MIDDLEBURGH

Middleburgh Last Quarter

The game continues... A few weeks ago I was contemplating withdrawing from playing "IMGUR" and moving on to explore new challenges, but the Chinese Thought Police insisted on playing "down vote" with me.

This is where I post an image about umbrellas, demonstrators or establishment figures(with a "flattering" comment) on IMGUR and they, hunting as a pack, run it to ground and down vote it into oblivion( driving the score to -10 to get it automatically pulled) so that no one using IMGUR might see anything supportive of HK protesters. The fastest they achieved was about 7 minutes (post to gone) and about 400 views. This is actually not very impressive. The image,left, which was posted with title "Hogworts: Generation 2" was "as if by magic" pulled down with net score of -13 votes in less than 4 seconds (ie gone between submiting the image and flicking the screen to view it (1 screen refresh) The Party should review the performance targets it has set it's 50 cent posters - Allegedly it pays 50cents for each posting/scoring action on westerm social media sites, to either push the official line or counter any contrary view - clearly not getting it's monies worth!!

Anyway whilst we (the Chinese and I) were sparring, I finessed my work flow for sourcing, qualifying and posting images to IMGUR (I do process re-engineering in real world .....) .At the same time IMGUR upgraded GIF processing and a bot started to cross post my images. These changes meant that the view rate targets I had originally set myself were invalid (and understated). Effectively it had become a two tier system (GIF/static images) which frankly took the fun out of playing. At that time I was on about 1.3K points ie a mid range poster and I realised that it might not be a big deal to push for a user rating of 6K points (which would put me in top quartile of "posters". Now I personally don't give a rat's turd about how well esteemed I am on IMGUR but I am "competitive" and up for a challenge Under these circumstances I decided to realigned my objectives and tasked myself to get to a user rating of 6K by end of October 2014.

As of this morning (slightly ahead of target ) I have met and exceeded this objective. At time of setting the target I did consider follow on options eg 6K is midway in the "Idolized" band (4K -8K) so the thought was I could then (if motivated) go for 8K+ and get in the "Renowned" band (8K-20K) but, so my reasoning went, 8K is such a naff number that if i could get to 8K (which in Chinese mythology can be associated with "double death") I should go for 10K+ (a much more "well rounded" target) . In the event I blew it ..

One of my earliest posts (Sept 28th 2014) had gone viral getting 0.5M views but only a score of only 60points (compare this to image with the most recent highest score 254 points/20Kviews) . Based on the totality of my posting experience my plan was to post daily a limited group (minimum effort on my part) of "high quality" images with intent of getting a daily total incremental score of about 200-250 points to build my score. I had just started running into problems about maximum number of images on display (225 image cap) and I had no expectation of getting another viral image (although there were a couple which got 100K views) or any images with more that 250 points.

However, in yesterdays batch, there was a gif similar in nature to the previous .5M GIF ie a discrete attractive asian woman who does something unexpected and funny. Since last night its sailed past 0.5M views on its way to 0.66M+? and has 5.5K+ score (still counting) . It has pushed my rating to 12K+ which means I either quit (since I am over above 10K), or focus on some niche objectives ie only post "quality" non GIFs etc for edification of masses, or lots of provocative bums and tits to piss people off , or go for bust and try to get into the "Glorious " band (20K+).

The situation is now under review...... ehm ....I have a backlog of images to post .......

Labels: IMGUR, PROTESTS

Posted at 10/26/2014 05:18:00 pm by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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Middleburgh - Game Report

Here are the half time statistics from the Middleburgh-IMGUR games. It's been hard fought match with lots of interesting learning lessons on the side and occasion moments of "humor".

FYI I was getting bored and contemplating suspending or abandoning play but I have recently been joined by some Chinese Thought Police (much nicer type of person than the Triad bully boys down at Mongkok) They seem to object to "Umbrella's" and want to play "down vote" with me so I might play on for a bit. More on this latter....

In my last post I put up some targets which were based on a statistical analysis of my first 30 posts. I posted a total of 86 images over a 20 day period to 9 September. I caught one snitch (500,402 view and had a near miss (111584 views) A total of 5 images were pulled down (net like less than -10) The median sentiment was 82% ie 4 likes out of 5. There were 4 posts with less than 1000 views, 4 with less than 10 votes, 17 with 0 favorites and 2 without comments. And, not that it matters, as at today I have a user score of 1708 which I understand puts me ahead of 55% of IMGURS users (hence the cryptic reference to half time)

Summary Analysis

	Views	Votes	Favorites	Comments
Total	767421	2392	367	578
Maximum	500,402	213	54	25
Median	1722	22	2	6
Top 20%	2097	35	5	9
20% Target	2000	35	5	10
Minimums	556	6	0	0

Notes

• High views were associated with re-posting onto Reddit and whilst I didn't re-post any of my own posts (too lazy) if you really wanted to boost view rates that's the way to go.
  
