.
Who said they were ‘friendly’ bots? 
From what I hear, the rise in bot traffic may largely be due to people trying to expose their chatbots to forums in order to teach them how to converse.
However, you bring up a valid point. It could have malicious intent behind it. There are some bad actors out there too, I suppose.
You make a lot of corny assumptions,. How would you know how often I go outside? Btw, what is a 'former ‘she’ '?
I used to identify as a pronoun.
Please respect my transition into a fish.
It’s been a journey.
Thank you…
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…anyway the name is Rick Lewis not ‘James’
William James it is, then.
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Yes, I learned that recently. Thank you.
brrrrr.
Bow vow
meeeeauw
me no(t) unfriendly trilbot
Just
a. kind
(of)
BLAST
from the past
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.
LoLoLoL! …bro, what!?
.
…someone’s enjoying their latter Summer-days far too much… 
“I am a married robot.” - Meno_, in robot voice.
That’s how I will always remember you.
Rest in silence.
My gut feeling “here and now” is this: that the forum was no longer taken seriously by the powers that be there. The gap between the magazine and the forum just got larger and larger. It was awash in personal attacks, venting, scapegoating. Some got banned for it but when that expired they were right back at it.
Just imagine if the forum was actually frequented by those who write for the magazine? Or if the philosophy boards were moderated with the intent to sustain actual philosophical discussions? Or if there was a rendition of the Dungeon or Rant for those inclined to just use other members as punching bags.
As for those bots, I’ve been in many, many philosophy forums over the past 20 odd years and never once did one of them collapse because of that.
I think what will disappoint me the most is if Rick and the Magazine don’t provide us with that promised “announcement” explaining what happened and what will happen to the forum.
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.
It seems like the forum become fertile ground for right-wing conspiracies.
Which forum? If ILP, what’s the conspiracy?
Sorry. I was referring to Philosophy Now, not this forum.
“I’ve been in many, many philosophy forums over the past 20 odd years and never once did one of them collapse”
The last time i saw the homepage there was about 400 guest bots there. Dealing with that has to be time consuming and costly. Also, the owners of the mag and the site might be thinking that if prospective subscribers see the posts at the philosophy forum, they sure as shit won’t want the magazine.
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This is a zommer tech problem that won’t be solved by boomer minds.
It requires a rethining of the data model
Here is my business card
unzips
#fannypack
I just discovered I was banned. The only reason I can think of is that, for quite a while now, I’ve always had three tabs open whenever I started my browser (I once again have over 500 tabs open at this point).
My name there was Self-Lightening, so if any of you happens to talk to Rick James, please tell him I’m not literally a bot.
“The problem for scientific methodology is not so much to create machines that think but to force men to think like machines!” (Harry Neumann, “The Nihilist (Liberal) Discipline of Scientific Method”.)