Next TourneyBot Feature

[MadMatt]

Hello.

Here is your chance to influence what features should be implemented faster than the others, so vote for your favourite choice.

I can't promise that the winning feature will be the first one to be added   , but the outcome of the poll will definitely have an influence (if enough people vote, that is)

Cheers,

[MadMatt]

If you select "Not specified above." in the poll above, make sure to post an anwser and tell us what you would like to see!

Cheers,

[webrunner]

I had a hard time choosing between website integration and integration with my favourite client.
 

[Tomawaky]

Not sur to understand better scheduler
But if it is a way to make more tourneys at different time each day, I think It will be the better thing to work on.
 The first thing to do in my opinion is tu use it as often as possible

Full integration of FIBSLeaGammon Fridays3 tourney sounds good to me as I am so close to it

Web site integration will be fine but a hard work

Integration with your favourite FIBS client is maybe hard and will favorize some over others cause there is so many Clients.

The ability to limit participation of players based on their rating/experience/RepBot reputation  : Be carefull

<_< Seeded bracket tourneys : I like random

[Kari_Grandi]

Hi everybody.

obviously I voted for full integration with Fridays 3   .
We've been testing tbot a lot now with Matt by running various tournaments and it convinced me (along with Matt's continuous working with the project) to start another FibsLeaGammon tourney in february.
It's called 'Weekend Blitz', 1pt matches and 3 pt final. It's a weekly tournament (every saturday) and I'll make own web-page for it.
More info and rules will be available later in http://fibsleagammon.free.fr/tournament.htm

Kari

[Tomawaky]

Have made my First tourney with Repbot and one thing happen is that I did not see that diane have plan to organise one.

So is maybe a good thing that the next feature is to find a way to have a centralized scheduler !

[burper]

On RepBot integration: fibs is anarchy, and the internet is a very large place, so unfortunately you have to plan for malicious users. Each moderator should be allowed to choose the reputation level they are willing to live with. Because a malicious user can always create a new account, minimum experience is a good idea as well.

I believe that making a reputation more valuable, by creating the sort of reward that TB participation does, helps RepBot, which in turn helps TB. I was hoping that ChouetteBot and LadderBot would do that too. Not to make this a RepBot rant, but I had hoped Patti would use RepBot as a sort of way to automatically choose which savedgames files to open and look at. Why hasn't lily been banned? Back to TB:

Perhaps the BAN command can take a "policy" in addition to a particular tourney, i.e. "TELL TOURNYBOT BAN MINREP -10000", which would automatically ban anyone trying to register with a reputation lower than -10000. Experience would be similar.

Now what would be really cool is if each moderator could set their preferences once and have any new tourney they create inherit them.

On a related note, I think either the BAN GLOBALLY should work only per-moderator, or a separate option should be added for that, i.e. "TELL TOURNEYBOT BAN Mort MY". This is related since you would have to implement some persistence for each moderator, i.e. preferences. I want to ban Mort from all my tournaments, but the other moderators should choose for themselves. Maybe it's just something personal between me and Mort.

Adding another moderator to your tournament does not automatically inherit most of their preferences, but perhaps their ban-list is an exception. Once reputation and experience limits are implemented, ban-lists should be quite small.

Here is a whine from a telnet user: can the interface be reviewed and changed to make typing easier? Change the name of TourneyBot to TTT. Change "TOURNEY 83" to just "83", making the order of the argument significant. Accept command abbreviations. With these 3 changes, I can now do this:
t ttt cre bra
t ttt d 100 This is a new bracket tourneyment blah blah blah...
t ttt min 8 100
t ttt max 16 100
t ttt mat nor 3
t ttt mat fin 5

[MadMatt]

Perhaps the BAN command can take a "policy" in addition to a particular tourney, i.e. "TELL TOURNYBOT BAN MINREP -10000", which would automatically ban anyone trying to register with a reputation lower than -10000. Experience would be similar.

Yeah, it will work like that, except that the command won't be BAN but instead LIMIT, i.e.

Code Select Expand

LIMIT REP <minimal reputation> [<optional maximum reputation>]  TOURNEY <number>

or something like that. Similarly for LIMIT RATING and LIMIT EXP.

Now what would be really cool is if each moderator could set their preferences once and have any new tourney they create inherit them.

I had thought about this myself, but the fact is, customization is really done via tourney type. If you regularly hold the same kinds of tourneys, they may become an accepted FIBS feature. If they become an accepted FIBS feature, I will be more than happy to support them by creating a new type for them. I have done this for FLG Fridays3 and it has worked rather well, it seems. In any case, you can make use of client features such as programmable buttons in JavaFIBS to quickly set the desired properties. I think this is a better solution than me spending hours implementing moderator settings which is something that could be quite complicated while at the same time not being of exactly great added value to the existing bot features. I'm not saying it won't ever be done, but not prolly before TourneyBot version Y3K.

