Google has had their image search out for a while and it is a great tool. However, there are a lot of images out there on the web that are not named with descriptive filenames. If a file is named "DSC01239.jpg", how is Google supposed to allow that item to show up in its search results?
The answer is with the Google Image Labeler. It relies on pairs of users to look at that image and give it labels that correspond with what is actually in the image.
You are randomly matched up with another RANDOM user somewhere around the world. Both you and the other user type in as many words or labels as you can think of that describe that image. You get points if you are able to match a word with the other user.
I was playing around with this today to see how it works and came across some very strange results.
Quirk #1:
In the results shown below, you can see that I did not do very well. I only matched 3 words with the other user. The weird thing, though, is the other person's guesses, which Google lets you see when you are done.
The order of this round of Labeling was as follows:
1) Woman in Pool
2) Cup
3) Dragon
4) Cat
On the first item, the other user properly guessed "water park, pool, swimming". On the second item, the user properly guessed "milk, coffee". On the THIRD item, however, the user guessed "entrepreneurialism, accretion, and diphosphorate". I passed on the third item, because the other user stopped guessing (NOTE: While guessing, you can't see what the other user is guessing, only how many guesses that they have made). Then, on the fourth item, the other user returned to normal...guessing "cartoon, chinese"
So what the heck happened to that user on the THIRD item? Did they all of a sudden have a brain spasm and just randomly start typing in huge random words? Then when I passed on that item, they returned to normal and started guessing again.
I thought this might just be a fluke...an oddity...Google messing with me...who knows. So I Labeled for a few more rounds, and then came across this result (NOTE: Keep in mind that you are not paired with the same user each time. You are paired with a random user each round):
The order of this round was: Old woman, house, trees, Oxygen cover, anime girl, wrestlers, conference, and Damien Rice drawing.
You can see that the other random Google user and I were on the same wavelength here. We matched on our first 4 images just fine...the other user was making very logical guesses. However, look at what happened on the FIFTH item here. The other user guessed "bequeathing, accretion, entrepreneurial ism" and I finally passed on the item when I saw that we were not going to match up.
Then, just as with the first incident, the user then returned to normal, and matched me on the last 3 items.
So...what the heck is going on here?!? Is someone or something trying to sabotage the Google Image Labeler? Why would someone play along, entering labels, only to then start entering random long words??
Anyone have any idea what's going on here?
Quirk #2: I noticed that sometimes, the other user will ONLY guess "googley" and NOTHING else. A couple times, if I see that the other user has entered 1 and only 1 guess and i can't seem to match up, I'll enter "googley" as well and sometimes it will match.
Quirk #3: Even if a partner user is guessing properly, when viewing the partners guesses at the end of a round, the guess "abrasives" shows up a lot...on random pictures.
