#2222 zodbot too difficult to use - provide help?
Closed: Fixed None Opened 13 years ago by duffy.

= phenomenon =

I was trying to run a meeting using meeting bot. an exercise in frustration:

<mizmo> zodbot, start meeting
<mizmo> zodbot, startmeeting
<mizmo> grr
<mizmo> does anybody know how to get it to work?
* mizmo is frantically searching the wiki
<mizmo> zodbot #startmeeting
<mizmo> ....
<mizmo> #startmeeting
<mizmo> ianweller, ^^ do you know how to get the bot to start the meeting?
<mizmo> i dont understand why its not working
<mizmo> im just going to say screw it, its too frustrating

I tried /msg zodbot help and got nothing back

actually now that i look at it i wasn't opped in the channel, wonder if that was part of the issue?

= reason =

i don't know. most bots i'm used to using have a help command.

= recommendation =

  • if zodbot sees a command but won't complete it, could it spit out an error message to the person giving the command?

  • at the least maybe it could spit out the url to the wiki page with commands listed out?

  • if i /query or /msg zodbot and ask for help, can it print out a list of commands? please?

  • if i address zodbot like this, "zodbot startmeeting" and the command i type is wrong can it message me the correct commands?


So there's a zodbot page on the wiki (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zodbot) which helps to explain what zodbot does. There are far too many commands to be listed in a help message from zodbot, but I bet it would be possible to have it return that URL.

(#startmeeting was the right command, but you weren't connected to IRC at the time, as we found out the exciting way earlier today during the meeting)

Kevin, I'm thinking of an alias called 'help' that would reply back to the user with the URL to the zodbot wiki page. Then -- I believe this is possible, I'm not 100% sure how -- override the default help command with that alias. (The original help could then still be used with 'misc help'.) I once remember seeing how you can override which plugin provides the default version of a command, but it seems to have escaped me and the Google now.

(On an unrelated note, should we clear out all of the stupid stuff in 'list alias' at some point?)

I have setup zodbot to have a sane 'help' response I hope:

<nirik> help
(zodbot) Please see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zodbot for general help and information about this Supybot

You can use 'misc help ' to get the old help command.

Perhaps we could all meet up sometime and brainstorm tweaks to it to make it easier to use? It should normally respond if you are sending it something that it doesn't get, so it sounds like you were not connected?

It's easy to override it's commands with an alias of our own devising.

Thoughts?

Any further thoughts on this? Is the above ok?

I'll go ahead and close this now, feel free to reopen if you want further changes.

Some of the issue with the meeting commands is the way the meetbot plugin works. It doesn't use normal bot commands, it uses it's own "Simpler" commands, which don't error much. :( I can ask upstream to improve that.

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