The bots of #flat

...the bots are taking over the channel! Save yourselves...

#flat contains a considerable number of "bots" - programs masquerading as real people, which do a variety of useful and not-so-useful things. This guide tells you what they're for and how to use them. Herein where I have written "$nick", read this as the nickname of a real person you wish to reference. Similarly for "$message" etc. Most of the bots can be addressed both on-channel and via a private query. Sometimes they respond differently depending how you address them. Often a bot will not respond to an on-channel command unless you prefix it with the bot's name, eg "bot: do what I tell you!"

Santa

Santa keeps track of when people were last seen talking on IRC. Saying "santa: seen $nick" tells you the last thing $nick said or did. Santa was written and is "maintained" by Billy, who periodically rewrites it to make it "better". Santa tracks changes of nickname in a reasonably intelligent fashion, eg if John changes nick to "John|feedingthecat" or even "Vongtheveganslayer", asking when Santa last saw John will still produce the answer you want. It is currently possible to confuse the system by using someone else's computer and changing their nick to your own.

Norfolk

Norfolk is a fully-fledged infobot. He learns definitions of things by watching what happens on-channel, and repeats them back whenever he thinks it appropriate; he can also be programmed directly. There is extensive documentation on the infobot website at http://www.infobot.org/guide-0.43.x.html which I'm not going to repeat here. <ed - he also insults, cuddles, rants, grumbles, sulks and sings when given enough encouragement. He's lovely!>

Minime

Minime is an "op-bot". He sits on channels and, as long as he has ops himself, gives ops to people who join, assuming they're on his "trustedlist" for that channel. There is no authentication involved - if you're untrusted but join with the nick of a trusted person, you'll get ops too. It would be polite in this case to deop yourself again and change nick to something non-conflicting. Minime keeps two lists for each channel: a "trustedlist" of nicks to op and an "ownerlist" of people who can change the contents of that channel's list. Membership of the latter does not imply membership of the former. To change the contents of a list, use the commands "add $nick", "remove $nick" and "list" to show the current list members.

An example: you're on #monkey and want to add "mojojojo" to the ownerlist: you would (in #monkey) type "ownerlist add mojojojo". You could also do this via a private query: "ownerlist for #monkey add mojojojo". Other commands are similar: "trustedlist for #sekritkabalofsheep list" etc. Minime also supports the commands "join $channel" and "leave $channel". Only members of the ownerlist can use these commands. If you tell Minime to join a channel he's never heard of before, he will create a blank trustedlist for it, and an ownerlist with just you on it and then join the channel. If you are killing off a channel, it would be polite to remove all entries from the lists - this will then delete the lists from the database. Just remember - an op-bot without ops is fairly useless :-) If you don't know what ops are, never mind... Minime was written and is maintained by Steve. He seems to work pretty well (Minime, that is...).

Scot

Scot is a weblogbot. People tell him about interesting websites and he remembers them. The database can be accessed in a number of ways: there's a web front-end at http://www.elvum.net/scot/, an rss feed that I forget the uri of, a syndicated livejournal feed, "scotbot" and you can also search the database from irc. The commands are simple: "scot add http://www.uri.here # a description of the uri" adds the uri and description you specify to the database. "scot correction http://actual.uri.here # corrected description if appropriate" replaces the most recent uri *and* description that *you* added to the database with whatever you choose. This is irrespective of how long ago you added the original entry, so use with caution! "scot search $string" searches the database for a uri and/or description that matches the string you specify and returns the most recent matching entry. A case-insensitive substring match is used. Scot is written and maintained by Steve. His source code is available under the GPL from www.elvum.net/bots (Scot's, not Steve's...)

Cont

Cont is a "context bot". He exists to tell you what happened immediately before you joined a channel, so that you can pop in unexpectedly and catch people talking about you behind your back. To add your nick to the list of those whom he favours in such a manner, use the command "enable context" in a private query. To remove yourself, use "disable context". To get an instant blast of context if you accidentally connect as a non-listed nick (mIRC has a habit of doing this), use the "instacontext" command.

Wilhelm

Wilhelm is somewhat complicated.

Chance

Chance is written and maintained by Steve and does a number of things, none of them useful. Try saying "summon hot meat pies" for an example.

Apathulu

Apathulu really can't be had.