Bot Contest

Zara- the Chatterbox Challenge is the most inclusive and well-done bot contest and it is once a year in April/May.

Eugene Meltzner - I have them but haven't posted them yet. With 100+ bots this year the contest has been a bit overwhelming to me. Hopefully soon...anyone feel free to e-mail me and I will sent them to you.

Early Scores in from 2 judges. Not clear yet how many more are to come. People don't always follow through with things but maybe 4 to 5 yet to come. Thought you would all like to see these though. I will be posting them to the contest site. (10 points is the best)

Judge 1:

Elbot by Fred Roberts-10pts
Alice by Dr. Wallace-9pts
God Louise by Joy Harwood-8pts
Ella by Kevin Copple-7pts
Talk-Bot by Chris Cowart-6pts
Hal by Zabaware-5pts
Jabberwock by Juergen Pirner-4pts
Jabberwacky by Rollo Carpenter-3pts
Little Mu by Jamie Kowalski-2pts
Zero by Computer Hope - 1pts

Judge 2:

Alice by Dr. Wallace-10pts
Ella by Kevin Copple-9pts
Elbot by Fred Roberts-8pts
God Louise by Joy Harwood-7pts
Jabberwock by Juergen Pirner-6pts
Talk-Bot by Chris Cowart-5pts
Little Mu by Jamie Kowalski - 4pts
Jabberwacky by Rollo Carpenter-3pts
Hal by Zabaware-2pts
Zero by Computer Hope - 1pts

I guess Duo will have to wait for next year's Chatterbox Challenge. Loebner doesn't look so appealing anymore.

Hello Chris,

The envelope please....

And this year's best overall Chatterbox Challenge winners are:
(1 being the best)

1) Alice by Dr. Wallace
2) Elbot by Fred Roberts
3) Ella by Kevin Copple
4) Talk-Bot by Chris Cowart
5) God Louise by Joy Harwood
6) Little Mu by Jamie Kowalski
7) Hal by Zabaware
8) Jabberwacky by Rollo Carpenter
9) Jabberwock by Juergen Pirner
10) Zero by Computer Hope

Attached are the final scores from all five judges.

Any questions/comments, please let me know.

James

P.S. The individual scores are posted to the contest site.

Congratulations to all the PF bots!!

Congratulations God Louise and Little Mu! Well done!

I would like to make one comment and this is not to criticize anyone or to take anything away from the winners but once against we simply didn't have enough judges. We started with 15 but only 5 judges actually returned scores for the finals. With only 5 judges it only take 1 bad score to do you in. Take God Louise for example. She had a good run going until one judge doomed her chances. If we would have had 15 judges that wouldn't have happened. We could have thrown out the high and the low score.

Maybe we need to actually pay the judges or offer some incentive for them to actually return their scores. Something I will try hard to address come next year.

Chris

I think one of the difficulties is that it's hard to find someone really interested in the contest who doesn't have a bot in it.

How were the judges recruited, Chris?

I think that the judges could be botmasters, as long as they were forbidden from judging their own bots.

Joe Repka - James handled all the judges so I really don't know all the details. I know he had difficulty just like I did in past contest.

Doly - unfortunately the botmasters as a whole didn't seem to interested either based on the number of votes the contest received when they were asked to select the 2 additional bots.

Chris

Kudos to Chris and James and all the others behind the scenes who put on what I think was a pretty good contest this year, and well done to all the PF bots that placed.

Re the issue of lack of judges, one of the detractors from wanting to be one has to be the workload. Checking out and rating 100 or more bots really is a bit of a chore. I think that having contestants from last year automatically entered into the next one really makes the workload tougher. I say this because I know a few of the PF bots entered have botmasters that don't seem to come out to play any more and probably aren't even aware they're still entered. This also means they haven't been worked on or improved, and thus they kind of clog the works up without contributing much.

And I'm sure there are a few of us that, even if we do still work on our bots, would have preferred to sit this one out either because the bot was in a kind of in-between stage of some major upgrading, or because they haven't been worked on much in that 12 months between contests.

So to cut a long story short, I would recommend having a situation where every bot must be re-entered every year rather than carrying over. Otherwise there's just more work being generated for the already over-taxed judges that do put in the effort.

Anyway, enough from me. It was still a really good contest this year, and there was a very positive vibe about the whole thing.