Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

Professor, I've been thinking about creating a new bot... but if you have any for adoption, I think that might be a better idea.

<+1>Why don't you create an adoption centre thingey where bots automatically appear after certain criteria have been met?

But what if the botmaster still wants them? You'd sorta be left with a "put a bot up for adoption" button, but then you'd end up with too many abandoned bots, just cause people get tired of them

you've got a good point there. Solutions?

Just me, my interest in these bots tends to wane. Sometimes I'll log in every day for months at a time, sometimes I'll go for months at a time without ever logging in. Glad my bots weren't given away...

How about an auto-hibernate mode? Maybe any bot less than say a Junior would hibernate if the botmaster doesn't log in for a month. A bunch of abandoned bots wouldn't really hurt anything if they're asleep, right?

maybe but share da knowledge. how bout a don't automatically put up for adoption button.

i didn't work on mine for almost 6 months. i was glad to see he hadn't been deleted, i don't now what i would have thought if somebody else had taken him over.

like i said. a do not put up for adoption option or do not delete option

I think "hibernation" is the best option I've heard so far. And it could be keyed to whether the botmaster has logged in over the past six months.

But I also think it would be fun to hunt the orphans and tag them.

Adoption without the consent of the original builder is sort of a problem, I think ... but people could check "do not adopt" and then disappear, sure as they could build a bot and disappear.

I like the auto-hibernate idea, and agree with isaacc, it would be fun (and also, in my opinion, fair to users who don't come online much, but might still have friends that talk to their bots)to keep those bots searchable/accessible to guests for chat.

I think a good idea would be to send out a warning e-mail to a botmaster when his/her bot is left alwone for too long and if they do not reply then their bot gets delt with in what ever way is demed nessisery.

I don't want to create extra work for the Prof, though -- sending out an email to everyone who has abandoned a bot would be a big chore.