FIBS Board backgammon forum

Greetings, everyone.

I have decided to introduce a major change to the TourneyBot moderator (=Tourney Director) system. As I'm sure you're aware, until this change only trusted individuals who applied for the position via email were appointed as TDs.

From now on, however, everyone with a FIBS experience of at least 1000 is able to create and hold their own tourneys.

To appoint yourself as a Tourney Director, tell TourneyBot add moderator. The bot will check your experience and add your name to the list of Tourney Directors. Please make sure to check the Command Reference and familiarize yourself with TourneyBot before doing so. Also, consider yourself warned - being a TD requires a lot more work and dealing with unpleasant situations than you can imagine before becoming one. Make sure you are ready for this responsibility. You can see a list of current TDs by telling TourneyBot moderators. To remove yourself from the list, tell the bot remove moderator.

Since I do not doubt that this is going to be an unpopular change with a portion of FIBS population (most notably the old TDs), I will try to explain the reasoning behind these changes here:

1. When TourneyBot was first created, it made a lot of sense to only trust a couple of reputable Fibsters with it. It was a new thing, I didn't know how it would be accepted, there was a concern of abuse and probably a couple of hundreds other reasons, most of which are still valid today. However, since then tourneys have become a big part of the FIBS community and everyday FIBS life. Whereas before all Fibsters were created equal, TourneyBot essentially split them in two groups - those who could host tourneys and those who couldn't. While I never thought this would be a bid deal, I was apparently mistaken. Being a TD became somewhat of a prestigous thing for reasons that escape me. It's hard work and a lot of whining, but not really much satisfaction, or at least I doubt enough to compensate for it. The 1000 exp requirement is there to ensure that not every newbie has access to the bot moderation, but rather the people who have invested some time into FIBS and are likely familiar with the bot.

2. One of the things that amazed me the most about the TD group was the fact that the worst TDs were probably those who considered themselves the pinnacle of the Improve FIBS movement and whatnot. Several of them apparently only wanted a TD status because they felt like it belonged to them for all the good they had done for FIBS during the years. But they would rarely hold any tourneys, preferring instead to devote their time to useless bickering on this board, whining about don, complaining about other TDs, whining about don, complaining about MadMatt not making enough rules, complaining about MadMatt making too many rules, whining about don, insulting everyone who disagreed with them and whining about don. On the other hand, it was also amazing that those I had concerns about before appointing them as TDs mostly proved to be great at being TDs. I was concerned that they wouldn't be able to handle the technical aspect of TourneyBot, as well as the social implications of being a TD within the FIBS community. But to my surprise, they were the best of it, because they became TDs out of love of holding tourneys and playing in them. Looks like I'm not the best judge to determine who should be a TD, so I'm letting the community determine that from now on - if you don't think someone is good at being a TD, you can choose not to enter that person's tourney and maybe just start your own instead.

3. I sensed a danger of TourneyBot becoming a too-exclusive thing, in the sense of who can hold tourneys and also in who can enter them. There was a bit of a gang mentality among certain TDs in the end - let's ban other TDs who don't agree with us from our closed forum, I want the bot to support a personalized list of enemies so I can exclude all of them from playing in my tourneys etc. This change should do away with that.

4. I do not have the time, nor the will to "support" the TD group. By support I mean to look at who's suitable for being a TD, who's abusing their TD powers, who's active and who's not, to resolve complaints about users and other TDs etc. By letting the community regulate that itself, it relieves me of a huge burden.

5. It gives more people the chance to become TDs and contribute to FIBS in a positive way.

I don't know if this is going to work. While solving a handful, there are infinitely many  problems that this change introduces anew. If it is abused too much, I will simply pull the plug on the project as far as I'm concerned (of course, it's Open Source, so there's always a chance someone else might take it up). If it proves out to be a great thing, I will most likely get the motivation to make further improvements back. It's a social experiment of a sorts.

I made some changes to the bot to accomodate for this new system. For one thing, only the admin is now able to ban people globally (as in from any kind of TourneyBot tourney). Only the owners of a tourney type can create tourneys of that type (so only Kari, houtx and gogogiz are able to create Fridays3 tourneys now). You can ban whover you like from your own tourneys, as always. To prevent spamming and scripting abuse and weighing down too heavily on our bandwidth, you are only allowed to send one command to the bot every 2 seconds. A single TD can only hold 6 tourneys per day. These numbers are likely to change as I see how it will be (ab)used. Note that a day is considered a day according to the GMT timezone (so between 00:00 GMT and 23:59 GMT).

