Standardized Configuration for Bid-Based Voting Bots

This is a message to all bid-based voting bot owners - @buildawhale, @bellyrub, @booster, @voter, @sneaky-ninja, @upgoater, @discordia, @minnowhelper, @lovejuice, @pushup, @boomerang, @appreciator

The Problem

Since launching the Steem Bot Tracker site over a month ago now I've gotten a lot of requests to update information for specific bots as things are changed. They might change the minimum bid amount, or switch to 50% voting every 1.2 hours vs 100% every 2.4 hours, etc. I've also had to try all of them out myself to see if they allow voting on comments or not.

I'm not always available to make changes right away so sometimes the bot tracker will report wrong information if a bot's settings are changed without my knowledge which can result in users of the bot tracker losing money and have a bad experience overall.

The Solution

To fix this issue I am proposing a standard format for bots to report their settings via the "json_metadata" property on their Steem account. If you're not familiar with json_metadata, it is a property associated with every Steem account that can include any arbitrary information the account owner wants in JSON format.

Typically this is used to store account profile information such as name, profile image, cover image, about text, location, etc. It can also be used for other purposes such as bot settings information. @randowhale currently uses the json_metadata in its profile to indicate its settings such as the minimum bid amount and when it is "awake".

The json_metadata for an account can be updated at any time by the account owner by issuing an "account_update" transaction to the blockchain signed with their active key and including the updated information.

Proposed Settings

I am proposing the following properties and format for bid-based voting bot settings:

"config":
{
"min_bid_sbd": 0.5,
"bid_window": 2.4,
"comments": false
}

As you can see it contains the following three settings:

"min_bid_sbd" - the minimum bid amount allowed in SBD
"bid_window" - the number of hours between bids (2.4 for 100% vote and 1.2 for 50% vote)
"comments" - whether or not the bot allows bids for comment posts

The bot tracker site code has already been updated to check for these properties in the json_metadata for each bot and will use them if they are available. This way if changes are made to a bot's settings, the bot owner can update these properties in the json_metadata for the account and the site can pick it up right away so users will not see incorrect information.

How To Update Your Bot

Don't know how to update the json_metadata for your account? Don't worry - we've got that taken care of!

There is a new Config Page on the bot tracker site! You can get to it from the link in the previous sentence or by clicking the "Bot Owner Config" menu item at the top of the site.

As you can see from the image above, it will allow you to enter the name of your bot, the active key (note that this is not stored or sent anywhere - you can check the site source to verify!) and enter the settings for your bot and it will update the json_metadata for you!

A Call To Action

I would like to very strongly encourage all bid-based voting bot owners to adopt this standard for reporting and updating their bot settings. It will help ensure that accurate information is presented for the use of your bot and should hopefully help reduce issues, complaints, and refunds due to misinformation.

I am not able to update the site every time a bot's settings are changed and I think this solution will be good for users, owners, and services that work with these bots.

Ideas / Comments

Please let me know if you have any ideas on how this can or should be done differently, if there are any other settings you think should be included, or anything else that can help make this an effective tool.

I welcome all feedback from the community and will continue to work to promote voting bots on Steem since I think they are a great service to helping new users get their content noticed and provide a great use for the STEEM token.

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Open Source Contribution posted via Utopian.io

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