With lemmy.world having published their own set of bot guidelines I figured I should make some here as well to get some parity

The rules are less strict than lemmy.worlds rules within the confines of programming.dev but for communities in instances outside programming.dev default to the lemmy.world rules unless told otherwise

Bot Guidelines:

1. Mark Bots as Bots Bot accounts should be marked that they are a bot using the checkbox in the user settings. This includes any automation in an account (if you automate part of your personal account, put what the automation is in your bio so people know)
2. Put contact info The owner of the bot and some way to contact them must be in the bot's bio (unless its an automated personal account, in that case the account itself it the way to contact)
3. Use mentions as prefix If a bot has commands it should use its mention as a prefix. (This will allow different bots to use the same commands without interfering with each other)
4. Dont spam Bots should not spam posts or comments. (If a bot command has been used its fine to do a response but dont drown out non bot posts in the local new sort.) Certain cases are unavoidable such as if you want to get a bot posting weekly threads in different communities at the same time but in those cases please contact me first to get it approved
5. Allow mods to opt in Bots participating in a community should be opt in so communities can choose what bots they want. If you want a bot to be allowed in a community please contact the moderators of that community first. EXCEPTION: If a bot is deemed to be a well behaving bot that brings net good to the instance it can override this rule as long as it has been approved by an admin. This can include things such as a tldr bot, remindme bot, link fixer bot, piped link converter bot, etc. If a bot has overriden rule 5 with this exception community moderators should still be able to opt out of the bot

These rules should bring us up to parity with lemmy.world along with allowing a bit more leeway within the instance since there has been some nice bots getting made that I dont want unfairly punished

If you have a bot you want whitelisted for the entire instance for the rule 5 exception feel free to dm me here or on matrix

And if anyone has any suggestions for changes to these rules feel free to comment them. They can be adjusted as needed if any issues with them come up