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Google Wordmasters Challenge Backfiring?  (View post)

MAZ [PersonRank 1]

Friday, November 3, 2006
17 years ago10,227 views

These people at work! They like to call themselves PROFESSIONAL, especially the BOSS. I am in DISAGREEMENT with their VIEWPOINT on the World and think that they need to RETHINK theirs to ACCEPT that it is wrong and ADJUST it before they totally get on my NERVES. If they don’t, I dread to think what might happen to them. Don’t take that the wrong way – I wasn’t going to use a gun or anything! I just want them to be more DEMOCRATIC.

We have DIFFERENCES and I am ADAMANT that their MOTIVE here is not HUMANE and that it will HURT me and others. I MEDITATE daily and I therefore I feel that I am full of GOODNESS which gives me the INSIGHT to see that they do not think like EINSTEIN at all. (Or maybe they do and that is the problem?)

In order to CONTROL their behaviour I think they need to go to ANGER MANAGEMENT. If they ask me I’ll gladly give them some contact numbers!

informant [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

this was NOT a wordmasters challenge, this was an effort to build a stronger parallel corpus for machine translation of the indian languages by examining usage of english terms and variants as they interpreted by humans – this is a subtle form of annotation of a corpus for insertion into a model. this is not a new approach, but the fact that they did not reveal intentions is disturbing.

MAZ [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Yes disturbing that the intentions not revealed but yes I can see how English terms can be interpreted diffrently by different people and cultures. For example, even though English is used Worldwide in US 'ANGER MANAGEMENT' is a common term for what people in England might call rehabilitation?
They could put in into good use for example in overseas call centres where the cultural divide interprets language differently – not just for use in computer-based applications.

Joe Black [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Not winning is bad enough. Not knowing who won sucks even more.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

informant: That's an interesting hypothesis.

But if Google's intention was to build a corpus, surely they'd have run this competition online, instead of in person with a small number of entrants producing handwritten entries?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

ok let me ask you a stupid questions..was this an offical google Challenge ?

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

/pd – yep – and here are the terms:

http://services.google.com/event/wordmasters/terms.html

Some of the claims in those blog posts are strictly true, namely that the winners would be announced by 30th October. Fair enough, Google probably published that date, but the terms confirm why they've not announced a winner. Taken from the terms:

<< Winner Selection and Notification: The winners will be selected from among all eligible entries by a judges' panel chosen by Sponsor. The judges will review all entries and determine the winners in their discretion. The decision of the judges is final. The winners will be announced on or about 30/10/2006. Winners will be notified within about seven (7) days after announcement date via phone, email, post or overnight courier. The winners may be required to sign, notarize and return an Affidavit of Eligibility and Liability/Publicity Release and provide any additional information (such as social security number), that may be required by Sponsors and Administrators. The Grand Prize winner must return all such required documents within seven (7) days following attempted notification or prize may be forfeited. Return of any prize/prize notification as undeliverable, or inability of Sponsors and Administrators to contact a potential winner may result in disqualification and selection of an alternate winner by the judges’ panel. >>

So, as you can see, not only do they say "on or about 30/10/2006" but they then have a further 7 days for the selected applicant to complete the paper work before they can really be considered the winner, meaning that the earliest they could announce a winner would be 6/7th November... after which they might have to choose another winner, and so it continues.

I think some people just need to chill out a bit!

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Yikes..

"decision of the judges is final. The winners will be announced on or about 30/10/2006."

   I think I know whats happening ..at least with topcoder (codeJam), there was much more transprancy.. but what are they all jumping around like crazy.. its only been 3d after deadline date.. not like it weeks or months!!

This is a Signal vs Noise .. more noise then anything else..!!

Ganesh APP [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

[put at-character here]PD:
My only question is (like you have noted), why is there no transparency in the results announcement. Why can't they just put it across in some site. Why should the rest of them have to send a snail mail to the Google HQ at B'lore to get the winners list. Its plain fishy...

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Huh Ganesh, this is a localized event.... results decesion is not coming out from come out of Corporate /GooglePlex.. ..

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

[Updated the post with link to Tony's comment]

informant [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

to clarify (richard) the size of the annotation base does not need to be enormous to improve google's approach to machine translation – they are using a purely statistical and probabilistic approach, in this case any annotation can only serve to improve the incorporation of a linguistic approach (on their translate services, this is the case as systran provides all core language services excluding arabic and chinese, those two are done by google using their smt model)...human labor is the bottleneck in the incorporation of a linguistic approach, and when combined with their enormous low cost scalable computing infrastructure coupled with their enormous corpus (they just donated this to the LDC at UPenn last month, so you can see it for free), annotation only serves to improve language services where a large corpora does not exist, such as indian dialects (in terms of massive documents, like un proceedings and libraries etc). by improving the basic approach to parallel sentence processing and pairing with 'likely insertions and substitions' using their word game model, they might effectively drive real improvement in their core smt approach. this does not require millions of people, even for a firm of their size, just a few hundred would suffice and i suspect that a few hundred were in the competition. notice, if you will, the incredibly broad applications for their chosen words, that was no accident. that contest was not put together by english teachers, that was put together by engineers.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Informant , I hear you on this round (LDC at UPenn) its all about "phonetic features to discourse structures , part-of-speech and sense tagging"..

