Which do you guys like to see in a bot's access levels?
Ranking System (1-100) or w/e
Flagging System (Flags like BZOA ect.)

I prefer flags because you can give users access to specific parts of the bot without having to give them access to other features implicitly.

I'm going to agree with Skywing. Using a flag system allows you to assign specific "jobs" for users. Such as giving a user access to designation commands only(such as resign and desigate).

Using a flagging system is much more flexible than using a number system (unless the number system has specific numbers assigned to do different things instead of an ascending nature, but that'd be confusing and redundant since flags are more rememberable).

BTW, I voted for number system by accident, so keep in mind that it's REALLY O#1Votes+1 and O#2Votes-1.

Flags are better :D

ranking system, can provide equal access to everyone with ease. If someone does something stupid you can always remove their access and they can deal with it.

My bot uses a unique system made up of both, you can assign flags and a rank. If you dont assign a flag though, for each specific rank, you are given certain abilities some flags have, just incase.

Flags own, plz.

ild hafta say go with both because flags are more efficient but then ya get people crying because they dont get the same thing as others so use both just specafy what commands each access cant use when you add them

The people "crying because they dont get the same thing as others" as you say shouldn't be using your bot anyway if you think flags are better.

Both flags and rankings are good.

Rankings are more simple, and if you are going to make a simple command structure (which I personally prefer...) it makes things very easy, and laid out.  It seems easier for everyone.

Flags are good, because they allow much more flexibility of granting access to specific users.  As mentioned before, it allows people to have "jobs."

A good way to balance this would be to make a ranking system (say 1-5?) encompassing every command.  Then with the flags, you can add extra commands to certain people.  This way you have a simple basic command structure, with the option added complexity you may want to have.

The problem is that your average Bnet user won't be able to understand that! A mixture is too complex.

Flags tell you exactly what someone can and cannot do - rank just tells them if they can do more or less than someone else (and half the time there are lots of "ranks" that are the same as other ranks because they use a 100 point scale when there are only 8 tiers of access).

[quote][11:07:22] <From: Tec]@USEast> kal-zakath@azeroth => kal-zakath@azeroth: CDJMNOQS[/quote]

That is much easier to understand, for me.

If you have a mixture of both, you can have a newbie guide with your bot.  It can tell you not to worry about the flags, and only use the ranks.  And as for the 100 point scale thing, that would be why I suggested a simple 1-5 ;)

I think it'd be interesting to have a combination system of rank and flags. I prefer flags myself if I have to choose between them, but a combination might be even better.

The idea then would be that people of a certain rank could promote/demote/ban/unban/whatever people below them in rank but couldn't touch people of higher rank.

You may then think of rank as safelisting/empowering and flags as giving access to sections.

When you keep building on this, simple numerical rank will probably be insufficient. You'll need the ability to make groups and creating a generic hierarchy. Group leaders, etc.

Maybe we don't need fully this much access control for "just a bot" though?

Personally, I've always liked the idea of a mixed ranks and flags system; whereas, ranks specify the base set of flags a person gets when promoted/demoted, and then admins can set specific flags for specific users as needed/wanted.

That maintains a hierarchy *while* allowing full control over who has full control (heh).

When a user gets promoted/demoted, their flags get set to that rank's base flags, unless they have a specific flag forcing the bot to keep the user's current flags (or maybe add the flags that they dont already have).

But what I don't like about most flags systems is that they use only letters for flag identifiers... that's quite limiting.

Letters... Limiting how? It's possible that using whole words would make it easier to understand them, but there's nothing stopping you from implementing long explanations in a bot gui "B - Ban this user on sight". It's just not convenient to do something like

setuser evilspammer ban_this_user_on_sight
setuser adron access_allowed_to_talk,access_allowed_to_ban,safe_from_being_banned

If what you want is more flags than 26 (or 52, including lower-case letters), I suppose once I had that many things I wanted to enable on a per-user basis I'd have to think it over again. It would be a lot of work to type in more than 52 different whole word flags in a command line too....

Back on PLATO (the original multiuser networked gaming environment), we had available to programmers a tool called an Access Block.  It was a front end for some storage of groups, users, and rights, and sets of rights.  It handled the creation and storage of everything, so that from code we called its interface and the proper bits were checked in storage back on the mainframe.  The value returned was what we'd now call the effective rights, which we could evaluate through the tool's functions.
[pre]
Access Block GrokNotes
User / Group    Set Rights
grok / p        Owner
Other /pso      Moderator
Other / p       Moderator
Other / Other   Author
Other / student Read
Other / newbie  None
bauer / s       Write-Only
[/pre]
Thus "grok of group p" had the set of rights attributed to 'Owner', while "Other of group p" was a had the rights of a moderator.

"bauer of group s" was assigned explicit permissions of write-only .. which actually meant he could submit to, but not read, the contents of the file.  This was a nice feature for bug reports on the system.  We could get reports from people into a group notes that all us programmers could read, but not the general population.

I'd have to go with flags all the way. When I see .setuser WolfSage 100, that confuses me compared .user WolfSage +MSB.
With flags, you can guess what most of the commands mean. Not only that, but you can explicitly control what everone can do. And if you get sick of having to add the same flags to people, then you can have groups (Like Moderators for instance.) It makes a lot more sense, I don't see how a mix would make anything easier.

Flags are byfar the best ;)