and why they add value

Just for you ill add a rule that it cant trigger on any of your posts

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

which communities?

If you're paying any attention to what your bot is doing, you'll be aware of which communities it's triggering and what/how many messages it's spamming them with.

Nevertheless, again: the problem with your bot is that it's broken by design. If your goal is to cross-post submissions to related communities, instead of spamming discussions with requests your bot would be cross-posting submissions to related communities. If you did any semblance of requirements gathering, you would also notice that a basic feature of these bots is a) be opt-in, b) stop posting based on community feedback.

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Ive been paying attention which is why I dont see the communities youre talking about (especially after ive tweaked things). If youre quoting the instance rules with that theres the rule #5 exception which can make bots transition to be opt out instead of opt in. If you want it removed from c++ node and cloud I can do that (I assume you do considering what youve been saying so will remove the three communities from the bots sight)

[-] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

Ive been paying attention which is why I dont see the communities youre talking about (especially after ive tweaked things).

You're not paying any attention to what your bot is doing if you aren't noticing where and what your bot is posting.

If you want it removed from c++ node and cloud I can do that (I assume you do considering what youve been saying so will remove the three communities from the bots sight)

That does not fix the problem you're creating.

The problem is that your bot is dumping spam onto Lemmy, and apparently you don't even realize how broken your bot is.

If I wanted to ban your bot from the communities I moderate, I would already have done so. That does not fix the problem though.

I don't see how it's reasonable to expect that your misjudgement in deploying a broken bot should be solved by forcing others to cleanup after you, or do extra maintenance work just to avoid the mess you're creating.

In the very least, your bot should be opt-in, and it should directly cross-post stuff onto the communities that want a bot to generate traffic for them instead of annoying people.

Lastly, if you want additional evidence that your bot is broken by design, here's the absurd suggestion it posted onto !gamedev@programming.dev triggered by a post with a Godot example.

Do you really believe you're doing anyone any favor by suggesting to post a Godot C# sample to communities dedicated to the C programming language and .NET?

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I am noticing where its posting and im adjusting it accordingly based on that

I just didnt see a spot that has more comments than daily users as you said from the spots its posted to,but it has been posting to locations in general

The suggestion there I have fixed. The C programming language isnt being suggested anymore and dotnet and C# dont suggest each other anymore. I usually delete or edit the bots messages to account for my tweaks but forgot to do so there due to it being one of the first so ill do that now, ill also go and do the same for the rest of the bots messages. I agree other people shouldnt need to clean it up which is why ive been doing so and will do the rest now

again 1 comment occasionally isnt spam. This is just the same things over and over though in this chain so will stop on this chain. Just note I will clean up future bot messages and tweak it if it posts incorrectly which it should be doing much less now that its been refined. Other people shouldnt be needing to clean it up (if you call opting out as maintenance work its just one dm to send me and I can then deal with it) and it shouldnt be overwhelming communities. If I deem its been doing fine I can swap it to auto crosspost in the future although this doubles as leading people to post their future posts in that community without needing the bot

this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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