[squeak-dev] irc bots review, call for consensus

Aloha!

I'm back from vacation, and have been reviewing how the IRC bots in #squeak and #etoys performed. Also, now that we've
had a chance to observe them for a few weeks, I'd like to formally poll the community to confirm or reject the current
setup. I have heard mostly positive feedback but some folks think the noise outweighs the benefit. Just to be clear,
this mail is about announcements on IRC, not the commit announcements on the mail list.


Recap and some observations:

- four bots are running in #squeak (squeaksourcebot, squeaktrunkbot, squeakbugsbot, squeakplanetbot) and two in #etoys
(etoysupdatesbot, etoystrackerbot). The last two are quiet and uncontroversial so I'll ignore those.

- the bots ran pretty well unattended. I asked several squeakers to keep an eye on them but no maintenance was needed.
Mean time between failures (unexpected terminations due to loss of irc connection) was about one bot-day. Cron restarted
downed bots periodically so outages hopefully weren't too noticeable. As an extra safeguard all bots were restarted
nightly; this is normally not done.

- the bots are generic rss/atom feed announcers, emitting at least one irc message per new feed item. I can tweak them
quite a bit, but I'd prefer not to maintain special-purpose #squeak-specific bots.

- currently, each bot can announce up to 5 new items every 15 minutes. The downside of reducing the max announce rate is
increased time lag when announcing bursts of activity.

- also, a single item with an unusually long squeaksource commit description gets split up into multiple irc messages.
(This is rare but I'll probably change this.)

- most noise comes from the commit bots: squeaktrunkbot and especially squeaksourcebot. squeakbugsbot once or twice
announced 20ish items, presumably due to a genuine burst of bug-updating activity.

- when reviewing irc logs, bot noise sometimes looks overwhelming only because there wasn't much human discussion going
on. Look at the timestamps or participate in the channel in real time to get a better feel for it.

- commit activity comes in waves, as you'd expect. Some days are quiet. We had a couple of very heavy days while I was
away, probably due to ESUG. Commit activity will probably increase over time.

- I want the bots to reflect community consensus, so I'm posting here on the mail list and would like to hear from as
many as possible. I think opinions from the regular #squeak users should probably carry more weight than the rest.


Poll:

My question is: What should be done with the bots currently announcing in the #squeak IRC channel ?

a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.

b. Move them all to back to #squeak-in-depth or elsewhere, they are damaging #squeak!

c. Move the noisy commit bots to a separate channel, keep others where they are.

d. I have a better idea: ...

Please respond (any way you like) to this mail list thread to help me know what to do. Please do respond even if you are
happy with the status quo, so we get an accurate picture.

Thanks!
-Simon

On Sat, 2009-09-19 at 11:38 -0700, Simon Michael wrote:
> My question is: What should be done with the bots currently announcing in the #squeak IRC channel ?
>

My response is:

a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.

Simon Michael wrote:
> My question is: What should be done with the bots currently announcing
> in the #squeak IRC channel ?
>
> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.

I think all signs of life are helpful. However, not being a heavy IRC
user myself, I will defer to those of us who are ;-)

Cheers,
   - Andreas

b.

I think they present interesting and valuable information. Thx!  I believe however that the volume of bot postings obscure and damage the human interaction on #squeak IRC. I think they should have their own channel such as #squeakbots so that a person can look when it is desired. The bot postings should be archived so they can be reviewed later if you haven't been signed on to the channel for awhile.

Ken G. Brown


At 11:38 AM -0700 9/19/09, Simon Michael apparently wrote:

2009/9/19, Simon Michael <[hidden email]>:
They are _really_ annoying, remove them. If I wanted to be kept up to
date about Squeak Source I'd use RSS feeds. Same goes for commit mails
btw, that's really 90ies tech.

Cheers
Philippe

my vote is for option b

On Sep 19, 2009, at 2:38 PM, Simon Michael wrote:

b

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Michael <[hidden email]> writes:

Simon> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.

Yes.

I like them in the channel, in the same way as I like commits being
posted to squeak-dev.  It shows activity.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

2009/9/20, Randal L. Schwartz <[hidden email]>:
>>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Michael <[hidden email]> writes:
>
> Simon> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.
>
> Yes.
>
> I like them in the channel, in the same way as I like commits being
> posted to squeak-dev.  It shows activity.

Have we fallen so far that we need to prove to ourselves that we're
not dead by showing our capability to annoy people?

Cheers
Philippe

Second that. They are pretty disruptive when I have some questions and  
in the middle of the conversation is a burst of commit messages.

On 20 Sep 2009, at 01:46, Phil (list) wrote:

2009/9/20 Tim Felgentreff <[hidden email]>:
> Second that. They are pretty disruptive when I have some questions and in
> the middle of the conversation is a burst of commit messages.

The bot should perhaps postpone messages after a period of inactivity...

