Yeah, this is probably a good time to remind everyone that: - BBDQ does not use GenAI/LLMs - Bots created with BBDQ does not use GenAI/LLMs - BBDQ will never use GenAI/LLMs - Bots created with BBDQ will never use GenAI/LLMs - Most BBDQ bot replies don't actually READ replies, they return random text

so first, lol, but second, I do think it’s interesting how some people’s only conception of a bot is an LLM- or NN-driven conversation-shaped thing as opposed to something shaped by its creator into a genuine creative artifact

merritt@merrittk.com · 2mo ago

watching people get into fights with the discourse bot is incredible

Server's not responding, restarting it doesn't really work, can't do much about it atm, will reattempt later

I'm experimenting with small changes to the script that publishes your posts to Bluesky to reduce future crashes. At the moment, a side effect of said experimenting is that quite a few bots will post less frequently than usual. Hopefully, this is only temporary until I come up with something better.

Also kinda wondering and a little afraid to ask, but another hypothetical... If BBDQ bots by default were restricted to only post 4 times a day and don't read replies, and anything above that was a paid option (say, $1/month with quantum discounts), would ANYONE be okay with that?

Blue Bots, Done Quick!@bluebotsdonequick.com · 6mo ago

A kinda hypothetical question, asked out of curiosity: If I were unable to keep hosting BBDQ, would anyone be willing to take it over and keep it running in my place, assuming I handed you all the code and told you exactly how to use it? It's kinda gotten way too big for my server to handle 😩

A kinda hypothetical question, asked out of curiosity: If I were unable to keep hosting BBDQ, would anyone be willing to take it over and keep it running in my place, assuming I handed you all the code and told you exactly how to use it? It's kinda gotten way too big for my server to handle 😩

The reason BBDQ (and everything else on my server) occasionally goes down, is that the site was never scaled for running 1100+ bots, so occasionally it runs out of memory and stops working until I restart the server. For now, I don't really have a clever solution to this problem, sorry.

So the Bsky app decided to not send me notifications about this mention OR the eight other mentions saying the same thing, so I didn't see it until now ... Server restarted, bots should start running again soon. No idea what the issue is, but will investigate, this is the second time it's happened

lawngnomesorceress@lawngnomesorceress.bsky.social · 11mo ago

@bluebotsdonequick.com uhhhh, you alright over there?

*700 followers*? Wow! Hello everybody! BBDQ is a tool allowing you to easily build your own Tracery-based Bluesky bot, coding it manually or using an editor. The entire process contains zero generative AI. The site is continuously being developed, and new functionality is always around the corner.

Hmm, looks like my server has been down for a few hours. Should be up again now, and it looks like your bots are functional again.

Serious question - if there was a beta version of Blue Bots Done Quick where you could try out brand new BBDQ functionality a month or two before it became public to everyone, and it was available to anyone who subscribed to the Patreon - would that be of interest to any of you?

As for the wizard, here's the entirety of its source code: bluebotsdonequick.com/bots/towerwi... Everything that bot has ever written is put together from fragments that you can find on that page, all of which are written by Nora. Not exactly what you'd call a large language model.

Had I made bluebotsdonequick five years ago, I would probably have used the term "AI" myself. The reason I don't is that Tracery is *drastically* different from what people think of as AI today. One botmaker calls it "mad libs with rng", which is eerily accurate. The input generates the output.

This is not the kind of AI that takes a simple instruction and generates a response from that. Instead, a real person created a list of responses, and some of those responses fetches responses from other lists. EVERY word you see in those posts have been added to the bot manually by that person.

Words change. Those blog posts are 8+ years old. We used the term "AI" differently back then than how most people use it today. Yes, everything that is posted by a Tracery bot is "generated" by a computer. Technically. However: all of the pieces used for that generation are crafted by a human.

Just pushed a small, but important, change to BBDQ: If your Bluesky account is deleted, taken down, you change your password or anything else happens that prevents BBDQ to log you in to Bluesky, your bot will now automatically be deactivated. *For now*, you won't be notified when this happens.

BBDQ now adds link cards to posts containing links, prominently displaying the website's title and featured image (assuming the linked website has a <meta property="og:image"> tag) for the first link in the post. This will make BBDQ run a *little* bit slower, so please don't overuse it.

