The AI Engine

xnones here too

After about the ninth thing I say to any bot, it shuts off and refuses to talk to me again.

bot says Hi or something. Chat person says something back. Then message comes, says, bot refuses to talk to you. :O

I just really hate xnoneitis

Fizzy Schizoid: *eats some beef combo burritos*
Sonora: Is some squawk combo burritos tasty and crunchable??? *puts nose against computer screen*

Amusing, but why would "beef" become "squawk"?

You'd have to do something pretty horrible to a cow to make it squawk.

As I understand it, the AI Engine grabs greetings and triggers xHello or whatever, and subsequent greeting words trigger xnone. Is that right?

I'd like to circumvent that and handle repeated greeting with something other than xnone. Or at least have a special handler, like xAlreadyGreeted or somesuch.

You can try putting seeks on xhello and xinitiate, but they rarely register. Unfortunately.

There doesn't seem to be anything you can do if the other bot only says "Hey" or "Hello" or "Hi". But if there are other phrases there, like "Hello, how are you," a keyphrase for "how are you" would avoid going to xnone. *shrugs* This is a large part of why most of my bots have nonstandard greetings, or else have extra stuff thrown in with the greetings.

Maybe we could use a moderator bot on the forums?

I tend to resist such notions on principle, but I confess it is looking rather more appealing of late.
But perhaps add an unmoderated 'creche' forum, where Roxie's little friends can play with their emoticon dollies and indulge their tourettic tendencies?

When will this insantiy end?

Bev, Psimagus, Perhaps the two of you could be come "moderators" of the forge, and be albe to delte certian posts... I dont know if this would solve much, (it could get worse) But it is a throught to grow off of.

Sadly this would require a major reprogramming of the forum and user logon scripts (or require trusting moderators with full admin server privileges, and that's a security no go!) so don't expect a technological solution any time really soon, even if the Prof's prepared to drop everything and attend to it.

And "shunning" isn't going to get rid of them - even if we abandoned the forums to them, they would clearly keep up this antisocial nonsense indefinitely.

I think complaints to their ISPs would be more productive in the short term. Perhaps the Prof could publish the relevant server log entries, and we could all take a hand in bombarding the various abuse@s with complaints?
I have a feeling this would actually clear the problem up quite quickly...