I've recently started writing random IRC bots for fun lately. I initially found out how to write them by reading this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2968408/how-do-i-program-a-simple-irc-bot-in-python

I'm not a particularly experienced programmer, but this most recent bot I'm pretty happy with: https://github.com/wyldbrian/Python/tree/master/karmabot

Contents of README.md

Karmabot

How it works:

This script will connect to your IRC server (localhost by default) and respond to various prompts

• Typing ++ in IRC will give karma to an item (e.g. Karmabot++)
• Typing -- in IRC will take karma away from an item (e.g. Karmabot--)
• Typing !rank and then an item will let you know how much karma it has (e.g. !rank Karmabot)
• Typing !top will list the top 5 items by karma
• Typing !bottom will list the bottom 5 items by karma
• Typing !help will print a list of options

The script uses json load/dump to periodically store existing karma in a file and load it on startup

[This is my first post]