BBS search engine
Evan Elias
of "BBS search engine". Basically, this would be like a BBS list, but would be
totally automated.
The programmer would just need to write some web robots to crawl the web and
grab telnet URLs, and perhaps another program to grab telnet addresses from
taglines in Fidonet, Dovenet, etc as well as posts in Usenet's alt.bbs*. With
these, you could easily build up a very large library of telnet addresses to
list.
Granted, this would also grab up telnet MUDs and other various telnet servers,
but by using simple text classifiers, the program could differentiate between
the two with reasonable accuracy. And using some more sophisticated concepts
of information retrieval (Bayesian models and whatnot), it would even be
possible to write classifiers to determine the BBS software and grab any
keywords/features/games listed on the board's log-on screen. And also throw in
keywords from wherever the telnet address was picked up (newsgroup ad, bbs web
site,etc) and then you'd have a fair amount of info on the BBS.
Then just throw in a search engine and a corresponding web interface, and boom,
you have a simple telnet BBS search engine (along with a separate telnet MUD
search engine, which may also be somewhat useful).
So my questions are --
1. To BBS users and sysops -- do you think this would be a good idea? It would
seemingly be easier than having to manually add yourself to a munch of BBS
lists.
2. BBS developers -- would you be interested in helping with a project like
this? I could probably write the engine for it (preferably using Perl)
sometime this summer, but I donn't yet have the skills for the web interface
side of it.
Let me know your thoughts :)
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Frank Vest
Is this to be a BBS list for access on the BBS, web page or ??
Check out "http://biseonline.com/fido_int". It's not very good, but if
something like this is what you are shooting for, I'd be interested in
putting the thing up... provided my host will allow it.
Frank
Black Knight
Re: BBS search engine
By: Evan Elias to All on Sun Apr 06 2003 12:41 pm
> 1. To BBS users and sysops -- do you think this would be a good idea? It wo
> seemingly be easier than having to manually add yourself to a munch of BB
> lists.
The idea sounds ingenious... at least to me anyways.
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|02 I
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|04"Life is merely a play, and we are all actors."
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Digital Man
Re: BBS search engine
By: Evan Elias to All on Sun Apr 06 2003 12:41 pm
> 1. To BBS users and sysops -- do you think this would be a good idea? It wo
> seemingly be easier than having to manually add yourself to a munch of BB
> lists.
I think it's a great idea. Be sure to parse non-standard port numbers and such
as well.
> 2. BBS developers -- would you be interested in helping with a project like
> this? I could probably write the engine for it (preferably using Perl)
> sometime this summer, but I donn't yet have the skills for the web interf
> side of it.
What could I do to help?
digital man
Jazzman
Re: BBS search engine
> In any case, I'll post on this again this summer -- was just mentioning it
> early to see how much interest people had in it :)
Heya Evan,
How are your other projects going ? The Trivia door and the Usurper style
game?
Looking forward to them so wanted to ask..take care
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Evan Elias
Re: BBS search engine
By: Jazzman to Evan Elias on Tue Apr 08 2003 11:22 am
> > In any case, I'll post on this again this summer -- was just mentioning i
> > early to see how much interest people had in it :)
>
> Heya Evan,
> How are your other projects going ? The Trivia door and the Usurper style
> game?
>
> Looking forward to them so wanted to ask..take care
Going slowly, unfortunately :(
The beta version of the Trivia game is actually complete, I just need to find
time to write up the installation docs and the web site. Also need to go thru
the beta apps and pick testers.
The database currently has 450 questions, which isn't bad but isn't great
either. Hopefully once I get the beta out, I'll get a lot more questions in.
Very sorry for the delays, I was planning on having this beta out 2 months ago!
Sigh... my classes this semester are taking up a ton of my time... sometimes
it's hard to find time to do hobbyist programming when I spend a ton of time
programming stuff for class :( (I'm workin on my computer science degree)
As for the BBS search engine thing, what made me think of that was I'm taking a
class in Information Retrieval (basically covers models for search engines,
text classifiers, and web robots) so I already have some perl code for these
types of things that I could adapt fairly easily to handle BBS-related things.
