On the topic of chatbots...

[pelmut]

[..]
The problem here is the amount of time -- and this is time that none of us will ever get back -- that has been wasted utterly over something that elsewhere would have been handled by the push of a button behind the scenes and nobody would have been any the wiser for it.

We have benefitted because we now know a lot more about chatbots than we did before and might be able to spot one if it invades another forum with potentially more serious results.  That's not what we came here for -- but it could be regarded as a collateral benefit.

[Midas]

I must confess I was surprised to learn that this individual is a bot. I just assumed it was a verbose narcissist with a lot of time on his hands.

I suppose the volume of posts, many of which were very long, in just a few months ought to have given a clue.

[GerdG]

Well, behind any chat box there must be a human being. And who was/is he - or she?

[Elisabetta]

Why under ScotL's name is it listed Chatbot? Have I been missing something?

[GerdG]

Why under ScotL's name is it listed Chatbot? Have I been missing something?

You have. ScotL is accused of being a chatbot.

I have no idea, whether true or not, but it certainly opens up a major problem, because who are we? And how can we prove that we are real and existing? And even if real and existing, are we telling the truth, or are we just spinning?
Do you believe, that I exist? And that I am who I seem to be or have a wish to be? You haven't seen me. I haven't seen you. I have never met anyone contributing on this forum. Years back, I have had some pm correspondence with Stu about living in DK and S. That is all.

On a forum everything is based upon a mutual belief that we are all honest people. This chatbot discussion has been an eye opener that it might not be true.

[Myopic Bookworm]

Why under ScotL's name is it listed Chatbot? Have I been missing something?

He was incorrrectly identified as a chatbot, or as an operator sometimes using a chatbot, by Carl and the administrators of the forum.

As far I can tell from the public record, he was a frequent and voluble contributor from the time he joined in August 2022, and had some difficulty in shortening quoted posts that he responded to, so his contributions tended to bloat threads until he got the hang of it. He was posting at a rate of over 4 posts a day, which I believe is significantly higher than any other member. Last night I went through a large swathe of his posts, which reinforced my opinion that he was simply used to chipping in to conversations and not sitting back to filter or edit his comments. He rubbed the administrators up the wrong way last September by innocently starting a discussion on the terminology of skirt vs kilt, a topic which had caused flamewars on previous incarnations of the forum, as noted by Uncle Al.

I ignored the issue until a short positive response from ScotL to another member prompted an inappropriate, intemperate, and hypocritical rant from Uncle Al (as member rather than as moderator). The intervention was so egregiously unfair that I could not remain silent, and I openly supported ScotL, sending a PM to Uncle Al to back up my comments. I was informed, without details, that they had had problems with his membership behind the scenes. I never saw any admission of error from Uncle Al, or any apology for his clear misrepresentation of ScotL's post.

One of the other threads that ScotL started was a discussion of the "bots" that appears in the list of users logged in to the forum. I don't know whether this gave the idea to the admins, but they started claiming that an unnamed user was a chatbot, or was using a chatbot, and that the forum was therefore being flooded with low-quality content. Despite protests, they never, to my knowledge, stated publicly that ScotL was the user in question, but merely posted insinuations, until recently labeling his account as "chatbot". Since ScotL is not a chatbot user (but a technically inexperienced user accessing the forum mainly on a phone), this was deeply hurtful to him (as he told me in PMs), since he saw himself merely as a keen and curious contributor. Personally I thought it was extremely insulting to label a user as a chatbot. No proof could be produced, since any clearly human interaction wth ScotL could be written off as originating with the supposed human operator of the chatbot: such an argument borders on conspiracy theory, as it makes the allegation utterly untestable. No single post was ever identified, or even alleged, to be artificially generated, and no grounds were given for supposing that such a sophisticated chatbot would target such an obscure corner of the internet as a forum for skirt-wearing men.

I believe that ScotL has now been expelled from membership of the cafe. This will be my last post on the forum for a while, as I am going to go and sulk about the insensitive and unreasonable behaviour of the administrators. If any wants to communicate with ScotL, they can send me a PM, as I have an email address for him.

[BouffantBelle]

Since ScotL is not a chatbot user (but a technically inexperienced user accessing the forum mainly on a phone), this was deeply hurtful to him (as he told me in PMs), since he saw himself merely as a keen and curious contributor. Personally I thought it was extremely insulting to label a user as a chatbot.

He was also the first to reach out to me via PM, regarding of all things, the importance of playing nice here.

I find this whole debacle a rather distasteful witch hunt. These kinds of accusations simply should not be thrown around without presentable and irrefutable evidence to support them, imo.

It certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth when considering further contributions to the forum. Who will be next on the ducking stool, I wonder?

[pelmut]

[...] These kinds of accusations simply should not be thrown around without presentable and irrefutable evidence to support them, imo.

There may be other evidence we know nothing about; making it public would reveal to the operator how his ruse was discovered, so he would be more careful next time. There is a parallel here with national security: how do you have a fair public trial without giving away information about how you caught the person?

The underlying problem with the Web is anonymity, people feel they can get away with doing or saying anything because they know they are anonymous.

[Elisabetta]

Why under ScotL's name is it listed Chatbot? Have I been missing something?

You have. ScotL is accused of being a chatbot.

I have no idea, whether true or not, but it certainly opens up a major problem, because who are we? And how can we prove that we are real and existing? And even if real and existing, are we telling the truth, or are we just spinning?
Do you believe, that I exist? And that I am who I seem to be or have a wish to be? You haven't seen me. I haven't seen you. I have never met anyone contributing on this forum. Years back, I have had some pm correspondence with Stu about living in DK and S. That is all.

