[8pla.net]

Perhaps, the most well known of A.I.  communities, the chat bots organization, (.org), began with so much ambition. And, it has since enjoyed soaring popularity. The fact is, online website calculators estimate its worth to remain a leader, statistically.  So keep that success record in mind as you read this post.

Since the early days, as many know, there have been a number of changes to permissions of A.I. community members.  In your opinion, does restricting the permissions of the members, make a popular A.I. community more or less accessible?  Is it better if A.I. community members are restricted from making edits to their own posts, even to correct minor typos?  Should A.I. community members be restricted from posting under a pseudonym, and be required to use their personal names?

These questions are best answered by A.I. community members.  In your opinion, as an A.I. community member... What action do you think causes a reaction, which precipitates a popular A.I. community to appear unattended to?  In other words, what makes an active online community suddenly slow down?

[Freddy]

I pop in there very rarely now, not because of any personal reasons but mainly because I don't like the forum software. It has slowed down too as have all AI sites.

If I wanted help on say AIML I would probably pop in, but people like Dave Morton have moved on and there's not a lot going on there of interest to me at this time.

[Don Patrick]

I think it's mostly because of a lack of interest. All the AI news nowadays is either "Neural net does another task" or "Watson does another task". There is little innovation happening at the moment and even less that's relatable to chatbot creators. Meanwhile Eugene Goostman's 2014 win has put a damper on the value of Turing Tests and the Loebner Prize passed fairly uneventful. And Dave Morton isn't active anymore. The technical details aren't much of a problem, I still see people register just to make one post.

[squarebear]

I thought you stopped visiting there after you threw your teddy out?

Remember, you registered domains with Mitsuku and Arkon's names when we asked you not to and then got annoyed when I mentioned your real name of Tom Joyce?

Why worry yourself about a forum you no longer visit?

[8pla.net]

To tell the truth, it all started as a gift idea.  Intended for an honored guest, logging on remotely from the Netherlands.      The thought was, "Grab it for a friend before someone else does."  This linux webserver briefly webhosted a chatbot written in C++ before it became a Gothic Rock site.  Now...  Someone else, Ethan Arckon, was probably thrilled to grab it.

[DemonRaven]

The big boys are taking over AI right now so it is all about neural nets (new name being deep learning). Google, Facebook, Apple and IBM are scrapping over it via Virtual assistants and driver-less cars. So it does kind of leave out those of us who like to work on and talk about Chatbotfriends.  The forum over all, is not as well maintained, any more as it is here. That more then anything will kill a site. No one likes to be around a website or forum that is not maintained.

[Art]

For whatever reason(s), I've spoken with Dave Morton in the past concerning the Slowness of that Forum. It would take as many as 20 or so seconds for a new page to appear. I'm on east coast US and the pages at AIDreams usually appear within a second so I really didn't understand the issue.

I also mentioned to Dave that I found it annoying not to be able to edit my post, especially after I discovered a typo or misstatement of some sort or another.

While I don't mind using my real name, as I have nothing to hide, I think a lot of folks just prefer to use a handle, nickname, persona like they would in an online game or such. It adds to the overall experience. Then again, games are one thing and communal gathering is another.

Sad to see the site slow down as there was / is a Lot of talent there.

I mentioned to a friend that we chatbot enthusiasts seem to be a splinter or fringe group of individuals rather than mainstream. C'est la vie!

[8pla.net]

In theory, I may have figured out why forum members would be restricted from editing their own posts. This seems to fit with a forum package that is light duty.  Restricting member edits, may support the storage of posts in a separate read only archive. This way, a light duty forum package, may avoid its design limits.  It would be handling a much smaller number of new posts, instead of the much larger number of all posts, like a heavy duty forum package does.

[Freddy]

Well we've been doing this since 2005 and when we started there were a few AI sites about, now many have gone.

AI Hub Forum
Knytetrypper's forum deserted.
Zabaware very quiet
Virtual Humans, dead for a long time.
Generation 5 not updated for years.

I'm sure it goes on, nothing lasts forever.

[Art]

"Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky..." - from the song - Dust in The Wind

Just thought I'd throw that in there for something to reflect upon beside our own mortality.

[8pla.net]

According to one of the most popular online website evaluation calculators... For discussion purposes, and, without disparaging the chat bots organization in any way... The Google PageRank Prediction statistics for AiDreams.co.uk (51%), are about three times greater than the chat bots organization (18%) .   So, AiDreams.co.uk may now be the fastest growing AI site on the Internet.

[Freddy]

Yes some time back and over the years Data and myself have worked on things like SEO. We have things in place that get us onto Google searches and so on. And in all my rambling I have thousands of signatures all over the place ! And of course the members all post quality material that will interest many.

We get a lot of visitors that do not post too, so we don't really see any sign of them. One of the things is the articles, mostly I wrote them myself, but something like this one...

http://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?page=Artificial_Intelligence_in_Everyday_Life

...that I commissioned gets a lot of hits; nearly 20,000 to date. And that goes hand in hand with the social networking links on every page. If you look at that same example it's been shared over 200 times.

So yeah we are out there and doing pretty good.

I'd like to add more articles, I have an idea for a new one, but not the time to write it. But I know a place with good writers so I might commission another one soon. If anyone ever wants to write articles then feel free to let me know - I'd love to see what the members here can come up with.