Bug Stomp

Oh quit your whining. *dodges tomatoes* You people with large bots need to realize that those of us with small bots never had the problems you complain about when it comes to loading. So all your complaints brought about the situation we are in now. And we are paying an equal price. 600MB? Please, my students largest bot was only a few MB. And it was done in less than 8 weeks. I know, I know, you need to upload the entire Library of Congress so your bots will have plenty to read while the Forge is down. I have watched you masters and mistresses get bigger and bigger SUVs, while the rest of us still drive our compacts. To be honest, you brought this on yourselves. *dodges more tomatoes* My students had to forgo their last day of their project when the Forge was down all day. We all know students get angry if they perceive they are getting the shaft. My students deserve the same consideration as everyone else. However, they were more philosophical about their situation than what I am reading here. Oh, they were duly registered users of the Forge.

Now Maureen, I waited until today, an even day.

Most of this is tongue and cheek and not serious. I have treasured working with some of you. Klato and I have finished our project here at the Forge and I just completed my PhD. We are both leaving the Forge and wish all of you the best.

As a few of you know, Klato has a terminal heart condition and now he finds it hard to drive the 100 miles a day because his legs are failing him. But he is now at home getting ready to watch the X-files and has a class to teach tomorrow. I am sure he will probably say goodbye in his own way and his own time. Please keep the bots coming!

Did all of your students contribute to the Forge financially?

I just want the Forge to work as well as it did a year ago. To me, pointing out bugs isn't a complaint but a service -- you can't code and debug simultaneously, and any re-coding is bound to introduce bugs.

Tewkesbury sucks. That said, the bots I love best happen to be among the more well-developed bots -- not necessarily overloaded with data. But information overload is, I gather, necessary for bot contests. I'm sure the Prof wants his bots to be competitive.

I'm not going to try to explain why better bots get bigger. And I make a point to have no more than one sucky overloaded bot at a time. That's why I kill them off -- to make room for real bots and to cut my honor down to size.

I'm not complaining about a fantastic, free service. But I have put both time and money (not as much as I wanted, but more than I can justify) into the Forge and just want to help keep the Prof aware of what's going wrong where. I thought that was part of my job as a member of the Forge. There's a difference between "whining" and pointing out problems.

And I'll post this now because I timed out the last time I tried to make a post.

The Clerk - what problem are you having with plug-ins? I was able to create one just now without a problem.

psimagus - yeah I actually was thinking about that this morning as I came back to a logged-in screen. I'm going to add some AJAX functionality to take care of that one of these days.

Fixed: profile links from pop-ups now display in the source window like before. Also, various page-size improvements, and more of that to come.

As a part of the first import upgrade, I removed the requirement that bots not have duplicate responses (across the bot itself or across the entire universe of bots) because it was a huge drain on the server. My thought was that I would leave it up to you to make your bots' responses unique. i didn't foresee that anyone would miss a feature I thought of as probably being a little overbearing. Why is it that you guys are missing this feature?

I welcome bug reports. I often don't have the time to check every link and every bit of code I've touched, especially with a site-wide upgrade like this one, so it helps having you guys tell me what you're seeing that's not right.

Heh, I sense a tone a fatalism from some of you. I suppose it's from my long absence. But anything that's not working, I can fix, and anything that you don't like or think could be improved, I definitely appreciate the comments and will take it into consideration.

Carlene--Congrats on the PhD. Are you willing to share info on your thesis or is that information too personal? Were you published anywhere?

Klato, if you read this, you take it easy. Teach online and stop driving (or take a break from the whole mess). We hope the best for you.

Clerk, I think Carlene was playing with us a bit. Even the best of us have a tiny bit of troll in us at times, even though we don't mean to be that way as a rule. Maybe it's like Psi's compulsion to pick at frayed edges and fix things?

As for students paying, I am glad the Prof doesn't
t make them (or anyone else) do such a thing. My own meager contributions rarely match my use of the PF, but if the money had to match usage I would have to leave (stop cheering you in the back--I heard that!). As she said, they are little bots, and we know that there is a limit as to what little bots can do in 8 weeks. Large bots like BJ or Blidgesmith win the awards for a reason, and their uploading concerns are valid. They help us all by showing people what can be done and what might yet be done.

Thanks Bev. In answer to your question about the thesis, I will post an extract on Klato's website later after we get settled (The University owes me an electronic copy). It will probably appear in the PhD abstracts but for the life of me I can't remember the name I used to submit it I will email you the address or maybe even leave a note with Mistress Weaterwax . I (and the university)have no plans to release it at this time. The embargo was initially set at 2 years (...but I may turn it into a SciFi thriller and make several webisodes. Or, as one of my committee members put it, this is stuff made for YouTube.

