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Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

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Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#51

Post by JacobAldridge »

spyder wrote: post #12

This campaign doesn't change the reason why peoples are searching for bad things about Romanians. It's just fixing a symptom but not the source of the problem.

Yes and no - I'll often note what Autocomplete prompts when I'm doing a search. Negative autocompletes may impact my perception of something when doing a related search (say, "Romanian holidays" and at "Romanian" autocomplete throws up some of the negative terms in the OP).

So it lessens the spread of those negative terms. As you point out, of course, it doesn't change the (far more important) source issue of people believing those stereotypes before going into Google.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#53

Post by ovi256 »

alexseman wrote: post #34
rdtsc wrote: post #32

One thing I'll say about Romanians is that I noticed they distrust each other, or they are just not friendly towards each other. For example I've noticed how the immigrant community acts and while other communities opt to stay together, mingle and be friendly with each others, Romanians abroad don't give a hoot about other Romanians, they are willing to integrate into the local culture as fast as possible and forget…

As a Romanian myself, yes you are mostly right. But another thing to notice is that most of the Romanians that leave the country aren't well... the cream of the society so to speak :).

That's not an accurate view, brain drain is a real problem for Romania. While the phenomenon of Romanian manual labourers crowding Spain and Italy is well known, and oh so stereotyped by local media, there's a lot of emigration of highly trained (or soon to be highly trained) engineers and researchers to Western Europe and the US. But these people tend to be cosmopolitan and blend in extremely well, so they don't raise awareness of Romanians among foreigners.

And precisely this is the second focus of the campaign: raising awareness that there are a lot of emigrated high-achieving Romanians, quietly blending in.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#54

Post by ovi256 »

vlasta2 wrote: post #47

It is interesting that none talk about this being spam, the "suggestion box spam". Would spamming the web with "romanians are smart" actually change something? Isn't this the actual non-working method that spammers use? Instead of building good "content", they just pretend to...

This is supposed to correct a perception problem. Of course Romanians are not perfect, but we're working on that :)

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#55

Post by andyking »

jim-greer wrote: post #49
JonnieCache wrote: post #48

My favourite was when it used to complete "chinese people are" with "aliens." extremely odd. I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation. Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distribution of n-grams in google's index, as much as in the search terms?

> I also enjoyed it recently when the top result for "define an english person" was the wikipedia article "cunt." That one smacked of deliberate organisation. The funny thing about some of these is that they become victims of their own success - the bomb doesn't work now because all the results are for blogs, reddit, etc talking about the bomb. > Anyway, aren't the search autocomplete suggestions based on the distrib…

I regularly do a Google search for "Ofcom MCA maps", a rather specialist subject that takes you to the following page that's impossible to find on the website itself: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/mcamaps/MCAs.h...

When I first searched on this, Google didn't suggest it at all, and the page itself was half-way down page 1. Now, it's up there at the top (even when logged-out). I can't imagine very many people search this term--so I can only assume my regular searches have pushed it into the search engine's consciousness.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#56

Post by moilolita »

ktizo wrote: post #50
moilolita wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite distinct.…

I'd say that in my experience, the Roma don't beg and steal particularly worse than any other marginalised or impoverished group. There may be a culture of theft among some of the poorer groups, but that is hardly unique, a culture of theft is extremely common in a lot of widely varied communities around the world, from energy companies to impoverished slums.

In my experience, the general public in the west does not believe and can't believe what an eastern european says about the Roma people, because anything we say sounds like prejudice and discrimination. The westerners simply ignore the fact that these prejudices were formed along more than 150 years of coexistence and although insulting, they describe rather accurately the character and the habits of an entire ethnic group (group which is not as diverse as you may assume). Time will tell you more (cause if I enter details, I will be banned :D).

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#57

Post by nuxi »

moilolita wrote: post #37
armandososa wrote: post #13

I tried with a bunch of nationalities and every one returns equally negative results for "[Nationality] are". I don't know why people get so upset about stereotypes. I bet almost every one is stupid/lazy/ugly by the opinion of random strangers in the world.

In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite distinct.…

  > ...including the Roma minority which are highly nomadic by tradition and very visible in the west because they beg and steal aggressively and live in slums in very primitive conditions.
Pot, kettle, black.

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#58

Post by Tangurena »

ubernostrum wrote: post #24
dgquintas wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, "romano" means Roman in Spanish. As in, an inhabitant of the city of Rome, both in the classical and modern senses. The proper Spanish term would have been "rumano". I guess the guys over at the Italian capital are happy about the free compliments

"People called Romanes, they go, the house?"

For those who don't get the reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8

Re: Romanians are Smart or How to Change the Google Autocomplete Suggestions

#59

Post by bad_user »

ktizo wrote: post #50
moilolita wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to understand why romanians take this so seriously, you need to understand the context. Romania is widely regarded by the western Europe as backward, poor and corrupt. On top of this, Romania has the largest Roma minority in the region ~500.000 according to wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_(Romani_subgroup). The average westerner can't distinguish a romanian from a roma/romani/gipsy although they are quite distinct.…

I'd say that in my experience, the Roma don't beg and steal particularly worse than any other marginalised or impoverished group. There may be a culture of theft among some of the poorer groups, but that is hardly unique, a culture of theft is extremely common in a lot of widely varied communities around the world, from energy companies to impoverished slums.

My experience contradicts with yours.

First of all I'm not trying to paint all gypsies with the same brush. I actually know a couple that are very educated, very honest and very hard-working human beings. But within all the "Roma" minorities, there are sub-groups and not all of them are created equal.

In general in Romania there are many gypsies that are definitely not marginalized and impoverished.

Some of their culture is also part of ours (e.g. many people like their music), their children go to the same schools as Romanians, some of their words became a part of our language, interracial marriages are not at all uncommon (up to the point that for some people their origin is not at all visible) and they also receive lots of subsidies from the government ... they definitely are NOT marginalized. If anything, some sub-groups of this minority are marginalizing themselves.

Also, there are many gypsies that are filthy rich. Come down here sometimes and I'll show you entire villages of villas (i.e. big and luxurious country residences) that are inhabited by gypsies. Those villas come paired with luxury cars too. And some of them still steal, still beg for money on our streets or in other countries, some of them still live in tents in their own backyard.

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