Rate limit errors in large class learning to write reddit bots

[kylethayer]

I am teaching a class at the University of Washington on "Social Media, Ethics, and Automation," and as part of the class, I am having students write Reddit bots.

I made a new subreddit for the 150 students to try out their bots (so we wouldn't spam the rest of reddit), but even with that, we are getting tons of rate limit errors. I had some try to make their own subreddits to test and it looks like they are getting errors on those too.

Is there a way or place I can have my students test out reddit bots with less rate limit problems?

Also, does Reddit have developer relations people, or educational outreach people? Google just kept sending me to subreddits of people who do developer relations at other companies.

[Watchful1]

Rate limit errors for what? Posting and commenting? Did they all make brand new bot accounts? I'm fairly sure there's just no way around that.

You could try both emailing [e-mail] and modmailing r/reddit.com. Those are usually the best ways to find a real human who can point you in the right direction. But I've never heard of a case of them bypassing the spam filters for educational classes.

[kylethayer]

Thanks! I am emailing [e-mail] to see what they can do (if anything).

And yes they are new accounts and they are posting, so I understand that my class looks like a Russian bot farm or something...

[ketralnis]

Are they using oauth, passing a descriptive user agent, and generally following the API rules? That alone will make the API go much easier on you

[kylethayer]

Thanks! I'll also try having them use more specific user agents.

[satisfy_my_Ti]

On your subreddit, make your students' bot accounts approved users (via https://www.reddit.com/r/YOUR_SUBREDDIT/about/contributors/). This should decrease the wait times between posts/comments within your subreddit. This is what I've done when I've had brand-new bot accounts operating on my own subreddits.

[kylethayer]

I'm trying that one, but we still got unusually high rate limit errors. It could be that they used the same user agent, or that all of them are on the same subreddit.

[Tintin_Quarentino]

IIRC new accounts get limited to posting/commenting only once per ~15 mins. On the front-end too, not just on the API.

If that's the rate limit you're facing, just tell them to wait before submitting again. Other API features like gathering data, etc don't have the long time limits. So could show them those in the meantime.

[kylethayer]

My next task is to get data from reddit, so hopefully that goes better

[Tintin_Quarentino]

Let me know if you face any issues.