Results of an informal survey

[PolyphonicBrie]

The savedgames information has never required RepBot-- RepBot just regurgitated and slightly altered data that have been available publicly.

True.  Except when you've found a player you might want to invite to a match, by the time you've gone to the saved games page (or figured out if mudPY is logged in and mis-typed, say, ZWAARISTAARTMEESTER sevreal times) and found the correct saved games tally, the player in question has normally already started a game with someone else.

Most of my time on FIBS now is spent trying to figure out who I can trust my time to, rather than just playing great Backgammon.

SL

[webrunner]

5. Create another new email address for Repbot support.  Say, repbotatfibsdotcom.  Forward all these emails to socksey.



SL

Or better.. forward them to this forum, it is made for repbot support. 

[webrunner]

Personally i like the idea of Burper to remove the complaint function  and only allow vouches. What do you think about that Patti?

[Patti]

repbot at fibs would tie RepBot too closely to FIBS.  Besides, it's not really any different from contacting the owner directly via email... it just adds a layer to it.   And forwarding complaints here doesn't meet the needs of being able to contact the owner directly unless he happens to be reading the forum.

How would you use information from a RepBot that didn't have complaint functions?  What would the numbers mean?  And wouldn't people still have an incentive to create sock puppets to boost their rating?

[PolyphonicBrie]

So put the email address of the owner on the front page of www.fibs.com.  If you don't know what that is, set up repbotdotcomplaintsatyahoodotcodotuk.  Ignore all the incoming emails but set up an auto responder to reply with some basic facts about Repbot (chiefly that it's nothing to do with FIBS or yourself), including the email address of the owner.

The point is it just gets the whiners off your back, and the rest of us can have Repbot back!

[Patti]

If people don't look at the whois information on RepBot, I can't imagine they'll notice it at a place that's completely disconnected from the bot.

And you're missing the bigger point, which is that I have to do a lot of cleanup work from people who abuse FIBS just to game RepBot.  Until that loophole is closed, as I first requested in February 2005, the rest of the discussion is completely irrelevant.

Right now the issues that prevent RepBot from being allowed back onto FIBS are:

- RepBot must somehow close the anyone-can-voice-an-opinion-about-anyone issue that encourages ganging up and creating sock puppets
- RepBot needs to be much more assertive about informing people that I have nothing to do with it (and clients need to pass this through)
- RepBot needs to pass along the descriptive text about what savedgames numbers mean (and clients need to pass this through as well)

I've proposed one solution for that first issue, and I'm certainly open to hearing other workable suggestions.

Does anyone find those requirements unreasonable?


Oh, yes.  The reason that I require a working email address for every bot is very simple:  I want to be able to contact the bot's owner directly if there are any problems with the bot, and I want every FIBS user to have a simple way to do the same thing.  I've personally used this information twice in the past month alone, once to give RepBot notice, and once to inform don of a bug I discovered in mudPY.  I know others have used it in the past to contact bot owners to report bugs.

[PolyphonicBrie]

If people don't look at the whois information on RepBot, I can't imagine they'll notice it at a place that's completely disconnected from the bot.

Not sure I agree.  Command lines are archaic and alien to a lot of the 'younger' generation.  I bet there's a whole tribe of FIBS users out there who never use 'whois' or any command-line command at all.  They rely purely on the client's GUI.  The first place they'd go in the event of a 'problem' would be a support website to look for an email address.

And you're missing the bigger point, which is that I have to do a lot of cleanup work from people who abuse FIBS just to game RepBot.

Ah... okay. I see, sorry.

Right now the issues that prevent RepBot from being allowed back onto FIBS are:

- RepBot must somehow close the anyone-can-voice-an-opinion-about-anyone issue that encourages ganging up and creating sock puppets
- RepBot needs to be much more assertive about informing people that I have nothing to do with it (and clients need to pass this through)
- RepBot needs to pass along the descriptive text about what savedgames numbers mean (and clients need to pass this through as well)

I've proposed one solution for that first issue, and I'm certainly open to hearing other workable suggestions.

