ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat

Posted byRandall 1,377 Comments on ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat

Edit 2: Oh God Oh God 4chan has Robot9000. soup /r9k/. Have fun with the bot and do one last barrel roll for me.

Edit: As expected, with the huge flood of new traffic after this post went up, the channel is full of new folks coming in and playing with the bot. This is unavoidable and expected for these first few days, and ROBOT9000 is actually controlling the noise pretty well. Still, #xkcd-signal is a social channel — if you just want to play games with the moderator/concept, please use #moderator-sandbox. Thanks!

#xkcd has had about 250 chatters these days. Large communities suck. This problem is hard to solve, but we’ve come up with a fun attack on it — enforced originality (in a very narrow sense). My friend zigdon and I have put together an auto-moderation system in an experimental channel, #xkcd-signal, and it seems to work well, so we invite you all to take part.

When social communities grow past a certain point (Dunbar’s Number?), they start to suck. Be they sororities or IRC channels, there’s a point where they get big enough that nobody knows everybody anymore. The community becomes overwhelmed with noise from various small cliques and floods of obnoxious people and the signal-to-noise ratio eventually drops to near-zero — no signal, just noise. This has happened to every channel I’ve been on that started small and slowly got big.

There are a couple of standard ways to deal with this, and each one has problems. Here’s an outline of the major approaches (skip down if you just want to read about ROBOT9000):

  • Strict entry requirements: This is the secret club/sorority approach. You can vet every new person before they’re allowed to speak. This sucks. It reminds me of Feynman’s comment on resigning the National Academy of Sciences — he said that he saw no point in belonging to an organization that spent most of its time deciding who to let in. The problems are apparent during sorority rush week on college campuses. Not only is the question of who does the vetting (and how) difficult, but the drama reaches horrifying levels as bitter counter-cliques rise up and do battle.
  • Moderators: This is the approach IRC channels and forums usually take. You designate a few ‘good’ people who can deal with noise as it happens, by muting, kicking, banning, or editing content as need be. There are a couple problems here — the circle of moderators has to grow with the community. It eventually becomes fairly large, with complicated dynamics of its own, and the process of choosing moderators leads to sorority/NSF-esque drama and general obnoxiousness. I don’t like the elitism that inevitably develops, and prefer more egalitarian systems.
  • Running peer-moderation: When it’s possible, this is a good approach. It’s used to great effect on comment threads, with Slashdot pioneering the whole thing and sites like reddit stripping it down to an effective core. But it doesn’t work very well for live time-dependent things like IRC channels.
  • Splinter communities: This has happened on most IRC channels I’ve been on — small invite-only side channels sprout up with particular focuses. Often, the older core members of the community go off to create their own high-signal channel, which is generally kept quiet. But this is limited — it lacks the open mixing of the internet that often makes online communities work.

I was trying to decide what made a channel consistently enjoyable. A common factor in my favorite hangouts seemed to be a focus on original and unpredictable content on each line. It didn’t necessarily need to be useful, just interesting. I started trying to think of ways to encourage this.

And then I had an idea — what if you were only allowed to say sentences that had never been said before, ever? A bot with access to the full channel logs could kick you out when you repeated something that had already been said. There would be no “all your base are belong to us”, no “lol”, no “asl”, no “there are no girls on the internet”. No “I know rite”, no “hi everyone”, no “morning sucks.” Just thoughtful, full sentences.

There are a few obvious questions/objections, and I think each of them has been answered by experiment:

Q: Can’t you just tack a random set of letters on the end to ensure your line is unique (or misspell things, add in gibberish, etc)?

A: Of course. The moderator has plenty of holes if you’re acting in bad faith. But if you’re doing that, why are you in the channel at all? Folks who persist in doing this anyway earn (like any spammers) a prompt manual ban.

Q: Won’t it get harder and harder to chat as lines get “used up”?

A: You underestimate the number of possible sentences. We’ve been working off two years (2 million) lines of logs, and it’s not very hard at all — I expect the channel will be able to run for at least a decade before it becomes a problem, and probably long past that.

Q: What about common parts of conversation, like “yeah” and the like?

A: Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to be a huge problem. In some cases, they can be done without entirely, and in others, you’re just forced to elaborate a little bit on what you’re agreeing with and why.

