where is an OK place to experiment with bots? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by maengd@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I used code from a github repo to make a lemmy repost bot from a reddit sub.

I tested it out, it seemed OK. So I let it run over night.

When I got back I found out it had been posting the same thing over and over again every few minutes. The account was banned for spam. But in the meantime it was very annoying to people. Also, there are a bunch of posts that can't be removed because it's impossible to remove federated stuff.

Is there a responsible way to test this stuff?

I don't want to make spam, be annoying, etc. I feel bad about the spam bot.

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[-] oleorun@lemmy.fan 5 points 1 year ago

This is great advice, and to the OP, don't feel bad. You're really not an IT person of any caliber until you have experienced when I like to call the "Production Incident Experience", or PIE. IT work is a job with unforseen consequences and hurdles, and we've all run into them at one point or another.

This being a learning experience, do what we've all done and learn from it. Now you can set up logging, whatif, sandbox instance, whatever you have to do.

You're on the road to becoming a good programmer - just learn from your mistakes, do your research on best practices, ask intelligent questions, and in no time at all you'll be writing one of these posts yourself.

this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023

51 points (87.0% liked)

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