Aymeric feedback

28.11.2012

0. Receivers are anyone in your project, or spammers?

There are anyone. Spammers won't participate, they will source material from which the bot is constructed. Say we take Mr. Wang, a spammer I have been exchanging emails with, I know a bit about Mr.Wang that I shape the bot, so that it impersonates Mr.Wang (he is middled age bank manager, living in Beijing, wants to make money out of the account of a dead client of his bank; Writes his long and repetitive emails, using elaborate language that doesn't really saying anything, the google translate glitches of his text). Mr Wang will become the bot, and also he could be given a whole new (online) life. (I am thinking as I am writing, but this should be included in the proposal)

1. make a diagram to make more explicit the step-by-step part

Yes, think it will help understanding

2. The introduction of the human receiver vs another human receiver via a preliminary bot chat is the strongest part of the project, the whole chat bot ai stuff does not deserve so much attention on its own, so try to balance it better in your text.

I agree!

3. Section "General Methodology of Work" is too vague, unclear, cant really figure out why it's there. Besides, you take as an example your phone calls, but I'd say that unlike with the spam stuff, you had an objective and played dumb to extract information by means of surprise and confusion, to actually get a better understanding of the data tracking industry. With the spam, by making spammers talk, there was also an objective, that is to use other techniques to make alive the spam mythology as a whole.

Maybe this is confusing. I believe the title General Methodology is not the most clear. This section should be a look back on past work and figuring out what general methodology is constant, and should also give examples of past work. Maybe it should be called some like Previous Works' Methodology

Without any clear objective (maybe I missed it), there is a risk that you will be creating a complicated text generator that looses its connection with the spam world, and the fact that you struggle to clearly explain what will be the outcome or final object more precisely at this point seems to confirm the existence of such a risk. This point should be nuanced depending of the answer of question 0.

Will try to nail down the outcome