repbot change request

[jimbow]

I recently tried to complain about a player that I had a saved match with, 4-0, but would not resume. Since the game was a few days old, repbot wouldn't let me complain. Could we be allowed to complain about players with whom we have saved matches?

[diane]

This one does seem absurd to me...I would rather wait a while to see if the opponent resumes - then complain if they dont, rather than have to do it within 24 hours and not give them the benefit of the doubt.

What I do right now is complain quick - but send a message that i will remove it if the finish the match..its long winded though.

[inim]

Could we be allowed to complain about players with whom we have saved matches?

Excellent catch & suggestion.

Repbot never learned to make use of the "new" commands like "show savedfor NICK", which is how your suggestion needed to be implemented.
Control flow would be like so, new steps are in bold:

Code Select Expand

USER -> REPBOT: Complain VILLAIN
           REPBOT -> matchdb : is within 24 hours, if so, skip next 2 steps
           [b]REPBOT -> FIBS: show savedfor USER (or VILLAIN), both would do
           REPBOT <- FIBS: list of saveds[/b]
USER <- REPBOT: allow/deny complaint

Currently repbot has no real concept of executing fibs server commands during a request, so teaching it to do so requires some structural code changes. State needs to be kept, and commands sent need to be scheduled, timed out etc. As repbot is not properly threaded, this leads to potential blocking behaviour for other users.

I have no time currently for a change of this size, but I 100% agree this would be a good extension of the 24h rule. The code is open source, so patches and hacks would be welcome and likely to be deployed. That, or an easy to download copy of the saved games data from fibs.com. Because if the data who has a saved game with whom was local with the repbot DB, it is only a minor code change.

[inim]

OK, did brainstorm a bit about the idea, and had a brief shout discussion. I propose this change.

The RepBot period to place vouchers and complaints will be extended from 1 day to 1 week.

Rationales:

• Implementing a facility to bulk update a local RepBot DB of saved matches is hard and messy for Patti.
• Implementing a case by case invocation of "show savedfor" by RepBot is hard and messy for me.
• RepBot roughly follows the same match events as the fibs garbage collection does for saved games, so they are in sync "well enough".
• The current timer for the fibs match GC is 1 week.
• Changing the timer is an easy shot in the current RepBot code base.

=> Extending the period for placing opinions to 1 week has de-facto the same effect as querying "show savedfor" at a much lower cost.

Opinions welcome.

[BadLad]

FWIW -- I agree -- both with the problem and with the suggested solution of setting the timer to one week rather than 24 hours.  I've just recently 'implemented' the approach Diane described -- but the week seems more in line with how we would/should act.  Two questions:

I've heard that saved matches 'expire' -- does anyone know how long that takes?
Do you have an ETA for the 'fix'?

Thanks for all y'all do!

BadLad

[inim]

The Repbot grace timer for submitting opinions has been extended from 24 hours to 7 days, which meets the duration of a saved game. So now you can vouch as long as you have a saved game with an opponent, and the grace period for both is extended on each new attempt to finish the match.

[diane]

Wonderful news - and thanks for letting us know