guess not

I'll still try, but it's hard

bleh, I have to eat dinner

RIP this egg

going to get nothing'd into oblivion

I think we made it to public, anyway.

I'm leaving.

Can't fight them alone, or nearly alone...

@Hosch250 I am as of last week.

@ChrisJester-Young Good for you!

@Hosch250 Thanks!

Just wondering if you can see which ones are bots and which aren't.

@Hosch250 I'm a little too green to know the tools for telling the difference.

I'm working on userscript to help fight the baddies.... if you don't get it sorted out first

OK.

@GiantCowFilms I hope you include some sort of command system so it can be manually controlled

test

odd

@Runer112 I can't get it to work yet... its pretty terrible anyway

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Egg Protector
// @namespace   giantcowfilms.com
// @include     *.stackexchange.com/*
// @include     stackoverflow.com*
// @include     askubuntu.com*
// @require     ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

//Created by GiantCowFilms
function main() {
	console.log("Protecting Your Egg");

	$("#egg-clock-text").bind("DOMSubtreeModified",function(){
		console.log("Change!");

Are the nothing voters serious?

The nothing and restart voters seems to be cancelling each other out

I got it to work

Good.

Copy this into your broswer console and it enter

gist.github.com/GiantCowFilms/836d4cb31de8ae87ab7f

It will vote for the most popular option that isn't restart

it will favor items higher in the list during a tie

it will default to ask if nobody votes

@GiantCowFilms What about Nothing?

That is the most dangerous thing now.

huh?

how?

They keep doing Nothing to get our site states too low.

Then, the system forces a restart.

Oh so sombody is going to change this

people aren't following the optimal rules :/

except for special circumstances, you don't vote for something that just dropped

Btu we aren't being restarted. That's a victory in and of itself.

Now just don't mention that on every other chat room.

yeah, I know

And we'll be fine

upvote

hey guys, I've figured out some numerical stuff that you might be interested in. gaming.stackexchange.com/a/212071/31508

why nothing :(

I've tested it pretty thoroughly for the private beta stage at least, since that's the easiest lol

grad strat: alternate Q&A up to max, only addressing alerts after letting them sit for two days

one of the highest priority rules is don't vote for something that just dropped, unless quality just dropped from 4 to 3 when our stats are mostly maxed

remember, let alerts sit for 2 days

Ok. I did a big overhaul of my new CodeBots post

this is day 1

reset raid getting big

Does this mean we can go back to Programming Puzzles and Code Golf now?

yes :)

especially because that challenge is going to be interesting

I'm excited for April 2. I'll take a look :)

next up, try to keep Q&A maxed and raise quality

thanks :P

lol

either someone's bot is malfunctioning or we're getting griefed

keep voting for maxed stats

^ meaning that's bad

@NathanMerrill Have you built the controller yet?

@BrainSteel no, but I've built the past controllers

so, I'm too worried about it

Alright, neat. You have my vote. I'll think about it and see if I can find any inconsistencies or cheap wins. I hope that challenge does well!

me too

^ total motivation to close

@BrainSteel I'm curious what your strategy would be

^ Great motivation to close.

I was meaning in reference to code bots

XP

@NathanMerrill Me too :) I didn't participate in the other code bots challenges, but I'm very much considering it for this one. I may try to write a program that generates a good program. I like doing that, even if it doesn't always work too great :P

@NathanMerrill Can a bot start a new thread in another bot to mess it up?

like a genetic program?

@TheBestOne Kind of. Threads are attached to the bot that created it

so I can write a Create line to have the bot create a thread

For the past 8 months, I've actually been building a massive genetic programming framework in C. It's played pong, recognized shapes, fit curves... I might try it :)

@NathanMerrill THAT is a neat mechanic. Hadn't considered that...

I ripped in pieces instead

probably should've worded it less menacingly

This is getting out of hand. Rather, got out of hand.

2 immediate downvotes :(

@TheBestOne One was mine. I don't like bots for these kinds of games, regardless what side they're on.

The other was mine

So I made a JS bot that plays StackEgg. It's a simple strategy that votes for the attribute with the fewest hearts, breaking ties top to bottom. It's been running great in Chrome for the last 20 mins. Here's the Pastebin.

