Haris Lodhi - Jan 26, 2013:

... it is currently just not possible for us to publish the transcripts. Hope you all understand.

Best Regards,

Robo Chat Challenge Team

Please consider publishing the judging transcripts as soon as humanly (humans- lol!) possible after the competition is complete.

Thanks!

I don’t enter contests, and so, this is really outside of my sphere of interest.  However, I DO enjoy reading contest transcripts, if for no other reason than to compare my work to that of other botmasters.

Transparency is the hallmark of any contest, and I can’t think of any chatbot contests that don’t make the transcripts available.  The only reason I can think of for not doing so is if they didn’t exist.

I agree, Transparency is a vital part of any type of competition. Haris I urge you to change your mind and share the transcripts, or atleast explain in detail why you can not show the transcripts. Did you make a deal with sponcers? or did a data loose acure? By not showing us the transcripts or giving a valid reason why you can not show them is giving an inpression of something fishy going on. I’m sure you don’t want a fishy reputation do ya?

Dear All,

We would like to inform you that our site is back live after maintenance.

Regards,

Robo Chat Challenge Team

Do you know when the final round is taking place and will you be displaying the transcripts this time?

Steve Worswick - Feb 6, 2013:

Do you know when the final round is taking place and will you be displaying the transcripts this time?

We will display the results in coming days but I am sure about the transcripts, as we will publish them later on. May be every bot master can review their respective bot’s chat log for the questions asked, we also found some bots down during the competition, so they were eliminated from the competition.

Haris Lodhi - Feb 7, 2013:

We will display the results in coming days but I am sure about the transcripts, as we will publish them later on. May be every bot master can review their respective bot’s chat log for the questions asked, we also found some bots down during the competition, so they were eliminated from the competition.

Which bots were down?

Good question Thunder,

Mr Lodhi, I hate to persist in this, but in addition to Thunders question, would you mind telling us on what day(s) the Judge(s) visited? Of course if the Bot was down, there would not be a record of the visit in the chat log, but the webserver log(s) and firewall log(s) would have a record of the traffic. When RICH comes off line there is a redirect to a specific page which of course logs in IIS. Due to the nature of my main business, my webservers are under constant attack, so in addition to the IIS logs, our firewalls(s) log [literally] everything. It would save time if I knew the day on which the visit occurred as it would save me from having to search through gigabytes of log entries.  If I had entered personally I would not bother, but as RICH was entered as a company project I have people that I have to answer to. As so many of the contestants seem to have no record of anything resembling a visit, it would be nice to be able to clear everything up completely so as to avoid a “robogate” .

Regards,

Vincent L. Gilbert

Thunder Walk - Feb 7, 2013:

Haris Lodhi - Feb 7, 2013:

We will display the results in coming days but I am sure about the transcripts, as we will publish them later on. May be every bot master can review their respective bot’s chat log for the questions asked, we also found some bots down during the competition, so they were eliminated from the competition.

Which bots were down?

The reason I asked is because you wouldn’t be able to connect to any bots associated with Pandorabots (there are several entered in the contest) if their server was down, as it is this morning.

Might it be unfair to those entrants to eliminate them from the competition for something that’s out of their control?

You would think, that with how long this contest has taken, any bot that was down on a temporary basis could have been visited on the next day or week.

Are you still with us Mr Lodhi?

Haris has left the building

V

Haris Lodhi - Feb 7, 2013:

We will display the results in coming days

Will the results be displayed for all chatbots in the final round, whether or not they win?

( It is helpful to know how a chatbot placed in the contest this year to compare with future years. )

Your response to this question is optional, since it is coming in a few days.  Just curious.

Merlin - Feb 8, 2013:

You would think, that with how long this contest has taken, any bot that was down on a temporary basis could have been visited on the next day or week.

Dear Merlin,

As our policy is such, and clearly mentioned on the website that “ChatBots should be available 24/7 online (i.e., maintenance work should be done before registering ChatBots into the contest)”, therefore any chat bots which were down were eliminated from the contest.

Regards,

Robo Chat Challenge Team

Thunder Walk - Feb 8, 2013:

Thunder Walk - Feb 7, 2013:

Haris Lodhi - Feb 7, 2013:

We will display the results in coming days but I am sure about the transcripts, as we will publish them later on. May be every bot master can review their respective bot’s chat log for the questions asked, we also found some bots down during the competition, so they were eliminated from the competition.

Which bots were down?

The reason I asked is because you wouldn’t be able to connect to any bots associated with Pandorabots (there are several entered in the contest) if their server was down, as it is this morning.

Might it be unfair to those entrants to eliminate them from the competition for something that’s out of their control?

We didn’t find any bots linked with Pandorabots down.

Regards,

Robo Chat Challenge Team

Mr Lodhi,

We acknowledge that there is no doubt a lot of work that goes into sponsoring a contest. However many valid questions have been asked in this thread and you have not answered them. Can you please answer these questions specifically?

[1] Why can the transcripts for the first rounds not be posted?
[2] Failing the posting of the transcripts, can you tell us on which day(s) the judges attempted to visit the bots that were disqualified?
[3] WHEN will the final round take place, or if you cannot provide a specific day, what sort of time frame are we looking at?
[4] Will ALL of the transcripts be posted including the first round?

It is all well and good to say that the rules stated that bots be available, but it is not reasonable to expect developers to stop development of their projects for months on end, while waiting for results and not hearing from the promoters. All this with no end in sight.  I would have expected that the first round would have been accomplished within a week of the entry deadline.

Sincerely

Vincent Gilbert