I talked it over with zigdon, a Perl guru, and he coded it up. We called the project ROBOT9000 (the most generic, unoriginal name for a bot that we could think of). Then we started a sister channel to #xkcd and put the bot in it. #xkcd-signal has been running for the last couple weeks (using the last two years of #xkcd logs) with about 60 reasonably active chatters, and it’s working beautifully — good, solid chat between relative strangers, with very little noise. (We’ll see how it handles the influx of people as we announce the experiment to the wider net.)

In zig’s implementation, the moderator bot mutes (-v) chatters for a period after every violation. The mute time starts at two seconds and quadruples with each subsequent violation, so you have five or six tries to get the hang of it. Your mute-time decays by half every six hours (we’re still tweaking the parameters). When looking for matches, the bot ignores punctuation, case, and nicks.

The big problem we ran into, actually, was meta-discussion overwhelming the channel. Every new person wanted to speculate about the rules and their effect, and every violation was followed by a long postmortem. At first, we had a scoreboard showing who was the best at talking without violation, but this quickly turned into a competition, destroying actual chat. When we took down the scoreboard and banished meta-discussion of the channel to #meta-discussion, everything worked out nicely. (And, of course, for discussion of the concept of #meta-discussion people had to go to #meta-meta-discussion, and for chat about how silly that whole idea was, we created #meta-meta-meta-discussion …)

You’re welcome to come hang out with us. The moderator bot is running in #xkcd-signal on Foonetic (irc.foonetic.net or irc.xkcd.com). But again, it’s a social channel; take discussion of the concept to #meta-discussion.

If you’d like to run this bot in your own channel, zig has published an initial version of the code here:

http://irc.peeron.com/xkcd/ROBOT9000.html (Perl bot, SQL skeleton, Changelog)

1,377 replies on “ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat”

  9. When I woke up the next morning Heather along with the petite 18 year old neighbor girl, Dani, were standing at the foot of the bed staring at me. Dani is a cute little Asian girl that stands about 5’3 and has a very tiny slender frame. Dani was dressed in a nurse’s uniform only it wasn’t really a nurse’s uniform as the skirt was really short, red and had medical cross on the right hand side of it. Her shit was only a half shirt and it exposed her slender waist and belly button.

    Rob, I am sure you remember Dani from down the street her parents are out of town this week and she will be staying with us. She has graciously volunteered to take care of you while I am working today. Well you two have a nice day I am running late.

    I was stunned as obviously I was looking forward to getting the explanation for the change in Heather’s behavior I was promised today. Oh well I thought at least I get some nice eye candy to look at.
    Rob, I will be taking care of all of your needs today while Heather is working. Is there anything I can help you with before I start making breakfast?

    “Grab the tops of my arms so I can get myself out of bed as I need to use the restroom,” I said.

    She leaned in putting her tits in my face as she grabbed my arms. Her perfume smelled wonderful. I got hard instantly and unfortunately with just my boxers and a t-shirt on my dick head was peeking out.

    “Rob, are your sure that there isn’t anything and I mean anything I can do for you?”

    “Um no, I think I will get cleaned up in the shower before I have breakfast. I should be able to handle that by myself.”

    She smiled at me, winked and said “ok”.

    As she walked out of the room I saw her backside for the first time. Her ass cheeks were exposed as they were hanging out of her short skirt and her panties were too skimpy to cover them. Oh fuck I thought as I sat down on the toilet I couldn’t believe Heather let her in here dressed like that. Plus my cock was throbbing and while I could move my hands I still couldn’t do a jacking motion as it required wrist movement and the hard casts around each wrist weren’t going to allow that. Dani certainly seemed more than willing, but I could not cheat on Heather. Unfortunately, I really did need help in the shower so I was only able to get a half assed shower, but it would have to do. I wasn’t going to call Dani in to help because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say no if she made a pass at me while I was undressed.

    I managed to get out of the shower, I dried off and put a pair of boxers and my robe on so good enough. Next, I had to walk out to the breakfast table. I sat down at the table and the bacon Dani was frying smelt really good, I couldn’t tell what else she was fixing so I asked.

