[Theforum] IRC Bot - thepfy

Martin martin at members.evolt.org
Fri Dec 28 14:23:53 CST 2001


On Friday, December 28, 2001, at 08:14  pm, A. Erickson wrote:

>> no, this isn't about bots.  it's about personality conflicts
>> and misunderstandings of the medium (irc).
>
> Bots confuse the issue. Who programmed what bot to say or do what?

Amanda

Bots aren't programmed by their owners to say anything
in particular [1]. They're programmed by the people who
interact with them who teach them stuff.

> Eliza was saying things awhile back about me that made me uncomfortable.

So that's not necessarily Dean's fault, but the fault of whichever
person taught her to say that. Which will very likely be a user of
#evolt. Of course, with an archived channel, individuals are unlikely
to use bots as proxies for abusive behaviour.

Bots can also be set to ignore people btw - to not respond
and to not learn. If we had an archivebot, I would see it as a
non-responding bot, clearly marked as an archivebot. Michele's
right in one thing - if a bot is saving a public archive, it's only
fair that it be obvious. (No bot is saving public archives for
#evolt at present afaik)

Cheers
Martin

[1] Slight simplification - a bot owner *can* bulk upload factoids,
dump the database to a file, make amends and reupload it. But
you have to ask: is the thing the bot is saying in character of its
owner? In Dean's and John's cases, neither of them are the kind
of people to use bots to be nasty about people. You'll have to
make your own call as to whether I am.
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