Lots of bots reportedly down - but the Steem FOSSbot Voter stays standing!
Just a quick post to take the opportunity to raise awareness of the Steem FOSSbot Voter bot while it seems lots of other bots which depend on the Python Piston library have stopped working. @patelincho and @noganoo reporting this
Steem FOSSbot Voter is still functional!
While your bot is down, why not check out a new Voter bot?
You can get set up in just a few minutes if you are tech savvy, or spend less than an hour getting to know everything.
Who knows, you may like it more than what you're currently running! 😜
Better than a simple author whitelist or vote following bot
Voter has a simple and useful web app dashboard which allows you to control your bot without messing around with code. Look at our guide explaining the interface here.
Voter uses a score based system and has over 70 metrics (bits of information about a post) to help you decide which posts to vote on automatically. All you have to do is select the things that interest you and assign them relative importance.
This allows you to try and model how you actually like to vote, not just the lowest common denominator.
Find out more on how this works on the usage help doc.
If you get confused @ mention me on the # bots channel of steemit.chat and hopefully I'll have a few minutes to help you.
Simple installation
Voter has a one click installation deployment to Heroku, a great cloud-computing service you can run for free to a limit of one bot running once every hour.
However it might be more your cup of tea to run it locally on your own dedicated machine or even your laptop. You can do this using our easy to use docker and our helper script, which will download the Voter code for you, build and deploy to docker, as well as manage starting and stopping it. It's very handy, and this part was a collaboration with @shaunmza, check out his tutorial on Voter for docker, and my follow up tutorial for using the handy script set up.
Beautiful in Beta
The bot is still in beta but is very functional. If you notice any bugs please log them in the issue tracker. I am actively working through them, though haven't done any in a week since other projects have taken my attention.
Hate bots?
I'm in the middle of a bots series aimed at questions of whether bots are bad for Steem or not, check out act 1 and act 2, with part 3 coming in the next day or two.
If you dislike bots and this has rilled you up, please let me know why you think so, very interested in the arguments 🤓
I would like to say thanks to all of those that have been working on this project. I'm a complete idiot and I was able to get this to run on heroku. It took about two hours for me as it is alot to digest but the guide and docs are so complete that I was blown away. Usually people will say do this, do that, do this but not really tell you how to do it. Thanks so much for helping balance the steemit system.
Thank you for this message, it made my day! Very glad you got it working and happy my docs are in good enough order. There will be some updates coming in the next weeks I hope.
Running Strong. Thanks Again.I just have to keep looking at the data and try to tweak the algorithms. I would like to add some of my loyal followers soon as whitelisted and then maybe export a beginner algorithm to help people get started. Once I Can Measure performance over time of course and split test. I 'll try to launch another bot and maybe set it up different if that is possible to run 2 at once? hmmm
This would be fantastic, if you do please be sure to @ mention me 😊
I would also be very interested in the results of this. You would need two accounts to do this correctly of course, with the same SP in each.
Followed 😎
It wouldn't be a perfect test but maybe we could get close and see where to focus our efforts maybe until another update. If i can do it I'll def share and keep you posted.
Im not a fan of the bots becaue this way of upvote remuve the value of the content . Better 10 people to look my post and 1 upvote me than 100 upvotes and 5 views . Even i found some autors very good , i dont like always what they post . ENGAGE and read before upvote !
You're not alone with this point of view 😅
Perhaps it is not your goal as an author to have up votes which are not considered by a human. But I think it does not remove the value of the content. Engagement comes in human and non-human flavors 😉
If I get you correctly, this is an important point, that always up voting the same authors is not necessarily good because you (as a human) may not always like all their posts. That exactly why I created the Voter bot to look for different interesting facts about posts, so you don't have to always follow the same authors blindly.
I'm still rather sceptical about the usage of bots but I might change my view in the future, who knows? In the meantime, I have one questions for you: Could your bot theoretically run on a Raspberry Pi?
It's a bit complicated. From my docker tutorial post:
I hope to try in a few weeks 🙂
I would love to see a Raspberry Pi port of your bot. Thank you for giving this a try.
Thanks for the enthusiasm, will do my best and post on it in a few weeks whether it goes well or not! 😄
Congrats!
I myself am curious to know why the other bots stopped working, it's very intriguing!
Pretty sure it is because of the library difference, I think all the python bots broke. Voter runs on the steem.js lib so I think that's why we were spared!
You, you… MEATBAGS!
Okay this sounds super awesome, other than the fact that I am Forrest Gump level unsavvy when it comes to tech, LOL. I will see what I can do with it, thanks for sharing! Also I feel like I keep running into you suddenly- I am supporting @dragosroua's experiment as well, especially as I feel that I contributed to his idea in at least a small way- and when that happens, I always think there is a reason for it, so I will be adding you to my list :)
@personz has put a lot of effort into making the setup easy, and is very helpful in the channel.
I am sure you will be up and running in no time!
I can see that, thank you!
Haha 🙂 Well, as you know, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get 😉
Good luck with it, the tutorials and docs should get you going and if not then hit me up 😋
It happens. What, shit? Sometimes. lol
Thanks, I may take you up on that!
You are correct, my piston scrips are all down as well. Will give your script finally a shot tomorrow.
Thank you 😆 I hope you like it
Interesting, will take a closer look at this soon, if I (hopefully) find the time.
Not a fan of bots in general, will see if my option changes when I know more about this thing.
I would be really interested to see what you think of it, especially given your current position 🤔
Thanks for the update thought I done something wrong any ideas to why its down or how long?
The Python Piston library? If so I don't use it so no idea.
If you do you could raise an issue for it at the main GitHub project.
Thanks for the reply personz