---
title: "Jabber Oracle: a quicker, n00bier guru?"
date: 2005-10-27T15:36:21-04:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2005/10/27/jabber-oracle-a-quicker-n00bier-guru/
author: Les Orchard
tags: [asides, chatbots, oracle, jabber]
---

# Jabber Oracle: a quicker, n00bier guru?

A quick further thought I had, regarding [the Internet Oracle][ora]:  What if I built a Jabber/AIM Oracle?  You send it an IM with a request; you're asked, in turn, to answer another request; eventually you receive an answer after a period of Oracular ponderance.

Now, I've already found [one impedance mismatch for chatbots][bot], in converting an IRC-based bot to an IM-based bot.  In particular, a privately-messaged automaton loses all of the shared context built up in a public chatroom.  For infobots on IRC, often the users manual is found in watching how everyone else interacts with it.  You lose that in 1-to-1 IM.  

I'd imagine going from an email interface to IM would narrow the amount of context available, but would it still be a fun hack?  Waste of time?

[bot]: http://decafbad.com/blog/2005/06/24/decafbot-update-faqs
[ora]: http://decafbad.com/blog/2005/10/26/tell-me-oh-oracle

<!-- tags: jabber oracle chatbots -->

<div id="comments" class="comments archived-comments">
            <h3>Archived Comments</h3>
            
        <ul class="comments">
            
        <li class="comment" id="comment-221083190">
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                <div class="author">
                    <a class="avatar image" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://dougal.gunters.org/"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=81717a172b6918071fbea1a52483294b&amp;size=32&amp;default=http://mediacdn.disqus.com/1320279820/images/noavatar32.png"/></a>
                    <a class="avatar name" rel="nofollow" 
                       href="http://dougal.gunters.org/">Dougal Campbell</a>
                </div>
                <a href="#comment-221083190" class="permalink"><time datetime="2005-10-28T15:42:51">2005-10-28T15:42:51</time></a>
            </div>
            <div class="content"><p>Well, Jabber has chatrooms. Why not use those?</p>

<p>Does AIM support that, too? I've only ever talked to AIM contacts via my Jabber-AIM gateway, not with the actual client...</p></div>
            
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