22 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
22 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
bot
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n [common on IRC, MUD and among gamers; from robot ] 1. An IRC or MUD user
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who is actually a program. On IRC, typically the robot provides some useful
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service. Examples are NickServ, which tries to prevent random users from
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adopting nick s already claimed by others, and MsgServ, which allows one to
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send asynchronous messages to be delivered when the recipient signs on. Also
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common are annoybots , such as KissServ, which perform no useful function
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except to send cute messages to other people. Service bots are less common
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on MUDs; but some others, such as the Julia bot active in 1990--91, have
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been remarkably impressive Turing-test experiments, able to pass as human
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for as long as ten or fifteen minutes of conversation. 2. An AI-controlled
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player in a computer game (especially a first-person shooter such as Quake)
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which, unlike ordinary monsters, operates like a human-controlled player,
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with access to a player's weapons and abilities. An example can be found at
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http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/. 3. Term used, though less commonly,
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for a web spider. The file for controlling spider behavior on your site is
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officially the Robots Exclusion File and its URL is http:// somehost
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/robots.txt ) Note that bots in all senses were robots when the terms first
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appeared in the early 1990s, but the shortened form is now habitual.
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