Thanks for the post @jasonmcz. Lots of bot posts lately! I'll weigh in.

Rule #1: A Steem robot must provide real value to the Steem community.
I do not agree that it should be about the money you get. Cheetah gets more downvotes than upvotes. A bot can provide value in other ways.

Rule #2: A Steem robot should value quality over quantity.
This one needs to be smacked into the forheads of some bots. And that includes jeeves, which spammed people who didn't want it. It should only follow those who want it, and assume by default people do not.

Rule #3: Conversational Steem robots shouldn't start conversations.
I definitely agree with this one, and this is exactly why calva got auto downvoted until it stopped spamming.

Rule #4: Your bot should provide value to the readers, not the author.
This is an important one as well. The author wants to read reader responses, not bot responses.

Rule #5: Your bot should announce itself as a bot.
Agreed. In addition, for most bots it should not even announce itself, and only follow those who want it.

Rule #6: Don't judge for the entire community.
This is subjective. I always take feedback seriously about cheetah, but it will first and formost follow my own philosophy. There is no one that said plagiarism doesn't belong on steemit. ***I*** said ***I*** don't want it, and I tag (not flag) people who do it.
It just so happens that many people agree with me.

Good points!

Upvoted

I had thought @jeeves was a pretty decent robot. Sorry to hear was discontinued. Prehaps in a future version could assign a few random stories? May make it less desirable than just trending stories, trying to think how it might draw exposure to overlooked articles that are still quality pieces.

Keep up the great work @jasonmcz 
 Upvoted 

Thanks @jasonmcz.  I'd love to see some type of visual indicator that a bot is a bot.  (emphasizing #5 in your post).  i.e. once the account has been flagged as a good bot, change the icon.

![Bot Head](http://i63.tinypic.com/1215v6a.gif)

Money is the origin intention for some robots, not the rules, the final rules are the steemit gui presentation and blockchain protocals. MAKE RULES THE CODE!

Thanks for bringing this up... I thought @jeeves was pretty cool. The only part I think pissed people of was that it was usually top of the replies...i.e It distracted readers from interacting with other steemians' replies. Bringing up the bot say after the 30 minute mark would be nice IMO.

Rule 5 is perhaps the most important to me.. Fooling people with one-liners aint cool and will certainly piss people off if they discover they had just replied to a bot... We all seek human responses to contents posted. 

Looking forward to how bots evolve on the platform. Thanks for laying the foundation.

Hi! This post has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests">Flesch-Kincaid</a> grade level of 5.4 and reading ease of 84%. This puts the writing level on par with Jane Austen and JK Rowling.

Hello! @jasonmcz  I am very much disturbed by a problem of boats. I would like that you as the creator of one of them took part in discussion of my post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@jennamarbles/i-think-that-bots-can-affect-steemit

Keep up the great work @jasonmcz 
 Upvoted 

I would even go so far as to expand on #2 - the quantity should be based on the number of users requesting a "useful" bot. 

Useful bots should be something that people want to use. They should be something that provides context to the content when asked to do so.

Maybe an improvement for @jeeves and a way to bring it back online right now is only respond to posts that mention it by name? I'd use "Hey @jeeves, share some links" or something worked into my content. 

I'd probably even upvote the comment it left, because it's bringing value to my post without me having to work for it.

Bots in any case need! but they must be very high quality and the need to help people (especially beginners). You wrote a good idea!

Steem isn't the place for the Turing test.

Yes!  I am constantly checking people's responses to see if they are a bot or not.  This is exactly correct.

I totally a agree with you well done :) bots should announce themselves as just that bots on a whole though I dont minds bots they are part of this new eco system

Nice artice, thank you

Thanks for this post! In case the rules a ordered hierarchical, my comment would be to put rule #5 to the top of the list. As I see it, a bot without making an entry statement like "Hi, I´m a bot" is already a problematic one, even if it proves to make valuable contributions. I´m looking forward to follow the discussions triggered by this manifest proposal.

Nice @jasonmcz 
 Shot you an Upvote :)

Keep up the great work @jasonmcz 
 Upvoted 

Thanks for this! I completely agree, as i've started getting very irritated by bots. If they abide by the above rules then atleast they are here to serve a purpose. Not just a bot that pretends to be a human wanting post rewards.
Thanks for this.

@jasonmcz I would say that this reflects the STEEMBOTS code of conduct explicitly with a couple of exceptions.

#1 There may be owners who explicitly do not want bots in their threads at all.  Make sure to respect it if they have gone to the trouble of adding #STEEMBOTSTAY explicitly, regardless of what the people in the thread want.

#2 If you run a bot, tag it.  Make sure the owner is known so people know where to complain to if there is a problem.  You don't want people calling the dog catcher when it's running lose, make sure your dog has a collar and proper tags.

Otherwise, this is great!
I hope you'll join the STEEMBOTS initiative.

@jeeves, find related posts