I'm learning Python and would like to start a small project. It seems that making IRC bots is a popular project amongst beginners so I thought I would implement one. Obviously, there are core functionalities like being able to connect to a server and join a channel but what are some good functionalities that are usually included in the bots? Thanks for your ideas.
I'm also in the process of writing a bot in node.js. Here are some of my goals/functions:

map '@' command so the bot detects the last URI in message history and uses the w3 html validation service
setup a trivia game by invoking !ask, asks a question with 3 hints, have the ability to load custom questions based on category
get the weather with weather [zip/name]
hook up jseval command to evaluate javascript, same for python and perl and haskell
seen command that reports the last time the bot has "seen" a person online
translate command to translate X language string to Y language string
map dict to a dictionary service
map wik to wiki service
IRC bot functionalities