Thommo wrote:IHateYouTrebek wrote:I thought I'd let you all know (if you're curious), Xerographica tried his experiment on another forum that took him up on his challenge.
Wealth of Nations won when it came to voting, but Fifty Shades of Grey won when it came to spending - despite the fact that only one person liked fifty shades of grey and spent money on it, a number of other spent money on it just to make it beat wealth of nations.
Do you have a link to the forum thread? It's hard to make much of this when the forum population, and what they were told isn't shown.
I'm quite interested in why anyone would spend money on this at all!
Here's the link. In the previous thread I had stated that my belief in the superiority of spending would be falsified if voting ranked The Wealth of Nations higher than donating did. What I did not realize at the time is that many of the participants in that thread had many puppet accounts, which they used to vote for The Wealth of Nations. Plus, some members donated for 50 Shades of Grey, while I was the only one to donate for The Wealth of Nations.
The thing is, if somebody happens to randomly find that thread, they aren't going to know that both polls were majorly trolled, unless they happen to read the discussion.
In this thread I shared the results from donors ranking potential themes for the libertarian party (LP) convention...
$6,327.00 — I’m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 — Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 — Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 — Empowering the Individual
$395.00 — The Power of Principle
$150.00 — Future of Freedom
$135.00 — Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 — Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 — Free Lives Matter
$42.00 — Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 — Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 — Taxation is Theft
$15.00 — Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 — All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 — Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 — Liberty Here and Now
Did anybody troll this? I have absolutely no idea. It's entirely possible that some liberals trolled the LP by spending $6,327 to put "I'm That Libertarian!" at the top. If so, it was a pretty subtle troll.
Recently I found a website where people can use their donations to rank photos. For example,
here's a contest sponsored by the Cat Welfare Association. Did anybody troll this contest? I have no idea. Perhaps if a dog was #1 then I might guess that some dog lovers had trolled the contest.
This last weekend I went to the Fern and Exotic Plant Show at the Los Angeles Arboretum.
I blogged about it and suggested that members of plant societies/forums use the 360 Photo Contest website, or a similar website, to have a plant contest that is judged by donors. How would I know if anybody trolled the contest? Well, if poison ivy won the contest then I might guess that some plant haters had trolled it.
Personally I think it's obviously beneficial to see an accurate reflection of what any given group of people truly cares about. It's equally obvious to me that donating will create a far more accurate reflection than voting will. Yes, it's also obvious that the accuracy of a donation reflection can be decreased by trolls. But groups aren't equally infested with trolls. The groups with the most trolls will suffer from brain drain while the groups with the least trolls will benefit from brain gain.