Hello fellow Lemmings! the first version of the haiku-bot is out! anyone can add or remove it in any community by simply mentioning him and asking to subscribe:
!Haiku-bot SUBSCRIBE
when added to a community, it will read every comment (not posts currently) and if he detects the 5-7-5 syllable pattern typical of haikus will reply formatting it in a nice way!
If it becomes too spammy you can remove it by just commenting:
!haiku-bot UNSUBSCRIBE
currently it can be subscribed and unsubscribed by anyone, but if this will result in a problem please let me know and I’ll allow only mods to do this! any problem, bug, suggestion, insult, anything you wish is welcome!
hope you’ll enjoy it!
Here’s a human haiku:
bots are part of what
made reddit such a wasteland.
most bots are just spam.
i wish lemmy would
remain a place for humans.
why can’t we just talk?
If you agree that most bots are spam, then why are you making and promoting bots?
because most bots are spam doesn’t mean that all bots are spam. unrequested invasive bots are definitely spam, but bots that can be enabled or disabled freely do nothing wrong IMO
The issue with bots in Reddit was less about their existence, and more about how unsolicited, forced, and pushy they were, since the administration of that site never imposed some limits on what a bot could/couldn’t do. But at the end of the day they’re just a tool, and need to be treated as such - prevent abuse, don’t just kill the tech.
This is easy to prove by looking at the extremes:
- Roboragi - only triggered by request, subreddit-specific, providing contextual information relevant to the discussion
- CommonMisspellingBot - triggered by accident, regardless of subreddit, bossing you around with off-topic prescription
It’s clear why one was loved, another hated. And yet both are bots.
And OP is simply testing the viability of the tech here, based on what he says.
1 - Yes - some bots are helpful, some (most) are annoying:
-
a Haiku bot falls into your “triggered by accident” category (any post that is 17 syllables).
-
a Haiku bot also does not add any new contextual information (it just duplicates a comment).
That’s why I’m saying the haiku bot is junk.
2 - In this very post, when Otome said “I never liked the Haiku Bot”… OP responded “I’ve never liked them much either”…
so I’m asking OP: “why create a bot to spam lemmy with low-value duplicate content, if you don’t even like that bot yourself?”
a Haiku bot falls into your “triggered by accident” category (any post that is 17 syllables).
Only if opt-out, as the original Haiku bot in the defunct site. OP however made it opt-in, so in order to trigger it you need two conditions - to actively subscribe to the bot and post a 17-syllables comment. The first one won’t happen on accident.
a Haiku bot also does not add any new contextual information (it just duplicates a comment).
Arguably it highlights that the post has 17 syllables in a shape that is suitable to build a haiku with, but in general I agree with you. It is not the kind of bot that I personally would inscribe in my comms, nor that I’d use myself.
Even then, a few people like this sort of gimmick, so there’s some subjective value for some people. (Certainly not for both of us.)
so I’m asking OP: “why create a bot to spam lemmy with low-value duplicate content, if you don’t even like that bot yourself?”
OP himself answered it - “I wanted to try something easy to learn bot development on lemmy and a few users were waiting for this and so here I am!”
It’s a low-hanging fruit, and a few people wanted it.
EDIT: just to make my position clear, I think that a few restrictions on what a bot can/can’t do would be great, specially if they come from the admins. IMHO a good bot should have the following requirements:
- Must be explicitly tagged as a bot, instead of a human being.
- Must perform a specific, well-defined function.
- Must only act once explicitly allowed by either the user or the moderators of a community, through a standard approach.
- Must have a short, succinct output, that doesn’t force other users to scroll past a lot of junk.
- Should be non-prescriptive in nature; it shouldn’t be telling you what to do.
Again, I wouldn’t use this bot, but I think that it already fits all five requirements.
