Re: An IRC bot called Peanuts

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

Hello Felix,

Am Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 01:56:44PM -0700 schrieb Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.:
> Today I received this private message:

like others, I am appalled by the use of offensive language; in the
absolute, but even more so as it is directed at a volunteer trying
something out to make people's lives easier and to advance the Guix
project.

Concerning peanut, maybe I am naive, but I was mildly annoyed when there
was this new person on the channel echoing back parts of my own messages;
it took me some time to understand this was a bot (maybe because my naive
understanding is that on IRC I am connected to real people). So whatever
the outcome of the discussion, I would suggest to add "-bot" or "[bot]"
or something like this to its name.

Apart from that my impression was that there was not that much usefulness;
for instance, just taking the beginning of today's channel log:
<redacted>Have you tried using the importer (recursively to pull in dependencies)? https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-import.html#index-go
<peanuts>"Invoking guix import (GNU Guix Reference Manual)" https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-import.html#index-go
...
<redacted>JetpackJackson: here's the output of `guix import go -r github.com/sebas05000/hydroxide` for me: https://pastebin.com/DhFKfwtA
<peanuts>"output of guix import go -r github.com/sebas05000/hydroxide - Pastebin.com" https://pastebin.com/DhFKfwtA

These are indeed just repetitions of the previous messages, adding the
title of the web page, but which turns out to also be essentially what
the previous poster said.

Another example of yesterday:
<apteryx>I think gnu.org infra is down at large currently
<apteryx> https://hostux.social/@fsfstatus/112678216190653742
<peanuts>"FSF Out of Band Updates: "We are currently having issues with one of our ce?" - Mastodon Hostux" https://hostux.social/@fsfstatus/112678216190653742

There indeed, the title adds some additional information without having
to click on the link.

Making peanut more "intelligent", speaking up only when it can add useful
information, is probably a difficult task. But maybe it would help to
discuss which problem peanut is supposed to address?

In any case, as others have said, thanks for trying things out, which may
or may not prove helpful in the longer run.

Andreas