Utopian Bot Handling in the @utopian-io Bot

Today, I submitted two new pull requests into the api.utopian.io repository to help the @utopian-io bot better handle voting bots, trail bots, bot armies, and other types of bots voting on Utopian content.

I also fixed a bug with @utopian-io's maximum/minimum vote handling. These changes are in two separate pull requests, linked through Utopian.

How Utopian Deals with Bots

Remember that the @utopian-io bot is a very jealous one! If it sees you using other bots on your Utopian contributions, it'll be envious and may remove percentage points off your vote power!

This is why it's important that:

• users cease using voting bots and bid bots on their Utopian contributions, and
• bot services stop automatically voting on posts with the tag #utopian-io

If you run a bot service like @minnowpond that automatically votes users if they do a simple action such as following you, set your bot to skip posts with the tag utopian-io. This way, your users will be happier as they will earn more from the @utopian-io bot and will not have to lose vote power due to your bot :)

Updated Bots List

In my contribution, I updated the bots list with new bot armies. Bot armies are groups of users that trail the vote of a main bot, such as @ninjawhale. These armies are considered bots as well, and are being added to the Utopian Bots List.

If you think that the bots list still has room for improvement, feel free to head over to the Repository and add some more! If you're not sure how to do so, you can private message @elear, @mooncryption (myself), or other mods with your bot suggestions and we'll get them added in.

Alphabetized the Bots List

The bots list at Utopian is now perfectly alphabetized and much easier to search/sort through compared to the unsorted mess we had before :)

You can now easily find your bot in the list, or see if a bot is already present.

Voting Power Bug Fix

This morning, Utopian Founder @elear committed a change that was supposed to set the max voting power to 60%:

However, if you look at the line above if (vote > 100) vote = 60; you'll realize that this doesn't set the max vote to 60, and actually penalizes really good posts! For example, if my post was worth a vote of 102%, it would get bounced all the way back to 60%, while a 90%-worth post would still get a 90% vote!

I submitted my own change, as you can see below, that sets variables for the minVote and maxVote allowing for easy changes, and properly implements the vote limits:

In my commit above, you can see how the minVote and maxVote limits allow the editors to easily change these values, and keep the limits implemented.

Thanks for reading my Utopian contribution.

To get rewarded for developing an open-source project, writing code, making designs, translating, or anything in between, make sure to visit Utopian!

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Thanks for reading,
— @mooncryption

image sources: 1, 2, 3
proof of work: bot list commit, voting power fix

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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