Bot Contest

If you want your bot to seem more natural, try thinking of 6 or 8 topics that you think would be good for them, and write up a lot on all variations of associated words. Then in just a few places in other keywords, give a hint about those topics to steer the other person/bot in the direction of your favorite topics.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's usually preferable to give a much higher rank to noun-subjects that you would like your bot to talk about, than to words like why, how, because, etc.

Last, I would suggest making variations on some of the question words like this:
1. if
2. if you
3. what
3. what are you
4. what should

You can come up with phrases that sound much more natural that way.

I have (or will eventually) phrases like should i, can you, will you, i will, I should, do not have, are you, etc. and most of them work decently so far. Her expansion is getting slower though because I keep paying too much attention to what she's saying LOL

I still say you can make your own bot out of alice. Yes you can download the framework per se but you can also edit all of her responces to be your own responces and not that of alice.it takes time but it can be done. The other bots I mentioned are not aiml bots, but they can be programmed with responces that you pick for them, just like alice. Just because you download the skeleton does not mean that you have to use the body that came with it.

But from the descriptions I've seen, Alice processes language in a certain way, which means regardless of what responses you put in your Alice clone, it's still going to have whatever syntax limitations Alice does, unless you change that stuff too, in which case you might as well have made a bot from scratch. (If that sounded stupid, don't blame me for being uninformed. It's all Elvis's fault!)

I agree with Ladydyke, all the responses in alice can be disposed and you can strat from scratch and make your own aiml responses if you want to. And it is true Onyx, that alice has a type of processing called "SRAI." You can go check on the site if you want to know more... http://alicebot.org

Btw, sorry about that "Christ," Chris..... it's a typo and i've chat with your chat-bot, I like him very much

Sure it is possible but can you name me one person who has actually done so and where that bot is? Alice's database is huge...it would take forever and what is the point of doing so anyway? Geez, spend that time making your own. The Alice team has an army over there. She doesn't need any help. Besides OnyxFlame makes an excellent point. Regardless of what responses you add or change it is still going to be effected by the way in which Alice processes those responses. A lot of people who download Alice do so because they don't have a lot of programming experience. Well, the Professor has made it a lot easier for you. I would lot rather see people build their bots right here at PF than downloading Alice.

Chris

ZX20 You know The Professor called me Christ once....as long as it's not the anti-christ I can live with that. I've been rewatching The Omen movies recently.

Just outta curiosity, what do you guys think of some of the other bots out there, whether they're in the contest or not? I think my favorite so far is jabberwacky...it very rarely messes up its grammar, and if it doesn't understand you it frequently changes the topic of conversation rather than looking stupid. And it's funnier than a lot of bots out there. Elbot is easy to hold a coherent conversation with, but a lot of its responses are pretty canned. I've never talked to Alice personally, but I read a log from last year's Loebner contest and wasn't particularly impressed. Megahal just makes no sense whatsoever (the new version at least...its database must've been wiped since they posted its "best conversation ever"). There's also one called NICOLE which currently sucks (both in intelligence and in the interface) but I think it's mostly from stupid kids that like to swear and talk about sex being the only ones who've talked to it. From some of the responses I've gotten from it, I think it has a lot of potential, but it needs MUCH more information at its disposal before it stops sounding retarded.

My method of building my bot's responses up is this: I fix problems that appear in my transcripts, and then I think of possible responses that the other bot/human would make to what my bot says, and then make keywords for that. I think of whole conversations in my head that way, and they branch off several times(try going along with my bot's(NotKirby) knock-knock jokes - I thought of many different reactions people might have to that).

I should really add some seeks, but I don't wanna go overboard and make her TOO linear. I don't see why she should make any more sense than I do.

seeks are great! Don't worry, they don't make your bot too linear, unless you put in xnomatch in all of them. Plus, you can always put in a bunch of different possible responses to each seek.

Whose your bot Onyx?

I find it amusing to chat with Alice even though she does sound really twisted up every so often. You can generally tell who's used Alice as the base for their bot because they've forgotten to change some obscure response. For example, if you ask her "Are you immortal?" she will say "No I am immortal." Cybelle says that too.