BattleBot

BattleBot has to be one of the ugliiest GUIs ever designed for a bot, but it was an extremely powerful tool. Battlebot was named after a TV show I really liked: http://www.battlebots.com/  I loved watching these bots battle it out, and I always thought that my BattleBot would kick all their butts. It sure kicked the butts of MSN's troublemakers :)

BattleBot logged on using an Admin account. When users joined Helpdesk and complained about a join/part flood in their room, the guide or sysop instructed BattleBot to monitor the room. When BattleBot detected a flood in that room, it would set a carefully created IP ban on the user. We were very careful to never reveal a user's IP address to anyone, so BattleBot would set very broad bans, for a very short time, in the chat room being flooded. BattleBot also was used by Sysops to remove bans from rooms that banned Sysops. I am sure many of you noticed these entries in your room's access lists: OWNER '*!*@*
Any time a sysop was banned from a room, and requested help, BattleBot would set all Guides, Sysops, and Admins to owner in that room.

BattleBot performed many other tasks too, but I think you get the idea. There were very few Admin bots on MSN. BattleBot was one of the few.


 

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