Re: "Don't be an asshat"

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

I have very little opinion to add... But I will add my thoughts.

Spoilers: Mafia is inherently spoilerish. Scripting for mafia is at least as much so. Spoilers should not be a problem, as long as there was not spoiling simply for spoilings sake.

Multi Abuse: This is a grey area due primarily to no clear cut definitions of multi abuse. My opinion is to take it on a personal scale. If you think the current topic pushes your boundaries of multi abuse, don't get involved.

Beyond that... I have no clear cut opinions.

I wish I could help more.

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

You type... a lot
=D Very constructed speech, >> the ghost of the English language must love you 0_o.

Hmm on that double posting thing...
[PretendAsshat]You did it yourself in page 2 of the hi-mein discussion[/PretendAsshat]
Hehe... XD yes... I am lame but not the point, the point is that while it is pretty universal rule on double posting it isn't actually covered by the current rules and policies... Then again I do suppose thats why we are discussing in this thread XD.

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Hehe well onto the multi-abuse section! (Yes... the above was short and had almost no point >>)
In the below I will refer to a term "login->logout" which I will assume means: login, do something and send output to another character, logout, login on other character, work on the output sent you it from first character and then loop for as many times as needed to produce final output.

1. Scripts that require interaction between characters and accomplish this through a series of "login->logout" scripts shouldn't be posted.
2. Scripts that require interaction between characters and accomplish this through writing a script for each character but don't have a login->logout function are fine.

I personally justify the above reasoning because while someone can pretty easily combine the scripts from option 2 into something that works like option 1, if they are able and willing enough to combine the scripts they should have sufficient knowledge of scripting and what they are doing. This further means they should also take responsibility of splitting the end product evenly and fairly between the characters involved because they themselves turned it into a script which is multi-abusable and to the czar may be considered multi-abuse.

I can further the above example by saying a icy-peak script is fine because a lot of people will farm the peak to fund their ascensions and farming the peak is perfectly fine. But like in the above example if a person adds a login->logout script and a send command at the end for multiple characters then they know they are farming the peak with multi's//main and then they also know that they turned the innocent script into something that is multi-abusable and may be considered multi-abuse by the czar.


As a answer to the questions asked by Daychilde but because my above justifications focus on what should and shouldn't be allowed they don't really apply so...:

1. If a script is determined to be helpful for multi abuse, should it be disallowed?

Click to expand...

1. No, because all scripts can be considered to help with multi-abuse. Quest scripts help to ascend your multi for skills that will help with abusing later (Meat +% skills for farming as an example), scripts that equip your character "smarter" make it easier to ascend and thus help with multi's to ascend for skills that can help with abusing later.

2. How should a script be determined to be helpful for multi abuse?

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2. As already shown by my stand point on question 1 all scripts are multi-abusable so its not a question of determining but rather a question of "How easy should the scripts be to multi-abuse?"

To my own question I shall repeat myself, the script should require at least the abuser to script up something that causes the multiple logging in and the interaction between the characters.

Oh but then what about buffbots because they "interact" between characters? Well because KoLMafia even has a whole GUI interface for requesting buffs from the buffbots it should be accepted that requesting buffs would not be looked upon as multi-abuse... not to mention the buffbot probably wont be yours and so not a multi... unless its a private buffbot because I'm talking about public buffbots.

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So spoilers eh? All I have to say is this quote from the first line of the KoLMafia thread in the KoL forums.

Be forewarned, this client is SPOILERTASTIC. Do not use unless you've finished your game and just feel like trying something new.

Click to expand...

Yup not much you can do to argue that if KoLMafia itself is spoilery then the branch of KoLMafia: "scripting" would be equally if not more spoilery >>.

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

My personal loving opinion of this community is that it is too uptight about the issue of multi abuse. I chuckled when I saw the analogy to yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, because the debates have struck me as more similar to if a car company wondered how to adapt their product so that it wouldn't be used as an accessory in so many bank robberies.

I'm not The Eye, but I suspect that I'm capable of doing his job. And, as such, I doubt that KoLmafia or its scripters are part of the problem. If someone is crazy enough to (frex) create a large number of sauces, k-mail them to a pastamancer, log in as the pastamancer on the same machine, create a large number of hi meins, and stick them into the mall, then KoLmafia is just making it easier to catch this person based on the synchronicity and speed. If anything, my job would be harder if all these 1335 haxx0rz felt that they had to switch to a black market product that didn't do such a conscientious job of filling out all of the HTTP fields or that used evil to redirect the IP addresses so that they would look like different users.

I don't totally mind "Is this abuse" conversations when the focus is a user who doesn't want to do evil. We don't know the answer to that either, but I don't mind talking about whether I would feel comfortable running borderline.ash on a character that I liked. And I'm not talking about holatuwol's burden of having an underlying architecture that allows him to sleep at night, althoguh I would commend him for the job that he has done.

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

On the topic of multi abuse I really don't care if you or someone like you does it. The end result has already been defined. Your multis will be disabled. I do think that we should have respect for Holatuwol's wishes though.

Topics that nudge real close to the multi abuse edge that I have major involvement: http://kolmafia.us/index.php/topic,119.msg499.html#msg499
http://kolmafia.us/index.php/topic,52.msg168.html#msg168

The first tells how to make kolmafia go through all your characters 1 at a time. There is even a method I don't like which allows you to have them all go at once. The second is an icy peak meat farming script which can handle just about any character, handles the mushroom fields if you have them, as long as the character can hit a yeti, and not be hit most of the time, it doesn't take long to make the character compatible with the script. All that's needed is a few send commands, and you are there. Actually just 1 send command. If you send 1 message a day with all the items you are sending then you are less likely to be noticed than if you send 3.

