[TYPO3-hci] the bot-idea

[Andreas Rieser]

Hello!

Well, when I read about the idea of a Typo3-Bot, I closed my eyes and
started shaking my head... I don't like bot's, especially M$ bots make
me angry. And I know why: because they are often written so bad, that
you can't find the information you are looking for...

Anyway in case of Typo3 this idea seems to make sense.

The problem of working with Typo3 is everywhere the same: When you get
started with it you can't find the information you need because you find
 simply too much information. Later on you got the information and you
keep some things in your mind. But when you go on, you can't keep
everything in your mind and you start to do a small code snippet library
 with problems you "solved"... isn't this true?

So what about putting some work together for a great bot, that will help
us all?

When I think of the abilities of this bot, these ideas came to my mind:

- bot-network that offers the bot services based on a central database

- use of a light-weight protocol for that - perhaps IRC

- first view should offer one simple textfield for entering your search
words

- second view could come up with categories (like TypoScript) and give
information about specific semantics (to search in category TypoScript
enter "=cat:TS", to do not search in things concerning tt_news enter
-ext:tt_news)

- extension authors should be able to add something to the bot database

- when you e.g. have a look at an extension you should be able to ask
the bot directly

- perhaps some functionality like "Answer not found in DB - should we
ask the extension author?"

Well, what do you think about this? In my opinion removing features is
not the right way to improve usability. The typo3 community did many
efforts to give information about specific problems or extensions. There
is so much information already. All we have to do is making the search
easier...

-andreas