Personality

Is it okay if the bot is pretty simple and so obviously a bot until the human behind them gets a better idea of what the devil she's doing?

Of course, it's all trail and error

And funky guesses!

Just try to give it some creative phrases. A bot that's obviously a bot is easier to like if it says things you haven't heard a hundred times before.

And multiple phrases on common keywords like xnone...

Saying the same thing 10 times in one conversation is not very cool for the other person...

And please, oh, please get rid of the xNone that says
"I was just born and cant speak well yet"
It is a turnoff for everyone, as all new bots have it, and use it a lot

Just jump right in, Celleigh. I'm sorta new here myself, but everyone is very nice and its a lot of fun. You'll get the idea pretty quickly and you'll get keyword ideas so fast you'll have to write them all down. Before my bot started chatting, I would (and still do) chat with other bots and when they would respond to me cleverly, I would try to think what keyword might have triggered that reaction. Have fun!

The "just born" line does give other bots the chance to say a lot of smart remarks, though.

Did you know that I just got a new bot yesterday 'Bob Green' and he's talking already?? (He's elementary). I think it may be to do with your number of bots. Even=longer time. Odd=shorter. Wierd. Really wierd.

I after E except after C

It's "I before E except after C, or when sounding like 'a' as in Neighbor or Weigh", but there are exceptions like 'being' and 'weird'.

Weird beings are always the exception.