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31
What are Amazon doing now? [Public] / What the hell Amazon? What did you bozo's do now?
« Last post by TimothyEllis on November 06, 2025, 08:17:38 PM »
It appears the rank and series systems are down.

I just did Bookreport, and got no ranks on any of the books I monitor.

I checked a few, and a few others, and there are no ranks or series in the US store at all that I can find. The UK store was fine.

It's like half the product pages just vanished.

There's no revues there either, although the ranking numbers are still at the top, along with the orange tags.

Serious WTF, Amazon?

 :icon_think: :dizzy :shrug :help :tap
32
Bot Discussion Public / Re: Why is this NOT the Bot standard?
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on November 06, 2025, 03:43:44 PM »
Quote from: TimothyEllis on November 05, 2025, 10:42:25 PM
Saw this on FB.

Why is this not the core instruction set for all the bots?


Because it didn't have to be until Grok forced the issue.  Now that there's some serious ideological competition in how these chatbots are hard-coded, how they're trained, and how they function, the others can't just live inside the San Francisco ideological bubble if they want to compete for market share.

Want to have some fun?  Ask Grok to give you a vulgar roast of some person, place, thing, or group.   :hehe

Here, I'll start... 





Grok's response:


Quote
Oh, Jeff Tanyard, you pasty-faced, limp-wristed sack of expired beef jerky, strutting around like you're the king of the cul-de-sac but smelling like a dumpster fire after a chili cook-off gone wrong. Your face looks like it was sculpted by a blind drunk with a potato peeler?pockmarked craters deeper than the Grand Canyon and twice as welcoming to flies. You call that gut a "dad bod"? Nah, that's a goddamn beer volcano ready to erupt, fueled by discount swill and regrets from that one-night stand with regret itself. Hairline retreating faster than French forces in WWII, leaving behind a forehead shiny enough to signal aliens for a mercy kill. And your personality? Drier than a nun's snatch in the Sahara?boring, abrasive, and nobody's begging for seconds. You couldn't score with a hooker using a fistful of Venmo and a promise of "emotional support." Face it, Jeff: you're the human equivalent of a participation trophy?unwanted, unremarkable, and gathering dust in the back of life's bargain bin. Go choke on a taint hair, you irrelevant f*ckwit!


 :icon_rofl: :dance: :icon_rofl:

Seriously, if you haven't at least played around with Grok a little bit yet, you're simply missing out.
33
Bot Discussion Public / Re: Why is this NOT the Bot standard?
« Last post by TimothyEllis on November 06, 2025, 11:19:29 AM »
Quote from: Lynn on November 06, 2025, 04:01:20 AM
Because it doesn't work.

Of course it doesn't work.

You can't apply that over the top of what's already there.

This should be what the base code looks like, not what a prompt looks like.

The bots were built to lie to people and make this up instead of admitting they don't know.

No amount of prompting will ever offset that.

I'm asking why this code set wasn't the base code for all of them.
34
Bot Discussion Public / Re: Why is this NOT the Bot standard?
« Last post by Lynn on November 06, 2025, 05:45:04 AM »
Quote from: R. C. on November 06, 2025, 05:36:13 AM
Quote from: Lynn on November 06, 2025, 04:01:20 AM
....

It literally just doesn't do anything to stop the emotionally expressive elements that make up responses from the LLM bots. They are not independent thinking machines so they *must* mimic what they're trained on.

Not sure that's 100%.  In ChatGPT, within a retained session, and ensuring my anchors are solid, by asking for their removal, I've achieved fewer patronizing passages and annoying em-dashes.  However, when starting a new session, the fluff returns.

R.C.

I wasn't clear? I'm talking about "being a machine, emotionless responses, etc" versus "expressing things in a human way". They aren't human, aren't intelligent, and must mimic because that's what they are. They're trained on expressive content, not machine-like, emotionless data. The associations are going to come out no matter how hard you try to lock it down. LLM chat bots are what they are.
35
Bot Discussion Public / Re: Why is this NOT the Bot standard?
« Last post by R. C. on November 06, 2025, 05:36:13 AM »
Quote from: Lynn on November 06, 2025, 04:01:20 AM
....

It literally just doesn't do anything to stop the emotionally expressive elements that make up responses from the LLM bots. They are not independent thinking machines so they *must* mimic what they're trained on.

