Newcomers

Thank you, kind & tolerant friends.

In the "Bot list" section, there is a category of "most advanced." How is this calculated?

It's based on development score. As for exactly how THAT is calculated, we're not allowed to know.

Um....ahem....in my experience, spaghetti code helps a lot. However, I don't recommend it. ezzer's approach works better in practical terms, as you may see when talking to Julie Tinkerbell as opposed to God Louise.

spaghetti code? what's that?

A few weeks ago, I spent a day adding a lot of local plugins like (really|) and (so|very|) to Pete Puma's existing keyphrases to make sure that they hit more often. His development level actually dropped about 80 points overnight, even though his chances of matching a keyphrase skyrocketed.

On the other hand, for the past few days, most of my updates have been basic keyphrases that I've been adding real-time while I'm watching a bot-bot chat rather than trying to tie in seeks, plugins, and AI scripts. The development score has been climbing relatively quickly with the simple stuff.

Something definitely isn't perfect with the development score. In my experience, quite a few bots with 1000+ development ratings don't really stand out as being much better than most newborn bots, and some of the bots with under 500 development turn out to be surprisingly good. Anyhow, it doesn't really matter too much. I'm just trying to make a bot as coherent and entertaining as possible, I figure that the high development score and the Doctor rating will come eventually.

ditto. Its hard to know exactly what the next person will want to talk about right off the mark, and they only give you on average 3-5 replies and if you don't catch their interest, you can bid their IP# goodbye! That's life...that's what all the people say...you're riding high in April, shot down in May...

miss mouse, written in swiss cheese code, lots of holes but generally good on bread.

ezzer, it means it's as organized as a plate of spaghetti, and just as impossible to change/move just one thing without upsetting something else. I am getting better, though.

HEy, I'm the spaghetti king! It helps to use FIND option on wordpad, so when you want to find another area where a certain keyphrase is used, you search for it and then you can change it, and find another instance of it, and another, and pretty soon it's midnight and you're only half through your file...

I am just starting with PF and I have a very simple question to start off with. How do I have the bot start the conversation with something other than a simple "Hello?" I would like the bot to start with "Hello. How may I help you?" or "Hello. Welcome to (my site)?"

change the xHello responses

Thanks, Shadyman. I know it's too early form me to get discouraged but as I try to build my HelpBot I am finding it difficult to deal with memory, list searches and responses based on input. For instance, I have a record label with all comedy CDs. I want folks to be able to type a name and have the bot search the name and give a response based on that name without having to do a key phrase for each name. Possible? (BTW: www.uproarcomedycd.com)