Botwiki was created in July 2015 by Stefan Bohacek with the goal of preserving examples of interesting and creative online bots, and providing tutorials and other resources to folks interested in making them.
Later in August, the Botmakers online group was set up as a safe and friendly online space for artists, tinkerers, bot enthusiasts, and seasoned developers to share ideas, resources, and their bot creations, regardless of their technical knowledge. We also run periodic in-person and online meetups and workshops.
We’ve now collected over 1,000 bots and awarded 221 botmaker badges! 🎉 For a complete list of our projects and initiatives, check out the Projects page.
All of our work is open-source, and everyone is invited to contribute. Feel free to connect on Mastodon — or you can just say hi via email!
Milestones¶
Below is a timeline of major events in the history of the Botwiki project. See also our blog posts celebrating Botwiki anniversaries.
2022¶
- May 6: Stefan joined the Twitter Developer Insiders program.
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its seven years.
- September 17: Botmakers celebrated its seven years.
2021¶
- April 14: You can now subscribe to an automated weekly digest of new content added to Botwiki.
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its six years.
- September 17: Botmakers celebrated its six years.
2020¶
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its five years.
- September 17: Botmakers celebrated its five years.
- Survived.
2019¶
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its four years.
- July 17: Awarded 100th Botmaker Badge.
- September 17: Botmakers celebrated its four years.
- December 14: @newonbotwiki was created.
2018¶
- March 24: Botwiki was migrated to WordPress.
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its three years.
- September 17: Botmakers celebrated its three years.
- October 10: Botwiki now catalogues 1,000 bots.
2017¶
- March: Botwiki had more than 20,000 unique visitors.
- June 16: Botwiki got an official page on Glitch.
- July 15: Botwiki celebrated its two years.
- August 31: Angelina joined the Botwiki team as an event organizer.
2016¶
- January 1: The first Monthly Bot Challenge was announced.
- February 18: Created the Botmakers Meetup group.
- March 21: Hosted the first Botmakers in-person event.
- March 31: Veronica joined the Botwiki team as a Bot! zine editor and Botmakers community manager.
- July: First time Botwiki was visited by over 10,000 people in one month. Also, Botwiki celebrated its first year.
- October 1: Hosted the first online Bot Workshop.
2015¶
- July 12: The botwiki.org domain was bought and the @botwikidotorg Twitter account was set up.
- July 15: First commit to the public Botwiki repository, the site is officially online.
- August 19: The botmakers.org domain was bought.
- September 3: First tweet by @botwikidotorg.
- September 17: Publicly announced the Botmakers Slack group.
- October 20: The botzine.org domain was bought.
- October 26: The first issue of the the Bot! zine newsletter was sent out.
- November 16: Announced the Botmaker Badges in Bot! zine #4.
Latest from the blog
Twitter shutting down free access to their API on February 9
I keep saying it's an end of an era quite often these days.
How do folks get into creative botmaking?
Sharing the stories of our early botmaking days.
What kind of bots are posting in the fediverse?
Exploring the bots people make and follow in the fediverse.
Botwiki Interview: Nora Reed
Discussing Twitter, bots, and reasons to stay hopeful.
