[botmeister]

IMO a united bot, should be like a template bot, where components are plugged in, or default ones removed and replaced with alternate versions. The template idea may be best, because programmers can create their own alternate versions of the bot (diversity breeds innovation), and still retain a good standard to work with. Default components can be replaced with newer enhanced versions, allowing the bot to evolve to ever better forms. "Better" is an opinion, so anyone with coding skills could in princible replace or modify components to suit their vision of better. I think we'll have much less arguments of opinion over how the bot should perform and what it should do.

This type of project was attempted a few years ago, and there was a breif talk about it in botmans forums. It should be in the archives for reference. Someone (can't recall the details) had (or still has) a website with the details of the project.

Personally, I like the idea of us working on such a project. There's a lot of effort going into reinventing the wheel, but there's also a need to allow plenty of freedom to explore alternate methods - in a united way of course.