Something to note there is I wrote and maintained the icy peak script, I started the topic and I pretty much wrote the methods for automattically re-running the character if the script fails. Holatuwol contributed the idea to prevent kolmafia from going idle if a script fails allowing the set of files to run using task scheduler without interaction.

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ultimately what I saw with the first locked topic was a post by Holatuwol "this sounds too much like multi abuse" and the topic was locked. That was enough to tell me that Holatuwol didn't want the discussion to continue. I weighed over that for a while and decided that though cjswimmer had no ill will in asking why, I saw problems arising from future members. I should have left a post explaining why, but was thinking more along the lines of bringing this up for discussion among the moderators and administrators. I apologize for that.

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all scripts on this repository require the user to either write some login code, or log in manually and run the script.
[quote author=Nightmist link=topic=276.msg1430#msg1430 date=1152420004]
1. Scripts that require interaction between characters and accomplish this through a series of "login->logout" scripts shouldn't be posted.
2. Scripts that require interaction between characters and accomplish this through writing a script for each character but don't have a login->logout function are fine.
[/quote]

I don't see the logic here. Don't have a login->logout function? If I posted a script which contained the login function and you downloaded it, it wouldn't work. You would have to modify anyway. Last I knew kolmafia didn't allow login char1->logout->login char2 in a script.

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hmm now I will throw one out there. Scripting of the holidays.
In a fit of immaturity quite a while back I got mad at macman104 because in a reply to one of my posts on the kolmafia thread he said

More power to you

Click to expand...

I then wrote up a method to script the holidays. It took me only a few minutes. I posted the method in the kol forums, but deleted it less than 5 minutes later because Macman contacted me and pointed out Holatuwol does not want this ability in kolmafia. I very highly doubt that I am the only one who can figure out a way to do it. I don't think we should allow posting of such methods here.

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We really should consider ground rules for this type of post: http://kolmafia.us/index.php/topic,271.msg1399.html#msg1399
I posted it for a friend so they could easily sell me their sewer items, and made it a library function in an attempt to not totally make it an ad for my buying of sewer items. (make at least part of it usefull for everyone who might need the feature.) I really don't know how everyone feals about this though.

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

[quote author=efilnikufecin link=topic=276.msg1435#msg1435 date=1152475650]
all scripts on this repository require the user to either write some login code, or log in manually and run the script.
I don't see the logic here. Don't have a login->logout function? If I posted a script which contained the login function and you downloaded it, it wouldn't work. You would have to modify anyway. Last I knew kolmafia didn't allow login char1->logout->login char2 in a script.
[/quote]

The "logic" (Or lack of) is based around the fact that if a script is using multiple characters then they will be multi's//main. If that script engages in interaction (Which would be the only reason to need a script to login on multiple characters, well unless you have a mega-script that can handle different things depending on character status...) then I would prefer that the interaction and login commands be omitted from the script.

My explanation of the way I took the term "Login->Logout" was specifically targeted to Multiple Character Goods Creation (Any other interaction between characters could be deemed rather dodgy except the Hardcore store multi's although I do suppose trade offers to your own characters may... wait trading with yourself... >> *Lacks a decent comment and changes topic*)

Also I suggested not having the Login->Logout scripts posted because of my view being focused on Multiple Character Goods Creation I figured that:
Getting community help > Having your own little multi ring making everything
Because yes, if your going around using a Login->Logout script it is effectively a multi-ring doing most if not all of the work.

Oh and incase you didnt know the cli command "Login *Character*" does a logout before logging in (A feature added after my request I think because of "leaving a inactive account to timeout instead of logging out" was a possible security risk and also a possible server drain.)

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

[1] Do not transfer items between characters you control via scripts.

If I see scripting discussion that discusses this, or I see threads which are heading in that direction, I will lock the thread.  If you ever see your thread locked in a discussion forum, and the last post in the thread is mine, chances are extremely good that I did it and I did it for this reason.

[2] Respect the time of the people who help you.

Save your "Thanks but..." statements for the KoLmafia mega-thread, where I'm more civil when I bite your head off.  If you have a question about what the responder is doing (or not doing), ask the question directly.  Anything that sounds like lack of respect for the time spent helping you will result in your thread immediately being locked.

[3] Do not request philanthropic buffs from buffbots for scripts which will be run daily.

This is a soft policy; in other words, it falls under "don't be an asshat" but it's something that will not be rigidly enforced (by me at least).  Buffbots have finite resources.  If you write a farming script that will request buffs from a buffbot, replace philanthropic requests (the ones that are less than 50 meat) with real requests; they are not that expensive at all, and it's a good gesture and helps keep the philanthropic buffs going for people who really need them.

Re: "Don't be an asshat"

[quote author=holatuwol link=topic=276.msg1522#msg1522 date=1152912851][3] Do not request philanthropic buffs from buffbots for scripts which will be run daily.

This is a soft policy; in other words, it falls under "don't be an asshat" but it's something that will not be rigidly enforced (by me at least). Buffbots have finite resources. If you write a farming script that will request buffs from a buffbot, replace philanthropic requests (the ones that are less than 50 meat) with real requests; they are not that expensive at all, and it's a good gesture and helps keep the philanthropic buffs going for people who really need them.[/quote]Not too mention, that it is the quickest way to get yourself banned from being able to use the buffbots. Whether people are aware or not, buffbot runners do check to see if people are requesting the same philanthropic buffs everyday. If abuse is noted, you may be disallowed from using the bot by the user.