06/04/2023

Upcoming Changes to RITA and what we have been doing.

PLEASE NOTE: This Update was accurate at the time of sharing. Please refer to our Support documentation to ensure accurate and up-to-date information is known, If you have any questions or concerns please join our Discord Server and someone will assist.

1.4.0 is Here

Over the last 3 months, There have been a lot of changes to RITA, some you can see yourself, Other are systems, Services and Equipment changes. so I'm going to quick-fire some here.

* We have a new Permanent Member of the Development Team, Qjuh. 
* They have been instrumental in full re-write to support ESM seen in V1.3.24
* Has pushed over 55 Updates to V1.3 Lifecycle 
* Fixed countless bugs i have caused :)
* We have a New Junior Developer who joined the team, Z3US
* We are in the process of developing a [REDCATED], more to come soon.
* We have implemented our own Machine Learning API (More Below)
* We have Added 19 New Languages for Google API, These can be found V1.4.0
* We took the leap and purchased a dedicated server. 
* We remove Ko-Fi as a payment and subscription method as it was too unreliable for our needs. 
* We introduced slash commands (All down to Qjuh)
* We updated to ESM code standard (Still confuses me to this day)
* And many many more changes. 

RITA is Almost 1 Year Old, Again

* RITA was Born - 12/07/2019
* Unified RITA Launched - 01/04/2021
* Unified RITA Support was ended - 01/02/2022
* RITA went in to Beta Testing - 01/04/2022
* RITA was Re-launched - 01/05/2022

A Year of RITA (Well...)

2022 saw over 780 new users subscribe to RITA! At the start of 2022 RITA was using version 1.3.0, now as we start 2023 RITA is using version 1.3.24. 

Thanks to the tireless work of the RITA development team. 

More than 150 individual updates, fixes, and patches have been made. 

Resulting in over 32,000 lines of new code being added and nearly 16,000 lines of code being deleted due to refactoring and optimization. 

RITA Message Statistics for 2022:

* Total characters translated by RITA = 949,434,521
* Total messages translated by RITA = 17,749,158
* Translations sent by RITA in embed off mode = 13,119,780
* Translations sent by RITA in embed mode = 7,267,768
* Pictures sent by RITA = 462,227
* Number of messages translated via flag emoji reactions = 155,512
* Gif’s sent by RITA = 131,845

Numbers like this are what keeps us going, knowing that you truly use RITA to her full potential! 

Machine Learning (ML)

As of July 2022, and as part of the RITA development process, We have been working to create our very own machine-learning translation model.

For those who aren’t familiar with a machine learning model or a neural network. Instead of relying on Google to translate the messages. We are using various data sets to train the machine learning model via different means so that eventually we can offer an even lower-cost translation bot. With the same level of translation quality you’ve come to expect and depend on from RITA. This is a long process and we don't expect to be seeing immediate returns on this investment for a while yet, but the aim has always been to provide a service that is affordable and reliable for all of our users.

The total character translated with RITA’s ML engine as of 01/01/2023 was 9,721,043

"Softer" Soft Limits

As first shown in our old "v1.4.1" version - which was never fully released - soft limits have been enabled in all RitaBot's BITA (RED) and RITA (BLUE, YELLOW). In order to make sure some don't suffer from translation to/from languages that are not yet fully optimized in our ML engine we have created Softer Soft Limits. 

Plans have already had "Soft limits" in place since launch,These values were 200k, 450k, and 700k for Casual, Tinkerer and Pro Plans respectively.

Once a user hit these limits, no suspension activity took place however we would enquire about the usage to ensure validity, Once we knew it was all hunky dory we would not inquire again.

These "softer" version of our soft limits go into effect when your server reaches or exceeds the soft limit for the month for their respective plan, in which only languages that have been optimized to a respectable quality will use our ML engine. Otherwise they continue using Google.

Ex. You are a "Casual" Plan user, Your server has used 300k characters since the start of the month.

You use 3 languages on your server, English, German and Russian.

You translate to en -> ru and en -> de. German [de] will use Google whilst Russian [ru] will use ML. This is because German is not Optimised and would provide a poor-quality of translation.

Please see S.A.L.T.S Policyfor a list of Support Languages.

We're continuing our work on RitaBot to optimize as many languages as possible. 

If you find any strange translations while using ML translation for that language then please open a ticket in our Support Server and mention @Artanis - Dev Director.

New Supported Languages

We have update our list of support languages, These will now work in all commands. Note: note all have suported Language Flags.

If we have used the wrong flag we apologise, Were only matching language codes from Dicords Supported Emoji list. Please let us know and we will update it.

