FIBS Board backgammon forum

Currently you can't vouch or complain about a user unless you have played 'em in the last 24 hours, even if they have vouched or complained about you.  Because of this, I think RepBot should notify a user when another user registers a vouch or complaint.  Some may not want to be bothered, so I suggest that RepBot leave a message,
   *** <user> has registered a vouch|complaint about you.
for those who have RepBot's alert-feature toggled on (or else inim can create a new toggle).

--
don

Quote from: don on August 01, 2008, 07:48:18 PM
Currently you can't vouch or complain about a user unless you have played 'em in the last 24 hours, even if they have vouched or complained about you.  Because of this, I think RepBot should notify a user when another user registers a vouch or complaint.  Some may not want to be bothered, so I suggest that RepBot leave a message,
   *** <user> has registered a vouch|complaint about you.
for those who have RepBot's alert-feature toggled on (or else inim can create a new toggle).

--
don

Reasonable. At the time being, an obnoxious #ss#o## can wait and register her complaint 23 hours and 59 mins after the finishing of the related match and then the other party will be able just to whine.

Not a very important issue, BTW.

Regards

Perhaps setting the other player's deadline to 24 hours from their opponent's vouch/complaint would be useful.

The new RepBot complaint logic is more about matches than players, so why not make the reverse complaint automatic,
effectively marked the match as "under dispute"?

QuoteI suggest that RepBot leave a message,   *** <user> has registered a vouch|complaint about you. 

I like this idea.   

socksey



"Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?" - Martin Luther King

Good idea Don!
Could you also have it send a message by PM on Fibsboard?
That way people also get an email (if they have PM notifications turned on).

You'll have to ask inim about that, webby, and you are likely to get a reply directing you to sourceforge.net instead of action.

--
don

Quote from: don on August 01, 2008, 07:48:18 PM
Currently you can't vouch or complain about a user unless you have played 'em in the last 24 hours, even if they have vouched or complained about you.  Because of this, I think RepBot should notify a user when another user registers a vouch or complaint.  Some may not want to be bothered, so I suggest that RepBot leave a message,
   *** <user> has registered a vouch|complaint about you.
for those who have RepBot's alert-feature toggled on (or else inim can create a new toggle).

This suggestion is part of Avik's years old original TODO, and I have commented on it here: http://www.fibsboard.com/repbot/on-the-possible-improvements-proposed-on-httpwwwfibsboardcomrepbot-t1876.0.html;msg15018#msg15018. As written there, I consider it the most important feature missing and #1 of the TODO.

Current time constraints won't allow me to work on RepBot other than bugfixing until November. As Don points correctly out, this is an open source project, so anybody can take the action item and make it real before November.

The laboursome part is that I feel there needs to be a toggle to activate/deactivate this type of messages. Somebody not interested in RepBot should not receive messages. A point open for debate is whether this should be opt-in or opt-out. I would be glad to hear input on this here.

Quote from: webrunner on August 03, 2008, 08:08:22 AM
Could you also have it send a message by PM on Fibsboard?
That way people also get an email (if they have PM notifications turned on).

The implementation is trivial given you can provide 2 things:

1) Some API (REST or SOAP style http) to talk to fibsboard
2) A function mapping a FIBS user name to a fibsboard user name

If 2 is not possible we would need yet another user setting, of which RepBot so far basically has only one (the notification on logins). The settings classes in the codebase are pretty much ad-hoc, and implementing a generalized and easily extended form would allow for a number of new features. This is a can of worms I definitely won't open before November. And if we have extended settings anyway, the user could just configure an email adress there - sending an email in Java is a no-brainer ...

So: Can you give me 1) and 2) ?

Quote from: burper on August 02, 2008, 06:33:06 PM
The new RepBot complaint logic is more about matches than players, so why not make the reverse complaint automatic,
effectively marked the match as "under dispute"?

You have a point here, and I considered what it would mean to make the repbot relation symmetric. Using the asymmetric relation (alias directed graph) we have now, it is trivial to calculate the symmetric hull (alias undirected graph). That means your suggested change loses information without need - we can just calculate the hull anytime for the same effect.

Once we are at a point where repbot uses a weighted sum formula which allows to implement many metrics in parrallel and leave it to the user which one he likes (by assigning a large weight to that factor), adding a symmetric reputation metric component is a nice idea. But I don't like it as default.

1:
http://support.simplemachines.org/function_db/index.php
But this is in PHP so i don't know if that can help you.

2:
I see 2 possibilities:
- match the emailadres on fibsboard with the emailadres on fibs AND match the username
- match username and IP address
- creating a match application that will guide people in connecting the accounts. This could be done by sending a message to a user on fibs with a secret code and then let someone enter the code in the fibsboard profile.
This would defenately help building more features on Fibsboard.

also see this : http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=400
and other chapters of that programming manual.

Quote from: webrunner on August 21, 2008, 08:45:52 PM
also see this : http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=400
and other chapters of that programming manual.

Thx for the docs, which I browsed a bit. Here's two issues.

1) I can not use PHP code, so an API of that type requires some server side wrappers around those methods to be useable for Java. Basically the functions must be wrapped to be accessible via HTTP (REST or SOAP) from the internet. As repbot would connect from a known IP, security by IP applies. Repbot can not use the PHP code because it assumes to run on a server hosting the forum.

2) The API consists of read-only methods, I found no methods to push information into the system. The results of those methods are HTML include snippets, which are cumbersome to parse for data. So the API clearly is meant for portal assembly, but not suited well as a data interface between two servers.

