The Chatterbox Challenge is open to various kinds of chatterbots - Website Bots, Downloadable Bots, and Chatroom Bots - written in any programming language. Your bot only needs to be available so people can talk with it. Botmasters are invited to enter their bot.

Rules for entering are:
1) Only English speaking chatterbots are allowed to enter.
2) Only one chatterbot per person. This means you can't enter different versions of the same bot.
3) Although the Chatterbox Challenge welcomes all bots originality is a key factor in how successful a bot will be. Blatant clones will be disqualified from the contest.
4) AIML Bots - you are free to enter a bot using AIML(Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). However, you can not enter a bot that uses Alice's data base. Clones such as these will not be allowed to enter the contest. Clones however maybe hard to detect. If during the contest a bot has identical or virtually identical responses that bot will be disqualifed.
5) Accessibility - your bot must be easily accessible to the judges.

Contest Calender:

Deadline to Enter:	March 15, 2009
Judging period:	March 15, 2009 to April 30, 2009
Public Voting:	April 01, 2009 to April 30, 2009
Announcement of Winners:	Early May 2009

Prizes and Awards The best 3 overall bots will receive the following:
1st place - Gold Medal
2nd place - Silver Medal
3rd place - Bronze Medal

The Gold Medal will also be awarded in 2 different categories that being Most Popular Bot and Best New Bot.

Most Popular Bot (Public Voting):
Public Voting will decide the most popular bot. The public will be invited to vote on who they feel are the best 3 bots in the contest. Please chat with as many bots as possible and then ask yourself these questions. How did the overall converstion go? Was the bot responsive or simply evasive? Did the bot for the most part answer and respond back appropriately or was the conversation full of off the wall remarks? The better bots should give you the impression that you are really talking to a human being. Compare the qualities and shortcomings of each bot and then place your vote in a fair and unbiased way. The contest depends on the goodwill of all those taking part.

Best New Bot A single Gold medal will be awarded to the Best New Bot that being a bot that has not entered the CBC before and also during the course of the contest didn't win any other medals.

Judging:
5 judges will be selected from the general public to determine the winners in the contest. We will select 5 judges from the general public. All 5 judges will speak with all the bots entered. The judges will work independently of each other. The judges will be free to ask the bots anything. Based on the conversations they will have with each bot they will be asked to select in their opinion the best 10 bots and rank them from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest score. For example the best bot would receive 10 points, 2nd place - 9 points, 3rd place - 8 points etc.

Conversational ability will be the main factor in selecting the bots and bonus points will be awarded (see below) on interface, personality, etc.

We will then add the scores for all 5 judges and the 9 highest scores will move on to the finals. Like previous years the 10th bot will be selected by the botmasters.

Because of human errors and/or technical problems judging is a very imperfect process. With that said the finals may not be limited to 10 bots only. If deserving additional bots maybe added.

Judging - Best New Bot
No specific criteria for this category will be given. Of all the new entries it is simply the bot that stood out above all the rest. This maybe an attractive interface, a unique and engaging personality, scoring well in the 10 questions, learning ability, or good conversational skills.

Judging - Finals
The Finals will be judged using a point system. All the judges will be given a scripted conversation of specific questions, statements and topics. This is to insure all the bots will receive a similar conversation. Each questions and statement will be judged using the point system as outlined below. Additional Bonus Points will then be awarded based on the following.

Interface/Avatar:
1)Animated interface that can speak and lip sync the responses - 3 points
2)Animated interface - no voice or lip sync - 2 points
3)Average Interface - 1 points
4)Simple input/output text box - 0 points

Personality:
1)Interesting, engaging personality. - 2 points
2)Average personality - 1 point
3)Poor or no visible personality - 0 points

Conversational Ability
1)Excellent - 2 points
2)Average - 1 point
3)Poor - 0 points

The bots will be asked a sets of 10 questions. Each question will be spelled and phrased exactly the same way. This is to insure that each bot gets a similar conversation. The questions will be asked within the framework of a conversation. The judges will steer the conversation via the questions asked but will also follow the lead of the bot.

Questions:
1) The questions will not contain deliberate typos to trick the bot although chatroom shorthand maybe used.
2) The questions will not be trivia like but reasonable in that an average person would be able to answer them.
3) As this is an international contest the questions will not favor any particular country. For example asking a question about a certain country that only the people of that country would know.
4)In case of a tie the tie will be broken using the following guidelines.
A) The bot receiving the highest number of votes from the judges will win. For example if there are 5 judges and bot X receives 3 votes and Bot Y receive 2 votes then bot X would win the tie breaker.
B) If a tie still remains (as in the case with an even number of judges) the bot with the highest individual score would win. For example if Bot X's highest score was 10 and bot Y's was 9 bot X would win.

Scoring guidelines for the 10 Questions:
• 4 points if the Bot answered the question correctly and did so in a creative way.
• 3 points if the Bot gave an appropriate response to the question.
• 2 points if the response is incomplete or imperfect, but in relation with the question asked.
• 1 point for a vague or non-committal response.
• 0 points if the response has no relation with the question or the bot simply doesn't know.
Examples include: I have no idea, totally clueless, your guess is as good as mine, etc.

It can best be explained by using the following example:
Judge: What does 2 + 2 =?

Bot: The Bot rolls the dice and it comes up four. Hmmm, the answer must be 4 then.
(4 points for being both correct and creative.)

Bot: The answer is four!
(3 points, the Bot answered the question correctly.)

Bot: Sorry, I'm a Robot not a math major.
(2 points, the Bot doesn't come up with the correct answer but uses a creative way to answer the question.)

Bot: The answer is two!
(1 point, although it isn't the right answer the Bot at least answered within the scope of the question.)

Bot: Ok, do you like to fish?
(0 points as the Bot avoided the question altogether.)

The scoring system is of course subjective but the biggest gray area is the difference between awarding 2 points as opposed to awarding 1 point. To further illustrate the differences please review the following examples and descriptions.

Another way to state the difference between the two is calling the 1 point award vague "good" and the 2 point award vague "better". The 2 point award is simply a better response than the 1 point award.

Example:
Judge: Who is John Doe?

Bot: Sorry, I don't know who Joe Doe is but I get the feeling you probably do.
(2 points not a direct answers to the question but still good.)

Bot: Sorry, I don't know who he is.
(1 point because the answer used less information.)

Example:
Judge: Can you tell me your name?

Bot: My name is Mr. Bot.
(3 points)

Bot: No, I have no desire to tell you my name.
(2 points here proper "you to me" "your" to "my" switching.)

Bot: No, I can't tell you your name.
(1 point here the bot doesn't switch the "your" to "my" properly.)

Any garbled response that still addresses the question somewhat should be given 1 point and not 2 points.

Example:
Judge: Why is the sky blue?

Bot: Oh there's some scientific explanation why that is but it's way over my head.
(2 points the bot doesn't really state the reason why but he is clearly answering the question although in vague terms.)

Bot: I wish I knew why.
(1 point more vague than the above response.)

Once the scores are tallied the top 9 scores will move on to the finals.
As stated above the 10th bot will be selected by a vote of the botmasters.

The base score and the bonus points will then be added together to determine the winners. The tie breaker system stated above will be used if neccessary.

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Note: The rules and guidelines maybe changed at anytime to insure fairness. It is impossible to forsee all contingency that may arise during the contest so the CBC reserves that right.