first, i'm curious what you mean by schedule .. i assume it's an every Sunday, 1500 UTC, type thing .. it would  be great to have TDbot handle that, too, making set-up each week almost automatic .. although it makes me wonder if fully automated tourney's which seems to be where you're heading here might not suffer from bot like personality problems .. we have enough bot personality dysfuntion issues already, don't you think? worse still, what happens when something inevitably comes up that needs human intervention?

for example, socksey really makes a huge difference in all the stuff she does with "Mini-Matches" .. as do all the regular hosts of the other tourneys .. LuckyDice, for example, saved yesterday's Sunday Bago when the regular director was not logeed in at registration time .. stuff like that will always happen, sometimes even with bots .. but folks like socksey and LD are rare .. regardless, i suspect the tournament director's personality, ownership of, and responsibility for an event really can make an important difference in a tourney's success .. so, i offer an apprehensive warning about overly automating the whole process including scheduling

regarding spam, by which i assume you mean shouts by TDbot and the tourney director, something i'd like to see integrated into scheduling and expanded on is promotion .. fibs tourney schedules are *very* confusing .. it took me months to figure it out and i still screw it up from time to time .. therefore, i'd like to see TDbot shout out alerts to upcoming events synchronized to the time of an upcoming tourney

for example, shout hourly notices synchronized to appear one and two hours ahead of a scheduled time and at the scheduled time itself for a couple of days before the scheduled tourney .. this might help catch the attention of players who log on at regular times each day rather than inhabit fibs 24/7 like some of us do .. additional and increasing levels of alerts should also kick in during the 12-24 hours before the event itself
 
while possibly annoying, this would really be a good way to spread the word about tourneys (especially new ones where my thinking is at the moment) amongst new and old fibsters alike .. with a little thought these ads, err notices, could be simple and capable of expressing basic info as well as the personality or character of the tourney itself .. additionally, a TDbot maintained URL with references for scheduled events would also be nice

on the subject of promotion, i used my javafibs friends list which i use for almost everyone with a good reputation near my player rating and a programmable button to send out invitations to over 200 players for this first "Sunday Special" .. my wrist still hurts from all the mousing around required to do that .. i received a lot of positive feedback on this - primarily from folks who couldn't make it, but were glad to be aware of the new tourney .. i'll likely do this again a time or two for the "Sunday Special" and a "Midnight Special" i'm also considering hosting, but it was rather a pain in the old arse, not to mention wrist .. seems as if TDbot might be able to help manage a task like this too .. of course, the delicate balance of information, promotion, notices, ads, and true spam has to be weighed very carefully here too .. frankly, it can't be as bad as JokeBot can get .. also, if it came as a shout from something other than TDbot, say TDads, anyone annoyed by it could always gag it

on handling forfeits, socksey's comments below, my experience with 2 forfeits yesterday, and common sense suggest forfeits are an area where a human tourney director *must* be involved .. to spend time trying to automate that process may not be worth the effort and could create as many problems as it attempts to solve .. one or two bad forfeits by TDbot could do a lot of harm to TDbot's reputation which must aim toward perfection and be as transparent as possible, imho

However, since it is a time issue, here's a couple of suggestions on forfeits  .. whenever TDbot sends a notice of a next match to the players, include a UTC time stamp ... further, CC: that match notice to a log for the tourney (another TDbot idea) as well as to the tourney moderator(s) in a Tell .. thus, a reference time is automatically available for matches not started promptly .. all we'd have to do then is check the server clock to determine a valid time to forfeit when a dispute arises .. this would be far preferable, i think, to having it done automatically .. there will always arise exceptions to a precise 5 minute limit which need to be accommodated, e.g. smoke breaks for resh

yesterday, one of my forfeits in the "Sunday Special" involved a very reliable player, Bonnita, losing connection and being unable to reconnect or communicate with us until after the tourney .. thus, the semifinal match was sitting in idle .. fortunately, socksey was watching the match, timed the delay, and let me know about it .. thus, it was a quick and easy call to forfeit the match .. however, without socksey being on top of it, i'd have had a hard time making the call without adding even more time, perhaps another 5 minutes, to the delay .. not sure how TDbot might be able to help in that situation other than by monitoring and reporting (on request) a player's idle time to the moderator .. but from what i've seen of idle time reporting, it doesn't appear to be consistent enough to trust - maybe i just don't know how to retrieve it

regarding player registration limits, i set the bar a little higher on reputation yesterday and will experiment next week with setting it higher still .. i used a RepBot threshold of 5000 rather than zero whcih socksey uses in "Mini-Matches".. next week i'm going to increase that to 10000

my thinking is that this will not only encourage responsible RepBot use, but it just makes a nice screen door to keep varmints out .. if ever a player rejected in registration would really like to play and communicate that with me, i have the ability to give them a one time vouch for the event only which would bring them to the 10K threshold unless i'd already vouched for them or they were negative

i have several other ideas (i think), but this is way enough for now
 
thanks for your email reply from which some of these thoughts arose and i look forward to helping anyway i can with tourneys and using TDbot in future "Specials"
 
sixty

Do you mean on Fibs?  This freaks me out!      Fibs is too small to support anything like that.     We are only around 100 players at any given time give or take.  I have seen as low as 80 something players to as much at 157 (the max I've ever seen).  If you run any conflicting tourneys at same time, you will have poor participation for one or the other.   

You mentioned elsewhere that you had in mind 4 tourneys per day which might not be so bad, but they couldn't interfere with the current regularly scheduled tourneys.     That means there could not be 4 tourneys on the days of the already established tourneys.   

socksey

I also want to get greater integration with one or more fibs clients.
I am talking to JavaFIBS developers, now. It seems to be the only

and now a new idea for a TDbot feature - improved and expanded tournament reporting ..

I also like this

Upon completion of each match, shout and tell all players:

   Round 1 #19 Marcus (1500) def. #15 cassandra (1595)   3-0  1539 UTC

esp the TIME!