Our unscientifc experiment - using a Google trick from Philipp Lenssen - reveals Comment is Free readers “love” more than they “hate”.
Philipp Lenssen wrote last week about a fun way of finding out some of the likes and hates of users in a web community using Google.
The trick is to use the following search formula: “I hate *” [OR “I love *”] site:[Web address]. The example he starts with is the fast-growing news community Digg, using “I have *” site:digg.com.
This is more a “finger in the air” fun approach than a serious methodology. Sentiment analysis software will give you a more detailed picture of likes and dislikes on a site or in a community (obviously not all people express postive and negative sentiment by using either “hate” or “love”).
Also be wary of hidden preceding clauses in sentences. For instance, our road test of the method brought up comments like “doesn’t mean I hate…”
Still it’s an interesting way to start to get to know a community and even challenging some preconceptions or generalisations you may make about it.
I thought I would try the approach out on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.
By this measure (*affects impression of Peter “Swingometer” Snow) “remember it’s just for fun” Comment is Free contributors and commenters love more (478 results) than they hate (366 results). Which is nice.
And here are a sample of 14 things they hate and 14 that they love, plucked from the top results on Google:
| Love | Hate |
|---|---|
| Being an atheist | AMLO |
| Being pedantic | Arsenal |
| Boots | Being patronized |
| BSG | Blair and Bush |
| Cheap flights | England |
| Comic books | Everything MPB says |
| Eurovision | Hate |
| Gary Younge’s writings | Imposters like you who act like you care for a certain group |
| Jack Palance | Injustice |
| MrPike | Lukashenko’s regime |
| Radiohead so much this post makes me want to cry | Melanie “islam bashing” Philips |
| Senor Cocunut’s LP of Kraftwerk covers in Latin American style | New Labour’s ID Cards |
| The Guardian website | Seeing bridges in Lebanon blown up |
| Tolkein like I lover Roast Dinner | Turkeys |