All of you may not like this change, some of you might hate it. There is always a possibility of starting your own tourney bot on FIBS, if you are one of those control freaks that feel the need to have everything on FIBS under their control. But just to put myself in the clear here, I cannot and will not provide technical support for your bot, nor can I take any responsibility for your bot in any sense. You are on your own. I made the code open in hope to spur further innovation and useful additions to the FIBS community, to incite other developers to help out with the project and to ensure that the bot did not disappear if something happened to me. I did not do it for every dissatisfied Fibster to have the option of operating their tourney bot, though I do not particularly care if you do as long as you don't bother me with it. Also note that all of the current TDs will keep their TD status, regardless of their experience. (Unless they remove themselves, of course.)

I have not tested the changes too much. Please report any bugs you might encounter as soon as possible. I will update the web page documentation to reflect the changes in the upcoming days.

I'm sure I forgot some things, so watch this thread for updates.

Cheers,

Excellent idea - now if that poxy cafe goes too - maybe there will be peace again (well such as you can get on FIBS   ).  

And if any of the new TDs need any help from an old hand - just ask  

Thats a splendid idea Matt.

Thank you again for coding TB, it is a remarkable achievement and something you should be proud of, despite the bickering that has gone down.

J

hello MadMatt !

definitively better that way !
let's see how it will work ...

I can only say one thing about these changes:  

You are the man!  :ohmaster:

Right away i invite every TD to post any problems, questions, experiences etc. here for all of us to learn from.

All in the open of course !

Weeeeeelllllllllll, since ya asked - where do I begin.............  

Hey it is fun - really - give it a go!!

You lose a lot of playing time though - so hopefully with more TDs - that wont be such an issue.

I think this is probably a good idea, also.     I love playing in tourneys and the more the better!    

One thing I think needs to be stressed, is about the posibility of overlapping of tourneys.  This could be very confusing if not respected, and I would hope that all TD's would use the "tourneys" command to find out if an existing tourney is in progress, before starting up another tourney.   But, hey, I've been known to be wrong.  Maybe a vote would be in order.  I'm all for majority rules.  

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?  

socksey




ââ,¬Å"Donââ,¬â,,¢t like my driving? Then quit watching.ââ,¬Â - author unknown

Great idea to open up Tourneybot to eveyone Matt!  The only problem is that it wasn't your idea!

The idea to open up Tourneybot came from the same group of self serving obnoxious TDs that I count myself a part of (which of course is every TD who did not agree with you!)  Tourneybot is your baby, so it was your choice, but please give credit where credit is due.  The only problem with giving us credit is that it sorta undermines your argument that we were a bunch of elitists.

You might also mention that all of us self-important TDs, who supposedly wanted a secret society, all dropped out of the "secret" area of fibsboard weeks ago.  Again, that would burst your bubble of the TDs being an elitist group.

Lastly, as I am on at allllll hours of the day and night, I would like to mention the fact that these same self serving group of TDs were the ones who have held the largest percentage of tourneys.    Why you felt the need to malign us (and I use "us" because it is pretty obvious to anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention) is beyond me.

But thanks for all the fun tourneybot has brought me and the people who have played my tourneys.  It has been fun.

PW    :2drunk:

PS - I too am glad to help out anyone who needs it to run their own tourneys.  Just remember that the phrases "yo yo" and "drunken tourney" are trademarks of PortWine!

PortWine said:  

QuoteGreat idea to open up Tourneybot to eveyone Matt! The only problem is that it wasn't your idea!

I went to the td cafe today seaching for the source of this statement, being myself one of the td's who runs a lot of tourneys, but NOT being in the group who chose to remove themselves from the td cafe, and I found an interesting thread that I hadn't read before, at least, not that I can recall.    

Port is indeed, right.  The idea was first thought of by none other than our very own, burper, master of ideas!    

Also interesting, and rather humorous, was a post by one of the td's that states a totally opposite opinion than the one stated by the same td in this thread.  Do we have John Kerry here on Fibs in disguise?  heheheeee  That's OK.  Everyone has a right to change their opinion.  

Since that thread was started by burper ("TD's worth", 3 Jul 04) with his idea, the discussion went on from that, but MadMatt was not a part of the thread, as I was not.  This leads me to think that perhaps Madmatt didn't even read this thread, as I had not.  It's just a thought, but perhaps his idea was as original as burper's only came at a later time.  They both have great minds.   -_-    

I'd like to take this moment to thank burper for the original idea (chronologically speaking), give him credit for the thought,  and thx to MadMatt, whether he thought of it himself, or just took burper's idea and decided to approve it.    

If it is a good idea to open the TD status up to anyone, that is yet to be seen.  

