Forum:Chatbot proposal
It is with great hesitation that I bring this topic up given what happened last time this was bought up and I don't want to go into all of that again but I would appreciate if the community could all come together to discuss this amicably, regardless of whether you support this or not.
Over time I have felt that there have been a large number of instances in Chat, from users admitting that they're evading bans and other feelings of negativity, that could really do with some sort of backing up for the sake of clarity. Therefore I feel the community should re-evaluate its stance on having a bot in Chat of which one of its features of which would be to log the Chat to a page on the wiki.
I feel that it would be extremely useful to have a feature such as this as it would immensely ease the process of dispute resolution, referring to past events, backing up ban justification, ensuring order and fair management of Chat and deterring negative behaviour in general. It can be quite difficult for somebody to provide screencaps of issues all of the time, so having this would eliminate the need for somebody to provide a screencap upon request.
The bot would be hosted on my server and would simply just lurk and log 24/7. The actual logs would probably be located under The Sims Wiki:Chat/Logs/date or something along those lines.
To those who may be undecided on this idea, note that this proposal isn't to undermine or discredit anybody who goes to Chat but rather it's aim is to assist. If you're worried about logs being available for public viewing, note that this isn't in any way to go all Big Brother on anybody. If you never break the general rules of Chat or if you have nothing to hide, what's the issue? If you're still uncomfortable with the idea and wish to voice your opposition then fair enough - we won't force anything that the community at large doesn't want and I respect your standpoint on this. We don't have to do this, it's just an idea.
Please discuss this below. Lost Labyrinth .svg){kind=small}
• (c) • (b) 19:41, April 14, 2014 (UTC)
Discussion
While I rarely hang out in Chat, I think that this could prove to be a good idea to settle disputes and other events of that nature. However, seeing that some of the frequent users could fear for their privacies, I think it would be best to restrict the logs to Wiki administrators and Chat Moderators, as these users are deemed trustworthy and well-known around the community. DanPin • talk • contribs 19:48, April 14, 2014 (UTC)
- Keeping the logs privately wouldn't be an option unless:
- I made an external client for Chat that logs to disk, which I don't know how to make so we're stuffed on that unless somebody wishes to volunteer to make one for us (not holding my breath).
- We could make it so that the logs articles can only be viewed by admins/chatmods, of which would require a configuration change to the wiki's LocalSettings.php. I can't do that as I don't have server access and I doubt Wikia would allow that either.
- I do see where you're coming from and I feel that would be a better solution but unfortunately that's unsustainable. Lost Labyrinth
• (c) • (b) 19:59, April 14, 2014 (UTC)
- I support this. There's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't log these conversations, and it would be incredibly useful in resolving issues which may occur in chat. We log conversations on the IRC channel and have done so for virtually the entire history of the channel, and it has never been controversial or used negatively. I can't honestly think of a single good reason why chat shouldn't have a chatbot. -- LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 20:14, April 14, 2014 (UTC)