PogoTribe Experiment 1#

[RabbitWho]

Hee hee it couldn't be more measurable, i think it's the most measurable project on the forum at the moment. a 0 hit sentence can be followed very closely.

And if a few people were not to get the news that it was a lie, it would hardly increase worldsuck.

I think that I have a different idea of worldsuck, I think that making people believe something that is not true, even if it is just one person, is pretty much.. well it's one of the biggest problems on earth, isn't it?

People put up false information on wikipedia every day and i can tell you that in my experience depending on the page it takes anywhere between 30 seconds and 30 days to be taken down, but the average is about 15 minutes. Wikipedia and other sites like that have already thoroughly documented the methods of quality control they use.

Hurting something to see how easily it can be hurt is not nice. Not all the projects have to fight worldsuck, but I don't feel comfortable contributing to it, even in a very small way.

[mashuga31]

Apr 8, 2010 10:13:18 GMT -5 RabbitWho said:

Hurting something to see how easily it can be hurt is not nice. Not all the projects have to fight worldsuck, but I don't feel comfortable contributing to it, even in a very small way.

this. we really seem to share the same ideals rabbitwho.

I think that she also had an excellent idea when she wanted to eliminate some of the world's ignorance. Ignorance is a very big problem. While we don't want to force the people's eyes open, we still want to help them get to that point. One of the people I'm subscribed to (Gradual Report) actually does this for his webshow.... although he only eliminates ignorance about vulgar topics I think we could come up with something more appropriate.

What about general ignorance about a large topic like Video Games? I'm a gamer and there is a wide variety of lies out there claiming that video games cause people to be violent, lose their eyesight, and cause other issues that is easily proven false. Plus there are a lot of good things about video games. They teach, the contribute to hand-eye coordination (even if it's just a little) and they give you a different, more open perspective on life.

What does everyone think?

[RabbitWho]

Apr 8, 2010 12:38:22 GMT -5 @mashuga31 said:

Apr 8, 2010 10:13:18 GMT -5 RabbitWho said:

Hurting something to see how easily it can be hurt is not nice. Not all the projects have to fight worldsuck, but I don't feel comfortable contributing to it, even in a very small way.

this. we really seem to share the same ideals rabbitwho.

I think that she also had an excellent idea when she wanted to eliminate some of the world's ignorance. Ignorance is a very big problem. While we don't want to force the people's eyes open, we still want to help them get to that point. One of the people I'm subscribed to (Gradual Report) actually does this for his webshow.... although he only eliminates ignorance about vulgar topics I think we could come up with something more appropriate.

What about general ignorance about a large topic like Video Games? I'm a gamer and there is a wide variety of lies out there claiming that video games cause people to be violent, lose their eyesight, and cause other issues that is easily proven false. Plus there are a lot of good things about video games. They teach, the contribute to hand-eye coordination (even if it's just a little) and they give you a different, more open perspective on life.

What does everyone think?

That's excellent! That's exactly the type of thing I'd love to see.


We can try and come up with a list of sentences (which have zero hits before we post them on the board) and then decide which has the most potential to be picked up by people who haven't been to the moon and then spread.

Is there anything else we should change or ad to or use to develop this idea? It will need its own thread pretty soon.

I'm so glad zdecent started this!

I hope he doesn't mind that it's spun off.

[mashuga31]

Now by '0' hits is that relative? Or is it at the start?

What kind of 'sentences' are we going to be writing?

something vague or specific?
i.e. Video games don't cause issues
or Video games have been proven not to cause homicide

< is confused at the moment lol

[zdecent]

I believe what RabbitWho is trying to achieve is to use a single specific sentence that has no hits on google and see how long it takes for it takes for it to return a certain amount of hits, or by a certain amount of time how many hits it returns. It's a great experiment in terms of having control data, being measurable and doable but in terms of validity and reliability it's still lacking a little.

