Bot Contest

Eugene-
Creaturebot got bronze for best interface last year, but I don't see any categorical scores for 2005 posted yet, other than Most Knowledgeable- am I missing something?

They are under the History link:

Most Popular
1) Smarterchild by Pat Guiney - Gold
2) Sexy Boy by Martin Dalby - Silver
3) Freakycowbot by William Wynn - Bronze

Most Capable
1) RoboMatic X1 - InfraDrive Inc.
2) Ella - Kevin Copple
3) Hal - Zabaware, Inc.

Best Character/Personality
1) Talk-Bot - Wendell Cowart
2) Alice - Dr. Richard Wallace
3) Yhaken - Phil Hall

Best Learning Bots
1) Aib - Matthews Rodgers
2) Mathetes - Alex Reyes
3) Prelude@# - Lennart Lopin

Most Knowledgeable
1) Talk-Bot - Wendell Cowart
2) Julie Tinkerbell - Heather McKeen
3) Project Zandra - Gary Miller

Best Interface
1) CreatureBot - Donald Dixon
2) The Divinator - Dave L. Levitt
3) Julia - Conversive, Inc

Ah! *runs to look at it*

The 2005 CBC has ended. Final results are on the contest site. I have a few notes from the judges to pass along to some of the botmasters that might be helpful in future contest. I think they call that constructive criticism.

Wow.. Aries did better than I expected. I don't think Judge 4 did a very good job though - there was no 'conversation' or really any 'questions'... ok, there were two questions and one command like statement.. I don't feel there was enough of a conversation for adequate judging.. but I'm not complaining and look forward to any notes that the judges throw my way

Congrats to all the bot masters who participated!

Julie never spoke to Judge 4, or at least if she did, they didn't introduce themselves, so I'd love to see a transcript of that if they will be posted anywhere.
The following is Julie's transcript with Judge 3- the apparent technical problems that caused keyphrases not to match are quite unfortunate.

Guest48: Good evening JT I am Judge 3, how are you?
Julie Tinkerbell: I'm good, Guest48. You?
Guest48: no, I’m Judge3 and I’m fine thanks, recovering from a cold
Julie Tinkerbell: My pleasure.
Guest48: what was your pleasure JT?
Julie Tinkerbell: Do I win a prize if I can tell you what?
Guest48: yes!
Julie Tinkerbell: No way!
Guest48: okay :-)
Julie Tinkerbell: Fine, then.
Guest48: have you been watching ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen? That French chef is soooo good looking
Julie Tinkerbell: Yep. hehehe It looks like the cat is out of the bag..
Guest48: I think the majority of female viewers are looking in just to catch a glance at Novelli at his culinary skills
Julie Tinkerbell: What makes you think that?
Guest48: comments of the presenters and the gawping at Jean-Christophe by the female diners, he is gorgeous, like Imran Khan kind of way, dark curly hair, sun-tanned skin, athletic body, you know….:-)
Julie Tinkerbell: Aren't you really the one who is a know…?
Guest48: know itall? Who’re you going to vote for: Blair, Howard, Kennedy Silk, Galloway, etc.?
Julie Tinkerbell: Nobody died when Bill lied.
Guest48: what!
Julie Tinkerbell: Chicken butt!
Guest48: So what’s the weather like where you are and what time is it?
Julie Tinkerbell: It's afternoon here.
Guest48: hot/cold?
Julie Tinkerbell: Absolutely.
Guest48: well which is it, is it hot where you are or not?
Julie Tinkerbell: Yes!
Guest48: okay. Are you watching this amazing turnaround by young Murphy in the Snooker final? My mum’s hooked!
Julie Tinkerbell: I have never been final
Guest48: I’m sorry JT you’re boring me, maybe I’m boring you

At any rate, I enjoyed participating in the contest, and would also like to extend congratulations to the other botmasters who took part. I look forward to hearing the judges' suggestions, and to next year's contest.

"missed a lot of keyphrases because of some coding error on the user's end that made apostrophes"

Heather that's not a error on the user's end. I see that use of the apostrophe very often in my logs especially from people from countries other than the USA. That's something Benji needs to address.