Does anyone find those requirements unreasonable?

Yes those are perfectly reasonable requirements.  However, given the apparent apathy of bot and client developers at present, they also seem rather impractical at the moment.  (I say 'apparent' because for all I know there could be a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes as I type).

Oh, yes.  The reason that I require a working email address for every bot is very simple:  I want to be able to contact the bot's owner directly if there are any problems with the bot, and I want every FIBS user to have a simple way to do the same thing.  I've personally used this information twice in the past month alone, once to give RepBot notice, and once to inform don of a bug I discovered in mudPY.  I know others have used it in the past to contact bot owners to report bugs.

I never suggested otherwise.

Good luck
SL

[Patti]

I bet there's a whole tribe of FIBS users out there who never use 'whois' or any command-line command at all.  They rely purely on the client's GUI.  The first place they'd go in the event of a 'problem' would be a support website to look for an email address.

Is whois really not built into FIBS clients?  That's... wow, just wow.

However, that's also a really strong argument for bots being much more proactive about stating their ownership.  If the message shows up on the user's screen unsolicited, it might be seen.  If it happens often enough, it might even be remembered.  If the user can't find the bot's address, they probably also can't find the bot's support page.

However, given the apparent apathy of bot and client developers at present, they also seem rather impractical at the moment.

If so, then it will apparently be impractical for RepBot to remain.

I honestly think I've been perfectly reasonable here.  I've asked for three years (!) for problems to be addressed, and nothing has happened.  I contacted the owner and gave him a reasonable deadline for fixing the problems, or for at least giving me a plan for fixing the problems.   (In other words, if he'd said, "Here's what I'm going to do, but I won't be able to finish it before July", I would have been cool with that.)

[PolyphonicBrie]

Is whois really not built into FIBS clients?  That's... wow, just wow.

I only speak for the client that I use: CocoaFIBS.  The only way to do a whois is to open a terminal window and physically type it in with your keyboard.  But the way CocoaFIBS designed... there's not normally any need for the user to ever open a terminal window.  It's possible for a novice CocoaFIBS user to never know that FIBS was ever a command-line based system.  Maybe it's something to do with the general attitude of Mac-heads. 

So maybe CocoaFIBS is part of the problem.  Maybe you should ban that too! 

SL

EDIT: D'oh.  You CAN do a right-click on someone and select "get info".  I'm a nincompoop.

[Ramses]

i want repbot back. why not banning the 10k-club instead?
if this is not possible i want my accounts deleted. i am Ramses and UncleScrooge on fibs.
thanks

[Patti]

why not banning the 10k-club instead?

Perhaps you can suggest a way for me to do this that doesn't involve a significant amount of work on my part?  I suppose I could site-ban large ISPs for it, but yours would be on the list... would you want to be banned from FIBS because someone else abused RepBot from your ISP?

You should talk to RepBot's owner about whether it's coming back-- I have no information.  Should it not come back and you choose to leave FIBS because of it your accounts will expire in the normal manner.

[mradica]

The savedgames information has never required RepBot-- RepBot just regurgitated and slightly altered data that have been available publicly.

Please, can you tell me which command I have to use to see ones number of save games?
Thanks.

[Patti]

It's not built into FIBS-- it's published to a webpage every night.

http://fibs.com/savedgames/

[don]

Right now the issues that prevent RepBot from being allowed back onto FIBS are:

- RepBot must somehow close the anyone-can-voice-an-opinion-about-anyone issue that encourages ganging up and creating sock puppets
- RepBot needs to be much more assertive about informing people that I have nothing to do with it (and clients need to pass this through)
- RepBot needs to pass along the descriptive text about what savedgames numbers mean (and clients need to pass this through as well)

These are not unreasonable issues.  I think that mudPY addresses the easy ones (after a little indexing error where I was sending that info to the askee instead of the asker, sorry).

Patti's TimeBot provides all that is needed for a more reasonable dataBase of complaints and vouches. 