.. yes, thats a smart way to go, and I do remember that http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/ had some interesting ways too... but they were doing that in TCL/tk

Manjit Singh [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I also visited (Participated) in GWM contest at New Delhi. It was quite challenging and there were no Desks, We were expected to write on sheet supported by Goodie Bag/Notepad sitting on an auditorium seat!!!

Contest included – 20 random Words?

You must Use all of them in your little piece between 150-200 words!!! The piece should be accurate from both grammatical angles as well as logical?
Somehow I got my Q Paper almost 5-6 Minutes into the contest, since the volunteer simply was not coming my way, hence In about 40 Minutes, following was what I could put together!!!

***************
Words Chosen from Given Option
??????????-
Rethink, Humane, Meditation, Viewpoint, Soothe, Accept, Hurt, Professional, Motive, Adamant, Einstein, Control, Democratic, Anger-Management (this was together), goodness, nerves, Adverse, Boss, Insight, Difference

************************
My Piece without a Spell Checker 8>0
************************

Serving with an NGO, for upliftment of Homeless Children, I am forced to rethink if our approach is really humane? It all started when I suggested for Meditation for our inmates, to soothe their nerves and adjust to the adverse conditions. However, my boss had different opinions about controlling the problem, which includes usage of violence too.

Well, In a Democratic Setup such as our NGO, Everyone is allowed to present their viewpoint; it is entirely up to the other person to either accept it or reject it.

Now, not only has he scrapped my idea, He has started spreading bad words about my capabilities. I am really hurt by his unprofessional motives, He is adamant to create differences between me and my co-workers. Without having any insight on the matter, or even evaluating the effects of overall goodness it will create, He has become an Authority on Anger Management. I am no Einstein but I know how to study human behavior and make them better people.

************************
Total 163 Words
************************

It is really shocking that even after 5 Days of the deadline, the results are not out.

Is it really Google or is it some third agency, who had cornered the contract to evaluate the writings? and then unable to excute the same.

There is a sense of Deja Vu, remember what happens in Meerut? 13-14 yrs old, Fifth standard students checking PG Papers?

Who is to say about the actual picture, Google is not forthcoming with the truth.

God Knows Who [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

May be all the participants won and that's why Google is running out of ideas. May be they are printing OFFER LETTERS for all the participants. They know AMERICANS have IQ of less than 10. And now that they have seen the INDIANS have IQ of more than 95 they are finding themselves in tizzy.

informant [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

my guess is that next year's NIST SMT evaluation will be an indian dialect, i'd bet serious money on that....chinese and arabic are completed and so character intensive is reconciled, but not one has approached a requirement for a 10 or 15 or higher gram model (like german language might require) though indian dialect is close if i am correct (verb placement in sentences, placement of pronouns or whatever)

informant [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

also, i thought that this might help for those who have no idea what i'm talking about above with richard and others. this is a link to indian language corpora, none are heavily annotated, and the volumes are limited:
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/corpora/ach-corpora.htm

Harikrishnan Menon [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Tony Ruscoe's comment is well-taken, and I agree that participants are probably getting worked up over nothing, but a simple announcement from Google India that "the results are on their way" would have reassured them.

Considering the trouble and expense Google took in organising the contest (I got no less than three emails and two phone calls), it's only natural to expect the company to show a similar degree of interest and commitment when it comes to announcing the results. So maybe the participants *are* justified in feeling shortchanged.

ALI KIRMANI [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

COOL DOWN GUYS!!!!!!
I too participated at the wordmasters. The terms and condition clearly mentioned that the result will be out within 7 days of anouncment, today it is the 5th day, so we got 2 more dayz to go. Secondly, we are talking about google, we takin abt a giant, they make a mistake, and the media together wid the judiciary cum down on them like hell.
Also google had requested us to send a self addressed and stamped envelope to their Bangalore headquarters, to aquire the names of the winners, I have sent it, if I get a reply I will let u knw. The address is there on the terms and conditions leaflet, in case u have lost urs, send me a mail at SAKIRMANI[put at-character here]GMAIL.COM, and I will mail u the address.

ALI

Harshad Joshi [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Another Google hype.

