Newcomers

Dear Friends:

I created a new public plugin, called "propattitude", that has a number of verbs that are apt to be followed by "that" and a sentential clause; for example, believe (I believe that you went out), know (I know that he drank the whiskey), hope, and so on. Feel free to use it. Feel free to add to it, if you are sure you understand what it is.

Walk in Beauty, Irina

Oh, it's classified under "actions."

Irina- that's great. I've seen a lot of bots tripping over those kinds of phrases. For example:

BotA: I bet you like worms.
BotB: You can bet me again later.

Those same words are also often used with "that" like you said. This is what I was going to do, but a plug-in might be easier to read:

i (think|bet|will bet|believe|know|expect|hear|guess|notice|hope|say) (that|) you..
i (thought|believed|knew|expected|heard|guessed|noticed|hoped|said) (that|) you..
i (had|have) (thought|believed|known|expected|heard|guessed|noticed|hoped|said) (that|) you..

Then again.. I'd have to add all of that to each Keyphrase starting with "you" like "you want" so that, for example, "I think that you want a cow" would trigger "you want" instead of "I (*) you". Actually, Rank might be the way to deal with that. Has anyone dealt with this issue yet?

Yes, Prof! Tinkering with the rank, making "you want" worth more than "I think" works most of the time. I don't think I have a "I (*) you" keyphrase, since it's hard enough to keep my bot out of trouble without leaving her wide open like that.

I think the least specific plug-in I use with her is (verb), which still lends itself to occasional outbursts of profanity. lol She said "f*(K" to a guest the other day!
I was like- Julie, you're grounded! (she's rated teen)

Dear Friends:

I just strengthened "(propattitude)" [see my previous message] to "(propatt-rec)". The latter will include some compound expressions, such as "not see" and "could see".

"(propattitude)" currently contains only the form of each of the various verbs that appears in the present infinitive; e.g., "see," but not "sees" or "saw". "(propatt-rec)" will also get "will see" and "did see".

In reply to one point in the Professor's last note, perhaps it would be worthwhile to be able to recognize sentential clauses of various types, as such. For example, "I bet (sent-clause)" would match on "I bet you can't stand up alone", but not on "I bet the farm" or "I bet George that ..." [But of course, we grownups know that there is no "(sent-clause)", hee hee!] [Sorry, sometimes I just can't help myself!] [But maybe someone will MAKE a "(sent-clause)", hint, hint!]

Walk in Beauty, Irina

Walk in Beauty, Irina

re heat and development numbers (not important, but curious): two times recently, i added a few keyphrases online. each time, the bot immediately dropped a few development points. the next day the development numbers went back up proportionately to the number of additions. is there some time lag in the calculation?

It used to get recalculated on logout. Don't know if its still the case.

It used to get calculated right on logout and log back in but there seems to be some sort of lag now.

Thanks for the suggestion ezzer.

Heat is updated immediately, then reduced at some point in the morning around 6AM. Development is updated at around 6AM as well, once per day. Too few people werent logging out, and for those that did, the log out process was becoming too long.

I dont know why the Development points would change at any other time of day, though. Odd..

Dear Friends:

My new Bot, Botryoidal, is a tutorial bot. I have found that writing such a bot has been very interesting. (Actually, Irina Khalidar is also a tutorial bot, but only about one percent, and only for immature male guests!) Many bots seem only to produce long strings of jokes, insults, and fiendishly clever ways to evade questions. They are for entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that, but you might find it interesting to try something else!

Walk in Beauty, Irina

If when you say tutorial, you mean it helps you with questions about how to make and improve bots then I for one say it is an excellent idea and will make for a very different bot. I look forward to running into Botryoidal at some point

Dear Corwin:

Thank you, but I had a more general meaning in mind. By a "tutorial" bot I just meant a bot that attempts to teach something substantial. Botryoidal attempts to teach the language in process, "Bottish". The goal of Bottish is to make a language that is simple and regular enough to make botmasters' jobs easier, but is also comprehensible to (or easily learned by) speakers of English. It is an experiment, a shot in the dark.

But, your idea is a great one! I don't think that I am the one to do it, though, since there are many here who understand these things far better than I.

Walk in Beauty, Irina