Forum bots

Before I moved my forum to it's own domain name I had a bot installed to answer peoples posts. That time I got some complaints about this stupid "user" from some users.

Today I reactivated the bot to get some more activity in my forum, and the big question is: Should I make it clear to everyone that the bot is a bot and not a stupid human? Should I make the signature say something like "I'm just a stupid bot" or do you think it's enough to simply give the bot a special rank like "Forum Bot"?

I think the special rank with a signature would be ok for this.

By the way, how does this work? Can you give an example?

i join forums to interact with humans and not bots. if i want to chat with bots, i'd just install an AI software like Hal that can be downloaded for free...

The bot will send a PM to all new users welcomming them to my form (same standard text to everyone), but if someone reply to the PM:
Then she will answer with a new PM in just a few seconds:

You are not alone vbignacio. That's most likely why I got some people complaining about the bot last time.

I will still use her and I have given her a special forum rank and I put her location to "I'm just a bot". I'm not going to have her answer each and every post in my forum. She will only answer posts when someone post it directly to her or in about 10% of the posts (70% in the General Talk).

Where did yo get this and for what forum software?

I got it from phpbb.com (search for alice bot). It's for phpbb, but I guess that you can write your own bot for any software if you now some PHP. Check out www.alicebot.org for some free code.

The bot I use for phpbb is based on bot E.

/Andreas

While the technology is interesting, I can't see what anyone gains from having this on the forum.  I guess it depends on what you are doing on you forum though.

Brandon

I thought it was an interesting idea and fun to fool around with. I think the application of the bot in its' own forum for people to play with is not a bad idea, though I would HATE to see it let loose across an entire forum.