Each robot must carry a gun and send Fletch a pony.

Seriously, vote bots are not permitted: All your votebots are belong to us

Or perhaps you are talking about robots that collect information from the site? I suppose they just need to be well-behaved robots ... maybe following The Four Laws of Web Robotics?

Thanks for reply!

I did not intended to write a bot to spend votes to gain XP, or somesuch.
I want to behave :)

What precisely I am curious in, how some users are *always* in the monastery. I did not checked these days, but about a year ago I noticed I always see some users in the monastery... Were they collecting some sort of information?

Speaking for myself, I use the Monastery as an anodyne for the Corporate Idiocy I have had to put up with over the years.

At a previous Job, I had a mandatory "staff briefing" tele-conference, every morning at 0815. Most of the time was consumed by various 'bosses' having shouting matches about who was responsible for the current mess. We low-level techs got together on an Instant Messenger conference for ten minutes after the Managers got done, sorted out what was really wrong, and then got started with real work. I got most "Newest Nodes" read during that half-hour.

----
I Go Back to Sleep, Now.

OGB

I can't speak for other monks (well, I can, but I'd probably be wrong) but I know that I sometimes use a chatterbox client that keeps me logged in. Then I forget about it and leave it on ... so it seems as though I am here but I am really, er, hard at work.

... and of course, there are a few monks who have no life and are really logged in all the time ... :)

Ahem, newuser me is exploring. And I'm also in lab about 20 hours out of 24. I would, therefore, be most likely logged in almost all the time... maybe there are others like me too.

Although forgetting to log out is a much more likely explanation for most people...

Oops, forgot to ask: Did you see im2?

Same as anywhere else:

0. A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Isaac Asimov

Contents of http://www.perlmonks.org/robots.txt:

# sorry, but misbehaved robots have ruined it for all of you.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
[download]

ie. for all robots, you're not allowed to ask for anything.

Votebots are definitely not permitted. The Chatterbox FAQ says that bots that talk on the CB are not tolerated at all, but a bot can read the CB. I have not read a rule on whether posting by a bot is allowed or not. There's a rule about multiple user accounts used by the same person. Bots should naturally follow etiquette like not putting too much load on the servers, and not sending private messages to someone who doesn't request it.

In other cases, apply common sense, or ask permission from the gods to stay on the safe side.

Btw, the XML tickers might help you if you write a bot.

Depends a great deal on what a 'bot does... Monks are allowed, if not encouraged, to automate certain of their Monastic activities. See, for example,

What XML generators are currently available on PerlMonks?
PerlMonks::Mechanized (beta)

HTH,