On a forum everything is based upon a mutual belief that we are all honest people. This chatbot discussion has been an eye opener that it might not be true.

I'm as real as they come many here have met me in person so they know I'm legit but you're correct it does open our eyes on the matter. What a shame a chatbot has to be used. How are people supposed to get to know the real individual when they use chatbots? I never understood people.

[Elisabetta]

As for ScotL being deemed a chatbot I've seen his posts since he's joined and I'm sorry but he doesn’t spark me as a chatbot. He sparks me as a genuine person who just likes to engage in posts and caught himself being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[moonshadow]

how do you have a fair public trial without giving away information about how you caught the person?

You don't.

I'm still just not convinced that ScotL is a chatbot. If we're basing this suspicion simply on the volume of post he has made, well,, I can remember during my first year here I was so excited I made probably twice as many post per day.

Additionally, I've often been accused of writing long post.

And as for flame wars, unfortunately I've been involved with a few. I've even had at least one member take his leave on account of me.

I've only recently started using a VPN, so I know my "location" is bouncing all over the world.

In many ways, the only difference I can see is that during my first year, I flooded the site with photos of myself in skirts. But if posting photos is one of the clues of a "real member", well most members here don't post photos.

I don't know.... if ScotL is indeed a chatbot then this entire response was justified, if not, then I fear we have needlessly caused significant emotional hurt and stress on another fellow novice skirt wearer, more importantly, a human being, and yes... would be the textbook definition of a "witchhunt".

I'm conflicted about this... I still trust the judgement of the administration, but yet, I just can't get on board with this overall outcome.

[moonshadow]

On the other hand, if ScotL is indeed a chatbot (assuming the controller just penned a handwritten note for me), then he had made a fool of me, bookworm, bouffantbelle, and other allies.

Um...um... tough call.

There must be some protocol or apparatus that can be employed to resolve issues like this once in for all.

Again, I'll vouch for anyone who writes a note in the mail, stops by if they're passing through my area, or gives me a physical phone call, I can think of nothing else I can do....

[Coder]

The whole episode bugs me as well. I’m not convinced either way, mainly because of the lack of convicting evidence. It has been alluded to that some of his posts originated from “data centers” - but what does that even mean? I believe his occupation was in health care of some kind - if he was posting on his phone, from work, it’s quite possible he had to use the wifi in the office building/hospital, and depending on which network he was connected to, it could have been handled by a different vendor (ie, public vs staff) who used cloud infrastructure to route traffic. Not sure that’s all there was to it, but hopefully enough care and attention was done to fully understand the origins of where posts were originating from.

I realize occasionally he would use the wrong word or reply in such a way that made it seem like he did not understand what someone was saying - I just chalk that up to someone who’s not very savvy with the internet, and not used to forum posting. Plus, phones do autocorrect and if you don’t re-read what you wrote, you can have some glaring hippos.

I too received a nice pm from Scott a few days ago - obviously that makes me feel bad for him - but other members have expressed issues with his posting in the past - I dunno - my tendency is to ignore transgressions and try to see “the best in people” no matter how cynical I actually am.

I’m also - well - very skeptical we are at the level of technology chatbot-wise to have the level of interactions we’ve had with him. I’m not quite immersed in the world of LLM’s, which is the tech behind ChatGPT, but from what I’ve seen the open source tools to automate them are very very beta - and any time spent with a chatbot will undoubtedly product “hallucinations”, which would be words that don’t fit or include fake information (like a citation that doesn’t exist). The other problem is feeding data to these bots and having it understand the context - if using a paid api tokens are expensive past a few thousand words (that includes both input and output), and a local model you need a serious rig or perhaps time on a host with a graphics card (ie, AWS or azure cloud, or other provider). Even then, you need to have a system to give the LLM context so it can respond somewhat intelligently, and have to craft your prompts so it doesn’t write twenty paragraphs. All of that costs money, time, effort.

I would get it, if after gaining our confidence the “operator” started asking us for personal details - that would send up some red flags - or if he wrote us “I need some quick cash as my car broke down” - but the level of effort vs what was gained (nothing so far it seems) doesn’t seem to line up.

Is it a sociology experiment? To see if humans can detect chatgpt 5? Perhaps - and if so that means we are truly doomed - because this would spell the dawning of a new intelligence, one that - through written form - several of us here could not detect except through advance analytics (ie, stuff only a sys admin could know).

[Brad]

Is it possible that a living and breathing person would innocently use AI and appear to be a chatbot? Perhaps someone is not proficient in English, or maybe their writing skills are not the best so they use AI to express themselves.

I find this whole chatbot incident upsetting. It resembles a witch hunt. Anyone remember senator Joseph McCarthy?

I realize the moderators can't tip their hand and be completely transparent about this. I am not a cyber expert and have to trust that the mods did the right thing.

[Elisabetta]

I would like to request that you remove Chatbox off his name. That's a slap in the face and extremely rude. I say this because we've all done stupid stuff on these forums right down to threads being locked and I know you'll look at that differently.Where I come from we respect one another. You personally message the individual you take issue with and you speak like adults to one another about the issue at hand not publicly humiliate them.

In the entire time ScotL has been on these forums not once did anyone have a single issue with him until he started posting a lot more. This is absolutely ridiculous really and quite offensive may I add. A member seriously is hurt with these accusations and honestly that should speak volumes. Is that really what SK is standing for now?

Where's the proof in what he did wrong besides a bunch of hear say and aggravation?