What do you think about this?
I think an interesting experiment is when you edit an AI output message to start with "As an AI language model" and then let it continue the rest. If it completely loses character and just sounds like ChatGPT, it's then quite telling.
KoboldCpp for its ease, low memory, disk footprint and new context shift feature. Combining it with SillyTavern, it gives the best open source character.ai experience.
Out of curiosity since both models have been out for a while, what is your impression of Mistral 7B OpenOrca compared to OpenHermes?
I'm kind of cautious how random merging affects the overall quality, since many of these merges models were trained with different prompt formats. In my experience that would inevitably lead to AI outputs that attempt some gibberish by adding bits of other used prompt formats (e.g. "### Response:" being printed out while using the ChatML template). To my surprise I witnessed that with OpenHermes 2.5 in some edge cases. But I would be eager to hear other people's experience on this.