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Mar 17, 1999, 2:38am

So I like my bot. It follows me everywhere. 'Cept it can't. Not Welcome.
After seeing XelaG's companion bots I fell in love with the idea and have
been trying to perfect my "Botany" series.

Well why aren't bots welcome? Mayhaps because there are no restrictions on
their activities.

So lets help Roland out and spec out what is needed so he does not have to
waste his time on
figuring out what *exactly* is needed. Then he could peruse the spec and
add some code in during his lunch break.

A few yes/no flags would be easy to implement with little or no changes to
the world servers. Building quota's
are much harder and may I suggest they be delayed til round two.

My *initial* suggestion to get the ball rolling...

Two classes of bots

Caretaker bots. They can do anything. This is kind of how the current
restrictions work
If is on the "approved" list, then its in. No limits.


Other bots. These are the ones that need monitoring.

So for the Other BOT classification as series of radio buttons (or
something) that allow...

Bots can *always* whisper to their owners - this way they don't bother
anyone else.

(And I have marked *** the recommended defaults for non-caretaker bots)


Whisper to others
YES
YES outsize of GZ area ***
YES PS only
NO

Talk to anyone
YES
YES outsize of GZ area ***
YES PS ONLY
NO

Build
Public building worlds
Public - OK
Public - Seed only (tight quota) ;these two quota ones are
harder to code for
Public - limited (loose quota)
PS only *** (see note 1)
NO
Restricted building words
Authorized builders only ***
PS Only
NO

Delete
Public building worlds
Owner objects only
PS only
NO *** (It not hard to manually delete a lot of stuff.
Lets not have auto-deleters running around)
Restricted building words
Owner objects only ***
NO

Eject
PS Only
NO ***

Become an Avatar/Visible
YES ***
PS Only
NO



The code to enforce the restrictions can be in the SDK. It just needs a few
bits
of data from the world server along with what it already knows. A new API
call
to interrogate available privileges for the current bot would make life
easier.

- - -
Note 1:

Basically working on a backup/restore bot that can backup a world and
restore it.
I think a lot of people would like to back up their worlds to protect
against random
crashes/vandalism/etc/etc/etc. For private worlds there is no problem
getting
stuff rebuilt. For something like AW it would take something like the
privilege
of a PS or something to allow the restore bot to go in and rebuild a bunch
of
stuff. I can see where they don't want loads of people running builder
bots, but
I can see where exceptions should be granted with due process.



Ummm
Comments?
Howland

Mar 17, 1999, 2:42am

OH NO!!! I screwed up the lines so it looks like mush. Whack Whack Whack
I'll save eep the trouble. Whack Whack Whack.

Mar 17, 1999, 5:01am

[View Quote] [ a set of proposed Rules For Bots]

Is it really true that there are "no restrictions" on a
bot's activities? Can a bot change or delete objects that
don't belong to its owner? Can it build on somebody
else's property? I haven't tried these things, but I would
be surprised if they work.

Mar 17, 1999, 5:57am

>Is it really true that there are "no restrictions" on a
>bot's activities?

Well, I'm by no means an expert, but as far as I know...
Yes and no. Bots basically impersonate you. It depends
on what privileges you have. And if you are the world caretaker
you can do anything. And you can give other people that privilege.
And if you don't use a registry on your world you can enroach.

The bots *main* problem is that it can do everything so fast.

Can a bot change or delete objects that
>don't belong to its owner?

Its not generally set up like this in public building worlds, but on some
worlds a lot of people have the caretaker privilege apparently.

Also as I understand it Tourist objects can be deleted en masse.

Can it build on somebody
>else's property?

If the world does not use a registry it can. I think it can also delete and
build over tourist objects.


I haven't tried these things, but I would
>be surprised if they work.

Mar 17, 1999, 2:59pm

[View Quote] > The bots *main* problem is that it can do everything so fast.


> Its not generally set up like this in public building worlds, but on some
> worlds a lot of people have the caretaker privilege apparently.

But if the world owner sets it up that way, why is it up to the
SDK to restrict what delegated caretakers can do? The other day I
was in a world that had "Public Speaker" set to *, presumably to
give tourists a few more avatar choices. If somebody goofs
and sets "Eminent Domain" to *, that's sort of on them, isn't it?

> Also as I understand it Tourist objects can be deleted en masse.
>
> Can it build on somebody
>
> If the world does not use a registry it can. I think it can also delete and
> build over tourist objects.

I still don't see why it's up to the SDK to protect world owners
from themselves. If somebody opens a world to public building without
a registry in place, they're asking for trouble... bots or no bots.

It just seems to me that the restrictions scheme that's already in
place eliminates most of the alleged danger from malicious bots.

It is true that some of the conversational bots, like Hex, could
perform something that looks a lot like 'flooding' if you dropped
them into a GZ environment, because they try to respond to everything.
That could become a pain. Maybe the ability to "say" could be tied to
the ability to "add object". If you can't build here, you can't talk
here. That way nobody could drop a conversational bot into the
restricted radius to flood the joint (unless they were owned by the
caretaker or a delegate of the caretaker). That would also limit
ad bots ("come visit my world") to their own property.... and on
worlds where building is restricted, it would eliminate talking
bots entirely. That would pretty much eliminate any reason to
prohibit them.