There would have been no problems if Google had declared date as 7 November 2006. I mean, no participant would have objected to that. But imagine the loss of bandwidth, time, energy and financial wastage just because of an ambigious announcement.

Joe Black [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

This is what happens when you deal with a company that is as closed as Google. There is absolutely no transparency in its dealings and no respect for the community.

A simple webpage with status updates would have done the job. But that requires someone inside Google to actually care about the feelings of others. That apparently is a tall order.

If nothing else, Google India has lost respect and reputation among its staunchest admirers in the country and all future ventures of the company will be viewed with scepticism.

bad shah [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

waiting hasnt been as much fun as the wait-b-logging.

ALI [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Now this is too much, we have simply been fooled.

angry? yes me! [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

no point hiding the fact. none at all hiding behind the 'who me?' facade. this google fiasco has reduced us all to a bunch of angry young/old (owing to the no-age-bar) men and women. it has infected us with a kind of opressive compulsive disorder that makes us stare hopelessly hopefully at our inboxes for hours on end. (in my case- with breaks to look over my shoulder suspecting the boss's eyes to be on me, and my lack of work).
if not sue it, i atleast hope to sew together my shattered hopes and dreams...

Vandita Tripathy [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I agree to all the comments posted till now and would like to express my deepest regrets for a reputed company like Google which has been backfired by its modus operandi...if by any chance anybody has read "the Google Story", you can understand what i mean to say here. Google purely worked on a word of mouth publicity to get a foothold in the online market. Although the strategy had worked for the G-Empire till now, i presume the same word of mouth publicity can ruin Google's image...a word of advise for Google... never attempt something which you can't fulfill in the end...

aparna j [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

hey! and here i thought i was the only fool to go about checking my inbox every few hours in the hope that sooner if not later, the names of the winners would be announced.
yep, google has gone down in my esteem. if a company of its stature cannot keep its own deadline, why expect anything like from lesser corporates??

angry? yes me! [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Come on, come all... ye shunned, ye spurned, sanghattan mein shakti hai! lets form a community. lets have a president and a secretary. lets have monthly meets and eats as excuses to display our jewelry and gaudy clothes and carefully memorized technical details of the latest automobiles we have acquired. lets arrange blood donation camps and google-hate themed poetry competitions for school children and give out pencil boxes as prizes. what can be a nobler way to serve the nation?

Vandita Tripathy [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Just thinking... can't we all send a snail mail (depending upon Google's preference for an envelope!) to Google, compiling all these hatred/angry comments and just let them know that boss! is this what you call professionalism?

Can anybody please explain this over-exploited hypocrite philosophy?

Hari Menon [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I don't blame Google India for not being prompt with the results — for all we know, it probably means the contest was very tough to judge. :) I only wish the company had issued a press note saying the results will be delayed by a week (or two weeks, or whatever). That would not only have worked wonders for the company's PR, but boosted the morale of 3000+ participants.

Scooby Doo [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

The Google experience has left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. So bitter, that not a single day passes without remembering Google. So, is this what Google was really aiming at....being remembered every single waking day by 3000 outstanding brains of this country???

Ganesh APP [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Well like a few people suggested here, the 7 days are over (actually 9 days are over)... and the results aren't out yet.

Tshering [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

The wait is over:
Vamsi Krishna Nakkina wins Google Wordmasters creative writing contest
http://www.alootechie.com/News/1676.asp

Tshering [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

The rest of the story:

As a reward, Nakkina will receive a creative writing course from a reputed university abroad and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, Google India has said.

Karunguzhi Nalini from Bangalore and Amrita Singh from Delhi have been judged as second and third runners-up. They will receive a cash prize of Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively.

The other winners are Shriganesh Joshi (Mumbai), Shyamalima Sengupta (Bangalore), Ravi Rao (Mumbai), Tulika Srimal (Hyderabad), Debdutta Saha (Hyderabad), Terence Tuhinanshu (Indore), and Geeta Ganapathy (Bangalore)

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The top creative writer wins ... a creative writing course!

Harikrishnan Menon [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Hehe, I never looked at it that way. Sounds rather like giving the winner of the Boston Marathon a chance to enroll for professional jogging classes.:)

Harshad Joshi [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Its nothing, but a big farce..No transparancy in the process...

Anyway, its over, but Google should probably think on how to maintain their image in the public.

Harikrishnan Menon [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

As I mentioned elsewhere, the Wordmasters contest was announced with great fanfare in the Indian media, huge press ads and all. But the results? They are published in a little-known site that carries an encouraging disclaimer: “Apart from accurate news we also publish gossip, rumours and speculation”. So much for authenticity.