Ian.
--
http://mecenia.blogspot.com/

Hi Simon,

Simon Michael pravi:
...
> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.
>
> b. Move them all to back to #squeak-in-depth or elsewhere, they are
> damaging #squeak!
>
> c. Move the noisy commit bots to a separate channel, keep others where
> they are.
>
> d. I have a better idea: ...

First let me say that this is in overall a great idea and worth
continuing with it. So thanks for setting those bots up. I think that
with few more tweaks we can achieve a desired effect for most of the people.

So I vote for c.

Namely, commits bot is much more frequent comparing to blog and
specially StackOverflow ones. Later ones are more important for most
people, so there is a problem, commits bot overshadows those later two.
You cannot distinguish their posts easily from commit posts.

I therefore propose that commits go to the separate channel while only
the daily summary report is posted to #squeak channel.

That way we'll achieve both: showing the activity for the broader public
in main channel , while notifying the commits ASAP for those interested
in a separate channel.

Best regards
Janko


--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

>>>>> "Ian" == Ian Trudel <[hidden email]> writes:

Ian> The bot should perhaps postpone messages after a period of inactivity...

Yeah, that'd be better.  Wait for 3 minutes idle, then burst up to last 5
messages.  Repeat.

I think that'd alleviate my only objections as well.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

On 19.09.2009, at 20:38, Simon Michael wrote:

> - four bots are running in #squeak (squeaksourcebot, squeaktrunkbot,  
> squeakbugsbot, squeakplanetbot) and two in #etoys
> (etoysupdatesbot, etoystrackerbot). The last two are quiet and  
> uncontroversial so I'll ignore those.

Agreed, the bots in #etoys are not distracting. Still, if the bot  
waited for a period of inactivity it would be even nicer.

- Bert -

Good morning all. Three days ago I wrote:
> What should be done with the bots currently announcing in the #squeak IRC channel ?
>
> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.
>
> b. Move them all to back to #squeak-in-depth or elsewhere, they are damaging #squeak!
>
> c. Move the noisy commit bots to a separate channel, keep others where they are.
>
> d. I have a better idea: ...

Responses are summarised below. By my count the votes so far have been aaabbbbbc. This surprised a little; the
yay-sayers have been much more visible to me.

In the d category Ian Trudel suggested waiting for inactivity and Randal and Bert agreed. That's a good feature idea and
I've implemented it, thanks. All the squeak and etoys bots now wait for 5 minutes of silence before speaking.

Ken Brown suggested an archive to read in batch mode; that's http://planetmisc.squeak.org , or pointing your feed reader
to the individual feeds.

Also long items now get truncated to fit a single irc message.

I'll wait a few days to see if these change anyone's mind, or if new ideas or voters appear. I know we haven't heard
from all bot users; I'll add a notice to the irc channel topic. Unless more support appears, it looks like the squeak
bots will be heading back to their little room..

Thanks!
-Simon



Responses so far:

Ken Causey wrote:
 > a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.

Andreas Raab wrote:
 > I think all signs of life are helpful. However, not being a heavy IRC
 > user myself, I will defer to those of us who are ;-)

Ken G. Brown wrote:
 > b. I think they present interesting and valuable information. Thx!  I believe however that the volume of bot postings
obscure and damage the human interaction on #squeak IRC. I think they should have their own channel such as #squeakbots
so that a person can look when it is desired. The bot postings should be archived so they can be reviewed later if you
haven't been signed on to the channel for awhile.

Philippe Marschall wrote:
 > They are _really_ annoying, remove them. If I wanted to be kept up to
 > date about Squeak Source I'd use RSS feeds.

Phil (list) wrote:
 > my vote is for option b

Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:
 > b

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
 > Simon> a. Minor tweaks only, they are basically fine where they are.
 >
 > Yes. I like them in the channel, in the same way as I like commits being
 > posted to squeak-dev.  It shows activity.

Tim Felgentreff wrote:
 > They are pretty disruptive when I have some questions and
 > in the middle of the conversation is a burst of commit messages.
 >
 >> my vote is for option b

Janko Mivšek wrote:
 > First let me say that this is in overall a great idea and worth
 > continuing with it. So thanks for setting those bots up. I think that
 > with few more tweaks we can achieve a desired effect for most of the people.
 >
 > So I vote for c.
 >
 > Namely, commits bot is much more frequent comparing to blog and
 > specially StackOverflow ones. Later ones are more important for most
 > people, so there is a problem, commits bot overshadows those later two.
 > You cannot distinguish their posts easily from commit posts.
 >
 > I therefore propose that commits go to the separate channel while only
 > the daily summary report is posted to #squeak channel.
 >
 > That way we'll achieve both: showing the activity for the broader public
 > in main channel , while notifying the commits ASAP for those interested
 > in a separate channel.

The thread on mail list commit messages reminds me I never followed up on-list about about the irc announce bots. For
the record, they did move back to #squeak-in-depth on irc.freenode.net. There they scroll endlessly by with five of us
watching. Tune in there if you want to watch commits in real time. One exception: squeakplanetbot remains in #squeak,
but rarely speaks.

Best,
-Simon