#lainchan IRC Bot Standards

The following is a set of standards for IRC bots that should be adhered to.
Following these rules helps making bots clutter up the channel less, and makes them generally nicer to work with.

General Compliance

• Bots should speak via NOTICE unless there is a valid reason to send directly to the channel (PRIVMSG).
• All commands should be prefixed with a period ('.'). Some bots used other command prefixes in the past, such as '+' and '!', but these should be phased out.
• Any action that is not triggered by a prefixed command (e.g. links in messages) must be clear that it is responding to such a trigger. For example a bot responding to a URL might respond: "Link: News Article".
• Do not use commands already used by another bot. Please use another name. However, if you are unhappy with a bot's feature, consider contacting the owner. All bots are encouraged to be open source (see next item).
• All bots are encouraged to be open source. Please keep your bot's source code publically available, and under a FOSS license.

Standard Commands

• .bots - should print a short description of the bot, as well as the author for contact.
• .bot <bot name> - should print the same as .bots does. This is so users can request info about one bot.
• .source <bot name> - should print a link to the source code of the bot, as well as the language it is written in (e.g. "[Lang] https://gitla.in/author/bot").
• .help <bot name>- show a list of valid commands. .help <bot name> <command> should print information about that single command.