Ok, so the rules for
joining BU could be briefly summarized as follows:
- The person requesting to join must be a real coder with substantial knowledge of a suitable programming language. This rule would serve to keep rip-off artists like (3)Colours out of BU.
- Bot must either be finished or under continuos "construction", i.e. not just for 3 weeks and then silence.*
- A poll in the Agora must be posted, and a majority of the council members must vote for the joining request.
*: I see this point as problematic. The intention behind is absolutely ok and understandable, but since we don't have any reliable prophets among us (or do we?
), it's difficult to draw a line, just as stefan pointed out. I don't think we have any effective means to control this. On one hand, we cannot force bot coders to code some stupid stuff just to prove that they are still developing, and on the other hand we can't kick everyone out just because there has been no visible progress for some time. I think all we can do is direct the potential new members' attention to the fact that we don't wish to have short-term members who then disappear without even giving notice of their steps.
This leads me to a suggestion I wanted to make anyway: As soon as we have agreed on a sensible set of rules, at least a sticky thread summarizing these rules should be posted in the Agora - maybe even a link or some text on the bots-united main page?
Concerning totally new and not-yet-released bots such as FritzBot, all we can do is trust and hope that things will evolve in a positive way. Maybe non-CS bots (or even non-HL bots should be treated with priority in this respect? After all, offering a wide selection of difficult bots can only be good "propaganda" for BU...
However, regarding bots that already exist, we can test them and/or watch the progress they make and use this as a basis for the decision. And if a CS bot cloned from PODBot shows exceptionally good performance and popularity, a decision can still be taken. It won't lead BU anywhere if we only accept the "purest" bots and totally disregard popularity.
Ah, yes. That brings me to yet another subject (you still awake?
). I suggest we don't remove discontinued bots from BU. A separate section, ok. Totally separated from the active forums (linked page or whatever), ok. But we'd better not forget the ppl out there who are in no way interested in coding, programming, betatesting, waypointing or anything - and if many of these ppl happen to like a discontinued PODBot clone, we would deprive them of a valuable source of very wide-spread knowledge if we removed the respective bot forums entirely.