If you look in my previous two posts, you’ll see what I assume are automatically generated surveymonkey.com requests for participants on a study on the media by Smith College students. Let me express to the Smith College students who thought this a good idea, and whatever faculty supervisor approved it, that this is Not a Good Idea. It is distracting, annoying, and unprofessional. Here, by the way, is what the link leads to:
PURPOSE OF STUDY: You are invited to participate in a research study for a political psychology seminar. The purpose of the study is to explore where people get their political information and how credible they perceive the sources to be.
CONFIDENTIALITY: The survey will be completely anonymous and participants will never be contacted post completion.
COMPENSATION: Post completion, participants will have the opportunity to be entered into a raffle for a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com.
RIGHT TO REFUSE OR WITHDRAW: The decision to participate in this study is entirely up to you. You may refuse to take part in the study at any time without affecting your relationship with the investigators of this study, or Smith College. Your decision will not result in any loss or benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You have the right not to answer any single question, as well as to withdraw completely from the study at any point during the process; additionally, you have the right to request that the researcher not use any of your research material up to that point.
RIGHT TO ASK QUESTIONS: You have the right to ask questions about this research study and to have those questions answered by us before, during or after the research. If you have any further questions about the study, at any time feel free to contact Lauren Duncan at lduncan@smith.edu or by telephone at (413) 585-3763. If you like, a summary of the results of the study will be sent to you. If you have any other concerns about your rights as a research participant that have not been answered by the investigators, you may contact Phil Peake, Chair, the Smith College Institutional Review Board at (413) 585-3914.
Clicking the ‘Next’ button indicates that you have decided to volunteer as a research subject for this study and that you have read and understood the information provided above.
It says above, if you have any further questions … I have this one: Ms Duncan and Professor Peake, what made you think this was an acceptable use of other people’s blog comments sections? Let me ask VC commenters, am I being too nice, too nasty, or reasonable? In what ways, if any, is this different from using the VC comments to sell Viagra? (Update: Oh heck, I’ll stop being grumpy about this, though it is annoying – if you want to take the survey and support Smith College undergraduates, click through here.)
chug says:
WAY too nice.
November 23, 2009, 8:29 pmDjDiverDan says:
Definitely being too nice.
“In what ways, if any, is this different from using the VC comments to sell Viagra?”
Two ways this is different – (1) Some people actually want Viagra; and (2) You might actually get something useful (well, OK, not exactly “useful”, but definitely fun) if you visit the Viagra site.
November 23, 2009, 8:30 pmRusty Bill says:
I’d be contacting their upstream to see about getting them cut off from the net.
November 23, 2009, 8:30 pmArthurKirkland says:
Perhaps, professor, you are conducting a small but worthwhile lesson.
November 23, 2009, 8:31 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think you are being reasonable.
The way to go about this would have been to email you and ask permission. Maybe you would even have been willing to put up a very brief post about their survey. Now, probably not.
November 23, 2009, 8:31 pmKen Arromdee says:
You’re being too nice. (For one thing you’re actually quoting the whole thing, giving them help when you don’t need to). One of the essential ideas about spam is that spam isn’t defined based on content, it’s defined based on behavior. This is spam, and whether or not it’s for a good cause is no reason to treat it lightly.
November 23, 2009, 8:31 pmMikhail Koulikov says:
IMHO, by giving people *an* option/way to contact you online, you open yourself to – well – being contacted online. You may not like it, and have every reason to not like it, but it’s the same thing as, well, by having a phone, you give people an opportunity to call you, and by walking around on the street, you give people an opportunity to yell at you. Whether it’s illegal or unethical or merely unpleasant is entirely unrelated to whether or not it will actually happen.
And in a way, by running a blog, you assume the role of connection or conduit between information and potential consumers/recepients of information. What you feel about being a part of this process becomes largely irrelevant.
November 23, 2009, 8:35 pmBoutros Boutros-Garlic says:
If enough of the comments section whackos from around here fill out the survey, and the rest of us normal folks pretend to think like they do and likewise participate, we may yet end up making spamming not worth their time.
