⚽ Sports Betting Community Bot: A Proposal
The last few days were an eyeopener for me.
I've been debugging a script I wrote years ago that has stopped working properly. No documentation, no comments, and smartassery all over the place. I wanted to curse the guy who wrote it, but standing in front of the mirror and throwing insults at your reflection isn't that effective.
So, I decided to check out my steemit feed...
Long story short, I've learned a lot by getting into the arguments. The first thing I've learned is that posting comments after a failed debugging session will impair my civility. The second thing I've learned is that there are folks here that are genuinely invested in this platform and want it to succeed. The folks with resources willing to invest in the success of this platform.
So... what that has to do with the community bot?
Everything.
I've got a lot of support when I started 78 days ago and because of it, I want to pay it forward. The most of the support that I got came from one guy - @costanza. He reached out, pointed me to his must-read Getting Started on Steemit (Sports Bettors Edition), encouraged me to improve,... you get the point. Costanza is a great guy. Read that again. Now focus on a part of the sentence.
He is one guy doing the majority of the community building on steemit.
As I said, I tried to follow in his footsteps and do what he did for me. Reach out and let the newcomer knows that he's not shouting in the dark, there are quite a few degenerate gamblers around here.
I hit the wall with my approach. My account has 30 SP. I can give moral support and nothing else. Or so I thought.
I'm a software developer by profession. Writing and running a community bot is something I can contribute here. As a matter of fact, I don't even have to write one. @yabapmatt has already done it.
The other thing I can do is to engage with the big accounts here and ask for help and support. Folks, there are big accounts out there that would be willing to help us solve our main problem: new guys quitting fast.
So, how a bot can solve this?
By providing our community members with regular upvotes. Sure, the value of the bot's upvote will be small, at least in the beginning, but even a small, but regular, upvote can encourage our members to post consistently and to improve the quality of their posts.
To qualify for the regular upvotes, a member has to meet certain criteria of which the most important is engagement. The qualities we should strive for are layed out in the original Sports Betting Blog Curation by @costanza that I will sum up here:
- Keeping Track of Betting Results
- Consistent Posting
- Steemit Engagement
- Quality Content
- Post Layout Efforts
- Steemit Etiquette
I propose that our bot votes with different weights and as the member improves in the six areas listed above the vote weight goes up. The better a member does, the more reward he gets.
Imagine steemit being a place where you can follow dozens of quality sports bettors providing tips and analysis on regular basis... sports bettors with the public and verifiable track record... Wouldn't that be something?
It would and I believe we can do it.
Why not join the other efforts instead of creating our own solution?
Because our content is not for general consumption, I can't imagine getting the @curie reward by posting a tip on the Caen v PSG game. There are community bots supporting artists, writers,... there should be one for our niche, too.
My proposal
Let us create a bot that will support the growth of our community and reward the efforts of the members to improve and engage. The bot I'm proposing is strictly nonprofit. There will be no payouts for the delegation of SP, nor there will be selling of upvotes. All the earnings are going into powering the bot up. No payouts.
That may not sound as an interesting proposal with which to approach the big accounts, but I think that some of them will see that by supporting our efforts to create a sustainable, numerous, and active sports betting community is something that helps the profitability of the entire platform.
That's about all, for now. What do you think guys?
(An apology in advance: I will not be able to upvote your comments because my SP is low and the voting power even lower and that can put me in a position to have trouble with bandwidth, unable to respond to the comments.)
Having this kind of bot would certainly help, but I think the key is patience for now. Ever since I started on Steemit I saw the potential this platform could have for sports bettors. So many of them post online, often desperatly trying to make a couple of bucks by starting a service and selling their picks.
There is so much sports betting related content that can be posted without ever running out since there are always new matches, results, events, ...
Yet the amount of sports bettors that find their way to this platform is quite small right now. Some of the things that should help over time.
I've been planning to start a bot myself as an experiment I believe could very much work. (for the entire steemit community) I'll pitch you the idea if you want on dicord the next time i have it on.
Wise words @costanza, I don't see another bot really helping to be honest. I understand that communities are coming in the next Steemit update https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/update-communities-hivemind, I think there is scope here to develop a betting group and build an area servicing the betting community. A lot of the features listed could be of great value to develop the kind of experience I think you are trying to achieve.
