Observer Bot in the Steam Chat

Geit

💜 I probably broke it 💜
aa
May 28, 2009
598
1,161
Heya guys, apparently some of you are still uneasy about the Observer bot in chat and would like a thread formally detailing what it does, so here goes.

The bot (currently called "info_observer_point [Bot]" and sitting at the bottom of the member's list) simply forwards the group chat to our staff Slack chat. If the staff have opted in: if it finds their name, it'll send them a "mention" on Slack which typically results in some kind of notification (e.g. A mobile push notification or email). The staff currently opted in to this, and their trigger words, are:
  • Crash (ueakcrash or crash)
  • Geit (geit)
  • iiboharz (iibo or iiboharz)
  • Freyja (freyja)
  • LeSwordfish (sword, swordfish or leswordfish)
  • phi (phi)
  • killohurtz (killo or killohurtz)
The rest of the staff are pingable by using their exact Slack names with a @ before them, which are as follows:
Also if the word "staff" is mentioned, all staff will receive a notification.

The staff cannot add additional trigger words to their Slack Clients, as Slack currently does not support trigger words via a third party integration.

The last 10,000 messages from the chat are stored, based on the past week or so of messages you guys generate around 4,000 a day - so staff can read about 2.5 days back before they hit a limit.

Ultimately, this is a convenience feature for the staff. It allows us to monitor the chat and react to potential issues arising faster than before. We've had numerous issues with chat in recent months where we've had to be forwarded logs, or simply haven't been present and things have escalated, so we're also hoping this will bring an end to that.

If you'd like to raise concerns about a member of staff in chat, I'd advise you alter their name slightly from the trigger words, but remember that if any member of staff reacts disproportionately to criticism they probably shouldn't be staff and will be dealt with accordingly. The chat has never been private, just because someone hasn't been there, you shouldn't assume that it won't be forwarded to them.

Finally I'll leave you with a quick screenshot, just to show you how it looks to us:

D6K5ii.png



Abuse and excessive intentional pinging of a staff member can lead to temporary bans from steam chat. Please don't be a jerk with it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Crash

func_nerd
aa
Mar 1, 2010
3,315
5,499
Bumping this to point out that we added a new rule involving the staff ping system:

Abuse and excessive intentional pinging of a staff member can lead to temporary bans from steam chat. Please don't be a jerk with it.

Since it appears this joke has still not grown old for some of our members.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
aa
Sep 20, 2015
1,308
2,743
Is the trigger word for all staff @staff or just 'staff' because the word staff could be used out of context and accidentally piss off all the staff...
u think "staff" comes up by accident more than "crash" in a community that uses hammer?
 

Crash

func_nerd
aa
Mar 1, 2010
3,315
5,499
Wanted to bump this post again to mention that I really don't mind "crash" coming up in casual use. Hammer crashes a lot, I don't expect you guys to have go out of your way to avoid pinging me, that sounds like a pain in the ass. It's not a big deal, and honestly sometimes it's funny to get a "AHH HAMMER CRASH" ping while I'm at work. Your suffering amuses me.

I keep seeing this issue pop up and I've had people debating on my behalf about something that doesn't bother me at all, so I wanted to clarify my stance on it. The only time I do take issue with being pinged is when I'm intentionally being pinged excessively and unnecessarily for shits and giggles, but this hasn't really been happening anymore lately, and I appreciate it!

So carry on, crash away. nbd
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
aa
Sep 20, 2015
1,308
2,743
funfact the only time we remember to go out of our way to not ping you is when we're talking about you

kind of ended up in a weird situation there
 

Crowbar

Spiritual preprocessor
aa
Dec 19, 2015
1,455
1,297
On a more serious note, maybe delete "crash" and "frozen" ping words? ueakcrash and fr0z3n are obviously people, so they're let know if they're mentioned, but first 2 words are quite common.
Or, even better, add @ to ALL pings so you decide whether to ping or not. This is just stupid, how it works atm

EDIT: Please don't quote me on frozen saying he stepped down. I know it as well as you do.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
The staff members elect their key words. They choose to do it. By default it's just @slackname for the staff,

This is in the first post. For goodness sakes people, read it.