ROBOTS! - Tell your friends!

Since discussing this in Skype chat really didn't give us any concrete solution, I'll take the matter over here publicly.

Rainboy is interested in installing a Forum Bot (A BENIGN ONE, as in one that's easy to control and won't be a retarded-ass spambot) on the Mafia Games Board to monitor and track the vote tallies, so that no shenanigans or fuckups occur, posting the current vote tally on each new page for everyone to keep track of it. Sounds good, no?

The upside of installing this bot is that there will not be any bad-vote or ignored vote business, since everything will be transparent enough for the bot to recognize.

Which leads me to this point: If we agree to use this bot, we must change a bit how the voting goes out. How? By respecting the bot's input syntax. If I recall correctly, all votes must be like so
[vote Stalin]
bolded and everything. If you want to undo your vote to vote someone else, it's
[unvote]
and then you proceed to do your regular vote

Now, this doesn't mean the games will devolve into a [bolded bracketed soulless mess]. We can all keep our shenanigans, a-like so

I'm 100% certain that Aboi is mafia. Why? Let me tell you my reasons
Shadi roleblocked him last night and he somehow became voteless too and BLAH BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA
WALL OF TEXT GOES HERE
MORE REASONS
SHENANIGANS AND PARANOIA ARE OPTIONAL

So that's why I think Aboi's evil.
[vote Aboi]

So since there wasn't any clear answers before in Skype, I made this thread. I actually like the idea of this bot, but since there was a highly vocal opposition, I'll be democratic and added a poll too if you just wanna vote and not discuss, if that's your thing.

So... what do you think? Bot uprising? Or tradition?

...also, Rainboy, can we change the name of the Bot too?

This is...an interesting concept.

It's an interesting idea, but out of curiosity what issue is this meant to solve that we've been running into? I don't really oppose it but I would seriously miss the vote tally renaming shenanigans.

I think it's mainly to keep track of the votes since sometimes someone miscounts or is too lazy to put up a tally/forgets to put up the tally.

We can still keep up the vote tally shenanigans.
Just we'd have a correct count at all times at the bottom of the page.

I'm for it.

[Vote Robot Overlords]

Poot Votespenser Here
Vote of Support

Sounds like it'd be helpful. We could at least try it out, and remove it if it's too obstructive. The robot won't care.
...Right...?

I'm always a don't fix what ain't broke kinda guy but this sounds like a pretty good convenience to me.

The only reason I'd go against it is if it doesn't post results of the voting day. Like normally how we go:

X - 2 - Y, Z
Y - 1 - X

3/3

It shows us exactly who votes who and depending on voting patterns, it helps some of us keep track of what may be looking fishy.

I won't put a vote now for it, but if it can at least meet that one standard then I'm all for it.

Alpar wrote:The only reason I'd go against it is if it doesn't post results of the voting day. Like normally how we go:

X - 2 - Y, Z
Y - 1 - X

3/3

It shows us exactly who votes who and depending on voting patterns, it helps some of us keep track of what may be looking fishy.

Don't worry. Rain has said that he can edit what the bot belts out to suit the forum's syntax, so that's covered.

That's a vote from me then.

DA wrote: Rain has said that he can edit what the bot belts out to suit the forum's syntax, so that's covered.

Is he going to be on daily checking on it?

Disclaimer: Holy crap I wrote a lot down there. Sorry about that. Feel free to read if you're interested, but don't say I didn't warn you about how long it is. xD

Since DA has put this up for discussion, let me explain what the bot does in a bit more detail. Keep in mind that any of these features can be enabled or disabled as you all see fit. If you find the bot too complex, just let me know what subset of its features you want me to enable. Heck, if you all want a different syntax, that's fine too. I just found that [command] is very clear so there's no mistaking when someone is doing something. If that's too cluttered for your taste, I could easily change it to just command or anything else you might want.

First off, the bot polls the thread every five minutes and posts if there is new information (such as a vote) that it can digest or if the discussion reaches a new page. When it makes a new post, it goes back and deletes its previous post to keep the thread clean.

NOTE: To prevent players from altering the game by editing an old post, the bot will only read a given post once. Once a post has been read, edits to it are ignored unless the host restarts the bot with the [restart] command.

Feature list:
1. The bot tracks players.
This removes any and all ambiguity on who is in the game and who's alive. Players who want to join post [in] to confirm they want to play, and hosts post [kill <player>] to tell the bot that a player has died. At the end of each post it makes, the bot posts the current playerlist (including the status of each player) in a spoiler.

2. The bot tracks the lynch tally.
Like DA posted above, players post [vote <player>] to tell the bot where to cast their vote. This removes ambiguity and errors with the vote tally (such as my own error here). The bot posts a tally at the top of each post it makes. In the tally, each player's name is a link to the post where they voted. If players want to change their vote, they can simply [vote <player>] again (contrary to DA's post, [unvote] is only used to specifically remove any current vote, eg abstain).

3. The bot tracks the reverse lynch tally.
A reverse tally shows the players a player votes for, instead of the players voting for a player. As with the normal tally, each player's name is a link to the post where they were voted. A reverse tally is useful for watching voting patterns and tracking who changed their vote and when. The reverse tally, unlike the normal tally, will show every vote in a round including votes that were later changed.

4. The bot tracks the history of lynch tallies for previous rounds.
This is posted in a spoiler just above the playerlist (see #1). It contains an exact copy of the normal and reverse tally for each round (including links to all vote posts) and can be used to quickly peruse a suspect player's past votes to see who they might be protecting, who they might trust, etc.

5. The bot tracks the expected LHLV lynch.
You all will probably find this less useful since the common tiebreaker here seems to be coin flip, but where I come from LHLV is the common tiebreaker. LHLV says that the player who has the Longest Held Last Vote is lynched (usually the player who had more votes before the tie). Since LHLV is deterministic, the bot can calculate who will be lynched each round, assuming no shenanigans.