1- Is a search engine the best way to calculate how it spreads through the internet. Do we use a single site, or multiple? Bearing in mind that a majority of the internet is not sifted through by search engines.
2 - How are we going to spread this sentence around and why would each person feel the need to pass it on? Is it supposed to be a quote or simply a catchy saying?
3 - This experiment is quite different to the one I originally proposed, does it have the same objective? What is the intention of this experiment and how will it aid our use of the internet in future? What knowledge are we to gain about the internet and human interaction from this?

I accept now that my experiment has been criticised for it's ethical issues. Like a lot of research some experiments require the question to be asked; what is unethical about the experiment and is it worth the results? In this case I think it's clear that we believe it isn't and I'm fine with that. I'm all for RabbitWho's proposal but it's important that this remains a concise experiment that can be easily quantified. I'm not comfortable with the assumption that search engines can be used to measure the internet in it's entirety.

This kind of discussion is what I was hoping for doods!

[mashuga31]

Apr 8, 2010 15:31:31 GMT -5 zdecent said:

1- Is a search engine the best way to calculate how it spreads through the internet. Do we use a single site, or multiple? Bearing in mind that a majority of the internet is not sifted through by search engines.

I think it is actually. What other form of browsing through the internet is there?

[RabbitWho]

Apr 8, 2010 15:31:31 GMT -5 zdecent said:

I believe what RabbitWho is trying to achieve is to use a single specific sentence that has no hits on google and see how long it takes for it takes for it to return a certain amount of hits, or by a certain amount of time how many hits it returns. It's a great experiment in terms of having control data, being measurable and doable but in terms of validity and reliability it's still lacking a little.

1- Is a search engine the best way to calculate how it spreads through the internet. Do we use a single site, or multiple? Bearing in mind that a majority of the internet is not sifted through by search engines.
2 - How are we going to spread this sentence around and why would each person feel the need to pass it on? Is it supposed to be a quote or simply a catchy saying?
3 - This experiment is quite different to the one I originally proposed, does it have the same objective? What is the intention of this experiment and how will it aid our use of the internet in future? What knowledge are we to gain about the internet and human interaction from this?

I accept now that my experiment has been criticised for it's ethical issues. Like a lot of research some experiments require the question to be asked; what is unethical about the experiment and is it worth the results? In this case I think it's clear that we believe it isn't and I'm fine with that. I'm all for RabbitWho's proposal but it's important that this remains a concise experiment that can be easily quantified. I'm not comfortable with the assumption that search engines can be used to measure the internet in it's entirety.

This kind of discussion is what I was hoping for doods!

I don't see how it's important that search engines don't hit the entire internet.

A search for pogobat, a 7 letter nonsense (I think) word

Výsledky 1 - 10 z asi 444 000 na dotaz pogobat. (0,25 sekund)
(over 444 000 results)

A search for ejwfajl - another 7 letter nonsense word.

Na váš předmět vyhledávání - ejwfajl - nebyl nalezen žádný odkaz.
(no results)

So you think that because google isn't searching private email addresses all those results are meaningless?

My point is that as long as it's a closed system the amount of search results does indicate how successfully it spread.
Unless you actually think there are more than 444 000 emails out there with the word ejwafiji in them?

How we spread it? Every way we can. Social networking, relevant youtube videos, whenever the topic comes up in conversation, say it to our friends, I don't know. I have to come up with all the ideas? You think of some ways of spreading it too!

I think we'll learn about how to spread information and how to better cause a chain reaction online. Plus we'll be spreading a positive message and hopefully dispersing some lies, so we'll be helping that way.

It's worth a shot, how are we supposed to know everything we'll learn in advance? We'll know what we learned afterward.

[mashuga31]

So what is our sentance?

[zdecent]

RabbitWho it's still important to have a hypothesis when constructing an experiment. The whole point is not to just do something and see what happens. If you're gonna convince me this is a good idea for an experiment you've gotta have some kind of idea of how you're going to reach a conclusion. Simply mentioning your sentence to others isn't going to encourage them to spread it.

