Contributing

We welcome and encourage contributions to the ChatterBot Corpus! This project relies on community contributions to provide high-quality, diverse training data for chatbots across multiple languages.

For complete contributing guidelines, please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the repository.

Content Quality Standards

The corpus aims for:

• Factual correctness - All factual information should be accurate and verifiable

• Proper grammar and spelling - Content must meet high quality standards for the target language

• Natural conversation flow - Conversations should flow naturally and contextually

Legal Requirements

Important: All contributions must be original work or freely licensed content.

Contributions must not include:

• Copyrighted material (dialogue from movies, books, TV shows, etc.)

• Song lyrics or poetry under copyright

• Content that violates intellectual property rights

• Illegal, harmful, or offensive content

Contributions must:

• Be your original work

• Be freely licensed or in the public domain

• Not violate any copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights

• Be appropriate for public distribution

Quick Start for Contributors

1. Fork the repository on GitHub

2. Create a new branch for your contribution

3. Add or improve YAML conversation files in chatterbot_corpus/data/

4. Ensure proper formatting, grammar, and factual accuracy

5. Submit a pull request with a clear description

File Format

All corpus data files use YAML format (.yml). Here’s the basic structure:

categories:
- greetings
- casual

conversations:
- - Hello
  - Hi there!
- - How are you?
  - I'm doing well, thank you! How about you?
- - What's your name?
  - I'm a chatbot. What's your name?

Adding New Languages

To add support for a new language:

1. Create a new directory under chatterbot_corpus/data/ with the language name

2. Add conversation files in YAML format (.yml)

3. Follow the existing structure from other language directories

4. Ensure translations are accurate and culturally appropriate

Improving Existing Content

You can help by:

• Adding new conversation topics to existing languages

• Correcting factual errors in existing conversations

• Fixing spelling, grammar, or formatting issues

• Expanding topic coverage within a language

• Improving the natural flow of conversations

Full Guidelines

For detailed information including:

• Step-by-step setup instructions

• YAML formatting guidelines

• Pull request process

• Language-specific guidelines

• Style guide and best practices

• Detailed legal requirements

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md in the repository.

Questions?

If you have questions about contributing:

1. Check existing issues and pull requests on GitHub

2. Review the CONTRIBUTING.md guide thoroughly

3. Open a new issue with your question if you can’t find an answer

Thank you for helping make ChatterBot better for everyone!