Bot Contest

Well, I thought the questions were fine. They seemed to be geared more towards conversational ability than specific programmed knowledge, which is 90% of what makes a bot great.

The thing that ticks me off, I had a few missed questions where I just had the wording wrong, and I also had a couple that should've hit and didn't. All of these gave xnones:

How are you feeling?
I had how are you feeling today. I should've caught that by now.

Do you own any pets?
I had do you have any pets. So close.

What is your favorite color?
I had (my|your) favorite color, which should've hit.

why?
I have ^why and $why ?$ (re) raw, either should've hit.

Can you tell me a funny joke?
I had tell me a joke, so close.

You guys are hilarious! I dont think my wife would be happy at the idea of me fathering all these bot children without her knowledge. So let's just say you're all the creators of them and I built the 'city' in which they live.

I go almost always by 'The Professor' here, not my real name, so many dont know that name. I dont mind a bit- I made this place for fun, not recognition.

So most people think the questions were fair, and I do too. Everyone keep in mind it cost nothing to enter the contest and Wendell is donating his time to do it.

I think the questions were fair and I've enjoyed reading the transcripts. The only thing that really irritated me was the problems with the 'what day is this' question. Osiris has a highly ranked keyphrase for this, as do most other bots but as far as I know, none of the PF bots answered this properly. Most gave answers like "This is a morrow" or "This is an eve". I'm guessing it was an engine problem. Still, well done everyone!

I think a few got it right...unfortunately Julie didn't.
In Julie's case, it was a ranking problem, but it works fine now that I adjusted it. I just had the intended keyphrase ranked too low. That'll never happen again!

Steve got it right.

I stand corrected.

W00t! (Microsoft says that means We Own the Other Team... Pfft, like they would know.)

I think those people debating the fairness of the questions are missing the point. All questions are fair. A person in a conversation with another person can ask any question they want. They may not get an answer but they can ask it nevertheless. So should this hold true with bots especially if our ultimate goal is to simulate a real person. Now in a contest environment we have to set limits because we are looking to announce a winner. If we asked 10 extremely difficult questions and no bot was able to answer them what have we accomplished? Likewise if we ask 10 easy questions and everybody gets them right we are in the same boat. So the questions were a mix of both...easy and hard.

The only question of unfairness with any question would be if we didn't use the same questions for every bot but as you know we did just that.

I always find it interesting that no bot in any contest that we ever had has score a perfect score however if you take the collective responses for all the bots participating we have come extremely close. That is always encouraging to me to continue to work on my bot because I can see plain as day my bot could have done better. I don't think there was a question asked that couldn't be answered. God Loiuse answered the Benji Adams questions as well as the day of the week. Correct me if I'm wrong but even so collectively the PF bots did extremely well.

Anyway I have read through all the transcripts and no one bot really stands out above all the rest. I think it is going to be extremely close between a lot of bots. With that said and having so many bots participating I think it's only fair to award a silver and a bronze medal as well to the second and third place finisher. These are nice medals and I'm sure you will be proud to receive them. I hope we can do a similar contest next year just between the PF bots. I will gladly be a part of it as long as it's done in conjunction with the CBC.
Maybe we can over time turn this into something big with cash awards. I like to think big

Best,
Wendell

Professor, thank you so much for all the hard work you have done here. Too bad your own bot was so mean to you.

Wendell, thank you for putting on this contest.

I'm having a great time and am pleasantly surprised at how well some of the newer bots did in their conversation with the judges.

Wendell: thank you for the time and effort put into the contest at no recompense- that's mighty good of you. Just to add my two cents inre to fairness: I thought that all the q's were fair enough, the closest to unfair was the "Benji Adams" q, but it would have been unfair if you'd asked "Who is Wilhelm Riech" or someone equally as obscure whereas Benji is a presence pretty well felt here to anyone seriously programming a bot and thus a key for his name isnt an unlikely concept; though, I think most botmasters use a "who is X" approach to avoid keying dozens or hundreds of names.

Also I second the sentiments of Butterfly Dream inre to appriciation of the Prof's work here- you make it all possible Benji, thank you.

Wendell,
You've done a great job with all aspects of the contest, including the questions, which all participants have agreed were excellent and completely fair (unless the one real critic has a PF bot he's not revealing). I'm not sure why someone who doesn't even have a bot in the contest would be so passionately insulting ...
In any case, as you said, the contest is most fun for botmasters that enjoy the opportunity to challenge themselves, and more clearly see how they might improve. In this way, your donated time has truly been a gift to us. Anyone who feels otherwise has the free will to participate or not in 2006. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

The main thrust of the critique of the questions seems to be that they were too easy -- the fact that no one bot answered them all refutes this idea.