My ISP kills all background processes at 2AM my time.  For that reason mudPY is a static bot, and doesn't even experiment with extracting info from consecutive updates of saved games.  It would be pretty easy for me to create a reputation bot that would satisfy all of Patti's requirements, but I don't see the point without a permanent home for it.  Also, I only ever used the saved game info provided by RepBot.

The material for the solution is out there, RepBot lovers.  Quite simple to do.  Put up or shut up!

--
don

[socksey]

The material for the solution is out there, RepBot lovers.  Quite simple to do.  Put up or shut up!

Sure!  If I were a programmer, this whole thread wouldn't exist.

socksey



"Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." - Carl Zwanzig

[Luddite]

Will somebody with the skills, resources, and access PLEASE fix this problem!  I'm 0 for 3, so all I can do is whine. 

With repbot gone, I can no longer play strangers at fibs.  Mudpy is helpful, but it's not enough information, and the command line takes too long (as a previous poster discussed). 

We need a vouching system, period.  Patti's suggestions are perfectly reasonable, so will somebody please DO SOMETHING, gosh dang it! 

FIBS SUCKS WITHOUT REPBOT!  With repbot, I can play anytime, because I can play strangers.  Without repbot, I can only play when people I know are logged in.  Right now, no one I know is logged in, so here I am at fibsboard, complaining about repbot! 

Hey, if Patti gets more emails complaining about repbot's absence than she does about repbot's problems........  Nah, let's not go there. 

Thank you Patti, I know this will work out eventually.   

[Patti]

Just play people with high experience who don't have abnormally-high ratings.  Or if you play newcomers, play one-pointers until they establish themselves.

FIBS was just fine for years without RepBot.  I've played under assumed names on and off for years, and I've never been dropped.  My rule was to never play anyone with under 1000 experience unless they entered an email address using the "address" command.  It was a simple rule, but it worked spectacularly.

And hey, "FIBS sucks without..." doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy.

[blitzxz]

I've only been dropped when I started playing on Fibs. Repbot wasn't any help then it was other way round. I was dropped because Repbot. I got bad reputation because I didn't want to chat or some other guy just complained me because I was too lucky. After that no one would play me because I was newcomer with bad rep. The only opponents I got were rating manipulator or droppers who didn't care about my bad reputation. After that I stopped playing in Fibs. I can only guess how many people have experienced the same thing.

But I tried again with new nick after couple of months on other sites. This time I tried to play the popularity contest and begged for vouches. For a long time it was like walking on thin ice. I mainly playd with low rating and low experienced players so my few vouches could ruined with just one complain. And sometimes Fibs just kicked me out (which it still does) and I didn't get back until my opponent had left and complained me. But finally I got my reputation to level that I don't have to care about Repbot any more. To me it was only obstacle for playing and I'm happy to see it out from Fibs.

[maria]

FIBS SUCKS WITHOUT REPBOT!  With repbot, I can play anytime, because I can play strangers.  Without repbot, I can only play when people I know are logged in.  Right now, no one I know is logged in, so here I am at fibsboard, complaining about repbot! 

I don't understand this part at all ... you mean your interface doesn't allow you to see who is on the Ready list and you can't invite those people using the inv USERNAME MATCHLENGTH option?
Part of the fun on FIBS <at least to me> is playing and meeting new people.
Don't forget you were a newbie once yourself!

[Luddite]

What I mean is, I'm unwilling to play unknown people without the information repbot provides.  I have been dropped and/or treated rudely several times (over the 4 years I've been here) -- ALWAYS when repbot was down, or when I didn't bother to pay attention to the rep score. 

OK, repbot's gone, and maybe something will replace it, and maybe not.  I guess I'll be "rolling the dice" on unknown players, and Patti's criteria suggestions are helpful. 

But my plea remains -- will someone with skills/resources/access please create a bot that meets Patti's perfectly reasonable requirements?  If you must vouch or complain within, say, 2 days of playing a game (or partial game), problem solved!  I think it would be wise, though, to allow someone to withdraw a vouch or a complaint at any time. 

"Bones"