moderated: this thread is split from http://www.chatbots.org/ai_zone/viewthread/295

There used to be a thread dedicated to forum/website suggestions but I can’t find it at the moment, so I thought I’d post here. It seems this site has been getting a lot of registrations from individuals hoping for help on a specific (often school related) project, who then disappear into the aether. I think it would be helpful for the sake of community-building to encourage those who join to contribute to other threads/discussions before starting threads and/or soliciting help. (Perhaps include a comment to this effect when people register?)

I hope Krishna finds someone with experience with ProgramD (I’m not familiar with it) and I’m sorry for hijacking his/her thread, but this is a trend I’ve been noticing and it doesn’t seem to be a positive one. :(

I’m sorry C R Hunt. but its not at all a school project. i am a new bie to AIML as well as ProgramD.So i cant prove of much help to community. rest is upto the admin. but let me assure you that i can be of help iff i could get help understanding the answers to my problems.

I don’t mean to lump you into a category, just trying to draw attention to a trend. Even being new to AIML/ProgramD/chatbots in general, you can still contribute to the community by checking out other threads and adding comments. Many areas of the forum are non-technical and can be fun to participate in—I encourage you to check them out.

Perhaps you would also generate more interest in your problem if you described in more detail what got you interested in chatbots, what your design goals are, etc. And do keep the forum updated on your project!

@krishha:

C R Hunt - Dec 7, 2010:

Perhaps you would also generate more interest in your problem if you described in more detail what got you interested in chatbots, what your design goals are, etc. And do keep the forum updated on your project!

I agree with CR. Many people have been around for a while, have been involved in discussions with each other before in other threads, have explained a lot about their activity in our area, so when they leave a new topic, this context, combined with a solid personal profile, it is clearly understood by everyone. That optimizes this:

Krishna Techie - Dec 7, 2010:

right now i’m eager to have ans. to my problems

@CR: Other forums even have policies that you can’t post new topics during the three months of membership, or not before you replied 15 times. What do you think about that?

@CR: you can leave suggestions about the content and policies of the AI Zone forums here:
http://www.chatbots.org/ai_zone/viewforum/20/
and feature requests for the AI Zone forums and alllllll our other future forums over here:
http://www.chatbots.org/admin/viewforum/13/

Yup, Dave, that’s about right.

Erwin, I personally think some sort of policy of enforcing a minimum number of posts before starting a thread is a great community-building idea.

However, the only caveat is that some boards thrive on being places to search for specific answers to problems. For example, I often google my way onto the ubuntu forums to find fixes to software-related issues. Many of the question posers don’t have high posting rates (meaning they likely only joined to ask their question) but the forum is still a big help to those who wander in with the same problems. So though the forum community suffers some, the site has a lot of impact on the wider ubuntu community.

Now, the difference here is that ubuntu is a specific platform and a fix for one is often a fix for many, but chatbot development can involve a wide range of tools, making it harder to google your way to a ready-made answer. Thus finding a forum filled with questions from newly-joined members who disappear will only encourage more of the same by those who wander in. Which, like any spam, can be irksome and tiring. And judging by the way you encourage new members to become real presences on the site versus faceless aliases, it sounds like you also don’t want the forum to become a de facto anonymous help desk.

I know I’m sounding contradictory, but there are benefits and costs to everything.

Okay, enough thread hijacking. (I apologize again, Krishna.) Maybe this discussion can be moved into Feature Requests?

C R Hunt - Dec 8, 2010:

Okay, enough thread hijacking. (I apologize again, Krishna.) Maybe this discussion can be moved into Feature Requests?

done

What about a policy like this (new forum features necessary)

1. Everyone can join Chatbots.org as long as they have a valid email address (we’ve implemented this check two weeks ago)
2. Members can participate in discussion when they use their real name, they have a minimum bio and a personal picture.
3. Their first 10 posts are moderated. After this, this are free to join all pending discussions
4. After 20 posts, when they are aware of what can be found, they are able to create new topics. New topics are always moderated.

Would this work?

On top, we might want to add tags to posts, or better, even have tag-suggestions. So when someone is typing text containing Program-O, this is matched to our tag database and suggested as as a tag. The member is still free to edit the tags. The forum should then allow to find ‘other threads on Program-O’.

Would that be an idea?

