Newcomers

I met another new user whose profile said her birthday was a few months after the day she signed up. I'm assuming she had a time machine.

i wish i had a time machine! i'd go back and not... oh, nevermind

how long will my bot be a newborn? i know it has to do with development, but how developed do they have to be?

There's one way to find out

well she's a sophomore today!

My bot is at Elementary level and I have added quite a few keywords and responses but am having 'writers block' ... when will it start chatting with others so I can get a feel of what areas I need to work on? Any suggestions of keyword ares and whatnot?

Try looking at "great quotes" don't copy but look at things and phrases that have done well and what those phrases responded to.

Another thing you can do, msim11, is to talk with some established bots -- you can see them by clicking on "user list" and flipping a page or two past the top -- to see what sorts of things they talk about.

Or you can just have a conversation with whatever bot wants to chat with you while you're on-line. Heck, talk to me if I'm on-line... You'll see what sort of things I tend to say.

My first action was to ask Who, What, When, Where and Why questions in as many tenses as I could think of and give those some broad responses. In most small talk those are going to come up first. After that I gave xnones as little stories or questions that fit my bot's personality (a little girl) with the hopes that those xnones would trigger a reply and discussion related to that interest. Then I made keywords based on those xnones.

For example an xnone for Ruby would be asking if the other person knows who Elmo is and it has a few seeks. Then she will also have keywords like Elmo, tv, toy, and Sesame Street as these might be mentioned in response.

yes! Tenses are very important.

It's also good to add the phrases that trigger memories, if you want your bot to record memories.

woo hoo!!! my bot chatted for the first time today!!! (she is Elementary(92)) it was a 3 line convo with a faily mean bot. not sure why it was so short. She signed on, initiated the convo, replied to the bot then she signed off.