If the experiment is to measure how quickly or how effectively stuff can travel round the internet; Then of course it's important we accurately reflect the internet in it's entirety!!! If you want to do the experiment on a sample segment of the web-based community that's fine but you can't say one minute you're experimenting on the internet and the next suggest a method of calculating your results that only measures a small part of it.

Furthermore it is quite ridiculous to believe the only thing google doesn't show in their searches is private emails. The way google makes it's money is complicated, as far as I know it works on a pay-per-click basis which means certain sites can't afford to be listed on goggle whilst others don't see the need for it. Some sites are listed on certain search engines that aren't listed on others. Some sites appear multiple times, or are just echoes of other sites like a re-tweet system. Nevertheless the use of a search engine will never be an actual search of the whole web.

I'm not saying your method is wrong it's just a good idea to weigh the pros and cons of all our ideas wouldn't you agree? We've discussed the original idea and I fully understand there were a lot of "Cons" involved but in our considering of other ideas it's important we repeat the process.

[RabbitWho]

Apr 8, 2010 19:52:15 GMT -5 zdecent said:

If the experiment is to measure how quickly or how effectively stuff can travel round the internet; Then of course it's important we accurately reflect the internet in it's entirety!!!

You must really hate science then.
You apparently want to find out how many mice there are in a 10 mile radius every single mouse and counting him.
That's simply not how things work in the real world.

Scientists set up traps, catch 10 mice, paint their tummys white, let them go, set up 10 more traps, and from the number of mice with white tummies they catch the second time they know what the mouse frequency is in that area.

We know that the number of times it hits on a search engine is roughly proportionate to how much it's being talked about on the internet.

which means certain sites can't afford to be listed on goggle whilst others don't see the need for it.

That's not true. Is this the made up fact you're trying to spread? It won't work, everyone knows how google works. The only pay per-click things are the adds on the side of the page and in the yellow box on the top. all other websites are there for free.

Google spiders are constantly searching for new pages which are being created and indexing them on googles high speed computers so they can be searched quickly and efficiently.
If google can find it, they will put it up, the only way it won't be put up is if you specifically ask google "Please don't index my site, I don't want it in your results" and that's very hard and kind of defeats the purpose of the internet.

There was actually a man who tried to sue google when they first started, because he saw that their spiders had copied his website onto the google computer without asking permission. (This is how it works, and most people are delighted when the spiders find them because it usually takes a while) Before Google all search engines tried to search through the internet instead of searching their own data base, and they were amazingly slow.

[mashuga31]

Apr 9, 2010 5:47:48 GMT -5 RabbitWho said:

That's not true. Is this the made up fact you're trying to spread? It won't work, everyone knows how google works. The only pay per-click things are the adds on the side of the page and in the yellow box on the top. all other websites are there for free.

Google spiders are constantly searching for new pages which are being created and indexing them on googles high speed computers so they can be searched quickly and efficiently.
If google can find it, they will put it up, the only way it won't be put up is if you specifically ask google "Please don't index my site, I don't want it in your results" and that's very hard and kind of defeats the purpose of the internet.

There was actually a man who tried to sue google when they first started, because he saw that their spiders had copied his website onto the google computer without asking permission. (This is how it works, and most people are delighted when the spiders find them because it usually takes a while) Before Google all search engines tried to search through the internet instead of searching their own data base, and they were amazingly slow.

Good Non-Fact Wham!!

[zdecent]

Haha - Wouldn't that have been amazing if that was my plan all along! To spread the fact about google lol. Actually I had no idea that was how they worked, my parents and a lot of their friends used to have Internet-based businesses not so long ago and I remember them explaining how Google worked (as well as other similar search engines) I admit I was completely wrong. Therefore I think you've got a nice idea for an experiment there. The search engine would work well enough to measure our results with reasonable accuracy.