Consider this also. Out of 12 registered Tourney Directors, only about half of them (if that) hold tourneys regularly (and I use the term regularly very loosely here, to mean once per week at the least). Seems kind of pointless for me to waste my time spending hours developing, testing, writing documentation etc. for the mod prefs system so that a Director will not have to send 6 commands to the bot per week, but instead 3, especially since there are a lot of other features that the bot still needs.

On a related note, I think either the BAN GLOBALLY should work only per-moderator, or a separate option should be added for that, i.e. "TELL TOURNEYBOT BAN Mort MY". This is related since you would have to implement some persistence for each moderator, i.e. preferences. I want to ban Mort from all my tournaments, but the other moderators should choose for themselves. Maybe it's just something personal between me and Mort.

And this is exactly why the system doesn't work that way. I have said it in at least two different topics and I will repeat it here again. Personal dislike of someone is no reason to ban them, especially not globally. The global ban list exists solely for the purpose of preventing known abusers of FIBS and TourneyBot from entering tourneys. What's more, a single global list forces the TDs to work together and to always have a clear overview of who has been banned, as opposed to TDs secretely banning players on their personal list without anyone knowing who all has been banned and why etc.

Now imagine that TDs could have their own personal ban lists. What we would most likely end up is half of FIBS banned from participation in one way or another. This goes strongly against principles under which the bot was developed, that is, to provide fun for the entire community. What we would likely end up is a closed group of Fibsters who would enter tourneys and possibly grow tired of constantly playing each other. And I repeat, customization is really done by tourney type. Hence, there is an option to ban people by tourney type. i.e., ban ABuser fridays3. If you get your own tourney type, you may use that (with care).

Okay, to summarize this rant for those who don't like to read long posts:

Ban abusers. Don't ban idiots, unless they're abusers, too. Don't ban people you dislike, unless they're abusers, too. Ban from specific tourney rather than globally, except in case of repeated offence and major abuses.

Here is a whine from a telnet user: can the interface be reviewed and changed to make typing easier? Change the name of TourneyBot to TTT. Change "TOURNEY 83" to just "83", making the order of the argument significant. Accept command abbreviations. With these 3 changes, I can now do this:
t ttt cre bra
t ttt d 100 This is a new bracket tourneyment blah blah blah...
t ttt min 8 100
t ttt max 16 100
t ttt mat nor 3
t ttt mat fin 5

In short, that's not gonna happen. First of all, TourneyBot is a descriptive name, it can tell even a newbie what the bot does. Second of all, this isn't worth of my time and I can think of a whole wagonload of things I'd rather be doing than this.

Cheers,

[MadMatt]

OK TD's, is blinding a TD and refusing to unblind after several warnings a legitimate reason to be banned?

It is; I wasn't disputing your ban of Mort, I was just trying to shed some light on the goals behind TourneyBot and how banning should be used to uphold those goals.

IMO, a good rule of thumb regarding banning is, ban from a specific tourney on first (and maybe second) offence, then ban globally, but for a limited time (a week, a month) at first. If the abuse continues, then ban globally indefinitely.

On everything else, you are right Matt, my ideas were not the best. From my experience with RepBot, I can tell you though, all input is good. Just file it away Noone thinks about TB as much as you. I remember being frustrated with RepBot comments too. So take what I said and consider it a "user impression" and do what you will.

burper, I deepy appreciate any kind of input. I don't think your ideas were bad, they're just not planned at the moment with a lot of other stuff being in the works. It wasn't my intention to come off standoffish (if I did, I apologize), neither was I frustrated by any comments anyone made.

All in all, I'm very happy with the feedback I got so far, as well as the general popularity of the bot.

Thanks to all who have helped it make a success!

Cheers,

[jinnate]

i agree about shortening commands, and acknowledge that it is much easier on the users to keep the commands as self explanatory as possible.

the next feature i'd like to see is a way to send a 'tell' about the tourney to any player who isn't already playing a game. i'd like the mod to be able to create the message sent, but if it's going to be a general, standard message, then i'd just submit that i have a better response from simple tells than from copying tourneybot's shout and sending that.

my .02

[burper]

Player "tracking" during a real-time tourney would be nice to have sometime. TB could note when they start and finish matches, if they drop connection or logout, what their idle time, note the time at which they have a match available to play, etc...