Some posters are so predictable and repetitive in their posts so that, although I'm not a programmer, I think a well-designed bot imitating them could easily fool a lot of people for quite some time.

Some of my picks:

pvn:

Responds to pro-government keywords and phrases with "I don't like [X], ergo it's ok to boss people around" and/or lolque.jpg, lolironyments.jpg, gifs, or randomly selected links to news articles sharing keywords.

FlyWf:

Responds to racial keywords and phrases with an automatically generated two paragraph rant, inserting the poster's name into a variant of "I know you just can't help going up to bat for white supremacists". Should the bot ever be asked about anything specific, it responds with either a variant of "I know this is hard for you aspie types to understand", "I suggest you read a history textbook", or sometimes both combined.

MissileDog:

Responds to libertarian keywords and phrases with a multiparagraph, multicoloured automatically generated post with no discernible point, with the phrases "the odious zan nen", "youz guyz", "I am not your personal Googled" liberally sprayed throughout.

Riverman

Says "LOL GOP", "LOL ikes" or occasionally longer variations of these in any thread in which either is mentioned more than say five times.

David Sklansky:

Takes randomly selected political headlines and starts threads in the form "What Does [Game Theory/Bayes Theorem/] Imply About [Headline]?"

and/or:

Picks concepts at random from introductory economics and political science textbooks, translates them into Simple English, then changes the wording to make it seem original. This is quite hard, so the posts will seem strange.

steelhouse:

Randomly selects a time of the day to start a new thread, selects a few dozen sentences about taxes and the corruptness of politicians, puts them together in no particular order.

All of them.exe

That's a pretty solid list. pvn stands head and shoulders above the rest though --his usual "something something $extreme.strawman" posts could easily fail a Turing test.

I'm pretty sure I could tell you Phil's position on any issue well before he posted about it.

How you didn't mention public sector compensation on Riverman's entry is beyond me.

Surprised not to see LirvA there. Maybe OP suspects he's already been replaced.

10 REM LIRVABOT 3000
20 GOSUB 90
30 PRINT "**** OBAMA"
40 SEED *1 - 10000*
50 IF S>9000 GOTO 20
60 IF S<9000 PRINT "MURDERING BROWN CHILDREN FOR ****ING TAX DOLLARS LIKE HOW GOVERNMENT ALWAYS DOES"
70 REM ADAM KOKESH
80 REM RAND PAUL

etc. Even in BASIC I'm pretty sure LirvA wouldn't take up more than 10K at the most.

Yeah, but some of Lirvas attention-seeking escapades could never be replicated by a bot.

LirvA is many things, but bot like is not one of them. A bot would be a better poster and probably pass basic english courses.

I actually often find his political posts delightfully fresh. A mind uncontaminated by common knowledge, but quite lively and comes up with unique formulations. Of course, they are often batty, but they're still a respite.

Gamblor and steelhouse are the only legitimate bot suspects here imo, although I have to confess to not being able to associate particular posting algorithms with particular posters as well as many of you. I tend to take look at posts more as independent instances and respond to them at face value.

Very interesting thread, Nichlemn. I am really enjoying the discussion of the issue at hand. Thank you.

Wynton: Google random graphs and charts, remove any legends or background information, post in LC thread. EZ

Yes, I should emphasise that being "bot-like" is only moderately correlated with being a bad poster. A relatively simple bot could post links to relevant information and be an above-average poster. A bad poster could display good reading comprehension, yet make terrible arguments.

#Include <iostream>;
#include <string>;

Int main() {
String PosterName;
Cin >> PosterName;
If (PosterName == DeucesMcCracken) Cout << "You stupid clown.";
Return (0);
}

:thumbsup:

no self respecting bot would be written in C++

Dids, I am really enjoying your posting in unchained.

Begin
WriteLn('It was that or Pascal')
End.

(Or 6800 assembly code)

Znga:

Make account
Start wildly racist thread
Repeat

neg and jim, at least in the obamacare thread, have probably posted the same script dozens if times, so take your pick imo

I may have to try and replace myself with a bot for a little while and see if anyone notices :-P

Falconbot you idiots.