With certain, limited proviso’s, that sounds like a good idea, Erwin. However, with regards to item #3, above, there needs to be in place some sort of mechanism that allows moderators/admins to “reset”, or otherwise modify the number of posts that are moderated (never less than the original 10, but possibly more, if there are infractions to the rules that don’t necessarily require more stringent actions). There also needs to be a way for mods/admins to put someone “on probation” for a certain number of posts, giving them “new user” status, if warranted.

The idea of adding tagging capabilities to our posts is a great one. I don’t usually use tags, myself, but I certainly see their value in helping others find what they’re looking for. If there’s some way that the tagging suggestions could be implemented, perhaps I wouldn’t be as lazy about making use of them.

Sounds good to me, though what does it mean that the first 10 posts are moderated? They have to be approved by an administrator/moderator before making it onto the board? This could hamper the flow of a thread if the post isn’t approved fairly quickly. Then again, Erwin is quite prompt about these things, so I doubt that will be a problem.

My only suggestion is that a picture isn’t required right away. The reason is practical—sometimes you just don’t have easy access to a picture of yourself. Maybe a pic before you can create a thread? (I’m not sure how easy all of this is to implement—just throwing out ideas.)

4. After 20 posts, when they are aware of what can be found, they are able to create new topics. New topics are always moderated.

Perhaps this can be restricted to certain sub sections of the forum, while allowing posts on others. For instance, you can allow people to present themselves?
Also, Do you think that so many posts are required to figure out the intentions of a person? This might perhaps scare-off people who are not that out-going, but could still have something meaningful to contribute from time to time.

@dave: good idea to have a flexibility to make exceptions for indvidual members. Some have bad behaviour all the time, and should be moderated through out life time.

@CR: picture before posting: we might find that your post is hidden (javascript fold out) when you photo isn’t there. We need to have a manual check on picutres, because adding an avatar or any other picture does not equal a real picture.

What about creating a mandory link to a social network like LinkedIn or Facebook? The cool thing about that would be that we can connect to members’ friends and give recommendations like: ‘Recommended by your Facebook Friends’. Wouldn’t that be cool?

@Jan: we were writing exactly instanteneously. Good idea, people should be able to introduce themselves.

What about a ‘introduce me’ button?

When people push this button excerpts of their profiles and bio and included in the daily/weekly/monthly digest (after our approval). We can also list them in the left hand column.

The sky is the limit

Lots of interesting ideas floating around. But I think this is getting a little out of hand. Especially ‘mandatory’ linking to some social network. The thing I never liked about facebook is that it jumbles together different social spheres. There are certain aspects of my life (my family life vs. professional life vs. hobbyist life, etc) that I’d like to keep separate. I appreciate the goal of users identifying by their real names and real faces—it keeps interaction more civil and keeps at bay the ugly face of anonymity. But beyond that, I think these measures will just discourage people.

However a post limit before starting a thread I’d be in favor for. I think it’s just polite anyway.

What about creating a mandory link to a social network like LinkedIn or Facebook?

I’d also be careful about that. Don’t forget, not everyone’s life is centred around the social networks they build. Also:Still now, anything that goes on facebook, becomes the property of facebook. I would never ever write anything about chatbots on there.

Also, When reading through this thread, I was thinking to myself: I hope the guy who has to make all of this, isn’t reading through this post. 

Jan Bogaerts - Dec 10, 2010:

Also, When reading through this thread, I was thinking to myself: I hope the guy who has to make all of this, isn’t reading through this post. 

LOL. Most of the time I define the strategy and write the draft specifications. Then Arthur starts to work and together will end up with something perfect. Most of the time, he regards new difficult specis as a ‘challenge’.

The forum however, is a special module with Expression Engine, the tool we use. The special property of this module is that it is not very flexible as the rest of ExpressioEngine is. Therefore, we’ll probably write our own forum module so we can have it specifically like we want.

To mention and example:  I’d like to introduce ‘conversation areas’ tags: [conv]. When people enter transscripts like:
john: hello
james: o hello John, how are you
john: i’m fine, thank you

That the system automatically recognizes: ‘ehy this is a conversation’ and then automatically turns it into a conversation layout. That’s something you can expect on a Chatbot forum, but never on other forums. So we need to build it for ourselves.

What are these “pictures” you’re talking about? Isn’t everyone browsing with Lynx?