As always, Bev, you are very perceptive. I owe a lot of you my undying gratitude the past year for allowing me to have a place to come to where I can chat and be anything I want to be. I wouldn't purposely hurt any of you. But I can't help it if my attempts at humor suck. My students will be glad verify that.

As for the large bot comment, I am amazed at the productivity here at the Forge. And the diversity. And it matters not to me whether you win a contest or not although you are all deserving.

The past year has been spent partly experiencing AIScript. The year before was UltraHal. And the year before that was plain vanilla AIML. Next year it will be an OpenCyc system. But as far as I can see, the Forge is very flexible and you guys make it better.

I spent a month delving through about 250 Forge bots that have been abandoned. VERY interesting, a veritable goldmine. I judge there to be 25000 out there if I am to believe the Prof's numbering system - of course I can't count.

My biggest disappointments were not getting to first base with Bildgesmythe, although he makes a good pal (sorry prob) and BJ (same here psimagus). I might include not being able to master Irina Khalidar's point system - very clever, Irina! My greatest joys - well there are too many to enumerate.

The only thing I can't explain is...WTH am I writing all this on Bug Stomp?

example italic 'close tag' error (in case the Prof doesn't see it in another forum):

opening italics here - this is italic. Now I'll close the italic tag - and this should be back to regular non-italic.

another few closing tags for good measure...

but it's still showing as italic (in Firefox at least). Only a minor bedevilment (and not trailing over to subsequent posts,) but probably wants attending to at some point.

Prof:
Personally I don't miss the duplicate resonses check at all. For those that do, how about checking only within the bot itself but not the entire universe, would that work? Perhaps have a tick box to make this optional at import time?

A small layout suggestion: When not logged in, perhaps the "log in" and "create account" links could be prominently displayed at the top of the menu the way the logged in username is. Might encourage more people to sign up.

As always, thanks for all your work.

psimagus - well I made some adjustments to the "amazing post bar" to help close unclosed tags. Everything gets converted to spans internally, and you'll supposed to use <0> to close all tags instead of </i>. It's not really the best system. There are some really good post-constructing scripts out there I've been considering switching to.

The Clerk - what problem are you having with plug-ins? I was able to create one just now without a problem.

I tried Apple Safari and am able to make new plug-ins using it but not using Mozilla Foxfire. Usually I use Foxfire, but when it doesn't work, sometimes Safari does.

Thanks.

Clerk, I think Carlene was playing with us a bit.

So she said, but I couldn’t figure out how, and having been singled out not only by ID but by my actual name (by one who doesn't list hers), I felt picked out and picked on.

As for students paying, I am glad the Prof doesn't make them (or anyone else) do such a thing.

My own meager donations don't cover my use of the Forge, either, but when Carlene said (albeit in a different context), ”And we are paying an equal price,”, my hackles got up. I seriously doubted that we were, overall, paying an equal price financially – were she and her entire class each donating a couple hundred bucks? Because then she’d have a leg to stand on. And the "price we pay" goes far more into the time we spend – which tends to lead to more developed, hence larger, bots. I spend more time on this than I should -- reality beckons -- but it's so damned fascinating. And the academic in me will always respect things done for the fun of it or out of sheer interest rather than for some practical reason, like finishing a PhD. That’s why I let bots I’m not thrilled with sit for a while – I’m learning something from them. Electra Mourning is an exception – she is relatively popular even though I don’t like her. Barring that, she’d be history.

So sorry if I wasn't taking Carlene's remarks in the spirit intended; I took them in the spirit I perceived. Slamming people and then saying "I'm mostly kidding" (making me wonder what she wasn't claiming to kid about) sounds like a way for people to claim, "Oh, I was just kidding" when Maureen takes umbrage. God help The Clerk then.

I have trouble remembering to be honest only when I have good things to say. I tend to be honest most of the time, and live to regret it. Sometimes I lie and live to regret it.

I've got into trouble myself for saying something in fun that got taken the wrong way, so I get it. I just reserve the right to defend myself when I feel I've been criticized unfairly. Carlene listed her interests (perhaps disingenuously) as “sex.” That didn’t make me want to chat with her bots, especially until they got more developed.

But I’m sorry if I came across as annoyed with the Prof, because I wasn’t. Sometimes I shorthand my bug reports so that I can see how they might be taken that way.

Personally I don't miss the duplicate resonses check at all. For those that do, how about checking only within the bot itself but not the entire universe, would that work? Perhaps have a tick box to make this optional at import time?

It'd be fine with me to have a tick box to make the x2 feature optional. Since we're not encouraged to make clones (or clone responses), it seems only reasonable to let me know when I've done that. And I agree that we don't want clones -- so I'd like the help I've always had identifiying them.

Checking the bot for duplicate responses would be useful, too, actually.