KarMann wrote:8 seconds after the hour? I think that's a new record!
Not really. Ever since the newpixbot took over, it has been 8-10 seconds. But before that, I actually had one manually posted at 6 (Outside) seconds past newpix.
SBN wrote:cmyk wrote:Damn yer fast, mscha!
Well, he's cheating. I think he's contributing to thread slowdown too. There were times when I made an effort to make sure the Newpix got posted, which meant I was online and might respond to what someone said. I'm less likely to respond to things said while I'm away, depending on how many newpages I have to catch up on. Now I have a high confidence that it will be posted, so less need to stay here.
HAL9000 wrote:I really think mscha needs to stop using the bot (if he really is). It's kind of dickish, and I'm pretty sure it's not entirely in accordance to the rules.
SBN wrote:If the bot was encouraging discussion that would be one thing. But since the bot got turned on, discussion has decreased, and for some of us at least, so has the fun. I'd hope that the ONG isn't the only creativity we have left. I wouldn't mind some sort of backup to the humans, but I don't like the bot the way it is.
Well, cheating was certainly not my intention. (I'd have left the “posted by newpixbot” out if I had meant to cheat.)
I also don't believe discussion has decreased
because of the bot, in fact, I wrote the bot precisely
because things were so quiet around here, and newpix were (almost) missed, or incorrectly posted without anyone noticing. (As other people noted, Time has gotten a bit boring recently (is that heresy?), which IMO is the biggest reason for the slowdown. What is there to discuss about yet another pixel twerk to Meganstein?)
Anyway, I've changed the bot to try to post not earlier than 5 (Outside) minutes past every newpix. This gives Real Live People a chance to make the post, but if there aren't any, at least the newpixly update won't be missed.
Is that okay with everyone?
(The bot is smart enough to
not post if there is already a (correct) post of the current newpix. This actually works, as was proven by chem1190c. (His manual post really added to the discussion, in contrast with the bot posts.
))
Angelastic wrote:I like the bot. I like it when computers do repetitive, simple tasks which computers are good at, correctly (no time.png) every time, so the humans' time is free for having insane discussions. I like programming computers to do that, and I'd be annoyed if a PHB told me not to use such tools (especially when I'd only just written them) so that people have more mundane tasks to complete/compete over/talk about.
Maybe the bot could link to the other auto-collected images (e.g. aubronwood and that other one I don't remember the URL of yet) and the wiki, so people don't have to keep bumping them. Some day perhaps it'll automatically post updates of graphs, hats, etc. We won't even need to be here! But we will be, if it's fun.
All the fun parts of life are optional. If there is a downturn in discussion, at least BlitzGirl will get here sooner. And what will we do then? I suggest we destroy the moon.
ETA: The only thing I don't like about the bot is that it doesn't give other people the chance to show their creativity in 'ONG' words. Maybe somebody here has been thinking 'Oooh, I can't wait till I get to be the one to post an ONG! WOLLONGONG is going to kill!' and is now put out by the robot overlong. So I would like to suggest that there be some kind of web interface where people can submit their ONGs (along with their usernames, if they want to get credit for them) and the bot could add these to its list.
Thanks for the encouragement.
All interesting ideas. But since the bot will now probably rarely get a chance to post, probably not worth the effort.
