On the topic of chatbots...

[Spirou003]

Coder, you made me think about something: creating a chatbot that operates in a forum like this one also requires that when you write something "about you", then your chatbot must be able to remember it so that it only tells things that are compatible with what have been said before. For example if I am 30 years old but have seen the Tchernobyl nuclear catastrophe, then we have a problem somewhere. Just being able to understand what someone says and react to it, is not enough, you need to have a way to continuously feed the chatbot.

Note that I'm not stating whether ScotL always has been concordant with what he told before or not, I honestly don't know and I won't take time to check it. To me, he never appeared to be a chatbot but I've actually suspected other people of this, so who knows? Certainly only people behind their computer know if they are human or not!

Regarding posting photo, I think ScotL recently posted one.

[Coder]

I would like to request that you remove Chatbox off his name. That's a slap in the face and extremely rude.

Seconded

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

I too would be interested in some evidence - I agree some don't find his writing style up to their standards, and perhaps it isn't consistent in a way we all expect, but since there are so few of us, I think every effort to find common ground is imperative.

[Coder]

Regarding posting photo, I think ScotL recently posted one.

Two, actually. I was going to jokingly suggest he hold a placard with his handle on it (like they do with eBay auctions)... but where do you draw the line? Does he have to pose with his wife? At his place of business? Purchasing something from a very specific retailer (ie, REI) - something that would be hard to fake? At some point this is ridiculous, and a level of trust has to be formed both by the user and the moderation team - any breach by either party and you have what's happening now...

A few things come to mind, number one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monst ... ple_Street

And secondly, ethical use of AI. With the explosion of LLM's, the tangible-but-not-yet-here AGI, it really shows how few of us trust humanity in wielding these tools. Whether or not ScottL is a chatbot, the fact that we can feel such distrust over the possibility of one being used, it's a sign of things to come. If so much as a wonky poster can cause this level of disruption, what happens when the next iteration of these tools are released and they are actually employed?

(addendum - I have no doubt bots are commonplace on the web, but I don't think - unless wielded by NSA/FBI/etc... that they can reach the level of sophistication needed to fool lots of people. If I've been fooled - I shrug my shoulders - it's going to happen someday.)

[crfriend]

"ScotL" has been in the crosshairs for months, and the reason has nothing to do with rule-breaking, because technically no "rules" have been broken, except for the first time he/it wound up on moderated status for calling people out. The reason was the notion of wasted time. That entity has posted in excess of 1,400 posts in a short period of time, not a one of which contained original thought or actual content. Now, we've got several hundred users, and each of those users who were reading were spending, likely, about a minute or two for the shorter posts, and possibly two to three for the longer ones. The moderation staff has to read everything posted. Working the maths on that comes up to a staggering number of 972.2 human days of wasted time in aggregate -- and this is time that no human will ever get back.

That it may well be a chatbot was only one possibility, and the other one was even less salubrious. Things were said about it behind the scenes that will not be repeated here for the sake of politeness.

One of the reasons for the delay (and massive frustration on the admin staff) was the fact that we had no guidelines how to deal with something of this character and were "flying blind". If it was clearly a case of vandalism, the reaction would have been swift and sure; likewise, there had been overt rules violations the reaction would also have been swift and sure. This was a case of "new ground", and even I had to come up to speed on the chatbot technology. I'd been expecting it to rear its head eventually because it would likely be inevitable as these things essentially take over human space. The net result of that will be a massive further dumbing-down of the human population to the intelligence level of the programs in use -- and we already are seeing that in the press and popular media.

There are tools purported to be able to sniff ChatGPT out in the wild, but the ones I've seen so far seem customised for Twatter [sic] and Farcebook [sic], and I need something I can shove a raw database feed into. I'm converging on something, but as I'm also working 70 hour weeks at the moment may be months off.

[pelmut]

n 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.

I had an issue all right, his two replies to me were so offensive that I killfiled him. If I had challenged him and said what I thought of him at the time, there would have been an almighty row and I might have been banned too.

[Elisabetta]

n 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.

I had an issue all right, his two replies to me were so offensive that I killfiled him. If I had challenged him and said what I thought of him at the time, there would have been an almighty row and I might have been banned too.

I've must've missed all this. Well what a shame a bot has been used.

[Brad]

Will someone please explain killfiling? What is it and how does one do it?

[GerdG]

I still should like to know how to tell a chatbox from a real person. And how you can proof that you are NOT one.
By the way, I'm using VPN. Therefore, my posts can come from many countries or places.

[Barleymower]

I had a long regrettable discussion with Scotl which ended with Carl telling me to stop talking (in so many words). I was incensed that they saw transvestism as an illness.
After that I stopped replying or reading any posts by them.

[pelmut]

Will someone please explain killfiling? What is it and how does one do it?

It's a term which originated in Usenet (or possibly earlier) where each user has a file containing a list of names of people they don't want to engage with.  If someone is behaving badly, adding them to the kill file prevents their posts appearing to that particular user.  In this forum the same effect is achieved by making someone a "Foe".  Carl explained how to do it a few posts back:

I believe the change is made on a per-user basis using the "Friends" and "Foes" classifications in the User Profile.

[pelmut]

On another forum, someone is reporting a massive reduction in trolls on many forums in the last few days.  She speculates that it might be that the out of favour Wagner boss has shut down his troll farm.

[crfriend]

I was incensed that they saw transvestism as an illness.

I have never so much as once described transvestism as "an illness" because the notion is ridiculous on the face of it. If ScotL represented me so then the accusation is factually baseless.

It is defined so in the DSM, and I happen to disagree with the "diagnosis".

[crfriend]

It's a term which originated in Usenet (or possibly earlier) where each user has a file containing a list of names of people they don't want to engage with.  If someone is behaving badly, adding them to the kill file prevents their posts appearing to that particular user.

It actually dates to a few years before USENET appeared and was in use when e-mail lists were the common means of exchanging large numbers of messages. It became popular in the the USENET era because it became simpler with the new protocol. The notion persists to this day, although the history has been largely forgotten. Such things remain very useful in filtering things like trolls and the like from feeds of assorted types.

BTDT.

History is important. Study it. Frequently it serves amazingly well as "prelude to future" Even things as "modern" as computers have a history to them, and that history is valuable.

[Barleymower]

I was incensed that they saw transvestism as an illness.

I have never so much as once described transvestism as "an illness" because the notion is ridiculous on the face of it. If ScotL represented me so then the accusation is factually baseless.

It is defined so in the DSM, and I happen to disagree with the "diagnosis".

Apologies Carl when I used the word 'they' I was referring to Scotl. At no time did I think that you would use labels like that.

[crfriend]

Apologies Carl when I used the word 'they' I was referring to Scotl. At no time did I think that you would use labels like that.

No worries, but if factually misrepresented even I can get "testy". "They" is also overlaid with other problems now in the "woke era". So, no hard feelings.