The point is, we are all trying to make Fibs a better place and to have more fun.  Let's try to keep that in mind when we are posting here, instead of jumping into "attack mode".  Port, I love you, but I think the tone of your post is more than obnoxious.  Although with some merit, you could have said the same thing with a bit more kindness and regard.  BTW, I have noticed lately, with some sadness, that you don't seem to be running so many tourneys, and I want you to know that I, for one, have missed your drunken tourneys!    

Having said that, as an aside, I ran into another thread while I was in the TD Cafe, that I had forgotten about until I saw it again.  The old TD's already had a vote on overlapping tourneys, and the result was overwhelmingly opposed to overlapping tourneys, 14 to 1.  

socksey

P.S.  And, don't forget that "socksey's blue monday pick me up tourney/blitz", "socksey's woozy tuesday tourney/blitz", "socksey's wednesday "hump day" quickie ", "socksey's wednesday slow "hump day" tourney/blitz", socksey's "is it already thursday?" blitz/tourney", socksey's "you give me fever" friday tourney/blitz" , "socksey's sexy saturday partaaay tourney/blitz, (only sexy persons need apply)", "socksey's zippy sunday blitz", and "socksey's slow comfortable sunday tourney" are tradmarks of socksey.  ))  



"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain

Ahem - I think I had the drunken tourney going long before you were born mister!!!!
Ask anyone about those early little adventures we had !!!  

But you are welcome to keep yo yo!!    

I think I can say that I responded "in kind" to Matt's message.  But your comment is noted socksey.  It would have been nice it I elevated my message without as much rhetoric, but that is not my way.  I speak my mind, bluntly if need be, and if that is interpreted as some as obnoxious, oh well!  I also think you were too charitable socksey given the obnoxious nature of the message I was responding to.

True, not as many tourneys lately.  Been busy with a special project, but I should be having some free time soon and a back to my regularly scheduled tourneys.  Also trying to get my heart back into it.

I am also in deep morning over the loss of my special TD powers.  It is like when Superman gave up his super powers to be with Lois Lane.  Therapy and booze will help me through it.

And Diane, in regards to the drunken tourney, I am shocked and dismayed that you would hold a tourney drunk!  For shame!

PW   :2drunk:  

Hey socksey, how about you quote all those threads where I sang the praises of MadMatt and TourneyBot over and over and over again.

I still have great respect for the man, even if he seems to be in a bit of an angry spell. I'm not sure he made the changes because he thought it was the right thing to do, or as a perceived punishment by removing that precious prestige we all cherished soooo much...oh noooooooooo!!!!!! Why do I feel like his post was directed at me? Maybe not. Maybe it was all those other nasty TD's. Bass-Turds!!

But seriously, it will be an interesting experiment, and he can always change it back, resetting the TD list. We shall see. Hopefully there wil l be some more positive changes in store for the future! I truely think that TourneyBot was the best thing to hit fibs ever, right AFTER FibsLeagammon. Tomawaky's fake problem with other languages keeps him out of so much trouble!! I bet he tells French people that he is American.

Hey MadMatt, we're here to support you and your bot! Go nuts man, we still luv ya.  

burper
-vaporware writer extrodinaire

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK!  I was just in a nightmare on fibs street!  

I had a late meeting so didn't get to log in to fibs until around 11:45 pm cst, usa, where I found a tourney just opened for registration!  How lucky could I get?  NOT!  No sooner did I register than the tourney started and there were only 4 players!       So, well, OK, I was out in first round.  Then another tourney opened for registration, so I joined that one.  Then another tourney opened!  Then I tried to withdraw from the one I had joined but it had already started!  So, I played boardking (only because it was him) and luckily I lost so I didn't have to play any more, because another tourney started and the notices didn't say what tourney number..........it became horribly confusing.  

The tourneys were run by someone named gonzobuzz first, then gonzobuzz and sparks, then just sparks.  There were 5 tourneys in the space of half an hour that opened and rapidly started.  The last three only had 2 players. 2 players, and 1 player.  No notices of when the tourneys would start, just bam, they did.

The fun part was that sparks banned me from his tourney #962 when I didn't even want to play.  

Well, so much for this experiment!  

socksey




"If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt." - Dean Martin

I am sure the novelty will wear off  

Dont recognise the names though - do they have 1000 exp points - just to check that part of things is working ok?

Looks like sparks and gonzo are doing pretty good.