November 23, 2009, 8:37 pmNickM says:
Or we could all take their survey and give them false responses.
If most of us get our news from The Onion, they might have to rethink their study.
Nick
November 23, 2009, 8:37 pmFantasiaWHT says:
Way too nice. Maybe we all should go and try to fool around with their numbers. Reminds me of a Calvin & hobbes cartoon where Calvin fills out a gum-chewers survey with ridiculous answers like his favorite flavor of gum being “curry” and chewing an average of 12 packs a day.
November 23, 2009, 8:37 pmLeo Marvin says:
This is for the benefit of liberal academic elites while Viagra would be for the benefit of Republicans? :)
(I agree the spam-solicitation is obnoxious, and I think your rant was just right.)
November 23, 2009, 8:58 pmLeo Marvin says:
What happened to the auto-recognition of emoticons?
November 23, 2009, 9:00 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Much too harsh. A polite note to the Chair of the Psychology department at Smith suggesting a discussion of the matter with Dr. Duncan should suffice.
I might note that Dr. Duncan has published before on Right Wing Authoritarianism. This may indicate the ‘spamming’ was only apparently random, this being a place of frequent and shameless Right-wingery.
November 23, 2009, 9:15 pmjcm says:
I think you are too nice because i think Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141 (1943) was wrongly decided . I have the same right not to be awakened at 7 am on Sunday than you to non be bothered by others with spam
November 23, 2009, 9:21 pmDavid says:
I think you are over reacting. If comments are open, they are open, even to irrelevancies or to those with an agenda. It might be argued that this is akin to using blog comments to advertise a commercial product, which I think would be objectionable, but this project at least has some intellectual goals relevant to the interests of this blog.
As to “frequent and shameless right wingery,” yikes! This isn’t exactly a hard right blog.
Anyway, I enjoy the blog even if I think you are a little thin skinned on this one.
November 23, 2009, 9:26 pmDavid McCourt says:
You are absolutely right, though I must admit I took the plunge. After interminable questions about my magazine subscriptions, and badly phrased ones about what news sources I regarded as reliable, they went on to policy matters, and started serving up a series of completely idiotic questions, with a selection of opinions so caricatured that I pressed the ejection seat button after about five questions.
So: rude, pushy … and stupid and pointless. I think Smith must be a pseudonym.
November 23, 2009, 9:29 pmyoyo says:
Just right — they should be called out.
November 23, 2009, 9:29 pmKenneth Anderson says:
David: But are the comments open to … robots?!!
November 23, 2009, 9:37 pmjab says:
Too harsh. This is an undergraduate senior trying to collect data for a senior thesis.
Perhaps this is the wrong way for her to go about collecting her data… but the fault lies with the faculty supervisor… Given how much other idiotic things get posted in the blog comments, it’s not too difficult to pass this by if it annoys you… and it IS different than Viagra spam… the undergraduate is seeking to get participants of the kind that comment on political blogs.
The correct way would be of course to ask permission first… this is a mild breach in etiquette.. but there are far greater breaches that go through by regular posters in every thread.
November 23, 2009, 9:50 pmChrisTS says:
I think you are a) reacting as many might on finding that their own enterprise is being plumbed for someone else’s purposes and b) being a bit of a grouch.
As to the compariosn with Viagra spam, I would note that the subject lines for such spam are often disgusting and that students and their prof at a college might think a law profs.’ blog would be sympathetic to a research project.
My guess is that they think this is a site to which people educated in matters legal and political pay attention. So, their spamming is a kind of compliment.
November 23, 2009, 9:50 pmGreek Geek says:
Meh – who cares? If it is against site policy, ban their ip address. Otherwise, I think the readership is smart enough not to click on it.
November 23, 2009, 9:53 pmBleepless says:
If you are satisfied, that is what counts. Your turf, your rules.
November 23, 2009, 10:10 pmKazinski says:
It is an insult to those of us that spend all of thirty seconds hand crafting our own comments. But seriously, if they want participants they could have bought an ad with a picture of a sexy Smith College coed as tease. I’d click thru.
