Steem Bot Tracker Update 5 - Pre-Vote Group Info & Bid Validation

This post details the most recent development update of the Steem Bot Tracker tool that was committed to the https://github.com/MattyIce/bottracker GitHub repository.

Bid Validation

I want to thank @themarkymark, owner and maintainer of @buildawhale, for pointing out some situations where the bot tracker could show inaccurate numbers. For example if a bid was sent in for a post that was unable to be bid on (for any reason) the bot tracker would still include that bid in the calculations so the actual "max profitable bid" amount and payouts would be different in reality than what was shown on the site.

This was a very important issue to fix since it affects both users of the tool and bot owners. It wasn't an easy fix since there are a number of different situations where a bid could be invalid that I had to check, but after sending some purposely invalid bids to test, I believe it all works correctly now.

The site is currently checking for the following with each bid that is submitted:

• It is >= the min bid accepted by the bot
• It is in SBD and not STEEM (as far as I know no bid-based voting bots accept STEEM)
• The memo contains a valid link to a post or comment
• The post is still new enough to vote on (posted less than 6 days 8 hours ago)
• The post has not already been voted on by this bot (you'd be surprised how often people submit a post multiple times to the same bot!)

If a bid is invalid it will still be shown in the "details" view so there's no confusion if anyone tries to double-check the information shown on the bot tracker site (which I encourage!) but it will have an "X" in front of it indicating that it is invalid and that it will not be included in the total bids and max profitable bid calculations.

(Sorry @g-dubs, but you already submitted this post to @booster last round!)

Pre-Vote / Front Runner Group Info

Some bots have pre-vote or front runner groups which are groups of Steem accounts which will automatically upvote posts submitted to the bots before the bot votes in order to gain the curation reward from the (typically) large bot vote.

This is important information for bot users to be aware of since it will mean they will get even more votes and rewards on their posts for using those bots than just the bot's own vote. Personally I always prefer to use bots with a pre-vote group since it's like a free bonus!

Bots that have such a group will now be indicated with a green check mark next to their name as shown below. You can also click on the check mark to find more information about that bot's group.

For bot owners, the bot tracker site will now look for the "pre_vote_group_url" config setting in the json_metadata for the bot's account to determine if the bot has this feature or not. You can update this setting via the "Bot Owner Config" page on the Steem Bot Tracker site or via any other method of updating the json_metadata for your account.

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Open Source Contribution posted via Utopian.io

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