# ella1985 - bot or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 28, 2011, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141 "2011-06-28T14:54:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/1 "2011-06-28T14:54:40Z")
New poster, [ella1985](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/member.php), joined today, only three posts so far, looks like an AI in every case.[ > [@](#): > > Just want to mention taht you developed avery intresting subject here! American regionalism is a problem and people have to be aware of it. ]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964689#post13964689](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964689#post13964689))[ > [@](#): > > I think “nothing” mat means more than even can imagine. Some definitions were already revealed here but tis doesn’t mens that subject is exhausted. ]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964687#post13964687](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964687#post13964687))[ > [@](#): > > You got great feedback here! I found out some very intresting ideas. ]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964686#post13964686](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964686#post13964686))The misspellings are a nice touch. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/2 "2011-06-28T15:18:16Z")
So the plan is to trick us into believing it’s human, and _then_ it’ll bust out the links for unniveersity d1ploomas and peen1s enl4rgment and whatnot? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/3 "2011-06-28T15:30:04Z")
Yes, definitely a bot. I’ve banished it to the land of wind and ghosts, so the posts are now deleted. ---
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/4 "2011-06-28T15:48:09Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Yes, definitely a bot. I’ve banished it to the land of wind and ghosts, so the posts are now deleted. You sent them to Bodie, California? [http://www.visitcalifornia.com/Must-Sees/Desert-Wind-and-Ghosts-at-Bodie-State-Historic-Park/](http://www.visitcalifornia.com/Must-Sees/Desert-Wind-and-Ghosts-at-Bodie-State-Historic-Park/) ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/5 "2011-06-28T16:02:33Z")
I would like to understand this better. Is there some server somewhere that creates an account on a message board, randomly picks threads, and posts badly misspelled generic and vague replies? For what purpose? None of the quotes above seem like a plug for some other website… ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/6 "2011-06-28T16:06:49Z")
I would say those posts were cover and the spam would have come later. It’s just supposed to look good enough to pass a cursory inspection and not get deleted, I think. It doesn’t have to look like a trenchant insight. ---
**Author:** ![emmaliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emmaliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emmaliminal)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/7 "2011-06-28T16:21:50Z")
Not that I know much about this sort of thing, but I do clean up a lot of botcoments on a blog at work – maybe bots like \*\*ella \*\*just don’t competently distinguish between boards that do and do not allow links as part of usernames or sigs. I delete lots of poorly worded but polite and kinda-sorta-on-topic comments whose only spamliness is in the userprofile. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/8 "2011-06-28T16:22:00Z")
The third post certainly had no content, and the first one, I could see being just “\ is a problem…”, but I’m wondering about the auto-parsing that would have come up with the second post. Did it pick out “nothing” as the relevant word in the OP, or just notice that it was a word that was being repeated a lot in other posts? And my guess is that the misspellings are to make it harder to recognize repetition of posts. If a bot used the exact same text for something like that third post in multiple threads or on multiple boards, it could be caught that way, but by putting in a random set of “typos”, each post can be made different. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/9 "2011-06-28T17:22:26Z")
I think ella1985 make interesting sepculation…of course, theirs two sides always isn’t their? ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/10 "2011-06-28T17:25:17Z")
1. How/why would a bot decide that “regionalism” is a bad thing? (Maybe the thread was supporting regionalism…) The second quote, I guess a decently written bot might have been able to link “definition” and “nothing”. I guess. The third quote is extremely generic, could be plugged into almost any thread here. 1. Most importantly (from my curiosity’s sake), why does a bot need to establish credibility? Why wait to spam? ---
**Author:** ![Corner\_Case](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corner_case/32/234_2.png) [@Corner\_Case](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corner_Case)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/11 "2011-06-28T17:26:39Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Yes, definitely a bot. How do you determine this? Do you check the IP address against other sites that have already determined it is a bot? ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/12 "2011-06-28T17:32:27Z")
Easy. You ask it if it would like a delicious bowl of hex nuts and a tall glass of machine oil to wash them down with, and if it says “AFFIRMATIVE”… ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/13 "2011-06-28T17:40:26Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > 1. How/why would a bot decide that “regionalism” is a bad thing? (Maybe the thread was supporting regionalism…) Assuming it’s a bot, the programmer has no opinion on regionalism. It would just be programmed to detect a keyword and say that it’s a good or bad idea so it looks like it’s leaving a comment. > [@](#): > > 1. Most importantly (from my curiosity’s sake), why does a bot need to establish credibility? Why wait to spam? In theory, it’s so we don’t notice the spam. It’s more subtle than inserting a bunch of links to a bootleg shoe site or amateur porn, but only a little > [@Corner\_Case](#): > > How do you determine this? Do you check the IP address against other sites that have already determined it is a bot? That’s the easiest technique to use, yes. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/14 "2011-06-28T17:48:28Z")
I’m not seeing any of her posts in those threads–or any of her posts at all. Has she been disappeared into the corn field? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/15 "2011-06-28T17:52:53Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > Has she been disappeared into the corn field? Yes. Once I saw this thread and confirmed she was a bot, I banned her and deleted her posts. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/16 "2011-06-28T17:54:45Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > 1. How/why would a bot decide that “regionalism” is a bad thing? (Maybe the thread was supporting regionalism…) [Here’s the thread in question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964689#post13964689). The bot took the entire subject line of the thread and dropped it in the sentence: > [@](#): > > Just want to mention taht you developed avery intresting subject here! \ is a problem and people have to be aware of it. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/17 "2011-06-28T18:06:37Z")
> [@bup](#): > > [Here’s the thread in question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13964689#post13964689). > > The bot took the entire subject line of the thread and dropped it in the sentence: But, pulling a thread title from Cafe Society, you could have had this: Just want to mention taht you developed avery intresting subject here! Mom Brady got the crabs from John Lindsay is a problem and people have to be aware of it. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/18 "2011-06-28T20:58:11Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > But, pulling a thread title from Cafe Society, you could have had this: > > Just want to mention taht you developed avery intresting subject here! Mom Brady got the crabs from John Lindsay is a problem and people have to be aware of it. Next step: color it purple! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/19 "2011-06-28T21:09:01Z")
It obviously has multiple different templates to choose from for crafting replies. Maybe it only uses that one for thread titles below some length. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141/20 "2011-06-28T21:23:40Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > But, pulling a thread title from Cafe Society, you could have had this: > > Just want to mention taht you developed avery intresting subject here! Mom Brady got the crabs from John Lindsay is a problem and people have to be aware of it. Is John Lindsay that captain on Deadliest Catch? Them is big crabs. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ella1985-bot-or-not/587141.md?page=2)