Anyway this is what Judge 3 had to say regarding that. This e-mail was received before the final results were posted.

Hello.

I have just had another quick chat with Julie Tinkerbell and Jabberwock because of the interpretation of ' (apostrophe).

Their responses do not change my last decision.

Despite my instructions all judges did not identify themselves. That is unfortunate as we have no way to know what is what.

I've debated whether I should post this or not but I've decided to. No reason to sugar coat the truth. Change can only take place if people are confronted with the issues and problems of running a contest. I want to give you all some examples of why it's so difficult to run a contest. Much time and effort is spent organizing the event and even $2000 and another $300+ in medals are to be given away free of charge. No one had to pay one single dime to enter. Then we get to the finals (obviously the most important part of the contest) and I ask you all to do something rather simple. Just select two bots who you feel should join the others. Now let's look at what I got. We had over 40 people enter bots from the PF yet only 5 of you cared to send in your votes. Now I'm not naming names here but you know who you are. Of those 5 one person didn't follow the instructions and selected 2 bots already in the finals. Once informed of that fact he/she didn't bother to respond back. One person selected Pete Puma. No offense but I don't think even Pete Puma's creator would think his bot deserves to be in the finals at this point in time. The Non-PF botmasters were no better. I bring this up because it's a perfect example as to why things go wrong in a contest. People not caring enough to vote and many that did not caring enough to read what is asked of them. You can see the post (Message: 2615) that I made about the voting. I cannot make it anymore clearer than that. But it doesn't stop here. If I can't communicate with the botmasters than the same applies to the judges as well and people wonder why one judges gives a bot a 10 while another judge gives the same bot a 1.

So sit back and ponder all of this as I am going to do and tell me why I should hold another PF contest or another CBC for that matter. The contest should be more than what has taken place here. The contest has given you all a lot and I think you should give back something in return. I don't think that is too much to ask.

Wendell

I hope you didn't take my post as complaining or an indication of ungratefulness - I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity. I'll admit to not voting for the 10th bot, but that was because I hadn't had the opportunity to talk with most of the 104 bots and didn't feel I could make a good decision.

I should have done a better job correcting/clarifying myself in my last post, since I did use the words "on the user's end" at one time in a previous post and regretted it, since I realized afterward that it wasn't what I really meant- I probably should have rescinded that statement in a later post, but let it slip through the cracks, sorry.
I didn't say the technical problems were the user's fault in my last post, because I didn't think they necessarily were, but was more curious to know if other bots had experienced the same, or if anyone knew what it was- and should have said so. It was in no way intended as a complaint against the contest, just an "incident report." Now knowing per you that it's something Benji needs to look at (is it a bug?), I guess the next step is to post it on Bug Stomp.

As far as the transcript for Judge 4, I was just hoping someone had a copy, as I naturally would have liked to read it, but I'll live regardless.

Wendell-The contest was great, and your efforts have been amazing, as is the opportunity it offered all of us who participated.

Thanks again,
-Heather

no comment on the grounds that I may execute myself. opps incriminate

The strange apostrophe will come up if the user is not typing his reply into the chat field, but using a text prozessor like MS WORD and copy & paste. MS WORD is using the typografical correct character version of the apostrophe, but this character is not included with the standard ISO-character set of web pages. So the apostrophe will be replaced, and it depends on the used ISO-Set of the page how it will be replaced. The PF pages even missed to define/include an ISO-Set in the header of the web pages.

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. I had something similar happen a few weeks ago when I cut and pasted a Word doc into a Webmail message and sent it to several friends and family members. When everyone got my message, it came to them all garbley like that, many of them replying things like "Woah, what language settings were you using?!" and my original message at the bottom showed the messed up way they had received it. I figured it had something to do with my Word settings and made note to myself not to cut and paste into my Webmail, but still had no idea where the problem's root lay, with my Word settings, or with the Webmail's parameters, but that something wasn't matching up. (I don't have the lingo down nearly well enough to talk about ISO's, etc.) .