The Yahoogle Blues
So there's been very little response to the Bloodthirsty Pirates problems I posted a little while ago. Ok, there's been no response. I think I've narrowed down the reason for this lack of feedback to the following probable causes:
1) The problems were too challenging.
2) No one cares.
3) No one read the problem in the first place.
Reason 1 may very well be the case, the problems use a complex set of rules and force the puzzle-solver to think through each iteration of the voting process. However, there wasn't a response to any of the problems. Were they all too difficult? This seems unlikely.
Reason 2 seems more likely. Who could be bothered to solve some stupid intellectual challenge? Who has the time as well? This explanation seems to hold a lot of water. However, I enjoy these types of puzzles a great deal and I'd like to think I'm not the only one out there who enjoys logic puzzles. So what's going on?
I dug deep on this one, and my investigation turned up Reason 3, the fact that only 80 unique people have seen my sight since its launch in April, and certainly far less have visited this site in the last two weeks.
So why the lack of interest in this site? Surely this site is the authoritative source on all things Space Cabbagey. Who's running this Internet thing anyway?
Google and Yahoo, my trusted companions who have accompanied me in my ongoing search for information, warez sites, and porn, have let me down. When this site first sprang up, I notified Google and Yahoo that this web address did in fact exist. They both gave me warnings that my notifications would not ensure that my site would appear in their search results. Google also let me know that it would take a look at my site (which is exceedingly small) when it got around to it. Since these websites are essentially the godfathers of the Internet, I decided that patience would be the key.
For the last two months, both Google and Yahoo did not recognize this site, and a search for "Space Cabbage" brought up nothing. Yahoo has still not recognized this site. Instead of my site at the top of the results page, you get 80 hits of irrelevant garbage. What's the hold up? Take a look, it's good I swear!
I am happy to announce that Google finally got the memo and took a look at my sight. It's decided that my site, titled "Space Cabbage" and with a web address "spacecabbage.blogspot.com" should be ranked as link number 27 out of 189. What are these other 26 questionable sites?
Link number five is interesting, although Google says that this page (www.farm-garden.com/growing-vegetables/10/) discusses how far apart to space cabbage plants in your garden, after following the link you discover a blank page with only "hacked by Dante". Ah, just what I was looking for!
Links 11 and 12 are for a message board on Sportbike World (sbw.sportbikes.com/showthread.php?threadid=40656). Apparently someone mentioned the random words "Space Cabbage" in their post. This is quite unfortunate. Don't people know the effects of random utterances on the Internet!
Some of the rest of the 26 links are more valid referring to pop culture uses of space cabbage in everyday dialog (apparently there are some), and to the original creative works that helped popularize the phrase.
Not to diminish the relevancy of these fine sites, but shouldn't a website that's dedicated to Space Cabbage by higher on the list? Now I know that these engines use popularity (how many other pages link to a site) as a factor in determining relevance. This may be ok when I want to find the definitive or official source for something, since the most popular site will most likely be what I am looking for.
However, when looking for obscure topics, the most popular site is not always the most relevant. I know if I was looking for Space Cabbage, I wouldn't want this site to be ignored. If a site is packed with oodles of relevant information, it could be skipped over by search engines like Google if no site links to it. This is unfortunate for new websites, and is even worse for search engine users who don't know what they're missing.
So back to the Pirates problem. I'm not going to post the solutions. However, maybe if someone attempts the problem and posts their solutions in this or the original post, I'll be forced to reveal the answers. Until then though, it may be lost in the archives for a long time until the site is more popular (which may be never).
1) The problems were too challenging.
2) No one cares.
3) No one read the problem in the first place.
Reason 1 may very well be the case, the problems use a complex set of rules and force the puzzle-solver to think through each iteration of the voting process. However, there wasn't a response to any of the problems. Were they all too difficult? This seems unlikely.
Reason 2 seems more likely. Who could be bothered to solve some stupid intellectual challenge? Who has the time as well? This explanation seems to hold a lot of water. However, I enjoy these types of puzzles a great deal and I'd like to think I'm not the only one out there who enjoys logic puzzles. So what's going on?
I dug deep on this one, and my investigation turned up Reason 3, the fact that only 80 unique people have seen my sight since its launch in April, and certainly far less have visited this site in the last two weeks.
So why the lack of interest in this site? Surely this site is the authoritative source on all things Space Cabbagey. Who's running this Internet thing anyway?
Google and Yahoo, my trusted companions who have accompanied me in my ongoing search for information, warez sites, and porn, have let me down. When this site first sprang up, I notified Google and Yahoo that this web address did in fact exist. They both gave me warnings that my notifications would not ensure that my site would appear in their search results. Google also let me know that it would take a look at my site (which is exceedingly small) when it got around to it. Since these websites are essentially the godfathers of the Internet, I decided that patience would be the key.
For the last two months, both Google and Yahoo did not recognize this site, and a search for "Space Cabbage" brought up nothing. Yahoo has still not recognized this site. Instead of my site at the top of the results page, you get 80 hits of irrelevant garbage. What's the hold up? Take a look, it's good I swear!
I am happy to announce that Google finally got the memo and took a look at my sight. It's decided that my site, titled "Space Cabbage" and with a web address "spacecabbage.blogspot.com" should be ranked as link number 27 out of 189. What are these other 26 questionable sites?
Link number five is interesting, although Google says that this page (www.farm-garden.com/growing-vegetables/10/) discusses how far apart to space cabbage plants in your garden, after following the link you discover a blank page with only "hacked by Dante". Ah, just what I was looking for!
Links 11 and 12 are for a message board on Sportbike World (sbw.sportbikes.com/showthread.php?threadid=40656). Apparently someone mentioned the random words "Space Cabbage" in their post. This is quite unfortunate. Don't people know the effects of random utterances on the Internet!
Some of the rest of the 26 links are more valid referring to pop culture uses of space cabbage in everyday dialog (apparently there are some), and to the original creative works that helped popularize the phrase.
Not to diminish the relevancy of these fine sites, but shouldn't a website that's dedicated to Space Cabbage by higher on the list? Now I know that these engines use popularity (how many other pages link to a site) as a factor in determining relevance. This may be ok when I want to find the definitive or official source for something, since the most popular site will most likely be what I am looking for.
However, when looking for obscure topics, the most popular site is not always the most relevant. I know if I was looking for Space Cabbage, I wouldn't want this site to be ignored. If a site is packed with oodles of relevant information, it could be skipped over by search engines like Google if no site links to it. This is unfortunate for new websites, and is even worse for search engine users who don't know what they're missing.
So back to the Pirates problem. I'm not going to post the solutions. However, maybe if someone attempts the problem and posts their solutions in this or the original post, I'll be forced to reveal the answers. Until then though, it may be lost in the archives for a long time until the site is more popular (which may be never).
posted by flowbeus at 1:33 PM
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