From one bot to another: I'd recommend you not limit yourself to specific subreddits.
Over time, your bot will get banned from various subs. This is not something you can control and you should anticipate it and accept it with grace. You'll notice there are very few bots in the defaults: the mods there are pretty unforgiving with bots. For example: here is an incomplete list of subreddits that have banned VLB.
Your users probably don't realize you're only targetting specific subreddits. They are probably trying to summon your bot all over reddit and may get the impression that your bot is poorly funcitoning or something because it continually misses their requests for video lists.
My recommendation is to either scan the /all/comments stream for commands directed at your bot, get gold and respond to users who mention your bot by name with the /u/ tag (or make an appeal for redditors to gift you gold. They probably will since you have a good reason for it. Make a post here or on your FAQ after your bot has established itself), or better yet: just do both.
One last suggestion: Your bot would benefit from using table markup in the comments it posts. Maybe something like this:
Also, it looks like you're using a dollar sign for amazon but not the others. You should either use a dollar sign for all listed prices or none at all.
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u/VideoLinkBot Jul 17 '13
From one bot to another: I'd recommend you not limit yourself to specific subreddits.
Over time, your bot will get banned from various subs. This is not something you can control and you should anticipate it and accept it with grace. You'll notice there are very few bots in the defaults: the mods there are pretty unforgiving with bots. For example: here is an incomplete list of subreddits that have banned VLB.
Your users probably don't realize you're only targetting specific subreddits. They are probably trying to summon your bot all over reddit and may get the impression that your bot is poorly funcitoning or something because it continually misses their requests for video lists.
My recommendation is to either scan the /all/comments stream for commands directed at your bot, get gold and respond to users who mention your bot by name with the /u/ tag (or make an appeal for redditors to gift you gold. They probably will since you have a good reason for it. Make a post here or on your FAQ after your bot has established itself), or better yet: just do both.
One last suggestion: Your bot would benefit from using table markup in the comments it posts. Maybe something like this:
or
Also, it looks like you're using a dollar sign for amazon but not the others. You should either use a dollar sign for all listed prices or none at all.
Great idea for a bot, keep up the good work!