This is the one update I am particularly interested in as at the moment everything just comes at you from all directions, with the features promised it will be easier for like minded people to come together and build real value to the platform.
I ran this proposal by Asher(@abh12345) to see if the bot will go against steemit etiquette.
I've learned that this kind of bot is not only OK but that it may end up in the development toolkit with the hivemind update.
I'll take a closer look at the timetables of the planned update and if it's something that's around the corner I'll cancel the project. But if it is 6+ months from now, I think that in that time the bot can do a lot of work.
@beat-the-bookies looks like I misunderstood your post (was tired at the time) I thought you was proposing another bid-bot, I saw the link to @yabapmatt didn't follow it since I knew he developed bid-bot software and Steem Bot Tracker website, what a guy, didn't know he had also worked on a community bot.
So yes in that regard I am up for that, though reading closer his explanation of how it works you delegate to become a member so not sure that fits what you are proposing, I know you can sponsor someone though but not sure if that works for your proposal.
It sounds like that update is not far away but then SMT's were promised for early part of this year but we are well on the way to May and they are not here yet, so that is difficult to say. If you have time to experiment with the code and come up with a more detailed proposal then I'd say go for it.
It happens :-)
Yes, he is. Matt Rosen (@yabapmatt) built a ton of infrastructure that we can take an advantage of.
His community bot is open source and we can modify it to suit our needs.
Exactly how it should work is something we should discuss and come to a community-wide consensus. Once we have the rules, I'll do the necessary coding.
The main purpose for this bot should be incentivizing engagement. For example, the first time you end up on the @costanza's curation list, you get 10% upvote for a month. If you're still active and growing by the time the next curation report is published, you get 20% upvote,...
Another function that the bot can serve is broadcasting community-wide announcements. For example, after the first welcoming message, the bot will upvote silently (not leaving comments), but when there's something our community needs to pay attention to, it can leave the comment with instructions.
This platform has a problem with discoverability and building a community is hard. The hivemind update should solve the community building problem, but as you said about the promises being made... If it's six months or a year away, that's a lot of time we can use to lay some groundwork.
Great, how about setting up a discord channel or a Telegram or something similar so this can be discussed?
Here you go: https://discord.gg/SAEf6nV
This link will expire in a day, I'll write a post later inviting all interested parties to join in.
Great ideas guys, I feel lucky to have run into a proactive bunch. I'm not sure how much I will be able to contribute as I'm involved in quite a demanding project work-wise at the moment but I'll be watching from the stands for sure.
The closest thing we have right now to a community gathering is your monthly curation post. I'll keep promoting it so that new members can see that this is not a dead platform for sports betting. Perhaps, we should start a discord group, too?
Please, do. I'd like to hear more.
@beat-the-bookies fixed that low SP problem for you :)
This kind of generosity will really help this community forward !
Wow...
Thank you @stimp1024!
I hope my small upvote helps too, I'm rebuilding my voting power at the moment too. I'll be following you with interest and also the people that you have mentioned. I'm also interested in sports betting and hope I'll have something constructive to add in future.
Thank you @p-props!
If you want to find more sports bettors to follow read: Steemit Sports Betting Curation April. As far as I know, that is the post that attracts the most members of our community each month so you can see who's there and who's doing what.
You just did. Leaving a comment is one of the most valuable things we can do. It sucks when you write your soul out and... crickets!
Thanks for stopping by. I hope this is just the beginnig of our conversation. Cheers.
I hope so too mate and now I can follow @constanza too after your introduction.
Great idea and i didn't realize how big the sports betting community has grown. Just wondering but would a bot be different from those auto curation trails?
It's mostly because we have no central place to gather. Soon to be rectified :-)
It would. A bot allows more flexibility and the functionality that auto curation trails lack (such as broadcasting community-wide message after upvoting the post)...
I will think about how I can help. Will get back to you! If I do forget please remind me about it. I’m trying to keep too many balls in the air at the same time!
Did give a 100% upvote trying to get you out of the dark days!
Thanks for stopping by and thank you for the vote!
At this stage, I'm looking for ideas. So, if you find some free time I'd appreciate your feedback.