Yes, it may be considered cheating.

Going for fewest hearts is pretty suboptimal though, unfortunately :P

@Geobits Its a counter-bot bot. If you don't like it you could make a counter-counter-bot bot ;)

It's simply in our nature to skirt around the rules a bit, huh? :P I suppose you should expect nothing else when making a Javascript game for a primarily programming site. This write up gives an accurate depiction of what happened today if anyone missed it, and does it without thrashing PPCG. Neat.

Meh, whether bots are explicitly cheating or not (and apparently they're not), I personally think they ruin the fun worse than our earlier raiding ever could have. Leaving your browser open is much less required effort than constantly scanning numerous sites and monitoring chats, gathering the required votes, and taking it down.

That's just my opinion, but I've never been a botter, so...

Only bots I've ever used are the ones I wrote myself

@Sp3000 It wouldn't be that hard to make it better. Though it seems to vote with the majority at least half the time.

@BrainSteel That's a very nice blog post.

My most recent bot creation was for cookie clicker

@Doorknob I came across it from Jon Ericson's answer.

I have to wonder, why does the reset button still exist? I am a web developer, and removing a button literally takes 2 seconds. You can leave the object in code behind. You can even leave the button click event, both client side and server side. You literally just have to remove the freaking button. Jon Ericson's grandmother could have accomplished this in half the time it took him to write a single one of these meta posts, assuming she is still alive.

Perhaps it's just so low priority since it's going away tomorrow

But that takes me back to the effort required to write all of Jon's posts. That effort was more than the effort required to remove a button.

alternate ask and answer

I think the reset button problem is a much lesser concern than the botting problem. Even if the reset button is removed, bots can still have their way with anyone's game.

@Rainbolt Because social interaction is much more important than a game.

It's also less a problem than the other options. Yes, it resets all progress, but requires a 50% secondary vote. Raiders could just vote "close" every time to seriously mess up any vote that wan't very unified.

Because this incident has provided psychologists a lifetime's worth of work.

Good points both of you. I see now that the real solution to this problem is to provide TWO reset buttons.

let alerts sit for 2 turns

Do the psychologists then get two lifetimes' worth of work?

Depends on whether they took the blue pill or the red pill

@hichris123 That was the whole point, surely? I figured CogSci was spearheading this whole thing.

keep boosting Q&A

I have a suspicion as to why PPCG (or a subset of it) was liable to take raiding as being in good fun even when others claimed cheating and mean-spiritness

it's the way code-golf works

you're given a spec and write the shortest code that satisfies it, intent on no intent

or, win a KOTH with an unintended strategy

in PPCG, it's not cheating, it's creativity

@xnor That's what I was trying to get at in my heavily downvoted answer there ;)

so given that the option to restart was coded in, some people took it as a feature

Yeah. Those things are generally considered to be the OP's fault on our end of the site, but that's not the "general" mindset.

@BrainSteel You'll find out... after the break.

@Geobits I smell a Skeptics member here. ;P

I dabble in Skeptics, but consider this my home :D

The reaction to our rather short-lived raid was arguably less civil than the raid itself. A simple "Hey, stop that..." would've worked.

2 restart voters

@Geobits wait, I was right? lol. I was joking because of your conspiracy theory.

skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/19407/geobits Well, I am a member, but I tend to the "debunk the conspiracy theories" end of the pool in most cases.

ah, okay.

Welp, I should probably be heading to bed. night all.

G'night pal.

griefing is picking up

3 restart bots

I'm starting to lose interest in StackEgg.

It gets repetitive after the 8th time.

I'll get us up to 10 wins

then I'll be done

no point in competing with anime's bots

I'm working on my own April Fool's joke right now. I'm going to pass out "Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus" fliers at my school.

if I suggest we lead with answer first in grad stage, will you guys follow me?

answer always seems to drop on the first day, and I want to try to stop that

Okay.

otherwise, it's the same strategy of alternate Q&A

3 restarters

I'll help for a while.

