Hey everyone in bot land! It's been a while since I've made a post about updates to the Steem Bot Tracker since I've been too busy programming! But better late than never - so here's a summary of the updates which many of you have no doubt already seen:
New Site Theme
The great @suggeelson has generously donated one of his slick bootstrap themes and his time to implement it in the bot tracker website! He should get all the credit for this awesome update so please make sure to show him some love on his post about it here: Steem Bot Tracker - New Theme
Fixed issues with bids incorrectly showing as invalid
As some of you may have seen there were some issues around bids showing as invalid on the site even though they were actually valid which caused the site to show higher vote values for bids than what was actually delivered.
I'm happy to say that this has now been resolved, HOWEVER - please note that the bot tracker is not always 100% accurate. All of the bots work a little bit differently and there's no way the bot tracker can take all of those differences into account. Bots also change how they work, or have bugs of their own, or all sorts of things all the time which can cause discrepancies.
So please understand that when using the tool. The good news is that I do have a solution I am working on to allow the bot tracker to be 100% accurate all the time for bots that support it. More on that below!
Added minimum bid information and indicator icon for bots that accept STEEM
Showing min bid information was an oft-requested feature and I don't know why it took me so long to get it in, but it's finally there now! Additionally it lists the currencies that each bot accepts - SBD and/or STEEM.
In addition to showing the currencies accepted in the min bid column I have also added a STEEM icon indicator next to the bot's name to highlight bots that accept STEEM bids. This is especially important recently as SBD prices are skyrocketing making them much less attractive for use with bid bots.
I would highly recommend all bot owners to accept STEEM bids if possible.
Added indicator for bots which refund invalid bids
You would be surprised how often bids are submitted for posts that are past the payout window, are below the min bid amount, or even for posts that have already been voted on by that bot in an earlier round! Most of the time it's buyer beware and the bidder loses their money, but a few bots will automatically refund invalid bids.
Those bots now have a special indicator icon which I hope will be especially helpful for newer or inexperienced users to be more confident about using the bots and not having to worry about making a mistake.
Added @smartsteem Content Promotion Service
I have renamed the "Paid Voting Bots" section to "Content Promotion Services" which now includes @minnowbooster and @smartsteem. @smartsteem is a new service which looks really great. It's small now but I expect it can grow pretty big in the near future so it's worth keeping an eye on.
I would encourage you to check it out at https://smartsteem.com/ as they offer a lot of services beyond just vote buying such as a delegation market and sponsorship options!
New config settings & API support for 100% accuracy
I have added new settings in the bot owner config tool to indicate if your bot sends refunds for invalid bids and if it accepts bids in STEEM, as well as a new setting where you can specify a bids API URL for your bot.
The bids API is a new feature I have added to the PostPromoter bid bot software which exposes the details of the bids accepted by the bot in the current and last round. The bot tracker site will now use this API for any bots which support it. This will allow the bot tracker to be 100% accurate for those bots that use the API!
If you want to utilize this for your bot you can either use the PostPromoter bot software which supports it out of the box, or you can implement it yourself. Here is the API URL for the @postpromoter bot so you can see how it should be set up: http://postpromoter.com/api/bids
Hopefully in the future all bid-based voting bots will implement this API so that the bot tracker site can always show 100% accurate information.
Conclusion & Proof of Work
Well that's everything for now! My overall goal with the site is to make the vote buying and content promotion process as easy and transparent as possible for everyone and I think we've come a long way towards that goal already. I want to extend a big THANK YOU to everyone who has supported me!
Here are links to relevant commits:
Added indicator for bots that refund invalid bids
Added support for STEEM bids
Added support for bot bid API
Added some new bots and implemented the smartsteem API
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors