FIBS Board backgammon forum

webrunner, is it possible and easy for you to setup some web space for tourneybot moderators for posting tourneybot tourney info such as the brackets info?

Anything is possible, the only limit is my time

What exactly did you have in mind?

In another topic someone already asked for a closed forum for tb operators.
Since i am for openess i am not keen to start that right away.
But i have to say that it is the most easy thing to do. I would prefer an open forum though.. but then again.. there already is a tourney bot forum.

Another thing: maybe it is nice to pot postings on the fibsboard calendar on when the tourneys are about to take place. This way people know when to log in for a Tourney.

Normal HTML is not allowed in the board. Only BB Code.
Maybe Noodle can help us there. He has created the brackets for the postcard tournament.

Also we should wait and see what MadMat is going to do with TB.
The poll for new features reflects that website integration is rather wanted.
For now, we  can just use the forum

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In another topic someone already asked for a closed forum for tb operators.
Since i am for openess i am not keen to start that right away.
But i have to say that it is the most easy thing to do. I would prefer an open forum though.. but then again.. there already is a tourney bot forum.

I'm not upset, but I feel I should calrify my request for a 'Mod's Only' forum. I don't want to be seen as an isolationist or anything...

I think that a private place for TB Mods to discuss what some of the tourney participants are doing is a good idea. Some players are registering for tournaments only to disrupt them, and some others still try to harangue the mods and make arguments for no good reason. I only suggested such a closed forums so mods could keep tabs on who the troublemakers are and could discuss what top do about it in a private place. If this info is public, it may serve only to encourage these troublemakers, and it may offend others. It would also be a place to discuss who should or shold not be globally banned and why or why not. This would be a means to protect both the players and the mods. Doing so in public could possibly lead to disaster and nastiness. It would also be a place to debate rules and rule changes without interference from troublemakers...possibly.

I am only making a suggestion. And I very much respect the idea that all should be open and public. Thats a wonderful sentiment, but I wonder if it is in the best interest of tourneybot.....

My only interest is protecting the rule-abiding, good sportsman tourney participants from the miscreants that frequent FIBS. Thats all...

Jon

QuoteI think that a private place for TB Mods to discuss what some of the tourney participants are doing is a good idea

Perhaps use TB's own mailing list?
http://tourneybot.rubyforge.org/#mailinglist

Quotewebrunner, is it possible and easy for you to setup some web space for tourneybot moderators for posting tourneybot tourney info such as the brackets info?

TourneyBot has virtually unlimited hosting space at rubyforge.org. If you want,
I can set you up with some space at tourneybot.rubyforge.org/tourneys or something like that.

Not terribly convenient since you have to use SCP to upload, but you could use that.

Alternatively, I remember Eric telling me I had 10 MB at www.fibsboard.com/tourneybot
That would probably be an even better solution since there's an easy file manager to upload. Perhaps the TDs who apply could get access to that space and use it for their tournament webpages?

QuoteNormal HTML is not allowed in the board. Only BB Code.
Maybe Noodle can help us there. He has created the brackets for the postcard tournament.

Also we should wait and see what MadMat is going to do with TB.
The poll for new features reflects that website integration is rather wanted.
For now, we  can just use the forum

Okay, the website is still not the top priority. Here's the current itinerary:

1. Polish the code a bit, fix some minor glitches.

2. Release 1.0 stable

3. Add the ability to limit particpation based on rating/exp/rep

4. Come up with a better bracket building algorithm that will fix bug 269 and enable To-Be-Determined to be replaced with the actual match from the previous round.

5. Add the notificiation subscription system for people who don't like to listen to shouts, so that they're informed about tourney events.

6. Start with the webpage or maybe with the better scheduler here.

This schedule is likely to change as ideas come in or bugs are discovered.

Of course, if anyone volunteers to write the webpage instead of me...

QuoteI think that a private place for TB Mods to discuss what some of the tourney participants are doing is a good idea.

JonJon, I understand why you think this would be a good idea, however, alef and webrunner are right, we don't want this to be seen like a closed group of people taking over TourneyBot or FIBS in general, whatever...

Also, 2 other reasons:

- a forum is really a public place where everyone can voice their opinions. Having a closed session would somewhat destroy the purpose of a forum. If you want private discussion, use the mailing list.

- if you accuse someone of misbehaving, it should be done publically IMO so that they have a chance to defend themselves.

Cheers,

Matt

QuoteI will be glad to write some code for you to generate web pages from TB directly. Shouldn't it wait until you have #4 from your list worked out? I don't want to worry about writing files, and where etc... so perhaps there is a well-defined interface I can implement, i.e. (in java-speak)

String webpage = generateWebPage(BracketTourney bt)

...then you can integrate it and worry about how to get it in the correct file system location, presumably based on a property (for hosting portability) etc...

Yes I would write it in ruby, not java, but I haven't looked at that yet. Good opportunity for me to learn a new language. Let me know if something like this sounds okay.

I thought you were busy with ChouetteBot, burper?

Anyway, I noticed that the machine TB runs on also runs an apache webserver. Now, if webrunner agreed that we could run the pages from that server and to install mod_ruby apache module, then making this pages would be very easy indeed.

You'd just read the objects from disk where database stores them. Example:


tourney = database['tourneys/#{number}/object']
print "<TITLE>Tourney #{tourney.number} Info</TITLE>"
print "<I>Players: #{tourney.players_arr.join(' ')}</I>
etc.

There would be no need for any kind of interfaces or anything, as you would get the object directly, the same way as TourneyBot sees it. All you'd have to do is look quickly through tourney.rb and bracket-tourney.rb in the TourneyBot code to see what all the different properties are.

Cheers,

Nice discussion here.

I would be happy to donate some space in any form.
But first: MadMatt .. you are right about the forums. Thanks for making my point clearer.

Anyway.. i could reinstate the tourneybot webspace on fibsboard. That wouldn't be a problem. Although i don't like the idea to give all the tb operators access to the filemanager. I think that could get messy.

I would advice some php scripts that can be used by TB operators to enter their brackets and other information in an orderly way. I can provide with a mysql database for that.

About the server that is running the bot(s). I am having some problems with the mgnu bots and i want to sort that out first. After that i can generate a virtual webserver for the Tourneybot. I just hope the traffic doesn't get too much since the server is connected with an adsl line and i tent to like online gaming (not only fibs) that uses a lot of bandwidth.

I have to say i prefer a cron job that sends that tourney data through f.i. ftp to the fibsboard server. That way we only generate traffic once a day and the website will be on a true webserver with large bandwidth.

Just an idea...open for other ideas of course...

Quote
Anyway.. i could reinstate the tourneybot webspace on fibsboard. That wouldn't be a problem. Although i don't like the idea to give all the tb operators access to the filemanager. I think that could get messy.

Hm, a possible solution would be to only grant access to TDs currently running (or planning to run) a tourney. So, since burper's running a longer tourney now, he gets access which might later be revoked. Though I personally see no problem with giving access to every TD who wants one.

Quote
I would advice some php scripts that can be used by TB operators to enter their brackets and other information in an orderly way. I can provide with a mysql database for that.

Why? TourneyBot already takes care of the bracket building (that's its purpose after all) as well as storing all the information in a database. We only need a webserver to render those brackets in HTML so that they're easier to read than the stuff TourneyBot sends.

Quote
I have to say i prefer a cron job that sends that tourney data through f.i. ftp to the fibsboard server. That way we only generate traffic once a day and the website will be on a true webserver with large bandwidth.

I wouldn't be entirely opposed to this - you've done more than your share of contributing to TourneyBot without hosting its webpage as well. In addition, having everything at fibsboard.com (I could move the static webpage here, too) would be a good thing so as not to confuse people (where as if we have the dynamic webpage where TB runs we would have the original homepage at rubyforge.org, the forum at fibsboard.com and dynamic tourney info at that other place).

However, there is a major drawback doing this the way Eric suggests - the dynamic webpages would not hold real time data (instead the data would be between 1 second and 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds old), which, at least in my view would sort of do away with much of the appeal of such a website. It'd still be good for storing past winners and whatnot and even to see the bracket of longer tourneys, though. But you couldn't view real-time brackets of a tourney then (which people seem to want most of any website feature), so...

In any case,  I'll have to think about it some more. Perhaps decreasing the interval of the data upload would help...

Cheers,

I have given it another thought and i am happy to give it a try.
As long as it doesn't give me extra stuff to do or maintain. I em getting swamped as it is.

The easiest way is probably to host the dynamic page on the server tourneybot is on and do other stuff on fibsboard.com.

I will contact MadMatt about all this.

Okay, yesterday evening webrunner and I talked about the different options and then I thought about it some more and I think I've come up with a solution on how to have everything at fibsboard.com and still have real-time dynamic webpages. Here's the plan:

1. Move the rubyforge.org (static) webpage to http://www.fibsboard.com/tourneybot

2. If webrunner will consent, have http://www.fibsboard.com/tourneys or something similar as a space for Tourney Directors to put their custom HTML pages for longer tourneys, like burper wanted.

3. Have dynamically generated pages at http://www.fibsboard.com/tourneybot/tourneys
Here's how I think this should be done:

a.) We start with webrunner's idea - crontab runs a Ruby script once per day (or perhaps twice) that generates the dynamic pages from the database data, then uploads it to fibsboard.com/tourneybot/tourneys

b.) To have webpages with (almost) real time data for every tourney, TourneyBot spawns a script to generate and upload the tourney webpage every time a new tourney is started. Usually there are two or three tourneys per day, so the cost to CPU power and bandwidth here is negligable, especially compared to what TourneyBot and the four gnu bots already use. Even if the number of tourneys increased to 50 a day (which it never will, of course), it'd still be almost negligable. In fact, I believe the script should be run three times for every tourney: once when the tourney is opened for sign ups (so that people can read the description and all the properties on the web page before signing up), once when the tourney's started (so that they can view the bracket) and once when the tourney's completed (so they can see the results).


Anyway, this looks like a cool system with the best of both possible systems. It has shortcomings, too, of course (like the fibsboard.com site being down when the script tries to upload etc.), but otherwise it'd be pretty cool, I think

Let me know what you think,

  Good plan!!    

And i can probably also solve the problem of the webpage being offline by creating some temporary page.

Or even better.. we don't let tb upload all the pages but only new ones.
I can create a php script that creates a menu of all existing html pages.
This way the menu never has to be uploaded.
Only the pages with the tourney information, and they never have to be replaced, anly new ones added. This way we build a nice history too, wich i can make searchable.

I am still fuzzy about one thing: what do TB oparators need webspace for if TB himself is generating results and all that?
Shouldn't the forum be enough for that?

I am still not keen on giving access to the filemanager to too many people.
In my opinion the forum, the calendar, the TB bracket generator should be enough functionality, but i could be wrong.

If you could give me some concrete reasons or information that TB operators would like to post i can maybe try to find a solution that maybe plugs in the forum.
I don't want the fibsboard becoming some fibs-user homepage server if you catch my drift.

Quote
Or even better.. we don't let tb upload all the pages but only new ones.

Yes, it's going to upload only new/changed ones anyway. Maybe the daily crontab job would upload all the pages, but even that could be avoided.

Quote
I am still fuzzy about one thing: what do TB oparators need webspace for if TB himself is generating results and all that?
Shouldn't the forum be enough for that?

Well, I thought they'd like to give some more info than what TourneyBot provides. Like description of prizes, post postcards, player photos etc. But they don't have to host that at fibsboard.com if you don't want, there are other places that this could be done. I just thought it'd be convenient to have everything here.


Right, I'll be moving the home page shorty then.

Cheers,

Is the fibs forum not the best place to post that kind of information about tournaments?
I can create a seperate forum for that under Leagues & Tournaments.
Together with the Calendar there you've got everythingh you need right there.

I agree that we should put as much as possible under fibsboard.com.
That is wy i chose this forum script and this setup, so that we can enter almost any kind of information.
But i rather not have all the information scattered all over seperate directories. There are several downsides for that (f.i. not searchable).

Also, if you post it in the forum i can implement it in the portal page..
I could make a box with the newest trournament infmrtaion or just show messages from that forum on the front page too (like i do with the messages of the Annpuncements forum).

well.. just my two cents...

I might be wrong but i think ios going to create these brackets for you real time.
That would save you a lot of time and namecalling.

And there is a tag to use HTML in the posts.
Look at this:


[dohtml]<a href="http://www.whateverlinkblah.com">This is some sample HTML.</a>[/dohtml]

I think i just made your day right?


Only moderators are allowed to use this code.
Pleas use it with caustion as it can destroy the forum lay-out.
 

matt, i LOVE your idea! this is great! i've been playing with the idea of doing a regular tourney with prizes and this would help immensely!

webrunner, please, god, NO on putting the tourney info on fibsboard. i have an older computer and .. .fibsboard takes awhile in of itself to load, much less players finding a specific tourney to get information on. *shivers*

would it really be too much to have a fibsboard/tourneybot/mod directory? or even just a fibsboard/tourneybot directory?

No jinnate, you are missing the point i am trying to make.

The point is that fibsboard is the correct place for public postings of any kind. This way it can be controlled. Especially now i am cautious  about giving people access to more then just posting in the forum.

However, i can give access to TB or any other script that creates bracket pages and other tourney information. This onformation will all have to be submitted to TB in my opinion, who will create a nice page for it.
I think the best place for that is www.fibsboard.com/tourneybot/tourneys  but a different (shorter) URL is also possible.

i was getting it all mixed up. it sounded like you were suggesting that the code post bracket info in the forum itself, and that was what i was objecting to.