Oh dear. The trials and tribulations of botswomanship ...

A lovely, unknown-to-me chatter from Cape Town, South Africa, who works in a children's hospital, accessed my bot, Celia Gray, at 09:09 GMT, Monday, November 3. The conversation was going swimmingly, till poor Celia's new trial feature, a client-abuse filter, was triggered by mistake. The chatter remained admirably polite and behaved as I would wish all humans could to each other in trying and confusing circumstances. Thank you, unknown soul in Cape Town, you're a trooper! SO sorry for the mix-up!

I've now isolated and de-activated the filter, and it's back to the drawing board on that one. Since I'm a novice programmer, such things are bound to happen, but it's a sad irony that three NICE people experienced this problem in all innocence (two others besides the hospital worker).

But why the filter in the first place, you may be asking? Well, I want to enter her in the Chatterbox Challenge bot contest, and that'd mean putting her out in a much broader "sandbox" for development. It's the same as locks on doors and various overly restrictive laws: Many times they backfire on decent folks, while the baddies go free.

What's a gal to do?

Note: Imported from Websafe Studio blog (07-15-03 to 02-01-06).

Labels: chat robot, Websafe Studio blog