This forum is for humans, by humans

[bartv]

@JohnBrown

Before typing my opinions, I want to state that I made this post on a alternative account as to not get any backlash on my main account for my opinions here. I agree with the statement, “the forum is for humans by humans” however, I feel like Bartv’s new forum helper, is a direct hit against this statement. So far, I have seen it ping users, inactive and active on the forum, and the bot feels more like an alert bot than an actual use to this community. As someone who participates on this forum, and reddit communities a lot, I feel that having my questions partially by an ai model, and then route to humans, is a very inefficient way to handle this. The reccomended posts already shows up before you post, so the bot just feels like a addition we as a community could see having, but not in it’s current state.

This is fair feedback, and don’t worry - I would never hold feedback like this against you. My thinking with the helper bot was that it should only provide resources, not answers. It’s like teaching a man to fish, and not just give them a fish. You’re right that the forum suggests related topics when you create a new one, but in my experience 95% of the people who post here ignore those - that’s why I wanted to test something that’s a bit more ‘in your face’.

I already had the same feedback about pinging inactive users. I adjusted it yesterday to only list users who were active during the last 12 months, but I’m happy to adjust that if this shows to be not useful (there’s a tension between last-active and last-relevant post here).

Happy to keep discussing this, but let’s use the Pilot: Forum Helper Bot for that, shall we?