Not sure that's 100%.  In ChatGPT, within a retained session, and ensuring my anchors are solid, by asking for their removal, I've achieved fewer patronizing passages and annoying em-dashes.  However, when starting a new session, the fluff returns.

R.C.
36
Bot Discussion Public / Re: Why is this NOT the Bot standard?
« Last post by Lynn on November 06, 2025, 04:01:20 AM »
Because it doesn't work.

I wanted to see it in action so I had copilot make a transcript of the text from the image.

Then I put it into a chat in ChatGPT. Within three exchanges, it used the phrase "That fits beautifully..."

It literally just doesn't do anything to stop the emotionally expressive elements that make up responses from the LLM bots. They are not independent thinking machines so they *must* mimic what they're trained on.
37
Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Join Indie Voices: Authors & Books on Quora?
« Last post by TimothyEllis on November 06, 2025, 02:43:07 AM »
Quote from: Jan Hurst-Nicholson on November 06, 2025, 02:22:52 AM
That was my thinking. But it seems to be quite new and might eventually get readers. But writers are also readers. If you can help by answering questions it might get you a following.  Maybe we should keep checking it out.

I don't join Spaces.

And I don't tend to answer questions from them, but instead answer the parent question that got shared to the Space.

But, if you want to try it, and A2A me any questions you'd like me to address, I'll look at them.

The pain is, answers in Spaces have to be approved by the Admin unless you're a contributor, and you can't share you own answer there to your own Space until it's accepted there. And sometimes they're so tardy about doing that, there's no point.

But I find being a contributor just bombards me with stuff I don't want to see. I'm in my own Space, and that's it. I actually use it to stop some of my answers being collapsed for being too short.
38
Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Join Indie Voices: Authors & Books on Quora?
« Last post by Jan Hurst-Nicholson on November 06, 2025, 02:22:52 AM »
Quote from: TimothyEllis on November 06, 2025, 01:31:19 AM
I'm very active on Quora and hadn't heard of it before.

151 contributors, all authors. 999 followers. My guess is, all authors.

The welcome post is inviting everyone to post, including readers, but there are zero readers on there, just Indie authors.

It's like everywhere else. All Indie authors looking for somewhere to advertise for free, and no actual readers.

Now, if it had a membership of tens of thousands, and half of them were readers, it might be useful. But 999, mainly authors, is pretty useless.

My guess is, they're trying to get authors in, when they should be getting readers in, which is going to be substantially harder.

I seriously doubt it will be of any use for promotion purposes.

For example, Mercedes Lackey has a following there of over 25,000, and her books debut about the same as mine do, so that list is worthless from a sales perspective.

That was my thinking. But it seems to be quite new and might eventually get readers. But writers are also readers. If you can help by answering questions it might get you a following.  Maybe we should keep checking it out.
39
Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Join Indie Voices: Authors & Books on Quora?
« Last post by TimothyEllis on November 06, 2025, 01:31:19 AM »
I'm very active on Quora and hadn't heard of it before.

151 contributors, all authors. 999 followers. My guess is, all authors.

The welcome post is inviting everyone to post, including readers, but there are zero readers on there, just Indie authors.

It's like everywhere else. All Indie authors looking for somewhere to advertise for free, and no actual readers.

Now, if it had a membership of tens of thousands, and half of them were readers, it might be useful. But 999, mainly authors, is pretty useless.

My guess is, they're trying to get authors in, when they should be getting readers in, which is going to be substantially harder.

I seriously doubt it will be of any use for promotion purposes.

For example, Mercedes Lackey has a following there of over 25,000, and her books debut about the same as mine do, so that list is worthless from a sales perspective.
40
Marketing Loft [Public] / Join Indie Voices: Authors & Books on Quora?
« Last post by Jan Hurst-Nicholson on November 06, 2025, 01:21:08 AM »
Hi,
Has anyone joined Indie Voices on Quora? I haven't responded yet as I'm reluctant to add more emails offering to advertise my book to the deluge I already receive daily. But it might prove worthwhile.

Dear Author,
You poured your heart into writing your book. But in today?s crowded world of publishing, visibility is everything. Without the right audience, even the best stories risk being overlooked.
That is why I created a new Quora Space called Indie Voices: Authors & Books. It is designed specifically for indie authors to share their books, writing journeys, and insights with readers who are actively searching for stories.
Join here: Indie Voices: Authors & Books on Quora https://linkedinpublic.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3ca2a71eda40c8d06723b854b&id=c39fccea7f&e=6404f7c3ab
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