Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Scott — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:47:17 -0000

Gabe,

Right but it's still the fruit of the poisoned tree (to borrow a "Law and Order" term). You picked out a single group, each member of which have their own bias and favorite people to link to. :)

I agree with Robert that it's much harder to game people. It's social engineering vs. brute force.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Gabe — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:03:22 -0000

So I should probably note one more thing: what Robert said about the seed list isn't entirely accurate. A seed list is used to find a larger set of sources, and then that larger set (not merely the seed list) is used to discover what to post.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Scott — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:47:51 -0000

Exactly Robert, this is what I said over at Shelly P. BurningBird blog when the "testosterone meme" post hit. The system comes pre-biased because it is based on a seed-list of people.

It would be much easier to game if it were pure algortihms (see Google PageRank if you need an example.)

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Tara 'Miss Rogue' Hunt — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:59:24 -0000

Wow...I can safely say that neither Alex nor I intended to cause such a ruckus here. I, personally, didn't even think it would work.

I'm always happy to open up interesting debates.

And, for the record, I love Memeorandum and I think Gabe is brilliant. I believe the fact that he limits the blogs in the meme is a good way to keep out spammers. Perhaps an AttentionTrust.org x Memeorandum mashup would help?

From this point forward, however, I vow to behave and never to abuse my privileges again...trust me, I'm honored to be part of the meme.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

/pd — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:50:55 -0000

Its a game of trust which is like a spiders web. It catches everything that encompasses its span - however if a single strand brokes then the whole model fails. Likewise the "trust web" also is like the spiders web-5 times the strength of steel.

What matters here is the out of many comes one. (E.g boing boing,slashdot, memerandum,digg) all their content is second hand. They point to soemthing else. Human intravention is critical. Without it there would be no meaning. Everyone is 'gaming' here. Take a look at the pubsub catogory list- another human being doing the work.

The true game is to ensure creditablity and create trust - by whatever algorthims and methods makes no difference.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

PeteCashmore — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:31:35 -0000

Robert,

I think you've misunderstood my points. I wasn't trying to suggest in any way that Memeorandum has failed (this was actually just a bit of innovative social engineering by Alex and Tara) - I was just using Memeorandum as a starting point to explore the issues of how algorithms and humans interact. Gabe is right: everything is humans + algorithms, so the only distinction there is between implicit human behaviour (linking to someone) and explicit human behaviour (Digg this). The former is generally very efficient as a means to gauge relevance. And there's also a whole spectrum between these two behaviours.

I think it's more a case of putting humans back in the loop when things go wrong - Gabe presumably acts as the human check digit in Memeorandum, which works fine right now (and may be scalable depending on how Memeorandum works behind the scenes). The point is that where algorithms fail, humans need to step in with an explicit action (Report Link, remove blog from database). I responded in the comments:

http://mashable.com/2005/11...

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

Gabe — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 03:07:55 -0000

Wow, well said, Robert. Just noticed all this now, as my connectivity is spotty today.

I'd say memeorandum is "gamed" less than a bunch of well known blogs, since it draws on the output of a large group of people to decide what to post.

Pete also makes this Digg=people, memeorandum=algorithm distinction that makes no sense to me.

BTW, there are ways to combat "gaming" that don't even require booting sources from the site. In fact, I've haven't kicked out any site to date.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

scobleizer — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 02:49:41 -0000

Yup, personally this kind of stuff only makes the system stronger and makes us all wiser as to how things get onto Memeorandum. I wish I understood as much about how Google's News page worked.

Re: Gaming Memeorandum, NOT!

TDavid — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 02:45:13 -0000

Linking to good content and being on guard for/against deception will help keep sources like memeorandum relativey untainted.

It sucks when you link to something and then find out you were duped by a spammer or some lame scheme.

I'm sure Gabe is monitoring this situation (not just this experiment of Alex and Tara's, but the system as a whole) closely. He seems to be pretty on top of this stuff.