PersonFromPorlock: I might note that Dr. Duncan has published before on Right Wing Authoritarianism.

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.

Stuff the ballot box. The Onion is America’s Finest News Source. Let it be yours too.

Nick

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?

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.)

Kenneth Anderson: Max Hailperin — thanks for that enlightening note and I will forward it onto the powers that be.

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.

PersonFromPorlock: …this being a place of frequent and shameless Right-wingery.

Imagine! People engaging in right-wingery without shame!

Kenneth Anderson: David:But are the comments open to … robots?!!

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?)

Kazinski: 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.

Clearly not someone who is familiar with Smith students.

David: As to “frequent and shameless right wingery,” yikes! This isn’t exactly a hard right blog.

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.”

If comments are open, they are open, even to irrelevancies or to those with an agenda.

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.

In what ways, if any, is this different from using the VC comments to sell Viagra?

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.

David: 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.

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:

Kenneth Anderson: David: But are the comments open to … robots?!!

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

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.

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.

So: rude, pushy … and stupid and pointless. I think Smith must be a pseudonym.

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.

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.

In what ways, if any, is this different from using the VC comments to sell Viagra?

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.)