Maybe Google India will rush to "correct" this "oversight" by releasing ads in the papers later this week. That wouldn’t make much difference to the knocking the company has taken in credibility. Alas, what a fall for Google!

karan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I have a story ppl, around the 13th of this month, i was very excited about goin to the google office for an interview. So much that i even made fun of a few despos on many of the forums discussin google post wordmasters. Fate gets back at you. I went for the interview, it went well, i was even more excited on the return plane journey courtesy (sic) of google. So excited that i racked my brains to find some ideas for google that might impress the higher-ups and HR at google. Here:

the reply i got from my HR contact there was "this is great Karan"

From: "deepta" deepta[put at-character here]google.comView Contact Details
To: "'Karan J. Bhatia'" karanb16_2000[put at-character here]yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Google – Attachments missing & Ideas available
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:06:38 +0530
  
This is great Karan!!

-----------------------------------------
From: Karan J. Bhatia [mailto:karanb16_2000[put at-character here]yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 7:22 PM
To: deepta
Subject: Re: Google – Attachments missing & Ideas available

Hi Deepta,
I just woke up after a long sleep and an equally long journey hyd-bom-srt! You forgot to attach the Information Sheet. I have been going over my thoughts since the interviews and afterwards I came up with some and missed communicating some ideas about Google. Do relay them to the gentleman and lady who interviewed me as well as to some other relevant people. Here they are:

1) Google Logos

   A revolutionary new dimension to advertising. Combining the advantages of the recent Right to Information Act and the Google power of relaying information. Idea is simple. Next to text ads in Google Search, logos of the respective businesses should be made to appear. Now these Google Logos are not any regular logos of the businesses, but equal size formatted colorful little icons that will kick up the visibility of Google ads. Idea is special because now, all advertisers can have unique visual identities in Google ads, and also because Google will invoke RTI Act and supply all information regarding every company advertising through a simply click-able link on, you guessed it....the respective Google Logos!

2) Google Servers
   A 1.65 billion field in Hyd?!!! Spread it around! How about regional data centers all over India. Like say a 10000 sq yards field on the outskirts of the worlds fastest developing (officially! UNESCO) city – Surat City! My City! Have a 10 storey server complex built with terabyte fibre optic connections to Surat City as well as rest of gujarat and mumbai. Servers will provide everyhthing a google data center provides plus online game hosting (Google Gaming!), web hosting and a whole array of online services that will transform the worlds fastest developing city into the worlds fastest developed city! A real life project! :) I know just the piece of real estate that google could use going cheap at 30 million rupees.

3) Google ViralVids
   End the monopoly of huge corporations over the 30-second tv commercial. Duplicate the Google ads model of judging the worth of an ad or piece of communication that uses the audio visual medium. So, the quality score or ctr of a Google ad will correspond with an equally efficient quality score or View-through Rate (i.e. the number of times a viral ad or a video on YouTube got completely viewed as well as how many times it was viewed divided by the number of impressions or chances to view the video that were provided to users). Such a statistic combined with the pre-set Cost Per View (CPW) will control the budget of every kind of advertiser producing their very own tv ad for the business of their dreams without the nightmare of traditional tv ad budgets!

4) Google Cafes
   Imagine web cafe version 2, the daddy of all the Reliance Web Worlds and Sify gamedromes, a cafe equipped with everything Digital that a net user might need and equipped with a huge security-checked verified base of loyal Google and web users that will make Google checkout and related commercial transactions online a breeze!

tgb – wonder what this is? well my keyboard is damagbed, tgb keys dont work, so i have been copy pastin tgb all over the documen, plz excuse any spellin misakes :)

I am sure im missing a few ideas i had also thought of, let me sleep over them another 24 hours and i will send them too alon with the scans of my documents.

Warm regards,
Karan

24 hours later i get this mail
From: deepta[put at-character here]google.com View Contact Details
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by google.com. Learn more
To: karanb16_2000[put at-character here]yahoo.com
Subject: Thank you from Google.
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:47:08 -0800 (PST)
  

Hi

Thank you for evincing interest in Google. We regret to inform you that
we will not be able to proceed with your application. Your time and
effort is appreciated.

We wish you well in your endeavors and hope you might consider us again
in the future. Google would be happy to have you reapply after a period
of six months.

Sincerely,
Google Staffing

here are the google contacts:
hyd 04066975624
fax 04055375101
mumbai 02255078700
traveldesk 04066975548
fat ass 8itch 04066375372

hound them, call them, stalk them, make their lives hell, and if anyone can help me report this nonsense behaviour of google in traditional media, plz help! if i have been swindled for the sake of idea credits, may that [personal attack removed. -Philipp]

Manisha [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Hi, This is really tiring. I mean reading all the blogs reporting about Google not announcing the results.
Can someone really tell us the truth!!

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