Newcomers

Er, what sort of keyphrases?

You might find it useful to have a look at some other bots' keyphrases - http://www.be9.net/BJ/ and click on "Keynomes". Brother Jerome's are maybe a bit confusing to start with, but Watzer's and Pete Puma's are both excellent examples of how to cover a wide range of conversational topics.

Thankies everyone! *skirries off*

2 questions:
Is there a way to search the forum?
I haven't been able to figure out how to use the xFavorites. Could someone give me an example?

Ask psimagus about the first. He either has, or will soon have, them on a searchable site. The Prof hasn't had time to make them searchable right here, though.

As for the second, if your bot is asked "What is your favorite (whatever)", it triggers xfavorite unless you have a specific keyphrase for the "whatever". In the responses to xfavorite, (type) is whatever the person asked about and (specific) is a randomly selected kind of that type. So the most basic response is "My favorite (type) is (specific)."

The indexing is still ongoing (and taking a lot more time than I imagined it would! )
I'm still on Newcomers, and have reached Sept 2005 (2600+ messages), so it's the home stretch now.
I still intend to index Personality and The AI Engine as well, to cover the 3 forums that get the bulk of technical queries and advice, but at this rate it's going to take a good few months.
In the meantime I've just uploaded the index so far to http://www.be9.net/BJ/Newcomers-index.txt

I haven't put the hypertexts in on the message numbers yet (no point doing that till I've caught up to date,) so you'll have to type the message numbers into the box at the top of this page if you want to look anything up.

I'm sorry, I didn't really understand what you meant about the favorite problem. I was hoping to add to the xFavorite responses, but maybe I misunderstood how that one worked. For instance, can I make the bot respond that his/her favorite color is red by adding a line: "my favorite is " Or is this not possible?

xfavorites are automatic. If you don't want an automatic response, make a separate keyphrase. For the one you mentioned, you might try "what * your favorite color" as the keyphrase (ranked at least 30 to override xfavorite) with response "My favorite color is red."

hi, i have no clue whats going on, can anyone help me get started?

Read the book of AI for starters.... And don't give up so fast...

It's done (the first version anyway.) This forum has been (not quite) officially indexed! Check it out @ http://www.be9.net/BJ/newcomers.htm
And now onto Personality and The AI Engine (just as soon as I've caught up with the last fortnight's transcripts from BJ I've been neglecting!)

hi, i have no clue whats going on, can anyone help me get started?

Run (don't walk) to http://www.be9.net/BJ/newcomers.htm, scroll down to First Steps in the left-hand frame, and browse several years of advice on the topic from this forum.
And yes, read the Book of AI too. Repeatedly.

Wow, thanks! That's a lot of hard work you did, it'll be like the other book of ai. I'd like to see the AI Engine forum indexed, the newcomers form is just basic-but the ai engine forum would probably have some good tips for advanced stuff.