November 23, 2009, 11:04 pmbear says:
I’ll sign on to this, and add that the difference is audience, i.e. viagra gets sold at sex anon or captain stabbin’ websites, while solicitations to examine and catalogue intellectual minds are done here. This is perhaps even a compliment.
Later Prof Anderson asked:
The answer to which can only be….obviously!!!
Can they not be, are they otherwise prevented, or policy violating?
Of course, this is your blog, and your administration of this blog are matters entirely up to you all, or only one of you, or what ever rules you care to share with the volokhratai.
Eitherway, you have taught a valuable lesson to many, and hitting two birds with one stone, even improved the success potential of the endeavour you called out, effectively endorsing it.
All in all, very well played, I think.
-bear
November 23, 2009, 11:09 pmFub says:
Viagra spammers are artful and designing, playing the numbers to find a few fools hoping to raise their members.
These spammers are artless fools hoping to raise their numbers by finding a few VC members who won’t design to play against them.
November 23, 2009, 11:50 pmShelbyC says:
You’re being way to nice.
November 24, 2009, 12:34 amDavid Schwartz says:
ChrisTS: Using a forum because you want to reach its members without being on its topic is the quintessential example of abuse. It’s akin to posting advertisements for childrens’ sleepwear on a parenting blog. IMO, banning would be appropriate, along with a message explaining the ban and its rationale.
November 24, 2009, 1:12 amKen Arromdee says:
That’s true if by “open” you mean “physically capable of being used”. It has no bearing on whether the behavior is ethical. The fact that something is possible, and even legal, doesn’t make it right.
November 24, 2009, 2:13 amPersonFromPorlock says:
A little hyperbolic, maybe: but bear in mind that in some academic circles, the reasonable criticisms of the Left that we often see here are “shameless right-wingery.”
November 24, 2009, 7:40 amegd says:
Clearly not someone who is familiar with Smith students.
November 24, 2009, 9:10 amMax Hailperin says:
Similarly, Anderson’s original post refers to “what I assume are automatically generated … requests.” But there is no evidence provided to support this assumption and in fact the available evidence points the opposite direction. In the post on “Conflicts of Interest for Diplomats…”, the Smith College reply in question appeared one hour and forty minutes after the post (positioning it after three other replies). This means the reply was posted two minutes later than the similar reply to Anderson’s next post (on “Robots, Law, and Society”) — the sort of timing one would expect if a human were working through Anderson’s recent posts on VC, in the reverse-chronological order they appear, replying first to the new one and then a couple minutes later (to allow time for human clicking, copying, pasting, etc.) replying to the older one. An automated system processing the RSS feed, on the other hand, would typically either have replied to each quickly (with a delay much less than 1:40), if it were already processing the feed when the first post appeared, or would have responded to the two in close succession (with an interval of much less than 0:02), if it only started processing the feed once both postings were present, and so encountered the two at the same time. Admittedly, I can construct scenarios in which an automated system would respond as observed; for example, it could be cleverly programmed with a randomized delay precisely to make it appear more like a human. But that seems far-fetched. When one hears hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.
As a computer science professor, let me also say that only the more talented of my undergraduate computer science majors would be competent to set up an automated system to respond to the postings on an RSS feed. I have trouble imagining many students in a political psychology seminar having the necessary skill set — even if they had the motivation. (Really, for the volume of blog responses we are talking about posting, how much labor could possibly be saved by automating it rather than doing it by hand, even assuming one were fluent in the technologies of automation?)
November 24, 2009, 9:35 amShelbyC says:
Imagine! People engaging in right-wingery without shame!
November 24, 2009, 11:12 amKenneth Anderson says:
Max Hailperin – thanks for that enlightening note and I will forward it onto the powers that be.
November 24, 2009, 11:30 amMax Hailperin says:
Given this very gracious reply, I have no reason to add further evidence to strengthen my case. But I just found an item that has enough of a comic edge to it to be worth including in case it brightens anyone else’s day, rather than for its evidentiary value. I used google to see where else these Smith College students were posting. On http://www.blueoregon.com, I came across a case where there was the usual blurb, but minus the actual link at the end, and then 43 seconds later a second comment saying “opps…here is the link:” with the actual link. (And yes, it really did say “opps”, not “oops”.) Now if that is a robot, I’ll eat my hat.