6. The bot tracks inactive players.
If a player fails to post or vote for a full round, the bot will start to list them as an inactive poster/voter along with how many rounds they've been inactive. This mostly aids hosts in finding players who should be modkilled, but it also helps players know who's potentially not around and needs to be poked.

7. The bot tracks wins and losses.
This is a new feature that I just finished testing about two weeks ago. In our forums, there is a special thread that lists every game ever played, along with who hosted/won/lost. The thread also lists every player's wins, games played, and their percentage win rate. When a host posts [end <winner1>, <winner2>, ...] in their game thread, the bot will update the win/loss record with the new stats.



Bugs:
Occasionally, the bot will crash when trying to read extremely long threads (on the order of 50+ pages). There's also occasionally a bug when the bot thinks that votes cannot be cast currently. This is easily fixed by the host posting a [restart].


Development:
I'm currently working a feature for the bot that allows hosts to specify when the round will end, allowing the bot to put a countdown timer in his posts. The bot will also update the thread's title with the end time and round number. Like I said, this feature is in development and isn't yet finished.

Sounds great, I'll support it.

MrNaleIt wrote:

DA wrote: Rain has said that he can edit what the bot belts out to suit the forum's syntax, so that's covered.

Is he going to be on daily checking on it?

I'd be here daily to check on him, yes. The format of these forums (HTML-wise) is different than the forums I come from, so I expect it'll take me a month or two to port the code to work with this forum. I was tempted to start it, but I kinda wanna know if my work will be used before I start doing anything.

I don't know, honestly. I mean, it sounds neat, but human error is (from my view anyway) part of the game. If the bot is there tracking literally everything, especially vote patterns, it'll be way too easy to tell who's mafia based on that alone without having to go back and look at patterns and possibly mess up. And when each post is made with [vote x] in it, the bot posts right after? that'll make our threads nearly twice as long and it'll take longer to read through investigative-thinking conversations because it'll take two pages to read a discussion with people changing their votes instead of just one. Another thing is that we won't be able to use fun nicknames with this, and I don't want that to go away. (nor do I want to set a pre-approved list of nicknames because I might be a genius again and come up with something funny)

Also is there any possible way for a host to opt-out of bot-usage for their round?

I guess I don't like change?

Here's a screencap of one of the bot's posts (with comments on a few things). I've given DA links to a couple of his posts, and will leave sharing the links up to his discretion.

MrNaleIt wrote:If the bot is there tracking literally everything, especially vote patterns, it'll be way too easy to tell who's mafia based on that alone without having to go back and look at patterns and possibly mess up.

The bot does not post anything that's not public knowledge in the thread. It merely organizes it so players can easily find what they're looking for. It doesn't add anything new, just makes it less work to find things.

However, at the heart of your argument, it does make things a little easier for the village than it does for the mafia since most people are too lazy to go manually hunt down all the information the bot provides. You'd be surprised how little a difference it makes, though; once the bot is in use, the mafia on our forums adapted to it pretty quickly. It changed how the mafia played the game a little, but their overall chances of winning didn't noticeably change at all.

MrNaleIt wrote:And when each post is made with [vote x] in it, the bot posts right after? that'll make our threads nearly twice as long and it'll take longer to read through investigative-thinking conversations because it'll take two pages to read a discussion with people changing their votes instead of just one.

The bot deletes its old post when it makes a new one. Only the most recent post is kept in the thread, reducing the clutter as much as possible.

MrNaleIt wrote: Another thing is that we won't be able to use fun nicknames with this, and I don't want that to go away. (nor do I want to set a pre-approved list of nicknames because I might be a genius again and come up with something funny)

I've thought about that, and tossed around ideas in my head over the last couple of months while preparing for the inevitable discussion we're having now. You're right, the nicknames problem is a difficult one for the bot to handle. The best I can offer in this regard is an alias command (which anyone could use) that adds to a pre-approved list of nicknames. That adds to the clutter a little, and still forces you to use the player's real name the first time you use a nickname. It's sub-optimal, I know, but I don't have a really solid solution for this one.

MrNaleIt wrote:Also is there any possible way for a host to opt-out of bot-usage for their round?

The bot is coded such that until the host uses a bot command, the bot will never post in the thread. If a host doesn't want to use the bot, just don't use it and it won't do anything.

Hm... I'm not sure. But, if I managed to give ponies a shot, I don't see why I can't do the same here. Vote of confidence from me.

Wow did you seriously just compare a bot to My Little Pony

But because we gave ponies a shot it has become a indestructible and intolerable fandom, which are represented by the loudest members that just want attention rather than silently appreciating it.

Scept has me sold, fuck the robots.

*sigh*
It has nothing to do with comparing the two. I merely said if I could try one, I could give the other a shot.

Sure why not.  If we do go with it, we should make a sticky with bot commands to link to in the OP of rounds using it, like how we (used to?) do with the rules post.

[vote Bot]

Zyquux wrote:Sure why not.  If we do go with it, we should make a sticky with bot commands to link to in the OP of rounds using it, like how we (used to?) do with the rules post.

[vote Bot]

omg don't lynch him before he's even started :(


What a sad way to go...lynched for keeping tallies of the lynch.

Vatonnage wrote:Wow did you seriously just compare a bot to My Little Pony

As you can see in the screencap I posted, the bot IS at least 20% cooler.

Well, seeing that we're getting a lot more agreeing votes than denying votes, I think it's safe to say that we accept this bot into the family.

Before we close this poll and give Rain a green light on this...


Any objections, people?

(that is, anything you wanna add in favor or against it before Rain does the thing?)