From: smcmilla@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Scott A McMillan)
Subject: Bots and Common Sense
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 01:01:37 GMT

I would like to add my two cents worth of what, to me, is some common sense
as far as bots go.

Let's start with what IRC is: Internet Relay Chat. Okay, so the purpose of
IRC is to chat. I take that to mean to talk, to hold a conversation. From the
ardent supporters of vanity bots, I must be wrong...

Going on. Can people own channels? Nope. Why not? The number of channels is
potentially infinite. Any basic economics book will tell you that you can
only own something if there is a finite amount of it. In response to the
people who are plagued by people who join their channels and kick everyone
off or deop them or commit other IRC crimes... Create a new channel and
ban the offender and then invite everyone over... 

Next. Can people own nicks? Yep. I know that I violate my previous argument,
but nicks are names, when it's all boiled down. And names just represent
people. When I get on, I like to know who among my friends is on. The easiest
way to do that is using notify. Now is nicks are not exclusive, I'll have no
way of telling if that nick equals my friend... Therefore, nicks should be
owned. Plus, I can always /whois a friend, invisible or not, and find out
what channel they are on (there are exceptions, I'll grant), while I can't
/who channel and tell exactly who is on it...

I personally believe that nickserv is doing a fine job right now...

Vanity bots... I'll admit that I have written a bot, and ran it for about
two days. Then I wrote an ircrc. For better or worse, bots are good as
sources for ircrc's. Bot's that just hold a channel are wastes of IRC
resources (for the reasons mentioned above.) Bots that op users are also
a waste. Let's go back to what IRC is: chat. I sure don't need an op to
chat. Some people sure think they do. Maybe if people didn't throw around
ops, they wouldn't get kicked off 'their own' channel. I personally auto-op
three people when they join (from an ircrc.) I know lots of people on 
IRC, but I op three. Point made? I refuse to join #hotsex and #hottub because
of the number of opings and deopings that just clutter the channel and 
interfear with talking, the supposed purpose of IRC.

Let's see, what other reasons are there why someone would run a bot? To
keep people off of a channel? Use an ircrc. I can't stress it enough,
an ircrc can do everything a bot can do, but it is better. You don't have
to worry about the bot getting kicked off a channel or losing it's op.
The commands are shorter (eg. /msg botname op nickname vs. /op nickname, or 
even if you shorten the /msg botname with an alias, it's still /alias op
nickname) and easier to remember. Plus, ircrcs are written from the ground
up, therefore the user gains some knowledge of IRC script. I know of bots
created by just changing the /nick at the top and the op list. Can't learn
much from that...

Let's look at useful bots such as Nicksrv and Helpsrv and all of the others
that fall into the useful category. Let them stay. They perform a service that
individual users can't provide for themselves. That is how I define a useful
bot. If it does something that that I, as a user, can not do by myself (such
as nickname registration), it's a good bot. If it just does something that
any old user can do (op, deop, ban, etc) it's a bad bot. As far as bots that
flood users or try to make witty conversation, kick 'em off. A good rule
of thumb is that no bot should talk unless msged, and then only in the form
of a msg.

I hope that makes sense to most people. I do not believe that bots can ever
be banned from irc, so we have to put up with them. We SHOULD however, make
sure that they never flood and avoid loops. Hopefully, users will progress
from using bots (at least harmful ones) and become mature IRC users, and
not out to only op your friends and ban your enemies.

As far a `right' to have a bot, sure you can have your bot, just don't get
mad if I kick it off.... The roads goes both ways....

socket

-- 
Scott Andrew McMillan             University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
socket@uiuc.edu        "Fighting for peace is like fornicating for chastity"
smcmilla@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu            What about my ontological predicates???
Newsgroups: alt.irc