You: tourneys
TourneyBot: Listing tourneys currently accepting sign-ups or are already in progress:
TourneyBot: |963: [double] Double Elimination Tourney #963| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:18 UTC| |Directors: spark| |Status:
Signing up!|
TourneyBot: |962: [bracket] Single Elimination Bracket Tourney #962| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:17 UTC| |Directors: spark|
|Status: Signing up!|
TourneyBot: |961: [bracket] Single Elimination Bracket Tourney #961| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:13 UTC| |Directors: spark|
|Status: Signing up!|
TourneyBot: |960: [bracket] Single Elimination Bracket Tourney #960| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:13 UTC| |Directors: spark|
|Status: Signing up!|
TourneyBot: |959: [double] Double Elimination Tourney #959| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:02 UTC| |Directors: spark gonzobuzz|
|Status: Signing up!|
TourneyBot: |958: [bracket] Single Elimination Bracket Tourney #958| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 05:09 UTC| |Directors: spark
gonzobuzz| |Status: In progress|
TourneyBot: |956: [bracket] Single Elimination Bracket Tourney #956| |Thu, 19 Aug 04 04:25 UTC| |Directors: gonzobuzz|
|Status: In progress|  

Now wait just a gosh darn minute, before you go slamming my great idea...  

Wasn't there more to it than just 1000 exp points? I would have thought I put something about minimum reputation as well? I must have! (You have my permission to quote that post of mine here.) That would allow the other TD's to complain and thus drum the bad apple out. I suppose that means checking each TD's rep at tourney create time, but I know the code to check reps is in there. So that much isn't hard.

Maybe N tournies a day doesn't work as well as 1 tourney/hour might?

Were there any other TD's on at the time? Maybe some other control system can be devised based on majority of TD's limiting a minority, or does that put that evil prestige thing back into play? Or perhaps TDing can have an experience metric saved, so that you could have controlled the newbie TD somehow? Half-baked ideas here at best, but maybe it will get people thinking. A self-maintaining system would be best, where there is no central point of control (just like FIBS!), so I would love to see something worked out in this regard.

I was going to can TBot now that MM is back in the saddle and developing and supporting TourneyBot again, but now with this new TD system, I think I'll keep it going a bit longer to see what happens with it. I am playing it safe by not adopting this new free-for-all model, and I know that's not how innovation happens, but since there are some established tournies around, it might not be such a bad idea to have a backup bot around, at least for now. I'll think of it as supporting MM by maintaining a stable version, while he is free to experiment and further develop TourneyBot.

Angry or not, it's nice to have MadMatt back around. Even if nerves are a bit strained around the edges, a discussion like this is WAY better than no discussion at all.

Burper, don't you dare can TBot!  I'll put a hex on you!  heheheeheee  No more sex for you until TBot is running smoothly again!  So, be careful, bro.     You know I have the power, like grandma did!  How else do you think I can roll all those dbles?

Seriously, the limits for rep would eliminate the problem.  Everyone who didn't like the massive tourneys could complain and end that TD in a minute.  Shoot, I could end one in a minute singlehandedly that way.  Witch, or no witch.   I knew you would think of some sane solution!    

Oh, and I forgot to mention that gonzobuzz was soliciting reputation points.  I saved the chat if anyone is interested.  This TD had a -bad rep, so he would have been eliminated before he began, if the rep limit had been in place for TD's.

HELP, MATT!

socksey






"You may admire a girl's curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles." - Mae West

But you didn't answer the question: was the reputation bit part of the original idea?
If you want to give me temporary access to the Cafe, I will go find it myself, otherwise it's not a biggie.

However, I'm not sure if this would not re-insert improper prestige and power back into the system.
I know you would not mis-use it, but what about us wayward children with our personal vedettas?

No, I don't think the master of all would like this idea.

QuoteI sense a general attitude that having chosen TD's is not of value. Certainly those that have been running tournie's these last few months are not appreciated enough. How about we change the TourneyBot code so that *anybody* can run a tourney of any type, any time? Why not? Take away global bans, and make the tourney/type ban work silently. Wouldn't a totally free market of tourneys, given a chance, work it self out? Let the quality TD's rise to the top. Maybe some DB cleaning would need to be done for nuisance tournies? No special power for any chosen group, no special power for any admin. Remember that power corrupts absolutely. It is always better for any system to distribute it somehow.

This is full first quote, burp.  No mention of limits.  Then there was this one:

Quoteokay, how about nobody is a TD?
The first 4 people to register become the TD for that tourney. As soon as one tourney finishes, the next one opens. We'd still need a way to specify long-lived tourneys of course, or just have some sort of a timeout feature that marks it that way automatically.

That is all there was except a couple of meaningless ones.  Looks like you were headed to something better, when someone didn't think MadMatt would go for it, so the subject sort of dwindled off after that.  Matt didn't post here, so he may not have seen this thread either.   I'm not sure he reads all this stuff.  I think he's very busy with other things like maybe, a life, like you, burper!  

socksey




"I don't have a bank account, because I don't know my mother's maiden
name." - Paula Poundstone

Quote
a life

sarcasm noted  <_<