What if i were to design a computer program that generated sentences, in a random faction but with specific topics designated, and signed it up for the SDMB, then let it post away and argue with real live members? would this be considered sock puppeting, even if i kept my human persona away from the discussions? What if i resigned my human self and responded from now on only via computer generated responses? (This is all hypothetical)
It’s to your credit that you’re asking first, but the last two people who wrote programs to automatically access the board got banned for it (despite good intentions in both cases). You might be able to convince the mods to allow it, but there would be a rather stiff burden of proof on you to prove that it would not have any sort of negative impact on the board.
On the other hand, I don’t know what the status of the sockpuppet question would be. Stay tuned for what TubaDiva says.
Heh. Posts by a computer putting together sentences in random fashion would probably make more sense, overall, than some of the posters we get in here… 
I think it would be kinda cool, actually, to let HAL 9000 sign up and see what he says, as long as everyone understood that all his annoying non sequiturs and refusal to post cites were due to a lack of programming.
Maybe somebody could figure out a way to have Tars as a go-between, like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, so HAL wouldn’t register himself but would only speak through Tars.
Really? Who were these guys with the programs? This is the first i’ve heard of it!
If you were really serious, and you could prove you had good credentials and references, and good safeguards in place to prevent mass spamming and mass thread/post creation, you might be able to convince another Board owner to let you try it, hint hint…
Would your computer program capitalize the personal pronoun I?
Geez, Anthracite, now i actually WANT to do it. i haven’t written a sentence program since i was 12. (and that was in basic!). If i were to do it, it would be probably six months before i got anything remotely workable. Haven’t done much programming since high school.
And it would never capitalize the letter “i” 
But anyway the reason I wouldn’t want a person to use a program to access the board would be the danger that the program goes haywire and starts screwing up the SDMB (not unlike some of our posters you might say but that’s another topic for another time). Couldn’t you have the program generate the responses and then manually enter the computer’s answers on the reply screen?
I can’t imagine someone writing in only 6 months (presumably in their spare time) a program that could, for example, intelligently discuss a Straight Dope column or debate in Great Debates.
Probably be more of a MPSIMS thing. I doubt i could ever come up with a good GD program. or even a GD program that manages to take a stance on something and not segue into how Clinton and his Iraqi policy allowed pineapples to vacuum Romulan tornadoes. And i’d probably throw in a Pit section, based on those insult generator websites.
i meant that last one as a program that generated stuff that i personally submitted, not a haywire robot.
With errors like that, Tars, we might wonder if it wasn’t already in place… :o
IIRC, the two people banned wrote some code that collected statistics on the posters and posting. What got them in trouble was doing it even after they were told not to. Plus, there was someone once who wrote some code that trashed the board and got html turned off. That was a long time back, on UBB.
Now that you mention it, perhaps using the SDMB as a Turing Test for aspiring AI programmers might be a way to generate some extra cash for the board. Then again, we occasionally get posters who woul fail stopping by (of course, I’m referring only to people who aren’t around now). And I suppose that it’s hard to tell the difference between an obstinate Moon Hoax nut and a computer simulation of an obstinate Moon Hoax nut.
How long before it becomes a violation of the member agreement to accuse another poster of being a Basic routine?
There is a simple rule on the usenet forums I frequent. Bots don’t post. Period. It increases the noise level to have bots posting. The closest anyone has ever come is allowing the automated posting of the FAQ to be done by a bot. Even then it posts as the FAQ owner and only at certain times.
We have a hard enough time communicating with each other as human beings across digitial mediums, why throw bots into the mix? If you could build a real AI, that would be something different, but what you’re proposing isn’t an AI as much as it is a semi-random noise generator. No thanks would be my answer.
Enjoy,
Steven
Semi-random noise generator… sounds like a few actors I could name.
I think it would be really cool to have a program set semi-loose on the SDMB. Maybe it could be a bit more complex than the simple Eliza rogerian-bot and acquire new phrases from the general chatter. It could also rejigger the pseudorandom algorithms it uses to some extent to reflect the word frequency it encounters around here.
Of course, if we put something like that in MPSIMS it would be constantly talking about sex, drugs, and Dopefests…
Tars, your bot sounds like a valuable addition to the SDMB!
Valuable? Novel maybe, but what exactly is the bot going to contribute? Some mish-mash, however seemingly well organized, reposts of other poster’s contributions? Why? Personal curiosity doesn’t cut it. What value does it add to the board? Do you really think it could answer stuff from GQ? What if it misinterprets the question, can it properly understand a request for clarification from someone else, who may not be aware it’s a bot?
No, bad idea. Nice intentions, and such things DO need to be tested, but not here, especially with the board under such strain already.
Enjoy,
Steven
I think a bot that could take jokes would be a very valuable addition indeed.
Perhaps it can run a search on either the SDMB boards (if one of a few common things that has been asked already a fwe million times), or point a link to Google?
I think a program that generated random comments would be very handy…