But infobot works and you can implement a solution based on it very fast. Sure, the "Knowledge Base" is not too intelligent, but the language interface is very well suited to an environment like the CB. Why not start with it and then build a more complex backend?

My main argument here is that I think the language part is much more difficult than the knowledge part, at least for the "help desk" type of application we have here.

"the expert system is only as smart as what people put into it (the factpacks for example), and doesn't 'learn' from when it returns information incorrectly or correctly"

As far as I understand it, the first part of the argument is true for all expert systems, and the second part is mainly about the "elegance" of the feedback mechanism. Infobot learns when people tell it to forget and to learn a new fact instead. This is a simple feedback mechanism, admitted, but given the track record of infobot, it seems to work very well.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com