Quick Commands

This page is a quick and rough summary of commands. If you'd prefer a more detailed version, see the full documentation.

What is TARS?

It's an IRC bot to aid SCP Wiki staff.

Whenever you see a command such as .search, keep in mind that you can also use this command by pinging TARS at the start of your message: TARS: search. Anything in [square brackets] is optional.

Features

SCP-matching

TARS will provide a link for a message that's just "SCP-XXXX" or that contains "!SCP-XXXX".

Chevronning

TARS: ^

Forces TARS to reevaluate previous messages until it finds something that meets one of the following criteria:

• A command that it previously ignored because another bot was present
• A command that starts with the wrong character (e.g. !search or search)
• A message containing any SCP numbers
• A message that is equal to the name of a page on the wiki

Append a number after the chevron to change how many messages are checked, e.g. TARS: ^ 20. Limit of 50, default 10. More chevrons skip commands.

An empty message that pings TARS and nothing else, eg TARS:, is equivalent to TARS: ^ 1.

Deferral (to other bots)

Most commands will not trigger if another bot is in the channel. Look for J and/or H after the command name to see whether or not this is the case for each command.

However, if either of those bots fails the request (e.g. not finding anything in a .search) then TARS will automatically try as well. (If TARS also fails to find anything, it won't say anything.)

To force TARS to parse a command, either ping it at the start of the message, or prefix the command with two dots, e.g. ..search.

General Commands

.help

J

H

Provides a link to both this page and the full documentation.

.search, .sea, .s

J

H

Searches the wiki for pages.

.search [title] [--regex regex] [--tags tags] [--author author] [--rating rating] [--created created] [--parent parent] [--fullname] [--summary] [--select type number offset]

• [title]
  Search for pages whose title contains all of these words. Use quotemarks to wrap phrases.
• --regex, -x [regex]
  Filter pages by a regular expression.
• --tags, --tagged, --tag, -t [tags]
  Filter pages by tags. +scp means pages tagged scp. -scp means pages not tagged scp.
• --author, --au, -a [authors]
  Filter pages by exact author name.
• --rating, -r [rating|ratingrange]
  Filter pages by a rating number. Prefix the number with any of >, <, =. Default is >. Can also specify a range of ratings with two dots, e.g. 20..50. Ranges are always inclusive.
• --created, --date, -c [date|daterange]
  Filter pages by date of creation. Absolute dates must be in ISO-8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY-MM or YYYY). Relative dates must be a number followed by a letter to specify how many units of time ago; valid units are s m h d w M y. These units are not case-sensitive, except for m/M! Use m for minutes and M for Months.
• --category, --cat, -y [category]
  Exactly the same as --tags, except for Wikidot categories instead.
• --parent, -p [url]
  Filter pages by their parent page.
• --fullname, -f
  Instead of searching for all words in title individually, TARS will search for an exact match. Equivalent to wrapping the whole search term in quotes.
• --summary, --summarise, -u
  Instead of providing a link to a single article, TARS will summarise all articles that match the search criteria.
• --random, --rand, --ran, -d
  If your search matches more than one article, TARS will return a random one from the list.
• --recommend, --rec, -m
  If your search matches more than one article, TARS will determine and return which of those articles most needs extra attention.
• --newest, --new, -n
  If your search matches more than one article, TARS will return the most recent one.
• --order, -o [order]
  What order should the results be returned in? random/recommend/recent/none.
• --limit, -l [number]
  The number of results will be limited to this number. The rest will be cut off and forgotten.
• --offset, -f [number]
  This number of results will be removed from the top of the list.
• --verbose, -v
  TARS will explicity state exactly what search criteria it thinks you want. Probably not useful for anything other than debugging.
• --ignorepromoted
  Ignore articles that have already been promoted. TODO remove this from documentation

If TARS finds more than one article that matches your criteria, it will provide a list of matches and ask if you meant any of them. To pick your article from the list, see the showmore command.

.lastcreated, .lc, .l, .recent

J

H

TARS will generate a list of the 3 most recently created pages.

.lastcreated [amount] [extra arguments]

• amount
  The number of pages to show. Default is 3, max is 10.
• extra arguments
  You can use any of the arguments in .search.

.regexsearch, .regexsea, .rsea, .rs

Exactly the same as search, except your search terms are parsed as regular expressions.

.showmore, .sm

J

H

When TARS presents you with a list of articles to pick from, use this command to pick which one you want to see.

Use .sm or .sm 0 to see the whole list.

.authorpage, .author, .au

J

H

.au [username]

Fetches the author page for a given user. You must specify their Wikidot name exactly, although if you name an IRC user, TARS will check its list of aliases (see .alias) as well. If you don't specify anyone, TARS will try to find your author page instead (and it'll check your aliases, too).

.alias

.alias [name] [--add names] [--remove names] [--list]

Add an alternate name(s) for yourself into TARS' database. These names are used for .authorpage and .seen.

• name
  An IRC name. You can only --add or --remove aliases from this name if it's your current IRC nick (or if it's already one of your aliases), but you can --list anyone's aliases. If you don't include this argument, TARS will assume that you mean your current IRC nick.
• --add, -a
  A list of names to associate with your current IRC name. Separate multiple names with spaces. If your name contains a space, wrap it in quotes.
• --remove, -r:
  A list of names to remove from your list of aliases.
• --list, -l:
  List all aliases associated with the given name. If you don't include any flags at all, TARS will list the names anyway.

.seen

J

H

.seen name

TARS will tell you when this user last sent a message in the current channel, and when they last sent a message in any channel.

.tags

J

.tags [tags]

Equivalent to .s -t [tag].

.tag

J

.tag tag

TARS will provide a link to the page that lists all the pages with this tag.

Note that jarvis uses this command as an alias for .tags.

.wikiname

.wikiname MyWikidotUsername

Set your Wikidot username in TARS' database.

.user

J

S

.user user

TARS will provide a link to the user's Wikidot page.