What does everyone think of bots on Beehaw?

How do you all feel about bots?

I’ve seen a gpt powered summarization bot pop up recently. Do you find this useful? Do you hate this?

Do you think bots serve any useful purposes on this website or do you think we should ban all bots? Should we have a set of rules for how bots should interact - only when called, needing to explicitly call out they are a bot on their profile, etc?

I’d love to hear your thoughts

martreides,

GROND

poke,

I like summary bots, summoned bots that serve a purpose, and meme bots if they stay in specific communities where they are expected to be. All bots should self identify.

I could be mistaken but doesn’t Lemmy just have a setting for the user to not see bot posts?

I also figure users can block specific bots if they don’t like them.

rikudou,

The summary bot has now been disabled as per the decision of Beehaw. Contact your favorite community mods if you’d like to change that.

averyminya,

Disappointing. There’s a number of reasonable bots and auto-tl;dr can be extremely useful for avoiding tracking and shady sites.

Ignacio,

If we accept bots, I prefer those that can be summoned by the user, as it happens on Discord. If we accept bots either summoned or not by the user, they must be identified as such on their profiles.

But in no way I’ll accept bots that pretend to be a human user or that can interact in the same way a human user can, neither commenting nor posting nor voting.

EremesZorn,

While I understand the use cases of bots that provide some sort of utility or post helpful information, I lean towards having no bots. Reddit was festering with bots of all stripes - mostly memes - and it was kind of unbearable.
I personally long for a community that features strictly human-to-human conversation and interaction.
I’m aware that this opinion will likely be in the minority, given how tech-centric the fediverse in general is, but that’s my thought on the matter.

SomeGuyNamedPaul,

98% of bots are crap. The problem is that people have different opinions as to which 98% of them is the crap portion.

Absolutely any bot needs to self-identify.

GlassHalfHopeful,

There are most definitely some useful bots, like the recent tldr that I’ve encountered. I find them incredibly valuable. They should be used sparingly though.

“Fun” joke or game bots could be okay with if they were in specific communities that wanted them (which would be communities I’m not a part of, 😁), but not in general. I tend to be a purist and like to keep things as vanilla as possible.

rikudou,

The tldr bot has now been disabled as per the decision of Beehaw. Contact your favorite community mods if you’d like to change that.

Lycan,

I don’t find bots useful. I was on Reddit for years and I didn’t use any of them. I don’t think the door should be closed on bots permanently but for now I’d rather not see them, they’re no better than spam to me.

NeccoNeko,

Bots that can be summoned (e.g. !savevideo, or whatever the command format would be) could be useful. Otherwise, bots can sod off.

Nicbudd,

Some bots are cool, some are annoying. How about the community gets to vote to add certain bots. Many such options have been brought up already.

newtraditionalists,

I say no to bots. I see the utility in some of them, but beehaw is only one instance, and I’d love to keep it an instance that I know is full of actual people. Makes me want to engage in conversation much more. Besides, if you want a bot filled experience you can engage in one of the instances that allow bots. If bots are allowed, I want them to be very clearly labeled. I want to know in one glance if I’m speaking to a bot.

LastOneStanding,

Agreed. I find a lot of them to be irritating and the rest of them pretty useless and annoying.

nfld0001,
@nfld0001@beehaw.org avatar

beehaw is only one instance, and I’d love to keep it an instance that I know is full of actual people.

That’s an insightful way of putting it that didn’t come to mind.

I think part of what Beehaw uniquely offers is the drive for its own kind of instance and user culture and a closer and more organic community. Bots, save for moderator tools, admittedly detract from that kind of vibe. I could imagine that sacrificing less necessary bots, either partially or entirely, could be an important measure toward securing those aforementioned values. Federation with more Reddit-esque instances still allows us to scratch Reddit sort of itch when it comes up.

OneRedFox,
@OneRedFox@beehaw.org avatar

Bots like that one that changes YouTube links to Piped are good, as are bots like a metric/freedom unit converter. A well done meme bot could even be good. I just don’t like the ones that pretend to be human.

sludge,
@sludge@beehaw.org avatar

bots are kinda boring

Frederic,

Auto tldr is really cool, this is a bot I support

rikudou,

The auto tldr bot has now been disabled as per the decision of Beehaw. Contact your favorite community mods if you’d like to change that.

StringPotatoTheory,

I think some comment bots are nice, like the TLDR / summarization bot, reminder bot, youtube piped links, maybe one that replaces an amp link with the original? But these bots should be labeled as bots in settings so users have the option to toggle off seeing them.

I don’t like having bots post posts though, I’ve seen some in other instances and there’s not much discussion happening in the comments a lot of the time.

LastOneStanding,

I just saw a summarization bot on here make a summary that was longer than the post. Kind of silly.

StringTheory,

I saw one that pretty much missed the point of the article. Pre-digested pabulum. We should be reading the frickin’ article ourselves before we comment.

rikudou,

The summary bot has now been disabled as per the decision of Beehaw. Contact your favorite community mods if you’d like to change that.

acastcandream, (edited )

spoilersdfsaf

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