I was thinking, what if it wasn't a sentence but a word. We know how the internet loves it's single words; Epic, Fail, First etc. Perhaps if we can create a new word and give it a specific usage we can see how long it takes to spread around the net. Fred uses the word Hackin' a lot which caught-on fast. Maybe this would work? All we'd need is a few vloggers and bloggers mentioning it and we'd be on our way...

Thoughts? Is everyone now in agreement about RabbitWho's methods?

[Benyamin]

I like the word idea. But I thought the original point was to see how fast it would be stopped, right? How is a word going to be stopped? Unless I misunderstood.

[RabbitWho]

Apr 10, 2010 23:05:33 GMT -5 Benyamin said:

I like the word idea. But I thought the original point was to see how fast it would be stopped, right? How is a word going to be stopped? Unless I misunderstood.

We wouldn't need to stop this because it wouldn't be something bad.


I like the word idea, however i think we've seen that before with DFTBA and things like that.Plus I know things don't have to decrease worldsuck, but it would be cool if they did.
Also I think new words only catch on when there is a need for them, like DFTBA and it's affirmation of secret knowledge - it will only be understood by a few individuals and it allows them to recognize each other and also feel part of a group. (Okay, it's at least 2 groups now, but still) It's the type of thing that sends shivers down my spine.
It's not a time-saving devise because there are only two extra syllables in Don't forget to be awesome.

RabbitWho's methods

hee hee they're not my methods! just suggested ideas, the reason I didn't settle on a sentence as well is because I want there to be a bunch and we choose the best one, I want it to come out of the community.. whenever I have an idea (or change someone else's ) everyone looks to me like "Okay! What are you going to do now?" and the question is " What do we do now"


Okay so the ideas range as:

An uplifting sentence that makes people feel better
A sentence that disproves some widely believed un-true fact.
A new word

Who likes which ideas? Discuss!

[RabbitWho]

Here's a Ted talk on something very similar:

www.ted.com/talks/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html

He basically says that opinions are fine, but the way ignorance can go viral and we can't tell opinions from facts is costing billions of dollars and it could even result in people dying.


Idea now has its own thread:

pogotribe.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=projects&thread=1378

[Deleted]

^^saved to my "read it later" TED is awesome

[mooxim]

I reckon it's worth looking into what makes something go viral. I doubt an uplifting or thought provoking sentence will actually manage it when you consider what does. If you go onto encyclopedia dramatica or check out the most popular youtube videos you'll see humour is the most viral of attributes.

I think we'd have the most success if we can come up with a joke.
Jokes still have the ability to make people think but they're a lot more likely to get passed on. It could be designed to be uplifting or disprove some widely believed un-true "fact".

[RabbitWho]

Apr 15, 2010 8:54:51 GMT -5 mooxim said:

I reckon it's worth looking into what makes something go viral. I doubt an uplifting or thought provoking sentence will actually manage it when you consider what does. If you go onto encyclopedia dramatica or check out the most popular youtube videos you'll see humour is the most viral of attributes.

I think we'd have the most success if we can come up with a joke.
Jokes still have the ability to make people think but they're a lot more likely to get passed on. It could be designed to be uplifting or disprove some widely believed un-true "fact".

That's a great idea!

I disagree that things have to be funny:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRgS-Kmtr20
- she talks here about the power of things like twitter and how fast things can spread (she also talks about loads of other things and different ways of using twitter)

Things which are "good" or "important" go viral.

We're discussing this branch of the idea here now:

pogotribe.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=projects&action=display&thread=1378

Most people seem to be more interested in something uplifting rather than something factual , and I'm happy whatever direction it goes in! It's just great to see people getting involved in something!
but my own preference is factual so I'd be delighted to have more people who've read this thread take an interest

[mooxim]

I'm on the other thread as well.

It looks like zdecent is getting what he originally wanted. Dan's latest video is full of bollocks. Unfortunately I don't think his myths about brushing teeth with marmite, going to the NHS for a shower and the UK being formerly known as Greenland are going to last 5 minutes.

I'm tempted to try marmite on my toothbrush tomorrow morning though. I love marmite.