Hopebot

[Computer Hope Admin]

AI

Welcome message - Trigger a message for users asking for help to tell users to ask question.
Forum message - Trigger when asking about forum to post URL to forum.
Warn / Kick - If user is disobeying forum rules will warn and kick automatically.
Dictionary - Users asking what something is, e.g. "What is a CRT?" or "CRT?" will link user to dictionary definition.
Stats / Status - Update chat status and statistics to computerhope server.

Commands

Google searches

g = Type "g xxxx", where xxxx is what you want to google search.
gch = Type "gch xxxx", where xxxx is what you want to search for on Computer Hope (excluding forums).
gcha = Type "gcha xxxx", where xxxx is the search for any page on Computer Hope (including forums).
phone = Type "phone xxxx", where xxxx is a name of a company to display company contact information.

!report xxxx = Where xxxx is a name of a chat user you wish to report as misbehaving. Only use this command if user is truely misbehaving.
!seen xxxx = Where xxxx is a name of a chat user to display when that user was last active in chat.
!stats = Display URL to stats.
!help = PM !help to hopebot to see full list of quick reply commands.

Convert xxC/F = Where xx is a temperature to convert, e.g. converting 40C to F.
xxxx = Any natural language conversion should be possible (thanks to what was done with Zero). For example, asking a question like: how many bytes in a gigabyte or how many bytes in 10 gigabytes should be able to display values for.


TODO


Current Task

• Add welcome back message for users coming in as different name.
• Make daily/monthly logs available to users online
• Ability to add/remove commands adjust AI dynamically without having to reboot.
• Detect and only respond to channel hopebot is logged into.

TO-DO

• Go full week with no errors.

Done

• Working on stability issues being randomly encountered with Google searches.
• Re-enable re-log on error after stability issues resolved
• Allow Hopebot to do !op !deop !voice feature
• Add reporting feature, to report abuse in chat
• Update kicking / banning feature for repeat offenders (was needed as many of you expected)
• Removed math feature, wasn't really needed and was buggy
• Spent a lot of time cleaning up code, he's been cobbled together from other projects so code has been hard to work on and update. Hopefully should make things easier now.
• When pulling a definition will now pull title and then show the link. Should help answer many of the questions about a word immediately.
• Users who're looking for help on how to hack someone or something will be given an automatic message indicating how Computerhope and it's volunteers do not help with that type of question.
• Added flood protection.
• Corrected all issues with hopebot not detecting loss of connection and being able to reconnect.
• Corrected all issues with !seen command and not reporting proper time when user was last on. Increased backlog of user list to 500+ plus all users who've logged in and been active since hopebot last joined.
• Moved database of responses to external file.
• Added improved AI for phone support when suggesting users to call a company, should pull company contact information page.
• Improved abuse detection.

Ongoing work

• Improve AI

[Zylstra]

Current Task
- Working on stability issues being randomly encountered with Google searches.

I'm wondering, what exactly causes this?

I looked into the issue myself, looking at the last few crashes (this was last week, I think), and I noticed one similarity with most of the websites.
They all have the quick links listed below in the search results.

Eg:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ei=3HS9Se_6HZmMsQPm97E_&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&q=free+computer+help&spell=1
Look at ComputerHope's result, directly underneath it, it lists:
Forums
Free help
Dictionary
Ms-dos help and commands
Etc...

Could that be to do with it?

Random memory: First time I came to ComputerHope was when I was looking for a more extensive list of MS-DOS Commands, it had the best page I could find on the internet.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Random memory: First time I came to ComputerHope was when I was looking for a more extensive list of MS-DOS Commands, it had the best page I could find on the internet.

For anyone who cares, Same here.

[Computer Hope Admin]

The Google crash has been really stumping me, which is why it still has yet to be fixed. The quick links on Computer Hope I don't believe is the cause of this. I'm guessing that the issue is actually with the API that I'm using to interface Hopebot with Google and either it's crashing or timing out and not exiting properly. Unfortunately this type of issue is going to take me a while to fix unless I dedicate a full day to it and even then may not even get it fixed. But it is something I'm working on.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Update:

Re-wrote the Google function and hope that will resolve everything. Couldn't determine the cause so figured I'd just re-write it. If that fixes things I'll re-enable the feature that will reload the script if it crashes.