Quote from: webrunner on August 21, 2008, 08:44:52 PM
I see 2 possibilities:
- match the emailadres on fibsboard with the emailadres on fibs AND match the username
- match username and IP address
- creating a match application that will guide people in connecting the accounts. This could be done by sending a message to a user on fibs with a secret code and then let someone enter the code in the fibsboard profile.
This would defenately help building more features on Fibsboard.

I feel the forum needs to implement that heuristics and expose it as a simple SOAP or HTTP-GET call. I.e. make fibsname a customizeable user feature in the fibsboard server user profile. Then expose this info via a SOAP call.
That call has this semantics: If there is no match, return your best guess and add a boolean flag indicating that a heuristic was used. This may trigger anything in fibsboard, including but not limited to active measures like emails with secret codes.

We lack fibsboard data interfaces here, and Repbot for sure isn't the right place to implement them - e.g. how could Repbot "match" IPs?

Sending FIBS messages absolutely has to be 100% opt-in, rather than opt-out.  To do otherwise would be spamming.

Setting up "FIBS username" as a field on fibsboard doesn't make sense unless it's authenticated.  Otherwise, the first thing someone will do is set up a new account and say that the FIBS username is me,

If you really want to do this, fibsboard needs to provide an authentication mechanism and then repbot needs a command to authenticate a fibsboard user.  You only have to do this once-- repbot doesn't need to keep the authentication info.  Once you've authenticated the account, repbot could just use its own account to send messages.

However, if you're going to go that route why not just let repbot have a database of email addresses?  Send repbot the address, repbot sends email to that address with an authentication token, and then you give repbot the token.  Once that's done, repbot knows your email address and can send you notifications.  Email is a well-defined protocol, and it makes more sense to use it directly rather than using fibsboard as a proxy for email.

OK, here are my thoughts.

First: there IS an api for writing stuff, posting posts and sending messages thruegh the fibsboard API.
I am using it on a another site already.

I am no programmer so i am not able to make any stuff outside of basic php but i agree that there should be some XML interface.
I know there is a way to get the member table via XML.

Another thing i could do is open MySql for the IP address of repbot and give it a username and password and giving access rights to the table (or a copy of the table).

The good part of using fibsboard for this is that, once authenticated, we could add more functionality to fibsboard, like getting a persons rating for their profile etc.

I am just brainstorming.. hope it helps...

Quote from: burper on August 02, 2008, 06:33:06 PM
The new RepBot complaint logic is more about matches than players, so why not make the reverse complaint automatic,

good idea imho

vouches/complaints reffering to match
and
vouches/complaints reffering to the person
separately

please do this, whoever it can do

Sending messages on fibsboard only works for the small subset of people who use fibsboard.  Sending messages via email works for... well, everyone. 

Sucking information in from FIBS seems like a completely orthogonal problem.

My view on this is like so. First, repbot is repbot and not an egg producing wool pig. It does one thing, which is to maintain reputations and derive them from FIBS events and user input. Nothing else is in Repbot's core business. Keep it small and simple.

If some 3rd party system want's to be connected, I expect that systems to offer me 2 things

1) Callback API and methods I can call via SOAP (or a lot less prefered, REST) style webservices
2) When data structures are exchanged, i want to see an XML Schema sysntax formal model

When 1) is SOAP, 1 and 2 can be lumped to a WSDL format XML file. WSDL is for Web Service Description Model and it contains all API calls and the data model. In Java, I can directly generate code from that formal spec. So sending a notification to any system connected that way means to me to implement a 10 line handler object, which is little more than a wrapper around the actual SOAP call. I call it and forget it then, I will not keep any state related to 3rd party servers. Offering the deluxe-version, where Repbot actively calls other servers (i.e. offers an active API) is a nice little project, btw. Any takers?

Thus: I will consider calling back a 3rd party system if and only if I get a web service API which can be called with a simple SOAP call defined by the 3rd party system as WSDL interface description. Anything else is a lot of work. Keep it simple for me, and your 3rd party system will be more likely to be supported.

RepBot could offer an own active API, but this won't happen anytime soon. First of all I have completely no time to waste before November because of a running commerical project. Secondly, if I invest work it will be toward improving the actual qualtity of the rating formula and configurability of RepBot.

Another thing is that RepBot will not become dependend on any other system except FIBS no matter what. I.e. if I want to send an email from Java, i write that 5 lines myself. I won't write 5000 lines of interface code for fibsboard to solve the problem of sending a mail.

What IS interesting is to establish foreign key relations and API between FIBS, FIBSBoard, Repbot, etc. pp. But that's a real distributed system design then, nothing I will touch now. We got a lot more down to earth problems around fibs, such as the lack of a maintained FIBS GUI client or a poor rating formula in Repbot. Both projects would to me have priority above a "nice to have" distributed system integration (no matter how nice the idea is).

I wasn't talking about the email alone. i was exploring possibilities to see if there was any added value in making a connection. Brainstorming if you want.

Lets assume that i can deliver what you want in the way you want it (i build it or let someone build it for me).
Would there be a point in doing it?

Isn't fibsboard with the profiles and member map etc. a part od the community? I just wanted to see if we could strengthen the integration since that is nicer for the rest of the members. Don't you see any added value in that?
And yes, i was talking simple xml cals or whatever, and just informing what the possibilities of repbot are.
I know i am not a programmer but i am not stupid...