Corey
Re: BBS search engine
By: Evan Elias to Jazzman on Tue Apr 08 2003 01:32 pm
> [1m [34mRe [0m [34m: [1m [36mBBS search engine
> [34mBy [0m [34m: [1m [36mJazzman [34mto [36mEvan Elias [34mon [36mTu
>
> > > In any case, I'll post on this again this summer -- was just mentionin
> > > early to see how much interest people had in it :)
> >
> > Heya Evan,
> > How are your other projects going ? The Trivia door and the Usurper style
> > game?
> >
> > Looking forward to them so wanted to ask..take care
>
> Going slowly, unfortunately :(
>
> The beta version of the Trivia game is actually complete, I just need to fin
> time to write up the installation docs and the web site. Also need to go th
> the beta apps and pick testers.
>
> The database currently has 450 questions, which isn't bad but isn't great
> either. Hopefully once I get the beta out, I'll get a lot more questions in.
>
> Very sorry for the delays, I was planning on having this beta out 2 months a
> Sigh... my classes this semester are taking up a ton of my time... sometimes
> it's hard to find time to do hobbyist programming when I spend a ton of time
> programming stuff for class :( (I'm workin on my computer science degree)
>
> As for the BBS search engine thing, what made me think of that was I'm takin
> class in Information Retrieval (basically covers models for search engines,
> text classifiers, and web robots) so I already have some perl code for these
> types of things that I could adapt fairly easily to handle BBS-related thing
ya really, Far West Trivia quit just after it's database hit like 190000
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Evan Elias
Re: BBS search engine
By: Corey to Evan Elias on Tue Apr 08 2003 03:03 pm
> ya really, Far West Trivia quit just after it's database hit like 190000
Eh, not really; latest version I saw advertised 60,000 questions. Granted,
that's a lot of questions, but many of them were outdated or too obscure
(IMHO).
My game will support 3rd-party trivia files as well, ie developers can take
trivia files from other games and run them through a converter to get files
that will work with my game. This could potentially add several thousand
questions to my game. I can't distribute these directly for copyright reasons,
but I will be able to provide links to 3rd party sites who will handle
conversions and distribution :)
Vortex
Re: BBS search engine
By: Evan Elias to Jazzman on Tue Apr 08 2003 01:32 pm
> Re: BBS search engine
> By: Jazzman to Evan Elias on Tue Apr 08 2003 11:22 am
>
> > > In any case, I'll post on this again this summer -- was just mentionin
> > > early to see how much interest people had in it :)
> >
> > Heya Evan,
> > How are your other projects going ? The Trivia door and the Usurper style
> > game?
> >
> > Looking forward to them so wanted to ask..take care
>
> Going slowly, unfortunately :(
>
> The beta version of the Trivia game is actually complete, I just need to fin
> time to write up the installation docs and the web site. Also need to go th
> the beta apps and pick testers.
>
> The database currently has 450 questions, which isn't bad but isn't great
> either. Hopefully once I get the beta out, I'll get a lot more questions in.
>
> Very sorry for the delays, I was planning on having this beta out 2 months a
> Sigh... my classes this semester are taking up a ton of my time... sometimes
> it's hard to find time to do hobbyist programming when I spend a ton of time
> programming stuff for class :( (I'm workin on my computer science degree)
>
> As for the BBS search engine thing, what made me think of that was I'm takin
> class in Information Retrieval (basically covers models for search engines,
> text classifiers, and web robots) so I already have some perl code for these
> types of things that I could adapt fairly easily to handle BBS-related thing
I think as long as you offer a way of editing the database for the questions,
it won't be THAT much of a problem(for trivia). The main thing is the game
engine, since questions can always be added on later. I think it should be
pretty popular, since the game was really only available for MBBS/Worldgroup
systems before...
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