Hello everybody! First post here…

I submitted 1 month ago to chatbots.org my new french chatbot, D-KALE, and it is still in “pending status”...
it seems a long time to me…

How many time does it take usually to publish here a bot in the directory?

Btw, if you want to try it, you can visit http://www.d-kalage.ch

I’m the webdesigner of a rockband website. There are so much bands sites that I wanted to make this one special. First by programming a free online game, then by inserting a chatbot who can answer people about whatever question about the band, propose automatic redirection to other pages depending of the question, but also speak freely about other wide subjects.

As far as I know, it’s the 1st time ever a chatbot is used on a music website.
As it’s all about rock’n'roll, I decided to make a rock’n'roll bot, that means with a strong personality, a good sense of humour and sometimes cynicism.

D-kalage French - Apr 17, 2012:

As far as I know, it’s the 1st time ever a chatbot is used on a music website.

I use to produce dance music and had a teddy bear chatbot on my music site after seeing a chatbot on another music site I used to visit. This is going back to around 1998.

As my French doesn’t go beyond schoolboy level, I was unable to chat with your bot.

Aw then my website is not so original

thanks for your message

Don’t be disheartened

D-k, Do you want me to add your bot to the Chatterbot Collection ?....

Take a look : http://www.chatterbotcollection.com/ and see if it’s something you would like to do.

Good luck with your bot and band

Hi D-k,

Neat little bot you’ve got there! What architecture are you using to build it? (AIML, chatscript, your own, etc.) I took some French many years ago, but I admit I had to rely on google translate to talk with it.

It did well when I asked it to tell me about the band (said they decided the band name over a bottle). And it did well when I asked it what kind of bottle (“I’ll let you decide.” ) But it didn’t seem to have an opinion on what it’s favorite song was. (I asked, “Quel est ton chanson préférée de D-KALAGE?” Also tried with “votre” instead of “ton” in case politeness was an issue. ) It only answered with the same statement about how the band chose its name.

What type of questions can the bot handle? Do you plan to extend it to be able to chat generally? (Or can it already?)

@ Roger Davie > sure I’ll be honoured to be in you collection, though my bot is very basic and can’t compete with others.
Of course I will add a backlink to your site on its page. I will e-mail you the avatar (a tiny animated GIF is OK?) plus an english and french description asap.

@ C R Hunt > Thanks to have taken time to test it, even if your natural language is not french!
About architecture, well I work as a designer, not a programmer. So I use a free french service called bidiiz(dot)com.
Basically it provides an empty bottle (again, bottle!) where you enter keywords or group of keywords and define the corresponding answers. So it’s just a matter of if/then. if you ask a question A, the bot for A can choose randomly amongst answers A, B, C to make it more natural, not always answering the same question. it can also handle more sophisticated functions with conditions if/if/if then etc, but I am not skilled enough to use them. I don’t know on what technology it is based on, it is not mentioned in their website.

About songs and generally opinions (politics, religion etc), I kept it neutral, it answers evasively in the corner.
I have begun to extend it to general chat, but it’s time consuming. Its knowing is for now of about 2200 knowledges, which represents about one full week of work on my part.
So now it can have a 1st reaction to a lot of subjects, but can hardly follow the subject in a logical way, it rathers tries to the user jump to an other subject. That’s why I gave hime a strong sens of humour, to hide its lack of cleverness (if the user finds it funny, he may forgives it more easily)
Nowadays I have tons of work at the agency so the developping is pending, I will resume it when I’ll have free time again.
You are right about songs, I will educate it about that, but for now I wait a bit (the new album will be online in 1 or 2 weeks)

About the politeness forms tu/vous you are right too.
As you may now, french is an horrible language too learn, because there are so much exceptions and different rules, a simple word can have multiple meanings… its a pain in the ass to always think about singular/plural male/female spelling, etc That’s why I decided to completely omit the polite “vous” subject (and that’s why the bot on the splash screen says that it wants to be called “tu”). English is a very simple language with strong square rules, so I guess it’s easier to make an english speaking bot.

I realize that amongst you people, all skilled and experienced coders, my work is very (too?) simplist, but I don’t care after all. The feedback I had from french users/friends was pretty good until now. The main goal of the bot was to inform about the band and it does rather well (except for the songs as you said rightly), the general chat being an “extra” funny function, which I will develop with time.

Again, thanks for your time

Welcome on the Chatbots.org forum!

Sorry for the delay in moderation! Usually we’re pretty fast but as we’re also getting a lot of spam in our directory (having the ‘add chatbot’ button on the hompage). Therefore we always look a profiles of the submitters. When they use their real name, having a good bio and a personal picture, we regard these submissions as more serious, more professional.

Therefore, you might want to reveal your identity and show yourself like other Chatbots.org members have done:
http://www.chatbots.org/account/bio

There are a few chatbots related to music:
http://www.chatbots.org/industry/music_radio

Yours will appear here after we’ve optimized your entry.

Thanks for your answer.

I will fill the required fields asap.

But… is it necessary to put my photo???

I am a total paranoid about privacy on the net (I think twitter/fb etc is b$)!

The request for your real name and/or a photo isn’t a “set in stone” requirement, but it’s strongly recommended. We all understand privacy issues, but there’s also a need for accountability, as well, and if one uses more “personal” information, such as their real name, and/or a photograph, then they’re less likely to do or “say” things that would reflect poorly on them. Thus, if you could see fit to provide these things, I’m sure that your experience here may well turn out to be a bit fuller, richer and more enjoyable. Of course, it’s up to you, and we won’t think less of you should you choose to be a more “private” individual.

By the way, welcome to the forums here. I’ve not had as much time to spend here as I usually do, these past couple of weeks, and I don’t always have much to contribute to the various threads, but I ALWAYS try to follow the conversations, and I find a great many of them quite interesting.

Done

Thank you, Julien.  And I have to say that your avatar image looks like my last birthday cake.

well, indeed it was rather taken on a mad new year’s day alcoholized party

Dave Morton - Apr 27, 2012:

Thank you, Julien.  And I have to say that your avatar image looks like my last birthday cake.

Dave is at the age now where the candles cost more than the cake!

Welcome to the site Julien.

not to so welcome, bot rejected

EDIT: I just opened my past unread e-mails and now understand why it was rejected… and I didn’t notice your warnings, sorry! (been very busy lately, plus had accident while playing tennis, so my mind was a bit away from the cyberspace last month)

so… I re-submitted it from scratch, hoping you will accept my little bot in your community now

Best regards