valid vouches

[sixty_something]

recently a campaign was started with tells and messages to counter a few RepBot complaints against a new player which were apparently a result of a shout war .. while i vouched the player, it was because i'd played them before, would play them again, and would recommend them to others as fun to play with .. imho, that's a valid vouch .. but i've withdrawn it because i don't like being asked to vouch for someone for any reason and i don't like the taste of participating in a vouch campaign like this .. i'll re-vouch after a few more games, if it still seems right

for me, to use RepBot vouches or complaints because of something that goes on in shouts, personality conflicts, or any reasons not relevant to a players willingness to play and complete a timely and civil game seems to defeat the whole purpose of what RepBot is about

further, campaigns soliciting RepBot vouches or complaints aimed at other players really don't seem like a good idea at all .. RepBot should be about a players playing reputation not influenced by personality or politics .. RepBot is what it is .. we are who we are .. neither is perfect .. but let's leave politicking and personalities out of RepBot lest we have an outbreak of RepBot wars .. shout wars are just silly and easily ignored .. but RepBot is something many of us rely on .. let's not confuse the two

[socksey]

I agree and have long campaigned for exactly that.  We have had other threads dealing with this from time to time.  I don't know that I have had any influence in these wars, but it's nice to know when someone else shows concern.   

It would be very nice if all would use repbot honestly as it should be used to help us decide whether to play someone or not.  Since we do not have any other controls on droppers on Fibs, this is really all we have.  Maybe we should start complaining on the abusers of repbot.   

socksey



My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog thinks I am. - unknown

[burper]

1) use the friends feature. If you don't like the way someone vouches, remove them from your vouch list and you remove their influence on your results, e.g. maria is known to vouch for all droppers.

2) RepBot used to mark the complaints with actual saved games with a * and probably still does. The problem with that is when the match expires, it no longer shows up. I lobbied avik to have RepBot keep the asterisk until the complaint gets removed, but he vetoed the idea.

3) Foreseeing this type of thing as a problem, I wrote RepBot originallly with a limit of 10 vouches and 10 complaints, the idea being that if they held some value for someone, they would use them mroe carefully. avik removed the limit, and thus the reputation "economy".

4) How does one identify an abuser socksey? Your opinion is different than mine, and if I asked you to complain and vouch exactly as I have you would and should refuse.

5) There have been lots of ideas floated about regarding how to improve RepBot, but noone has stepped up to write any code. I personally think there is something of value that could be done offline simply by storing the full saved games list published daily by fibs.com and writing queries against it, e.g. you ought to be able to tell who played who on what day, and wether the matches were saved or not, or wether they expired. From that you ought to be able to count the number of times people play each other and infer vouches automatically and perhaps even give them weights, and use that data as an improved friends recommendation.

[socksey]

4) How does one identify an abuser socksey? Your opinion is different than mine, and if I asked you to complain and vouch exactly as I have you would and should refuse.

I never complain or vouch for anyone just because someone asks me to.  My system is to vouch for any player who loses to me and who is pleasant to play with.  I sometimes vouch for players who beat me if they are exceedingly pleasant and fun.  I always complain on players who have dropped me.  I do this first, and if the game is resumed and finished, I then remove the complaint and maybe vouch if I think the drop was for a good reason.  

When deciding who to play, occasionally, I will accept a game from a newbie who I don't check with repbot, but usually I check the "ask" feature and if the rep is positive, then I check the "list" feature and see who complained and who vouched.  Since I have been on Fibs for a very long time, I can usually recognize the vouchers who are insincere,    like marie/maria, and some others.  I know who to trust on the vouches, pretty much, also, so I may have an advantage over newbies in this respect.  

It was a real crap-shoot before you created Repbot, burper, so I thank you again and again and again!  At least now, we have a ready reference to give us a clue!  

socksey



"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

[fiftythree]

Another example of an invalid vouch is vouches granted by bots, the gBots will give vouches?? how can a bot give a vouch to a dropper?

i think bots should be prohibited from giving vouches

[socksey]

I think that has been accomplished now with the new RepBotNG, hasn't it?   

socksey



I'm out of bed and I made it to the keyboard.... What more do you want? - Maxine

[Mookie]

It is always valid to VOUCH mookie

moooookie

[inim]

Another example of an invalid vouch is vouches granted by bots, the gBots will give vouches?? how can a bot give a vouch to a dropper?
i think bots should be prohibited from giving vouches

Socksey is right, this has changed with the new repbot policy. In addition to Patti's new 24h-rule, another rule has been implemented which allows to assign different weights to bot and human opinions. Currently human opinions go into the calculation with weight 1 for both vouch and complain, and bot opinions go into the formula with weights 0 for vouch and 1 for complain.

I've proposed an even finer grained model with 4 categories of vouchers and the ability of each user to set the weights individually. Due to time contraints, this however will unlikely be implemented before November 2008. Please comment on that model, as it is a superset of what you suggest and think about. Java coder volunteers willing to help implement it are welcome anytime, of  course.

/repbot/repbot-formula-and-parameter-changes-t1971.0.html;msg15026#msg15026
/repbot/on-the-possible-improvements-proposed-on-httpwwwfibsboardcomrepbot-t1876.0.html

In a nutshell, under RepBot 2.0.1 bots can freely vouch and complain. The "list" command gives all the details of the full DB content. However, the numeric score formula produing the rating from the DB only considers bot complaints currently. The rationale here is that bots should have the right to complain against bot droppers, but should not be able to boost the opinion of their maintainer. The general approach is not to refuse any voucher or complaint, but to categorize and weight them in such a way that the numeric score fits user expectations and can serve as a reliable base for decision making in invite situations.

The actual formula used in the deployed repbot 2.0.1 is written in SQL and ready for review, see http://openfibs.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/openfibs/tags/2.0.1/modules/repbot/src/main/java/net/sf/repbot/db/UserDBImplementation.java?revision=57&view=markup (line 109 ff).