We had a really long discussion the other day in the CB about bots who could speak. Right now, the Site Doc Clan has the Chatterbox FAQ which says, "Are bots allowed in the Chatterbox?" and answers, "No. But actually, as long as the bot doesn't talk, it's o.k. Bots which talk on their own are not tolerated. One quasi-official bot is im2." The question is: is this true?

If we want to be pedantic, it's nominally true because it is written. But the question is: what is it about chatting bots that are problematic? Could there be bot(s) that the community find to be "ok"? What conditions would that be?

From the conversation in the CB, I got from tye his opinion that, basically, while it's true that chatting bots aren't currently allowed, he doesn't think that means that no bot could be accepted. And the criteria he gave was that bots should not be obnoxious. Which seems reasonable to me.

So the question is: would you think that PM's CB could accept a bot? If so, under what conditions? If not, why not? And would this be a good thing or a bad thing?

Now, due to some recent changes, there is a theory going around that it's easier to get feedback if a change is already implemented. Since tye seemed ok with this, I've gone and put together a proof-of-concept for this idea which may help get the juices flowing. If you go into the CB and type "Tankbot, stat $user", some stats will be extracted from data on $user's homenode and displayed. Similarly, if you type "Tankbot, lolcat $text", then $text will be run through Acme::LOLCAT and results displayed. Or, "Tankbot, is $question", Acme::Magic8Ball is consulted. This currently requires that my IRC connection is up, and ambrus' cbstream bridge is also active. This will only be true while I'm actually active (or close to active), as per Corion's request (see update below).

Just to keep some of the feedback from yesterday (as I remember it) and today (with it already running while I'm typing this):

• Bots should not speak unless explicitly spoken to.
• Bots could speak unbidden if the CB is dead (e.g., if no one has said anything in half an hour or some arbitrary amount of time).
• CB's problem for chatty bots is that in some interfaces, the CB only has a few lines, and an extra automated speaker can quickly chew up that history.
• one line for someone asking the bot, another line for the bot's response... doubling the amount of real estate someone can use up without any extra effort.
• even on irc I find it disconcerting when purl pipes up with something more or less out of the blue (unless you're familiar with all her detection/trigger heuristics)
• Responses should be private to keep from cluttering the CB (tye pointed out that this would be another type of spam where people would see the requests for info, but not the responses, causing them to try the same thing, cluttering the CB differently... and im2 already can respond to private messages, so that's already covered today.)

Preferably, we stick to what a bot would try to do, not how it would do it. Implementation details could come later (if ever).

Also, please don't try to break Tankbot (I'm sure it's easy to do). It's just a proof-of-concept, for fun, and not intended for long-term use. :-P

Update: Corion has asked me to take Tankbot offline while I'm not around, so, not wanting to *entirely* piss off the gods ;-), I'm doing so... which is unfortunate, because I think having it there would allow people to see what it's really like (which may, or may not, kill the idea more effectively than abstract talking).

Update 2: "fun and games" ... I thought that was half the purpose of CB. Ah well.

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