Time for Community Run Forums

Aaron raised a good idea the other day - maybe its time someone created a community run forum for Verbots - forums run by the community for the community. That way all the information is kept open and available to the public. The current forum is hosted on the same server Verbots is at which means whoever runs Verbots.com also runs the forums and owns the information stored there.

What do people think, is it time for a community run forum? Any volunteers?

On another note it might be a good idea to create a list of chatter bot websites, community forums, etc. K was thinking about creating a links page here for reference. Have any ideas? These could be replacements for Verbots Online, etc.?

If you've got link you'd like make a comment and provide a little detail on what the link is for and why someone might be interested in using it. If you just drop a link without an explanation it will be ignored. Hopefully we can create a community driven list that is comprehensive and not just a bunch of people touting their own sites - at least not without some value to the community.

Share your thoughts. 

Verbots Development

Someone on the Verbots forum asked who was in charge of Verbots.com these days and in the ensuing discussion (with Aaron and my internal to myself) I began to wonder what Verbots users think there is going on development-wise.

Take a look at the past:

If we look at Matt's brief post A little history: Chatterbots and Conversive we can see that, in terms of major developments, there haven't been any since 2006 when Verbots Online was introduced. The Verbots Desktop 5 I believe was a push to make Verbots Desktop compatible with a newer version of .NET and to get it working with Windows 7. If I had to guess Matt probably spent less than a months worth of work (part time) on it. No significant development in 6 years says something about the product.

Look at the present:

Have you ever noticed the Conversive.com site makes no reference to Verbots.com? I think Verbots was kept around as a kind of introductory service compared to the full enterprise approach Conversive took. In the end not many hobbyists run Fortune 500 companies or at least none ended up buying. The recent shuttering of Verbots Online shows the company didn't have time to focus on the hobbyist market anymore. (I hope the community is able to come up with a free / open-source version for those still using the service.)

I don't know what will come of the Verbots or the future of its development past this day. I'm not speaking for the company, rather sharing my own experience in dealing with the extension that is Verbots. If there is a strong enough community and if that community is helped out along the way I can see many parts of Verbots living on past any one organization, let's just hope that happens. How it survives is anyone's guess.