Bitcoin Forum

OK, quick poll to see what people think.

I can trivially set gribble to respond in PM for all commands in #bitcoin-otc.

So asking whether I should do that.

I deliberately don't have a third option like "yes, but not for command X and Y", because doing that would not be trivial. (well, would require some coding).

The way I figure it, if someone wants to make some particular response from gribble public, like the latest mtgox quote, he can take the effort and paste it on channel.

Your votes (and your comments in the thread) appreciated.

I think gribble shouldn't respond in public for most commands (like auth commands and so forth).. and you should put in a kickban-for-฿ on a vote-yes straight numerical threshold. There's some kind of protocol for bot communications anyway: notify is supposed to be used for information which is supposed to never be responded-to by another bot..  or something? Or is that not an issue on Freenode?

Two points:

If anything, have Gribble suggest PMing instead but how many times have new people come in and not understood the process of authenticating until someone demonstrates it? How often is everyone checking ;;bc,mtgox all at once? Perhaps limit calls in-channel based on activity, but I don't ending them is the answer.

Also, if gribble replies in PM to messages posted in-channel, people that are too lazy to PM gribble are still going to post their commands in-channel and you'll have more people doing it at once. Instead of replying to in-channel commands in PM, it would be better if gribble enforced PMing only for commands it responds to in PM. Replying with "PM me" instead of executing the appropriate command is, I think, the next necessary step if Gribble goes that route.

a lot of good points here. depending on the type of bot gribble is, can you signify two different command thingies, like ;; for in pm me and ! for respond in channel?
also, just as one member of the channel, i find the increasing amount of random bickering about authing in channel much more annoying than any amount of channel spam from the bot :(

For the most part, gribble talking in the channel is not necessary, I've seen a lot of people doing gpg authentications in the channel and people complaining that they should be done in private because of the noise... I support moving it to PM!

HAH.  I suggested that before you and convinced me he shouldn't always reply via PM :)

I think in most cases he should, but you should reply via PM; whitelist some trusted users (maybe even run the behelpful bot from #economics to auto-trust) so they can do things like you mentioned: use the wiki, bring up links, etc.

I voted No, fwiw.  I think you were right (nanotube) when you said it reduces usefulness too much.