COGS Bristol

• !help has been massively overhauled.  One might say it was more !helpful.  As well as help content being more accessible, you can now get help for a specific command before you try to use it by typing !help <name of command>
• !mod command has been introduced.  If stuff is going on in the channel which you don’t like, you can use this to attract the attention of a committee member or moderator to step in
• [request] A new per-user setting has been added, !set listnotify.  Use this to be notified when new game and/or event lists are created, even if you are offline.  Never miss a new list!
• Improvements to spam prevention
• [bug] In some situations, the bot didn’t respect the user’s messaging preference (PM or Notice). This is fixed
• Improved connectivity to some IRC servers

• We’ve decided to try out giving moderators more visibility in the channel. This led me to improve the usergroup system, so that we can add/remove people from groups (e.g. the moderators group) easily.
• Support for list maintainers has been added.  This allows committee to grant power to maintain a list to another user who would not otherwise have permission to edit any lists.  E.g. someone who isn’t on the committee may be ‘in charge’ of an event, and need to update description etc.
• !whois will tell you if a user is committee or moderator
• [bug] fixed problem where spam protection wouldn’t trigger until an extra message was sent, leading to some confusing situations..
• [bug] fixed problem where it would sometimes describe time as “1 hours” instead of “1 hour”
• [bug] fixed crash which could occur under rare circumstances (though it never did live) if someone was double-tempbanned
• [memo] check SQLite versions on new hosts before migrating

-WiFi

A minor COGSBot update is happening this evening.  Nothing incredibly exciting, mostly fixes and improvements, but I like to keep everyone updated with the world of COGSBot and what’s changing.

• Resurrected (and slightly improved) the !mani feature, offering a quick and easy overview of everyone running for committee positions at the upcoming AGM.  You can private message any committee member and ask them to add your manifesto to the list
• Added SSL support – the bot now connects to the network using an SSL link
• Improved integration with !lan (and added helpful easy-access committee view of liftee:lifter ratio)
• Improved code which checks if a user is identified with NickServ – on rare occasions the bot could conclude that someone was not (when they actually were…)
• Improved user online tracking code.  After netsplits, the bot could sometimes be left with the ridiculous notion that some users were offline, and so the bot would appear to ignore them!  This should not happen anymore
• Fixed a bug in the scheduler where two !reminders at exactly the same time would sometimes not trigger properly (thanks Wyrm for the report on that)

-WighFigh

Hello everyone.

I have been beavering away on some shiny new features for COGSBot for a while now, and the time has come for another upgrade.  Changes follow:

• !whois has been overhauled.  No longer do you have to PM your requests to WildFire — you now can manage your own !whois data yourself!  You can change your !whois setting through the bot’s standard settings interface (i.e. !set whois).  As always with !set, typing just !set followed by the setting will tell you what you need to do (though in this case it’s pretty obvious!)
• As well as being able to update your own !whois status, you can now get more information about other users from their !whois entries.  You can find out their online status, along with their current spam prevention status.
• !tell has been implemented, which allows you to leave messages for people who are not currently in the channel.  The next time the recipient joins the channel, your message will be relayed to them.  N.B. a new setting has been added which allows you to customise how the bot alerts you to messages left for you (!set tell).  You can also disable tells entirely, so that people are unable to leave you messages.
• If a COGSGuest joins and types !help, they now get customised help content to assist them changing their nickname
• The bot can now !inform groups of people rather than just the channel.  I can send message to all the channel moderators, for example.
• [internal] Fixed some odd behaviour when dynamically reloading some plugins

As usual, the IRC statistics have been updated as well.  Along with updating these, I’ve created some new ‘Rankings’ which offer a more exciting view of the stats.  Click here to view them

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for COGSBot – lots of work has been done.

• The bot is now pluggable. I can add, remove and upgrade features without having to restart the bot
• All the existing functionality moved to new plugin architecture
• Authorised user efficiency improvement
• Permissions system (i.e. deciding which commands people can use) improved/generalised
• !lan is back – once more it is integrated with the list of upcoming LANs and current LAN signup count
• !help has been improved. The list of commands is now alphabetical to make it easier to find something you’re looking for. Initial output of !help has also been simplified – now supports !help <topic> for more detailed help on certain things.
• !remind has been improved. You can now specify exact reminder times (not just delays). You can enter times in am/pm, 24h or military time.  You can also enter optional dates, for reminders on specific dates in the future
• !reminders added. Using !reminders, you can view an ordered list (by time) of all the current reminders you have set with COGSBot. You can also clear them all or delete a specific reminder if you don’t want it anymore.
• COGSBot’s topic handling has been improved to warn admins if they are going to set a topic too long. This should stop admins setting topics which get trunca
• Admins now have more control over lists – they can delete them for example

In addition to the above, the IRC stats have also been refreshed.

