Announcing the @spaminator PSA bot named 'Jack'
Tag Abuse has been a problem for steemit.com since the very beginning. We are a community that is designed to regulate itself, but sometimes new users need a little guidance.
I've been working with @nnnarvaez on a PSA (Public Service Announcement) bot that will comment the very first time it sees a user post with a specific tag. We are starting with the #steemit tag and will add #introduceyourself in the next few days.
Jack (the friendly bot) will post using the @spaminator account for now as we test the concept and see how well it is received by the community.
Our bot is multilingual! If a post also uses a language tag such as #spanish or #french it will post the message in the appropriate language. We plan to add Italian & Turkish in the near future. If there is anyone who wishes to volunteer to translate into other languages please let us know!
Jack will only comment once per account per tag. The comment will look something like this:
If all goes well we'll start with the most abused tags such as #steemit, #introduceyourself, #steem, #photography, etc.
Specific use tags
We also plan to expand the concept to work with groups on informing users about specific use tags. #colorchallenge, #minnowbooster, and others. Anyone with a curation tag, contest/challenge tag, or community initiative tag can request to be added to the bot by contacting @patrice. Requests must include a link to a post or website explaining the proper use of the tag.
Community PSA Bot
This is a community PSA bot. If you find the information useful please give it an upvote! If you think our bot does not provide a useful service to new users feel free to flag it… Just be kind when you do. A 1% flag will be enough for us to see how well this initiative is received.
Help Us Reduce Spam
Contact us if you think our bot can help your community initiative by informing users about the proper use of your tag with custom messages beyond the PSA standard comment. Comments could include more information on your specific project and even post from the account of your choosing. Our goal is to inform the community without adding to the already growing amount of redundant comment spam.
We appreciate your support and feedback!
Good idea. It's walking the line between useful and spam of course, but I think it's on the side of useful. Great work.
Well, that's a good thing.
I had once one of my posts being downvoted and i didn't knew why, also i haven't got a clear response.
I tried to see why and searched for issues.
And all that came in my search results it was that i used the steem or steemit tag on not relevant content.
I agreed to that and i just removed that tag / tags in the second day.
But when we are at the beginning and being so enthusiast with this platform we can't know about that things.
Even with some months of work behind we can't know that this can be a big issue and having downvote for a post that we worked hard it is a bad thing. And with no explanations there it can be more bad.
I understand that the ones who do that don't have time. But for having such a drastic action, they could make a more responsible action for users that don't make spam with lot of BS and just take a wrong choice.
Yes, i know FAQs are there. But who can understand the complexity of a system only from reading FAQs? There are no specific pages in the menu to give quick simple who should stress enough things like that there. The same they do with the password.
I think that always there is place for improvement in the users behavior also in the development team. They should understand that not all the people here are computer geeks or experts in programming and forum behavior specialists.
Ii can be a good step if you do that to especially have new users that comment in their posts.
Maybe from their first post in this platform it will be good to meet such comments.
Cheers and good luck man
Love this! Glad to see it.
One small edit I would make, There are bound to be a lot of users who need Public Service Announcement spelled out for them. Leaving it as PSA will likely cause some confusion.
Just my 2 cents in an otherwise brilliant piece of work!
That is a great idea i actually had to google it (I think it specially applies to non native English speakers) Will try and see if doesn't makes the message too long.
I think this is a good concept. So new steemians instantly know how to use tags and not to take not fitting ones. Keep up the good work! :)
That would be very good initiation to alert new users.
great post.
Very happy to see this, especially the part where the bot can offer intelligent "non-accusatory" guidance on first use of a tag... that's something we need around here!