Google Image Labeler

So I've been playing Google Image Labeler lately. If you're curious, there's a Wikipedia entry (of course). Basically, it's an on-line game that pairs you with an unknown person across the Internet, and you try to match words labeling an image. It's easy to play but takes time to learn, and also helps Google improve their image search accuracy.

Some things I've learned and encountered playing and watching my folks at home play:

1) You sometimes get paired with people who are deliberately unhelpful.
2) Some people will not type in anything for half a minute and then want to pass, after you've put in virtually an entire dictionary.
3) If you put in a very low-pointer, like "blue" or "woman," you can guarantee the other person has put in the same low-pointer, and you'll get only 50 points instead of forcing the other person to try harder and earn 140 points on, say, "amphibian". I'm not sure which is the best tactic.
4) You cannot expect people to know celebrities.
5) You certainly cannot expect people to know semi-celebrities.
6) "Sexy," for any young-ish woman whatsoever, is an almost guaranteed 140 points. Yay to commonly-accepted answers!
7) There are commonly-accepted answers (and not the illegit ones the Wikipedia article mentions), such as "girl" and "tie" and "bikini" and "trees."
8) Some people are very good at realizing that text in the image is fair game and an easy high-points match. Other people are not.
9) Cars, scantily-clad women, unclad women, and poorly executed manga sketches come up a lot.
10) Typing is hard.
11) Plurals are always a good idea. Even when there's only one of an object in the picture. I once matched on 'pyramids' when there was only one pyramid in the picture.
12) The Hensel twins have come up twice for me, and that's strange. Neither time did my partner know their names, nor did their names ever appear in previously matched words.
13) When people are labeling quickly and just putting down what comes to mind, they are actually very biased, race-oriented, chauvinistic, and judgemental. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the filter shut-down.
14) Spelling is trickier than it seems.
15) People are generally not as knowledgeable about animals as I am, but more than I expected.
16) Google apparently has porn on it. All pretty standard, though.


16 things is enough for now. Have fun playing, if you do.