Mar 17, 1999, 4:48pm

How can you tell a SeedBot from a BuilderBot? Wouldn't 300 copies of a Seed
object be a lot uglier than one Building with 300 objects in it?

Why should buildings that are built with the help of a bot be subject to a an
object limit, while buildings that are built without a bot have no object limit?
Total cells built per day for or by one owner is the best suggestion so far:
somebody has to write a program that automates the search through the day's
building log, sorting by owner and then calculating cells built per owner. (A
variation on this is a program that queries every zone in the world, records
every object built since the last survey, and then sorts by owner and cell. This
would also be handy as the basis for generating an uptodate guide map of the
world.)

AlphaWorld used to eject bots from the area around GZ. Caretakers have no
serious problem with obnoxious bots, because they can detect the bot's owner
from the world login process. Citizen avatars can be detected by other citizens,
and this inhibits obnoxious citizen behavior elsewhere in the world. Oddly,
there is no way for other citizens to detect a bot's owner, either from its name
or by means of the SDK. This means that citizens that wish to behave obnoxiously
can do so without fear of reprisal if they do it disguised as a bot. This is one
case in which bots have privileges that are denied to their owners.



[View Quote] > So I like my bot. It follows me everywhere. 'Cept it can't. Not Welcome.
> After seeing XelaG's companion bots I fell in love with the idea and have
> been trying to perfect my "Botany" series.
>
> Well why aren't bots welcome? Mayhaps because there are no restrictions on
> their activities.
>
> So lets help Roland out and spec out what is needed so he does not have to
> waste his time on
> figuring out what *exactly* is needed. Then he could peruse the spec and
> add some code in during his lunch break.
>
> A few yes/no flags would be easy to implement with little or no changes to
> the world servers. Building quota's
> are much harder and may I suggest they be delayed til round two.
>
> My *initial* suggestion to get the ball rolling...
>
> Two classes of bots
>
> Caretaker bots. They can do anything. This is kind of how the current
> restrictions work
> If is on the "approved" list, then its in. No limits.
>
> Other bots. These are the ones that need monitoring.
>
> So for the Other BOT classification as series of radio buttons (or
> something) that allow...
>
> Bots can *always* whisper to their owners - this way they don't bother
> anyone else.
>
> (And I have marked *** the recommended defaults for non-caretaker bots)
>
> Whisper to others
> YES
> YES outsize of GZ area ***
> YES PS only
> NO
>
> Talk to anyone
> YES
> YES outsize of GZ area ***
> YES PS ONLY
> NO
>
> Build
> Public building worlds
> Public - OK
> Public - Seed only (tight quota) ;these two quota ones are
> harder to code for
> Public - limited (loose quota)
> PS only *** (see note 1)
> NO
> Restricted building words
> Authorized builders only ***
> PS Only
> NO
>
> Delete
> Public building worlds
> Owner objects only
> PS only
> NO *** (It not hard to manually delete a lot of stuff.
> Lets not have auto-deleters running around)
> Restricted building words
> Owner objects only ***
> NO
>
> Eject
> PS Only
> NO ***
>
> Become an Avatar/Visible
> YES ***
> PS Only
> NO
>
> The code to enforce the restrictions can be in the SDK. It just needs a few
> bits
> of data from the world server along with what it already knows. A new API
> call
> to interrogate available privileges for the current bot would make life
> easier.
>
> - - -
> Note 1:
>
> Basically working on a backup/restore bot that can backup a world and
> restore it.
> I think a lot of people would like to back up their worlds to protect
> against random
> crashes/vandalism/etc/etc/etc. For private worlds there is no problem
> getting
> stuff rebuilt. For something like AW it would take something like the
> privilege
> of a PS or something to allow the restore bot to go in and rebuild a bunch
> of
> stuff. I can see where they don't want loads of people running builder
> bots, but
> I can see where exceptions should be granted with due process.
>
> Ummm
> Comments?
> Howland

Mar 17, 1999, 5:33pm

I fully agree with Canopus on this issue.

Some time ago I pointed out the necessity of identifying the bot's
owner: this is still not possible and is CRUCIAL in controlling OWNER
misbehaviour. A bot doesn't misbehave, just as a car doesn't: it is
the owners who do, and they must be identifiable.

True, a bot can act faster than a citizen. When bicycles came, we went
faster, when cars came even more so. What would be the state of things
if you couldn't identify a car's owner?

Restricting bots is putting technology there and forbidding its use.
Bloddy useful! Unless COF dares to allow bots generally and cope with
owner misbehaviour, bots will remain an elitaire technology, privilege
of few, and chatbots will keep predominating. Responsible bot makers
would have a better tool for disciplining their bots if the citizen
number were sent together with the session number: other bots could
then easily identify the owners, the aw browser might even incorporate
that as a feature: bot id known, culprit known!

By the way, building misbehaviour without sdk bots is very easy: just
use a keyboard controller, its been around for a long time.

XelaG.
--
Xelagot 46ADB [Delph]
creator: XelaG
email: decastro at cable.a2000.nl

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