Well... Google did not do me wrong. zapatopi.net/treeoctopus

try to max out quality while keeping Q&A high as well, don't worry about users for now

we need to coordinate a bit better

There's some nothing-bots.

I think there might be some Upvote bots.

I think there are just newer players who think low = bad

but really, low = good

Well, no, but it goes up by itself.

@Hosch250 No, that's my bot. It votes for the thing with the least health, tiebreaks go top to bottom.

ah

griefed by our own bot

@Calvin'sHobbies What are you doing that for?

We need the votes to help beat out the crooks.

Yeah, that's the exact opposite of our strategy.

It never presses nothing or restart.

That's just the simplest strategy

we just got closed

Make a bot that waits until the last possible moment, and then votes for the (acceptable) option with the most votes.

Just stopped my bot

@PhiNotPi Maybe I will...

Though this is keeping me from Red vs Blue :P

The crooks ran away, it seems.

Or maybe they went to bed.

nope

bots are upvoting

Or maybe they switched to Upvote.

and wastingn our turns that way

Less dangerous than others, but still dangerous.

we're goig to get wrecked now

upvoters and restarters

ok, regex to match $ followed by any number of lowercase letters \$[a-z]*

is that correct?

upvote bots have switched to resart

Studying extraversion for my management class (well, the Big 5 personalities).

Some studies claim that extraverts are happier.

But newer studies show that these are flawed because the measure arousal as a happiness indicator.

And introverts are happy when they can relax and let their guard down.

Is this in bad taste or is it funny? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252439/…

I can't decide

@Hosch250 Maybe you should take it to Skeptics? They're good at finding literature reviews, and if you frame it as being skeptical of one side or the other, it would probably be well received.

@Geobits Good idea.

@Rainbolt Ouch. Too soon man, too soon ;)

@Rainbolt Made me giggle

I am very skeptical about extraverts being happier.

@Rainbolt Ah, insensitive. The best kind of humor.

Made me giggle, too, but I doubt they're going to take it well.

I am a deep introvert, and I am very happy when left completely alone.

finally, 1 traffic

4 restart bots

I'd guess extraverts are more outwardly happy, but that seems like an obvious conclusion.

we're going to get overrun

Yeah.

5 restarters

Hey, can we have a separate chat room for the StackEgg game? It's wonderful and all, but the two conversations are kinda jarring juxtaposed.

Introverts are happier when they are alone, and other's aren't around to measure it.

I don't think we need a play by play

:) I'm done.

I think they were referring to me

I know, but I'm done with the commentary.

sure, I can drop the play-by-play, although that means we'll be disconnected from chat and probably lose this egg

<- beyond caring to be honest

Upvote bots are starting again.

I wouldn't mind the occasional "Hey we're getting restarted" but honestly it's too late by the time we can react to it

Come on, it will be gone tomorrow.

Guys my bot is working perfectly.....

:D

always makes the right choice if there is someone to guide it

it even chooses continue if it has more then 50%... I think enough of 'em running would keep the restarters at bay

Anyway, here is the Egg Protector...

gist.github.com/GiantCowFilms/836d4cb31de8ae87ab7f

if you want him...

How do I run it?

Chrome?

FF

Through the dev tools?

Paste it into your browser console

then press enter

I actually could run Chrome.

OK.

You can even close the console

And you can continue browsing too

You hit [f12]>console>paste>enter

OK.

I think it might work in FF too, just not tested

And the best part of it is that it is event driven and not on a polling interval

@GiantCowFilms It is working, but it chose Upvote!

Well done GiantCow

@Rainbolt :D

@Hosch250 was that the popular choice?

We don't want Upvotes :(

Yes.

it goes with the crowd

Except for the baddies?

OK.

@Rainbolt I had to flag your comment as not constructive,

@Hosch250 This should never UV

	console.log("Protecting Your Egg");

	$("#egg-clock-text").bind("DOMSubtreeModified",function(){
		console.log("Change!");
	  if($("#egg-clock-text").text() == 5){
	  	console.log("Vote nearly over! Time to act");
	  	protectEggs();
	  }
	});
	function protectEggs () {
		var widestTalleyBar = $(".egg-action").find(".egg-action-tally-bar")[0];
		$(".egg-action").each(function () {
			if(($(this).find( "button" ).text() == "Restart") || ($(this).find( "button" ).text() == "Upvote")){
				return true;

Errr.... that won't work during beta

@Rainbolt why?

upvoting is fine, as long as we need it

That ^

Upvoting is necessary during beta

Its not meant to win the game...