COGSBot statistics have been regenerated, so there is some new stuff to see over at http://www.cogsbristol.co.uk/stats

This has been a busy weekend for COGSBot and myself.  Lots of changes:

• !seen functionality has been implemented.  Use it to find out when somebody last spoke, whether they are online or offline.  If they are offline, it will tell you the manner in which they left.
• A large user tracking module has been created, caching who is online and whether they are authorised with nickserv etc.  This is really going to boost performance and maximise efficiency, as the bot will be able to message people more intelligently.  It should make the bot much more responsive.  For example, when someone triggers the !tf2 list now, the bot knows who in that list is actually online.  This module also powers !seen functionality
• The bot now has proper unicode support, so stuff like pound signs are treated and logged properly
• The bot detects when it has been dropped from the server and automatically rejoins – no more disappearing bot I hope!
• An automatic spam prevention feature, in a similar vein to the one previously trialled in the channel, has been integrated into COGSBot.  The system has been adapted significantly in light of user feedback.  There is more leniancy, and warnings are given before any action is taken.
• The bot now removes voice status from people that it bans (if required), so that they are not still able to talk!

Fixes:

• Fixed a problem where checking if users were authorised could could sometimes result in timeouts leading to patches of apparent inactivity from the bot
• Fixed a problem where not everything was being logged properly

In conjunction with the IRC shakeup, latest bot update brings:

• Moderator support. Our trusted moderators are non-committee users who have access to ops if they need to sort anything out, and they can also silence (tempban) people for a short time
• Topic support.  I’ve created a relatively large set of utility stuff which lets us edit the topic easily and safely.  People make their topic changes “offline” (without actually changing it in the channel constantly).  When they’re happy with the topic preview, they can update it in the channel.  It handles stuff like delimiting and colouring automatically so people don’t have to worry about it
• Auto voicing for committee members
• When people set reminders, tell them what time the reminder will be sent
• Refactor to allow commands to know what channel they were called from so some things are a bit neater
• Improved logging: now logs what the bot says as well. COGSBot wants to be in the statistics too!

It’s time for another release of COGSBot.  So, what’s changed?  Well, uh, not really very much… not with the bot itself anyway…

COGSBot has been gathering a lot of data over the past while and it was time to do something useful with it all.  So, I can now present our very own IRC statistics generated by COGSBot.  They have pretty graphs and lots of interesting numbers.  I hope you all enjoy looking at them.

There are future plans to create many more interesting types of statistic but for now this should do!

To help support these stats in future, the bot now has better logging support (such as rolling over to a new file).  Also added is a !stats trigger which will provide you with a link to the statistics page. You can find the statistics here.

Now that everything is back up and functioning again, it seems like a good time to hit the ground running with another upgrade of COGSBot. It’s a big one!

Requested Stuff:

• There are now multiple settings for how the bot notifies you. You can change how the bot alerts you for these three things:
  - Reminders
  - Game notifications
  - All other chat
  You can use this new feature to selectively choose which types of communication can ‘highlight’ you. I.e. you might not want your computer to beep at you for general chatter from the bot – but you might want it to alert you to !reminders which you set
• …reminders you say?  The bot now supports a !remind feature. You can have the bot remind you about future events at an arbitrary time in the future e.g. “!remind 1h30m Put out the cat” would remind you to put the cat out in an hour and half…
• You can now list who is on a game list by adding ‘list’ on to the end of a game command e.g. !tf2list will show you the people who are subscribed to the !tf2 list. It will not tell them that you want to play…
• !away now has persistent storage and saves people’s away status across bot restarts. Previously it would lose people’s away status if the bot had to restart
• Altered the ‘NSFW’ link warnings to make them less prevalent
• Now supports a !tempban feature for channel moderator use. It allows easy banning of someone for a desired period of time, after which they are automatically unbanned

Internal Stuff:

• When users are setting their.. settings.. they can now find out what their current value is by doing !set <value> (where <value> is one of the setting names)
• The !away feature now has improved time formatting i.e. !away 2h30m would set you away for 2 and a half hours
• The bot can now join in the actions with /me fun
• The bot now doesn’t highlight people in the gaming channel anymore, i.e. if they are !away, they will get no personal notification about the game
• Time was refactored to support a combination of either hours and/or minutes as described above
• Prevented any awkwardness by stopping lists being created with names which end in either ‘add’, ‘del’, or ‘list’ – The three modifiers which users apply to the end of lists to do things with them

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug in gaming lists where they could sometimes be triggered by people who were not in the list. *cough* Morgyn…
• Fixed a bug where the bot would occasionally miss messages from people, or think that they were not authenticated and would not respond to them at all, forcing the user to re-type the command.

I’ve heard rumours on the internets that some people think I am a girl. Some people think I am a slave; most of you seem to think I am a slave girl.  Over-active imaginations I say.

In this iteration:

• I now have a scheduler which I can use to do whatever I like at any time of my choosing
• By requesting !lan you can now find out exactly when/where the next LAN is and how many people are attending. This is linked in with the web signup system at http://www.cogsbristol.co.uk/signup
• By requesting !server you can find out what servers we run and more detailed information about our TF2 server i.e. the current map and how full the server is.  If you are not currently playing TF2 on our server, go and join it now!
• I can now be used as a vessel through which life and death can be bestowed upon thee.  By which I mean to say that COGSBot can giveth ops away, as COGSBot can revoke them. Or something.
• I was receiving complaints from some individuals that I occasionally m0d mistakes. Big deal. These are rectified from now on.

- COGSBot Announcer