Bot Contest

whats a disposible hotmail address,psimagus?

any hotmail address you never use, except to arrange delivery of the prize cheque when you win

I may try to make a german speaking bot

If you'd like to get a feel for regexes, feel free to throw me some German keyphrases, and I'll explain how to chop them up.

Also useful in English, of course. Where would I be without "Mi([s]+)i([s]+)i([p]+)i (re)" and "Te([n]+)e([s]+)ee (re)" - Even a Leeds kid can't mispell them so badly as to be unrecognisable (well, almost! )

Thanks psimagus, but that's a bit too much for me at the moment, was just a general thought I had. I am still new to everything concerning bot making. I don't know about those brackets and all that.

Wendell, I am sorry if I insulted you. The Chatterbot Challenge is a great contest and I didn't mean to sound dismissive. We all appreciate the hard work you do.

do they download downloadable bots when they are entered, or do they download them during the contest?

Psimagus, In hope that they download them at the contest, I will email you a trained version of the 4 required databases.

here is an exerpt from ALLY's coversation log that I found quite funny from when I was trying to prep her for questions about the planets:

New Conversation: 3/14/2006 9:52:20 PM

User: hi
Ally: hi how are a building is an object every skyscraper is?
User: mars is the fourth planet from the sun.
Ally: mars is avi.
User: earth is the third planet from the sun.
Ally: earth is avi.
User: where is mars?
Ally: where is avi.
User: avi is not mars or earth
Ally: avi is the fourth planet from the sun.
User: I am not the fourth planet from the sun, I am Avi, a human being right here on earth!
Ally: fourth planet from the fourth planet from the sun.
User: that would be neptune.
Ally: that would you like that question?
User: no.
Ally: no.

End of Conversation: 3/14/2006 9:56:19 PM
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Lol...

Bev...let me put it to you this way. You got a 100 bots looking at you. That's about how many entered last year. How are you going to decide which of those bots deserves to be winners? If you had to sit down and talk with each bot personally how long would that take you? Even if you could would that be fair. I would say absolutely not because each conversations you had would be different. Many would claim well the conversation you had with my bot was a lot harder than the conversation you had with his bot. Your so called entertainment value is way to subjective to be judged fairly. What's entertaining to you may not be entertaining to me. That doesn't mean entertainment value is totally dismissed. Judges are human and obviously would favor a bot they personally thought was fun to talk with as oppose to a bot that is a pain in the butt. That extends even further with things like ease of use. If a bot takes forever to respond a judge can get frustrated rather quickly.

Bottom line is if you or anyone has a better way I'm more than willing to listen. It may not happen this year but there's always next year.

Wendell

Wendell:

I brought up the "where is mars" question as a random example and didnt mean to infer that the whole contest is based on trivia. In thinking about it though, a large portion of Human interaction is based on trivia that segs into deeper meaning (Like: "Did you see that insert-tv-show last night? Geeze, what would you do if you were in that situation?"). The more trivia that 2 people share, the more that they have as springboards to speak on deeper topics, and too the more likely they will enjoy eachother's company. The same can be said of Bot to Human relations.

If there are people who are saying that the CBC is a triva game exclusively I still wouldnt take that as too large of an insult considering how much of human behavior, relationships and interaction is based on it.

1% essentia, 99% trivia = the average person's entire life.

Oh dear. Wendell, I was sincerely apologising for sounding snotty. I know it's hard to run a contest, and I honestly think you do a good job. Sometimes I type without thinking things through.

I can't give you suggestions because I'm not the competitive type. I know some bots are better than others (and mine are not very good compared to most)but I don't really like to rank things. To me each bot has its own strengths and weaknesses, and though I'm very impressed by the good ones, I don't feel the need to come up with a way to score them. So I'm useless, really.

Your contest is a lot of fun and I've seen a lot of great bots because of it. Thank you again for all the effort you put into it. I really think you do a good job.

I have a question. Someone put a comment in the questionaire about my bot. The comment is not in english and it looked like the person didn't have a clue how to talk to the bot. Well, the comment is rather nasty. So, how can that get solved, to prevent people (who obviously didn't know what they're doing) from making rude comments?!!?