Many years ago, I used to be a regular in the #quiz chat room on DALnet. That's on IRC, for you whippersnappers who don't know what DALnet is. If you don't know what IRC is ... then get off our interland, youngster.
The #quiz channel was great fun. A bot, powered by MoxQuizz, would ask a question. First to get the answer right got a point. First to 30 won the game. Hours flew by and were forever lost.
I was looking for a small project to while away a morning and wanted to play with Twitter's API, so decided to write a basic quizbot for Twitter along similar lines to MoxQuizz. After a couple of hours behind the keyboard, I am pleased to be able to introduce you to @TriviBot.
The idea is pretty simple - answer a question first to get a point. First to 10 (at the moment) wins the game. Leaderboards and all-time high score tables will be put up shortly.
In all honesty, I have no idea how well or badly this kind of idea will translate to Twitter. Twitter is, after all, not a chat room network like IRC. However, I've enjoyed writing the thing and testing it has been good fun.
14 Comments
Answered the last question almost ten minutes ago: http://twitter.com/MijMezelfIk But TriviBot doesn't update...
#1, MijMezelfIk, Netherlands, 18 January 2009. Reply to this.
Just had to try this since I used to love them old irc-quizes. As you said it might not be the perfect forum for it but I enjoyed winning a "losing lottery ticket" :-)
#2, Tomas Brolén, Sweden, 18 January 2009. Reply to this.
@MijMezelfIk: At a guess, I'd say maybe the bot reached the API limit. Not sure I've got the timings right yet, but working on it.
@Tomas: Congratulations on the win - looking at the stats so far, it's been more popular than I was expecting. Will be interesting to see if that lasts!
#3, DaveChild, United Kingdom, 18 January 2009. Reply to this.
Wondering aloud here, but does anyone think TriviBot would be better if it deleted old questions once they are answered? Or perhaps once the current game is over?
#4, DaveChild, United Kingdom, 19 January 2009. Reply to this.
Excellent! Going to follow right away!
#5, Joen, Unknown, 24 January 2009. Reply to this.
Okay this works very well, but it updates a bit too often in my opinion. Perhaps every 2 or 5 minutes?
#6, Joen, Unknown, 24 January 2009. Reply to this.
@Joen: Yes, it's a bit ... talkative! Kind of drowns out everyone else if you follow it. It may be that it's just not a very good fit for Twitter, or that deleting the older questions is a good way to make it less intrusive.
#7, DaveChild, United Kingdom, 24 January 2009. Reply to this.
I think it can really be made to work, but it needs tweaking mainly in timing.
How about a question every 5 minutes, and an answer within 5 minutes of that, and trivibot then asks questions for an hour, three times a day? Meaning: trivibot should take breaks once in a while, instead of having one endless quiz :)
#8, Joen, Unknown, 25 January 2009. Reply to this.
Dave, that's awesome, great idea! I used to frequent dalnet, undernet, and even (sadly) efnet, various channels which I'd possibly be ashamed to admit 15 yrs later. =) I remember modifying various bots, and finally eggdrop bot to do some fun stuff in channels. Mostly they were related to control, lol, but some of our bots we developed did the trivia bits, and dishing out useful information in the channel. The good ol days back when everything was text. =) Gopher, NNTP, and IRC FTW.
We still run a private network of IRC servers that hosts about 200 people. It still seems like the best communication method to me. Beats any of the other IM apps.
#9, Martin, United States, 4 February 2009. Reply to this.
This is a nice concept that needs to be developed more. I will keep track!
#10, Mexabet, Australia, 23 March 2009. Reply to this.
Any chance of sharing the code?
I'd love to set up a trivia-bot with my closest twitter-friends and maybe some old IRC-ones too.
#11, tiedemann, Sweden, 9 May 2009. Reply to this.
@tiedemann: I've been thinking about that - I'll get back to you here later - I've just moved home and have no internet yet :)
#12, DaveChild, United Kingdom, 11 May 2009. Reply to this.
Following!
#13, Petra, Germany, 31 May 2009. Reply to this.
I wonder who don't know about IRC. When I was first using computer, my instructor introduces me to IRC and Diablo game. These are two sites that got me addicted from my early ages to computer. Twitter is just another new version of IRC but it is more global and have more traffic.
#14, Atniz, Unknown, 23 July 2009. Reply to this.