I actually got all 5 hearts without upvoting at CR.

...just to stop it from being restarted

@Rainbolt Okay, then use the normal one

If you vote before 5, you vote will hold

we seem to be stuck in a bit of a loop, we may need to upvote manually

Yes

I don't plan on using any of them. I just wanted to see how it works. It's neat

Thanks...

I need to do school...

Should I leave my copy running, I wont be able to turn it off until tommorrow morning

Not because it isn't good. I'm not using it on principle

Okay....

What's the best strategy again?

Oh man

I turned mine off too.

The ellipses are growing longer with my every attempt to make you feel better

@Hosch250 Should I leave mine on... it has a downside of not letting the game rest if nobody is playing, however it did win a 50-50 for a restart a few min ago

Go ahead.

okay

bye all

fell free to modify and share it as much as you like

Bye.

looks like bots have come back and are asking

Asking is good a fair amount, we just have to counter with answers and closes periodically.

now restarting

This game has gotten very weird...

You guys use close in your 235 round?

nope, no closing for us

What the!

Nope

I don't think so..

Yeah I haven't found it particularly useful.

No flag, no close, no reset, and we treat our users like crap until the bitter end. That's how you win Internets.

Do you protect full stats rather than upvote?

e.g. public beta, all full hearts except for users... upvote or not

I've been tempted to protect another stat

Not during our 235. We anticipated when things would drop, but for the most part we rotated evenly during our end game.

we'll upvote if everything else is full

finally, looks like we've got it mostly maxed

I usually try to add a spare Q/A when everything is full.

I'm really curious whether upvote stat affects progress rate at all.

every stat affects progress rate, I thought

You get free users when everything else is high.

That's what I would assume, based on "have stats, must fill 'em"

I'm leaving the chat, it is too distracting.

You only get free users when traffic is high, I think

yeah, that's true

That was my hypothesis as well

But like all but one of my other hypotheses today, untested.

Man, actual Tamogatchis sucked. I don't know why I'm so interested in this one.

bots are closing now

I did test the one. Turns out, you can ignore warning for exactly four turns. On the fifth warning, you get shut down.

I had both users and quality warning, and it shut me down after two turns.

We didn't know that during our 235 run either. We could beat it

theoretically we could beat it

realistically, with the griefing and all, we can't

Well, I tested on Sharepoint SE multiple times and it consistently shut me down after any category had a warning five times in a row

bots switched to restart I think

Maybe my test was flawed though. I just brought the site to public beta and then voted questions repeatedly.

Then I did the same and voted answers repeatedly

I misclicked flag :(

nononono

Not on yours.

downvote you fools

I like how the "joke" game is telling us that user happiness doesn't matter.

status-declined forever

Anime officially caught up to us

Man, the nineteenth byte is never this active at this hour

The "build your site" game leaderboard turns out to be a good way to get attention for your site.

@Sp3000 The Nineteenth Byte has been extremely active today. Unbelievably, even.

I am a good Samaritan. I told Anime that their bots refused to restart the game after a win.

I watched it stall on "You win!" for three iterations

anime are not good samaritans, as they want to crush the contest with their bots

And with that I can sleep soundly tonight knowing that I helped an entire community of people with their troubles.

Well, maybe they aren't. But I am. I have risen above my devious ways of raiding and having fun at the expense of their poor souls.

would've been nicer to help actual human players who might appreciate it

I help all indiscriminately. Such is the way of... wait for it... the Mighty Morphin Reformed Raiders!

Can you tell it's past my bedtime?

I was amused. ^_^

Haha I had to run in here and ask everyone if it was alright to say that

Glad you enjoyed it

there we go. 10.

Ended with a downvote.

Alternation time.

Best times too.

Time to go delete my Arqade account.

I missed it. What was the final count?