    “That smells good what is on the menu this morning?” I asked.

    “Yellow Tail” she said while she looked at me flipping the front of her skirt up and flashing her shaved snatch at me. Apparently she had lost her panties somewhere on the way to the kitchen.

    “Uh…oh… ah… I am not sure that was appropriate,” I mumbled.

    “Don’t worry about it I’ll explain after you eat,” she said.

    She sat the bacon, milk gravy and freshly made biscuits down in front of me, and I ate everything. Dani was one hell of a cook. She sat down at the table and ate too. I didn’t really see the point of trying to make small talk with her as everything she had said had been some sort of innuendo. I thought it was best if I ate my breakfast retreated to my room after I finished and tried to hide as much as possible from Dani the rest of the day. When Heather gets home this evening I will have to have a talk with her about Dani’s behavior. Maybe it would be best if she stayed somewhere else this week. As I got up from the table to leave she pushed me back down in the chair.

    “Just where do you think you are going Robbie?” she asked.

    Look Dani you’re a really attractive girl I just can’t be around you if you are going to make advances towards me all day. I would never cheat on Heather.

    She giggled and said “and just who do you think chose my outfit and told me to flirt with you today”?

    “You have to be shitting me… Heather wouldn’t do something like that,” I said but then at the same time I thought to myself given the show she had given me last night maybe she did send this girl to get me worked up.

    I do anal Rob and Heather told me that you are an ass freak, because you have never had it. In fact I have a plug in right now getting it all ready for you Rob. She stood up turned around bent over and sure enough she had a butt plug in.

    Um look it is one thing if Heather told you to tease me to get me worked up for her when she comes home, but actually fucking you is another. Heather can be very jealous. Anyway at this point I am not even sure if Heather told you to flirt with me.

    She smiled, licked her lips and flicked her tongue out. Eventually she said “Heather told me to fuck your brains out, suck your cock, and she told me to let you ream my tight little eighteen year old asshole.

    As my mouth stood agape she took out her iPhone, scrolled through her contacts and hit “Heather”.

    Somewhere off in the distance I swore I heard a phone ringing. I didn’t have time to think about it as Heather answered and she was on speaker phone.

    Hi Dani, and I assume Rob is there with you too. Are you two having fun? Is my little Robbie being a good boy or do you need to punish him?

    “HEATHER” I said sternly

    “Yes, Robbie what is it?”

    “You won’t believe the things Dani is telling me…,” and then she interrupted me.

    You mean like I told her to suck your cock, fuck your brains out and let you sodomize her tight little asshole? Is that what you are talking about, because if so it is all true every last bit of it. And Rob you better fuck her good or I am going to be one pissed off bitch when I get off work. In fact if you don’t sodomize her when I get home I am going to take that butt plug she has in and shove it up your ass.

    “What the fuck Heather what happened to you while I was in the hospital?”

    I promised you an explanation last night and Dani is part of the explanation. Look Rob you have been a wonderful boyfriend, but I’ll bet even you think our sex life has been a little boring. Now is your chance to live your fantasy with me and with her along with a few other girls. I want you to have her and she wants you. For years you have wanted to fuck my ass, but were too afraid to ask. To be honest up until a few months ago I probably would have told you no. For now know I have had an awakening of sorts and I will tell you more later on tonight, but right now you have this beautiful eighteen year old 90 pound Asian girl that is willing to take it in every hole for you. What are you waiting for live your dreams. You have my permission, but even more importantly than my permission this is something I want you to do. I have already been so fucking hot at work I have gotten off three times just thinking about what you are going to do to her. click.

    Dani just looked at me, smiled and said “so do you believe me now?”

    “Well, Yes just give me a minute I am sort of in shock. ”

    Take a few minutes to process it. I will be in your bedroom waiting for you. I will clean up the breakfast dishes later. We can fuck the rest of day away if you like. While you are thinking this over please consider the things you would like to do to me. I can be submissive, dominate or anything in between the choice is yours. If you want me to whimper in pain when you stick it up my ass I can or if you want me to make it clear I love taking it up the ass I can do that too. You can even cum anywhere you like in my mouth, on my face, in my pussy and up my ass the choice is yours. I am yours for the day.

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