in reply to Best MonkBot
in thread Contest Ideas Quest

I like this idea a lot, I have one small criticism. Not all monks have access to a machine connected 24/7 to the internet, of those that do, how many are allowed to run background processes for 24 hours straight.

Alright I admit it, this is a post about me, I don't have access to these. :-(

Nuance

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RE: RE: Best MonkBot
by PipTigger (Hermit) on Jun 08, 2000 at 03:39 UTC
    I think helpful fellow monks with constant connections might be glad to host another's bot. In particular, if you were to write a bot, Nuance, I'd be glad to leave it running for you on either of my machines for the duration of the contest. I don't know how many monks I could do this for but probably lots of help could be enlisted if there was need.

    My concern for the contest is the number of submissions. Maybe an addendum (sp?) could be made to only accept 16 (or some reasonable 2^n || 2^n-1 threshold) entries so that the chatterbox isn't oversaturated and worthlessly cluttered/unusable for the duration of the contest. If somebody asks some FAQ question which clearly is the point of the contest, all the bots are gonna respond and that can be a lot if lots of bots are spouting. Sounds like fun though. TTFN & Shalom.

    -PipTigger

RE:(2) Best MonkBot
by swiftone (Curate) on Jun 07, 2000 at 00:22 UTC
    A very good point, but one to which I have no good answer. Selecting any period of time hurts people on some section of the globe. Certainly running for all 24 hours wouldn't be REQUIRED, but it'd hurt your chances not to be seen by everyone. Anyone want to donate a server connection?
      I think we could find a way, although those donating server time probably shouldn't be participants. If I weren't going to participate (and that would depend on too many factors to list) I'd probably be able to donate a small server for a few days. Enough for, say, 5 to 10 bots - if they were relatively low traffic.

      The main problem is that you'd need people with the time and resources to donate, AND who weren't planning to participate. Not only that, but those people would have to know they weren't going to participate far enough in advance to be able to organize the event. Perhaps they should be rewarded with small amounts of XP (less than any of the prizes) or those really cool Perl Monks tshirts/hooded sweatshirts/cowls we've been yammering about. <G>

      - Ozymandias