Language	Lang Code	Flag Emoji code (Discord)
Assamese	as	:flag_as:
Aymara	ay
Bambara	bm	:flag_bm:
Dhivehi	dv
Ewe	ee	:flag_ee:
Guarani	gn	:flag_gn:
Javanese	jv or jw
Kinyarwanda	rw	:flag_rw:
Lingala	ln
Oriya	or
Oromo	om	:flag_om:
Quechua	qu
Sanskrit	sa
Tatar	tt	:flag_tt:
Tigrinya	ti
Tsonga	ts
Turkmen	tk	:flag_tk:
Twi (Akan)	ak
Uyghur	ug

2023 So Far

RITA Message Statistics for 2023 So Far: 

* Total characters translated by RITA = 325,017,612 - (949,434,521 Last Year)
* Total messages translated by RITA = 12,151,259 - (17,749,158 Last Year)
* Translations sent by RITA in embed off mode = 8,145,058 - (13,119,780 Last Year)
* Translations sent by RITA in embed mode = 3,928,184 - (7,267,768 Last Year)
* Pictures sent by RITA = 231,307 - (462,227 Last Year)
* Number of messages translated via flag emoji reactions = 78,017 - (155,512 Last Year)
* Gif’s sent by RITA = 60,490 - (131,845 Last Year)

As you can see, We are holding strong, and expect to see the number exceeding previous usage by the same point this year.

Coming Soon New Features

See what I did there, I edited the Title, and now you can do the same in RITA.

With 1.4.0 we have introduced Message editing, At the moment it will always use our ML Engine until we can work out how much of an impact it will have on usage, and how we quantify that usage. 

So the supported languages for message editing are the same as the support languages for translation. If the language is not supported the edited message won't be translated. 

Version Command

As a way to see all the changes we have made directly from RITA you can use the version command. The same as before but with a added twist. 

!tr version
!tr version [version number]
    eg: !tr version 1.4.0
    
The original command will still show you what version RITA is running, and the version number specific command will show you what changes have been made. 

Just a little way to keep you updated without constant posts about minor version changes. (Or fixes to bugs I have cause, although Qjuh is quickly catching up on me for breaking changes)

RITA Who? Blue, Yellow, Red, Purple

As many of you have seen, there are a few versions of RITA. So I wanted to quickly tell you what they are, why they exist and what it means for you.

When we wanted to make a change to RITA, we had to take her offline, upload the new changes then reboot her, test and see if it impacts anything, if it did then we had to revert and try the process all over again. 

Not very efficient. So just like BITA, (our testing bot - not the same as global changes) we wanted to come up with a way to ensure reliability, allow us to continue to develop with minimal interference and provide a stable service to meet our uptime guarantees, thus the new family member. 

You can distinguish the difference by the Bot Icon, BLUE, YELLOW, RED and PURPLE.

RITA - BLUE

This bot is no different from YELLOW in terms of core functionality. Updates may be a day or so behind YELLOW but this is because we will not interrupt service to BLUE users to reboot and install fixed (unless necessary). Automatic reboots take 17 seconds on average and they happen each night at midnight GMT.

RITA - YELLOW

Our public bot, which is still in all 18k servers from before had to charge for our services. As such boot time is around 60 seconds on average and service can be disrupted throughout the day when we push bug fixes. With its large server base (although they are inactive) it generates a large amount of diagnostic data, allowing us to track down bugs and start to fix them.

BITA - RED

Our BITA bot, this BOT runs an experimental build, may have bugs and uptime is not guaranteed, you can not request access at this time to use BITA and access is invite only. All new features are tested on BITA first to make sure they work and features, functions, commands and slash commands can be added and removed at any time.

RITA - PURPLE

Developmental features, Future projects and local testing bot. This is only used by developers to test locally on test machines and servers, you may see it from time to time but it won’t respond to commands given by non-developers.

Any user that pays for RITA can swap to use RITA BLUE at any time, and we encourage and request you do so, this means we provide you the best service we can. So, in simple and short terms, we have a new member of the family. But nothing is lost in the service we provide, only improving it. 

You can invite RITA Blue by clicking Here or clicking on RITA’s Icon & click “Add to server”

The Boring Stuff

So now on to a boring topic for most, (Is it sad I really enjoy this part), we have had to make some changes to our policy documents. Please see the respective documents for the changes. 

These Policies take effect as of May 01, 2023, Until then the preceding version are still in effect.

S.A.L.T.S PolicyPrivacy PolicyRefund PolicyRight To Exit

Thats a Wrap

Thats it for now, but we will have some more info for you when we can. and if you want to check out all the changes made, dive into our change logs over in Version History

From all the Development Team at RITA, See you soon.