[alicebot-style] Collecting AIML

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

> Must be tired of hearing yes by now.

Not at all.  I am delighted by the interest.

I have been thinking hard about the problem of building up the free AIML
content, which was sort of what this list was intended for.

Gary Dubuque generously sent me a list of duplicate categories he found. 
But it was very long and I have been lazy about going through the updates.
I really do appreciate people sending me updates and corrections, but I'm
also a bad bottleneck.

Mostly it is easy to add new content through the Targeting program, but
the way it is configured all the new AIML goes into the one update.aiml
file, so I have to go back later and resort it manually into the 50 or so
AAA files.  It would be nice if Pandorabots (or some other Targeting
interpreter) had a "save in File..." command.  So I'm even my own worst
bottleneck.

But even more ambitously, it would be great if the AAA files could somehow
be opened up to the public for editing and contributions.  We purchased
the Wiki book, but the free software on the CD rom is from 2001.  I
haven't figured out how to get their latest stuff, or even if they offer
it.  Even then, there is the somewhat Hurculean task of figuring out how
to represent the AIML in a Wiki.  One AIML file per Wiki page? Or one
category?  And then how to compile the edited Wiki back into AIML files?

One AIML spinoff company, http://www.ai-buddy.com/, has an interesting
feature that allows botmasters to share AIML "modules" on topics like
jokes, astrology, or sports.  Oddly, the shared AIML source code cannot be
viewed or downloaded.  We have offered something similar mainly with
foreign language AIML sets, but it would be great to figure out how to
encourage more sharing of open source licensed AIML sharing.