layout	title	permalink	weight	sheet-url
page	about	/index.html	0	foo

botc.at

botc.at is a Twitter bot catalogue in two parts: a friendly, easy-to-use static website on the front end and a user-generated, lightly moderated, Google-Docs-driven database on the back end. It aims to catalogue both the diversity of Twitter bots—autonomous, automated accounts of all kinds—and the work of the creative, curious community of people developing alongside them.

botc.at has four main sections, each of which can be browsed, searched and filtered in various ways:

• bots, a directory of Twitter bot accounts
• botALLY, for info on their human creators and compatriots
• botMEDIA, links to writing, talks, and news coverage on bots
• botMATERIALS, for APIs, datasets, code and other botmaking bits

Read on to find out how it works, how to behave, how to help and how to get in touch. You'll also find info on licensing and acknowledgements. If you read nothing else, please read this bit.

How it works

botc.at is put together using the following:

• Jekyll (running on GitHub Pages) for static website hosting
• Mark Otto's Poole and Lanyon, for making said site much prettier
• Google Sheets and Forms to collect, store and serve data
• Exhibit 3.0, 'a publishing framework for… data-rich interactive Web pages', for data display and visualisation
• various other code snippets and suggestions, attributed where they appear in source
• lots of Googling

botc.at is user-generated in that submissions (via Google Form) are open to anyone, and are immediately opted in to the database by default; it is lightly moderated in that the maintainers of botc.at reserve the right to edit or remove any entry, for any reason, at their discretion.

How to behave

botc.at starts from a place of generosity, curiosity and respect towards bots and their makers, and the maintainers of botc.at trust users and contributors to do the same. This is the project's guiding principle. Keeping this in mind, a few explicit points:

• botc.at most emphatically is not a 'bot/maker doxxing database' or tool of harassment, and any such behaviour will not be tolerated. We take as our guide the definitions of harassment in the LGBTQ in Tech Code of Conduct.
• We strongly suggest that all data submitted be sourced from readily available public materials: public Twitter lists, botmaker blog posts, attribution in bot bios and so on.
• If you're submitting entries on other people or their work, we strongly suggest you contact them to seek and obtain explicit consent before submitting.
• Finally, anyone may opt themselves and/or any or all of their work out of appearing in botc.at, at any time and without further discussion, by contacting the maintainers—we will endeavour to comply with such requests within 72 hours.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns regarding botc.at, its usage or any of its contents.

How to help

2016-02-19: botc.at is still very much ⚠️ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ⚠️ and doesn't (yet) work as intended. Once it does, the following will apply, but for now hang tight, or get in touch!

The most helpful thing you can do is to add entries to the database! But be sure you've read up on how to behave first. You're encouraged to submit entries for yourself and your own bots, writing and tools, as well as for the work of others that you admire. This can be done using the Google Form at the top of each section, which publish 'live' to the site. You're also encouraged (though not required) to sign your name (or alias, Twitter handle, etc.) to your submissions.

If you'd like to make improvements to the site itself, and you have a GitHub account, you're welcome to fork the botc.at repo – you'll need Jekyll installed if you want to run the site locally. Pull requests welcomed.

Finally, please share botc.at with friends and fellow #botALLY!

Who to complain to

botc.at is currently maintained by:

• Tully Hansen (@tullyhansen on Twitter)

Please get in touch if you have any questions, suggestions, concerns or clumsy robot GIFs.

Licensing

botc.at is meant as a useful reference in its own right, but also one that can freely be incorporated into other projects. Contributors retain copyright on any original contributions but agree to license their work in accordance with the following:

• The botc.at database and data stored in Google Docs are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. A link back to this page is considered sufficient attribution.
• The botc.at website and underlying code are licensed under the MIT License. Some parts of the website and code may fall under licenses assigned by their respective creators, as detailed in the full license.

Acknowledgements

Thanks (in no particular order, and reserving the right to omissions) go to:

• the #botALLY and Botmakers Slacks, and their respective denizens

<3