Reddit vs Digg – A collaborative test for users.
I recently decided to run a test to see how well users can collaborate using social bookmarking sites like reddit & digg. This was assuming that users will collaborate and can accomplish something together!
How the test works
1) Each visitor to the site will be given any ONE random letter of a phrase (one per IP address).
2) They have to use the comments or any method to share with other users know the letter they got.
3) All users have only two attempts to guess the phrase. After they have used their attempts they can share their guesses in the comments section.
EG: If the phrase was “wild goose chase”. Visitors to the page might get any letter from ‘w’ through to ‘e’ and so on. Users use the comment section to share their letters and work together and find out the phrase. This is how a test looked on reddit.
Result of test on Reddit
Phrase / Word Section posted Time to finish
Observatory Programming 14.5 minutes
Starbucks Coffee Entertainment 107.3 minutes
Wild Goose Chase WTF 225.6 minutes
Result of test on DIGG
Phrase / Word Time to finish
Spill the beans 580.5 minutes
Observations on the test results
1) Although more than 5000 visitors saw each page. There were around 105 comments and around 20 – 30 users who actively participate to guess the phrase.
2) Thanks to proxy servers used – Some users (esp in programming section) could get more letters from the system.
3) Reddit edit comments helps a lot as users can change their comments any number of times.
4) Another interesting observation was that some people lie that they got a letter which was not actually given to them. It was good to see users upvote the letters in the comments that they have also got to confirm a letter.
5) Reddit programming users managed to find the word in just under 15 minutes of starting the test. WOW!
Reddit users win the collaboration test!
I am looking for any other fun ideas of a collabortive test? Looking forward to hear your ideas!
Also take a look at these collaborative games. They are really old but impressive cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/vr/gaming/, If you scroll all the way down you will get to see the games.
They also have Mah-Jongg: an augmented game for multiple users, that allows players to play with each other, while the computer is only a high-quality supporting tool.
But none of these are web-based.
Can we play again 🙂
Collaborative Hang Man! – You could call it “Lynch Mob”. LOL!
guess the image would be also nice. You can give puzzle, or different deformations. But does not get that far from anagrams or the likes.
Maybe random pieces a-la tetris, or words for a shakespear plot, and see if we can actually position them, but still does not get far form the old idea.
Maybe the nice thing would be: give us an economy to manage, and see if the game theory geeks can show us a working solution 🙂
Name that tune using people’s own mp3s.
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