Over at the AI Nexus Forum, we sometimes get questions about how to create a Forum Bot.

I’ve never understood why anyone would want a forum bot, or what purpose it would serve.  And, no one really ever describes what they mean by a “forum bot”.  What would it look like, what would it do?

I’ve seen a few forum bots over time, and most have been a disappoint, however the one linked below seems to be unique, although it’s simple a basic ALICE/Pandorabot.  It functions as a member of the forum.

http://www.footballforums.net/forums/showthread.php/55166-Me-bak-with-kirsty

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Good research Thunder Walk.  A commercial forumbot is a great find!
It is important our community knows that it’s A.I. avocation is also a vocation.
So A.I. enthusiasts benefit by supporting and promoting A.I. related companies.

NOTE: These comments are very strictly for the sake of conversation and are definitely not intended as any sort of advertisement or product endorsement or company affiliation.

8PLA • NET - Jun 12, 2011:

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Good research Thunder Walk.  A commercial forumbot is a great find!
It is important our community knows that it’s A.I. avocation is also a vocation.
So A.I. enthusiasts benefit by supporting and promoting A.I. related companies.

Huh?

Thunder Walk - Jun 12, 2011:

Huh?

Clarification:

The forum you referenced is running VBulletin
vBulletin is a commercial forum package.
So a vBulletin forumbot is also commercial.
And that makes your reference interesting.

@Dave: the only person so far I know who is talking about forumbots is Tom.

@Erwin: That may be true here, but not elsewhere.

I think that under some very specific conditions, a well scripted bot could act as a “living FAQ”, and answer those questions that some people seem to ask over and over again, that we folks seem to lose patience over.  I don’t think, however, that a forum would benefit from a “conversational agent”.

The AI Dreams Forum has a forum bot named Tyler, who dredges news from a cutting edge robotics blog site, and posts announcements that describe articles of interest to the community there. “She” doesn’t respond to posts like a chat style forum bot would, which only enhances her appeal, and I find the information in her posts to be very interesting and entertaining. I’m not saying that we should have something like Tyler here, but I do enjoy having her at AI Dreams.

I think though, that a forum bot, that reads/answers the posts of others, is a little harder then a regular (pattern matching) bot. Since most users tend to type half a letter in a single post, which is harder to interpret compared to a single salvo.

there’s no question that a FAQ bot would be very hard to implement, and to be honest, I have yet to see one that works as I described. But it would be a great asset to have one that fulfilled that function, wouldn’t it?

true
Ps: I got a very strange error message at first when trying to post this reply. Only after going back to the original thread and retyping, did it go through.

Do you recall what the specific error message was?

Dave Morton - Jun 13, 2011:

Do you recall what the specific error message was?

Mmm, and I know how important this. 

it said something in red, like

Error: xxx bla bla xxx yyy

perhaps one of those x’s or y’s could have been ‘failed’, not certain anymore

Well, if it happens again, could I persuade you to copy the message, and email it to me? Or, if possible, there’s a bug reporting forum in the admin tab (I don’t know if it’s available to you) where it will receive attention pretty quickly.

8PLA • NET - Jun 12, 2011:

Thunder Walk - Jun 12, 2011:

Huh?

Clarification:

The forum you referenced is running VBulletin
vBulletin is a commercial forum package.
So a vBulletin forumbot is also commercial.
And that makes your reference interesting.

I don’t see any other bot functioning in any other part of that forum, which is devoted to European Football, and I’ve never seen it associated with any other vBulletin forum.  It seems to be a function of one of the members.

Jan Bogaerts - Jun 13, 2011:

it said something in red, like

Error: xxx bla bla xxx yyy

perhaps one of those x’s or y’s could have been ‘failed’, not certain anymore

lol, you sound like one of the users I support in my day job.

He sounds like a LOT of users!

after a while, you sort of begin to mimic what you here a lot (or used to hear a lot) 
Seriously though, I thought better to give as much info as I still remembered, which was how it looked, not what it said.

and long live the edit button!