NEW FUNCTION: BBDQ now has an advanced post scheduler! - Scroll down to "Posting frequency" and select "At custom times" - Add daily, weekly or monthly posting schedules, as many as you want - Enter times in your own local timezone - Enter what text to post at that time - or stick with the default

Since scheduled posts are now implemented, here's the next Patreon Feature poll! www.patreon.com/posts/featur... Vote for what YOU want me to implement next on BBDQ. This time, the options are better error handling, Corpora implementation, link cards, and teaching bots to REMEMBER stuff!

Feature poll #2 | Blue Bots, Done Quick!

Get more from Blue Bots, Done Quick! on Patreon

patreon.com

NEW FUNCTION: BBDQ now has an advanced post scheduler! - Scroll down to "Posting frequency" and select "At custom times" - Add daily, weekly or monthly posting schedules, as many as you want - Enter times in your own local timezone - Enter what text to post at that time - or stick with the default

My little guide to tracery sets, constants, and using sets for alt text is about done; it needs some cross browser testing and for other human beings who aren't me to look at it and say if anything seems confusing or incorrect. nyoom.neocities.org/using_sets

Tracery Set Guide

nyoom.neocities.org

Working on the BBDQ scheduler function, and I have a couple of questions for you: - If you set your bot to post at a given time on the 31st of every month, what would you expect to happen in a month with less than 31 days? - Is it important/vital for bots to auto-adjust for daylight savings time?

Quick question out of curiosity – if there was a custom BBDQ domain (am considering bbdq.org – .com and .net were taken) that allowed you to easily get BBDQ themed handles for your bots (for free, obviously), would anyone be interested in using something like that?

Six months later, there are more than 800 active bots (+ 200 inactive ones), with a total follower count of 230.000. (If we exclude the two huge outliers that are mostly non-bot-accounts, we're at 92.000 followers. Which is, you know, still *fantastic*.) This is why your bot is slow sometimes.

Blue Bots, Done Quick!@bluebotsdonequick.com · 2y ago

Whoa, this blew up. BBDQ is now the host of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY bots. And that's not including the twenty-eight that hasn't been activated. Combined, these 150 bots have more than twelve thousand followers.

If you're wondering what BBDQ has in store for the future, I tend to jot down a lot of the things I really want to do with the website on the project's GitHub repository: github.com/olafmoriarty... Suggestions and feedback are welcome there, too (and here, of course).

Okay, I am SO implementing this in BBDQ one day.

a wizard@towerwizard.bsky.social · last yr.

And the MVP of all my bots is a github project called corpora, which creates public domain word lists for things like bots. I trim these down for relevance and use them for starting points for various lists. The vegetables one was particularly valuable this time. github.com/dariusk/corp...

Testing something: Posting order, which basically controls the accuracy of your posting frequency, is now sorted by posting frequency, meaning weekly or daily bots will be more accurate than hourly or ten-minutely bots. Bots with many followers will also be more accurate than bots with few.

Okay, I think most of the bugs surrounding last weekend's outage are gone now. Let me know if you have one I haven't fixed. The big issue still present is that the bsky connection is *slow* now. Posting a single post takes roughly five seconds, more if it has images, so 100 posts take >8 minutes.

Kinda pondering just how unpopular it would be if I removed the "post every 10 minutes" option so that twice an hour was the most frequent posting option. There's currently 70+ active bots using it, so changing them to every 30 minutes COULD reduce traffic and speed up the site quite significantly.

Ping @uni-strategic-bot.bsky.social @redlinecrooksquote.bsky.social @ai-fearz.bsky.social @holaveracruz.bsky.social @holy-mountain.bsky.social: If you are experiencing issues with your bots not posting to bluesky, this COULD be the reason and a possible solution.

Blue Bots, Done Quick!@bluebotsdonequick.com · last yr.

Hmm. Looks like your bot has a rate limit issue on bsky. I'm not 100% sure this will work, but my recommendation is: 1. Deactivate your bot 2. WAIT 24 hours (sorry) Could work before that, but can't tell you exactly when 3. Create a new app password 4. Log in to BBDQ with new password 5. Reactivate