I also fixed numerous other minor bugs throughout the day.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Update:

Fireballs indicated to me that a user by the name of Tim found that non-alpha characters were crashing Hopebot on Google searches. I've fixed this and hope this continues to improve his stability.

At the request of Lostcoast I've also fixed an error with Hopebot not properly warning users on repeated messages. Was a really strange bug.

Also tried improving the AI some more on how hopebot will say the welcome / wait for answer to question response.

Finally, I've also re-wrote the upload routine so statistics are only parsed and uploaded every hour instead of every login. Was killing my machine since the logs are getting so large and it was sometimes getting parsed multiple times every few minutes.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Update:

This should of been mentioned above but guess I forgot. I've also added a new google search option called "gch", short for Google Computer Hope. So anyone wanting to google can do:

g this is a test

or if you want to return only pages on Computer Hope:

gch this is a test

[Zylstra]

Nathan,

Wow, thats a great idea, no more trying to mess around with search formatting for me   : )

[WillyW]

Nathan,

Wow, thats a great idea, ...

You're welcome.

[Computer Hope Admin]

With Hopebot staying up for the last few days with no issues I believe the Google bug has been resolved and will revert it back to allow him to auto-recover from a disconnect and start working on the next thing.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Since Hopebot will now be the only bot with kicking banning abilities I've been putting in some additional hours tonight adding some additional features and correcting some annoyances.

Welcome message

The welcome message hopebot says when new users come in and say something such as "I need help" is now a notice message directly to that user, instead of a message publicly broadcasted to all users. I've also made it so I receive these messages so I can improve on this. Hope this helps with the complaints on hopebot's spam.

Forum message

Also cleaned up how and when hopebot will give the link to the CH forums.

Google Computer Hope

When using gch to google only Computer Hope pages results will now only show Computer Hope pages and not results containing forum pages. This was done because some forum messages seemed to be getting higher priority when they really didn't apply. Thanks to Zylstra for this suggestion.

!seen

Hopebot will now do the "!seen" feature. Not only will this keep track of users who've logged on since he's been online but also keeps track of the past 100 users VIA the log.

<~ComputerHope> !seen patio
[23:11] <&HopeBot> patio last said "yer killin me" on 04/14 @ 22:31:52

Kicking

Updated how Hopebot kicks. Users will now be kicked after they've received three warnings. After this is done the count will be reset. This will help allow users to know they can get kicked but still allow them in. Jacky brought up that this could be abused and it is possible, if it is we'll deal with it at that time.

Phone

Doing phone <company name> (e.g. phone dell) will post a Computer Hope link containing phone contact information for that computer company.

[Computer Hope Admin]

!voice

Because of the complication some have with registering with nickserv and identifying with the server to get VOP I've made Hopebot handle it for us. Users can now type !voice to get VOP and if on the list will automagically get VOP without identifying with nickserv.

Since I don't know everyone's host address I'll have to slowly build the list of those of you who're allowed on VOP so this command may not yet work for you.

[Zylstra]

I think it would be best if you could get Hopebot to do logging, I can keep Mr_Omally working, and I am sure if I work at it I could get the welcome message to just stop (something in the code needs to be killed first... I'm not sure which string to pull). If you can make a format that separates logs by date, and have Hopebot log that way, it would be wonderful.

[Computer Hope Admin]

I think it would be best if you could get Hopebot to do logging, I can keep Mr_Omally working, and I am sure if I work at it I could get the welcome message to just stop (something in the code needs to be killed first... I'm not sure which string to pull). If you can make a format that separates logs by date, and have Hopebot log that way, it would be wonderful.

Right now the log is one full log. Not sure of any advantage to parsing it into separate logs by day other then it'd be easier to manipulate and work with. But if needed I could probably work something up.

[Aegis]

Hoooopebot, your mother's still a toaster!