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Tags and proper use of tags is important. We've seen some users tag their every post as introduceyourself to get more exposure, but as you know, it's making it harder to find real users actually introducing themselves.

Like if I would write a post about cars and tag it as "food". It'd make no sense, right?

So the bot is only tackling one kind possible misuse in tagging.

Well, for the person who creates a bot - and it becomes accepted by the community at large, I'm sure it adds a lot of value to that person - wether we like the bot, or not.

@bi5h0p - IMHO I think bots have a place in a community like this.

Assuming the bot is created with the right intentions, I think they can do a lot to help cultivate the right kind of culture within the community - as long as the incentives incentivize the right type of behavior.

There's a bot called @gentlebot that searches for quality comments and up votes them based on value/quality of the comment - I think bots like this are great when used accordingly.

If there are automations (bots) that can help build the minnow community that provide solid value - why not?

I think some bots are actually necessary to fulfill the role of an administrator in this kind of a platform. However, they must be designed very carefully so as not to produce unintended consequences. And, i think they should be closely watched and regulated. People have been using bots to do all kinds of mean and greedy things on computer networks for many years - it's nothing new. It's just that they have a tendency to "take over" once they are let loose to do their thing. This is not the kind of platform - where you have all types of people - where you want to be chasing out the new users, otherwise it will not survive.