> It was Wednesday, December 03, 2003 when Casey West took the soap box, saying: > : I'm beta-testing a robot that searches Google when new questions are > : posed to the beginners' lists. I have no idea if it will be useful. > : :-) > > I should like to make an important note. This bot is not intended to > deter people from answering questions. Indeed, the goal of this list is > still to give detailed, useful answers to questions. Specific answers > that really help people. > > This robot is intended as a First Response Service, something that can > help the questioner between the time they ask a question and the time > they receive a good answer, from a human. My goal is that the archives > from this list and others, and the web itself will be of further > assistance, perhaps even adding a spark of creativity to some code or > thought process. Therefore I hope this robot will bring that information > a small step closer to the list. > > So please, keep answering those questions. The robot doesn't do such > a great job at answering questions, only guesses at where the > technical information might be, which is still a very useful service > as far as I can see. > > Finally, the subject lines from the robot have been altered to show what > it really is, a First Response System. Think of a person in cardiac > arrest. First Response does some very general, well tested attempts at > saving the patient. Sometimes they're successful, but the patient still > needs to see the doctor, maybe even ER. That's what we're here for. :-) > > Casey West > > PS: For all who asked, I'll show the source code in due course. >
I don't quite understand why the first response is sent back to the list rather than just the OP though? Using your analogy it seems like the first response is *also* trying to save the doctors at the same time, which would seem to get in their way. Another concern is that the response comes from your address, or at least uses your name, which will eventually (though maybe the subject will stem this, since it just went in) cause me to ignore all posts from "Casey West" which would be a bad thing. Personally I use the list through SMTP and don't have a thread/filter option for about half the time I am reading it (don't worry early next year I intend to write a web mail client that I can use that will do these things ;-)) which means the automated messages get in the way more than they help *me*. I do like the idea of sending help back to the OP, and I appreciate your time and efforts as admin of the list(s), just throwing out my $.02.... http://danconia.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