• I subjectively suspect that native low view rates may be influenced by a number of factors
  
  • when you post eg noon-3pm HK time seemed lower (when UK and US east coast is abed?) and also Thursdays (had some atrocious response times)
    
  • gallery view: you get a higher view rate if there is a face or something clear with bold colors etc need to be eye catching not drab and unclear (bloody obvious really!!)
    
  • Title: when user mouses over on gallery image IMGUR pops up the title: a short funny and/or enticing one seems to work best - click bait
    
• closer examination of data did not indicate any significant improvement in view rate, scores etc since I set targets - BUMMER!!
  
• high Votes/comments are not linked to high views. The image with highest views (0.5M) only got 82 votes (34 favorites) whereas the image with highest votes(213) only got 7745 views (54 favorites) The biggest surprise was an image taken from Chinese news site of man with a chopper chasing a "policeman" through Foshan(actually a uniformed market inspector)- got 4381 views but only 6 votes and 1 favorite
  
• Images with an orifice (of any kind) are "problematic" They provoke comments about what the orifice should be used for and how thus inviting down-voting.
  
• Misogynous or simply disturbing images such as plate of fingers, ugly people, snakes head etc are similarly scored down
  
• Images which can be associated with North Korea (even incorrectly) also get down voted. I posted an image from a chinese film (superb make up) and a woman (?) posted a comment asserted that "Korean men finds women w/bad teeth very attractive. The more jacked up it is, the prettier she is. In America, it's boobs & butts". I wasn't sure if she was speaking from personal experience or not so I asked her to cite her authority. There also seems to be a similar problem with Romanians - I have no idea why
  

I mentioned earlier that that there were some interesting learning lessons; These included

• exploring search engines and sites for images other than Google particularly in China, Russia, Japan and Vietnam (Those Vietnamese really have a wicked sense of humor!!)These is a treasure trove of hilarious content outside Google - and lots of bums and tits - thats why the missus objected- she was not impressed with argument that I had to wade through jiggly bits to find the funnies. Someone has to do it !!
  
• exploring the functionality of Google image search, in particular searching for instances of same image and then filtering for the oldest/best quality and checking first whether it was already on IMGUR (searching in IMGUR is pitiful - and comments complaining about re-posts are legitimate - unless of course there is a different spin) and secondly whether the source had any other interesting images to share.
  
• searching for quotes/jokes on Google based on image content. In the film "Finding Forester", Jamal starts some of his work by picking up themes from Forester's work. In same way I got ideas for image titles and write overs. Interestingly one person (smart cookie) actually twigged there was a game afoot.
  
• Playing with image tools eg stripping videos from Facebook, editing Movie maker,converting to gifs, compressing etc and brushing up the old GIMP skills
  

And I also mentioned there was some "humorous moments" which more precisely were witty repostes to the images I had posted or to comments incurred.There are some very funny people out there may they live long and prosper .

And now to the Chinese Thought Police..

As you may be aware, currently in HK there is a little difficulty. The head of the "family" has made an unpopular (and if I may suggest unwise) decision which has been challenged by some of the kids. There is a concern that other family members will similarly throw tantrums and disrupt their betters "harmony" . In a patriarchal society this is serious stuff... so kids over the border they have had their internet privileges withdrawn and they are getting an earful from their elders. Concerned neighbors are also being told to "bog off" (concerned comments = interference) and all the aunts and uncles have been told to close ranks and prevent airing of the families dirty linen in public. In practical terms this means that Chinese State in addition to censoring media within china is seeking to manage the debate outside. It is, for example, paying people to post comments on non Chinese websites to counter articles and sentiment which support the students and protesters in Hong Kong. bluntly they are crawling all over social media trying to control the argument (this is what a propaganda machine does and credit to them - they are very good at it)

Now to show solidarity with the students (and exercise my right of free speech while I have still got it ) I posted an image which on one hand laments the student radicalization by the government and on other quotes Mao Tse Tung to remind the party cadres that it's actually their responsibility to sort out the reactionaries in Beijing. (didn't go down too well!) Nor did subsequent images which mocked the use of tear gas against unarmed students. With 2 exceptions (which got missed) these were quickly down voted to get them pulled to kill debate. These are the statistics for these images to date

Summary Analysis

Topic	Views	Status	Uptime
Students	1693	Live	NA
Cancelled Fireworks	1799	Live	NA
Umbrella + Bush	1073	Pulled	60 mins
Umbrella + HM QE2	427	Pulled	30mins
Umbrella + Obama	464	Pulled	30mins
Umbrella + Pope	1423	Live	NA
Umbrella + Space	1150	Live	NA

There is a significant and different pattern in views, votes and comment as compared to my other posts (including the ones with North Korean images). I look at it this way. I have kept someone in gainful employment looking at my posts, I may have amused him/her (I assume they looked at the other images); whilst they are looking at my posts they are not looking at other stuff which might be more "damaging". I have a captive audience and based on what they get pulled I will simply re-post it elsewhere.

Labels: Hong Kong, IMGUR, PROTESTS, SCHOLARISM, TRIAD BULLY BOYS

Posted at 10/04/2014 08:54:00 am by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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