November 24, 2009, 12:10 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Heh!
November 24, 2009, 12:58 pmT.S. says:
Has anyone besides myself taken the survey? Being a huge fan of free things, I couldn’t resist a chance to win a free gift card.
I’m just going to copy some of the questions below. The questions on media were relatively benign, then they went on a “how true or untrue” particular things are: “Test scores in public schools have dropped sharply in the last 20 years” (A personal pet peeve: the test scores are arbitrary and can be skewed based on the difficulty of the test, the overall education has dropped undeniably whether the test scores reflect that is a matter of what tests are used.) Okay, so this section has some rational relation to media issues – you either know or think certain ways based on how informed you are.
The next sections of the survey contain several pages of “How strongly do you agree” questions:
(The very first one) “Our country desperately needs a mighty leadeer who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.”
(The very next one) “Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.”
“You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer.”
“What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.”
“Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religioun, and ignoring the ‘normal way things are supposed to be done.’”
“There are many radical, imoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.”
“The country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.”
“In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.”
“All groups should be given an equal chance in life”
“No one group should dominate in society.”
Perhaps I’m going a little overboard on my response. I’ll refrain from much editorializing except to say that the questions strike me as being fairly biased and seeking a particular response in order to gather data that has little to do with media. Acquiescing to spammers and providing a link to their survey does appear to somewhat give a tacit approval of the survey, so I would advocate that anyone commenting upon or linking to the survey take it beforehand. (Especially given the comment by PersonFromPorlock that “Dr. Duncan has published before on Right Wing Authoritarianism.”)
p.s. I’ve had to make survey questions before, so I realize it can be very challenging. Despite that, I felt that those quoted provided examples of problems beyond mere difficulty of wording the survey questions (i.e., the constant conflation of religion and politics, etc.)
November 24, 2009, 1:32 pmKarl Lembke says:
Personally, I delete comment spam. If someone wants to advertise synthetic herbal viagra on my blog, let him or her pay a decent advertising rate.
By the way…
There used to be a block of text outlining a comment policy at the end of the comments and before the enter comments form. Where’d that go?
November 24, 2009, 1:53 pmChiara Brown says:
Dear Smith College Seniors — it is obvious from your questions that you see the world in terms of “bad, hateful conservatives who want to keep others down” and “good, virtuous liberals who want love and fairness for all.” There are shades of grey and other nuanced opinions that you don’t even begin to address in your poorly worded questions.
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November 24, 2009, 7:12 pmLarryA says:
Personally, I blew off the “opportunity” based on its stupidity factor. Political psychology students who believe that any survey conducted in this manner could possibly produce any sort of scientifically valid sample should immediately sue their freshman statistics professor.
November 24, 2009, 10:11 pmChiara Brown says:
LarryA, I always wonder about this every time I see a graduate student posting online surveys for their research. Are their professors aware they are doing this, and if so, how do they justify it?
November 24, 2009, 10:23 pmDove says:
Too nice. This is spam. I think the norm would be to delete it without comment.
November 24, 2009, 11:53 pmNickM says:
I had fun answering the questions, and I hope lots of others do the same. Answers don’t actually need to bear any relationship to reality (that includes your age, gender, and ethnicity, as well as more prosaic things such as what you read and who you watch).
Stuff the ballot box. The Onion is America’s Finest News Source. Let it be yours too.
Nick
November 25, 2009, 5:13 amLarryA says:
I’m sure he’s absolutely spot-on. The Right Wing is overwhelmingly authoritarian! I mean, just look at the current administration! Why they’ve…
Oh, wait.
November 25, 2009, 11:11 amReihel says:
I’m going a little overboard on my response. I’ll refrain from much editorializing except to say that the questions strike me as being fairly biased and seeking a particular response in order to gather data that has little to do with media.The Best in the World
December 7, 2009, 5:42 am