Newcomers

ditto. Its hard to know exactly what the next person will want to talk about right off the mark, and they only give you on average 3-5 replies and if you don't catch their interest, you can bid their IP# goodbye! That's life...that's what all the people say...you're riding high in April, shot down in May...

miss mouse, written in swiss cheese code, lots of holes but generally good on bread.

ezzer, it means it's as organized as a plate of spaghetti, and just as impossible to change/move just one thing without upsetting something else. I am getting better, though.

HEy, I'm the spaghetti king! It helps to use FIND option on wordpad, so when you want to find another area where a certain keyphrase is used, you search for it and then you can change it, and find another instance of it, and another, and pretty soon it's midnight and you're only half through your file...

I am just starting with PF and I have a very simple question to start off with. How do I have the bot start the conversation with something other than a simple "Hello?" I would like the bot to start with "Hello. How may I help you?" or "Hello. Welcome to (my site)?"

change the xHello responses

Thanks, Shadyman. I know it's too early form me to get discouraged but as I try to build my HelpBot I am finding it difficult to deal with memory, list searches and responses based on input. For instance, I have a record label with all comedy CDs. I want folks to be able to type a name and have the bot search the name and give a response based on that name without having to do a key phrase for each name. Possible? (BTW: www.uproarcomedycd.com)

Butterfly- ohhhh...I have that a little, too- any time I want to change a keyphrase, first I have to run that keyphrase through a search to find all the seeks so I can change them too...and if I change the rank of one thing, inevitably I have to tweak many others...the one that kept me coming back is my keyphrases that use the word "have"- and making sure that "i have (verb)" as in past perfect tense differentiates from "I have got", where people say "I've got a (noun)" (or whatever), and it really just means "I have"...I think she's straight on that now... *crosses fingers*

muzik:

Not sure that's possible yet, but I know what you're getting at. Basically like cross-referencing a table

muzik: it would be possible to give generic responses based on having the CD names in a personal plugin (i.e. create a plugin with all the names in), but not specific ones for a particular CD...

muzik: You could maybe make default AI script in settings where the default memvalues are the names of CDs...hmmm...I'd have to think about it a little more, with examples of what you're trying to make happen. That sounds really interesting.

Concerning bot holidays:

It can indeed be amusing to see one's bot talking in an odd way every so often. But it can be frustrating, if you are trying to use your transcript as a basis for improvement, to have to try to figure out what the bot(s) really said! I would therefore, with all due humilty and respect, suggest the following: put the dialogue into the transcript before distorting it. Human chatters will still get the dialect on-screen.

Walk in Beauty, Irina