Posted on 10/11/2007 10:55:46 PM PDT by South40
Dear folks,
You guys are good. Real good. You are truly a force on World Wide Web and I tip my hat to you.
That's based on my first hand experience of your work regarding our CNBC Republican candidate debate. After the debate, we put up a poll on our Web site asking who readers thought won the debate. You guys flooded it.
Now these Internet polls are admittedly unscientific and subject to hacking. In the end, they are really just a way to engage the reader and take a quick temperature reading of your audience. Nothing more and nothing less. The cyber equivalent of asking the room for a show of hands on a certain question.
So there was our after-debate poll. The numbers grew ... 7,000-plus votes after a couple of hours ... and Ron Paul was at 75%.
Now Paul is a fine gentleman with some substantial backing and, by the way, was a dynamic presence throughout the debate , but I haven't seen him pull those kind of numbers in any "legit" poll. Our poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign. So we took the poll down.
The next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion. Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can't help but admire that.
But you also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest "show of hands" -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum. That certainly wasn't our intention and certainly doesn't serve our readers ... at least those who aren't already in the Ron Paul camp.
Some of you Ron Paul fans take issue with my decision to take the poll down. Fine. When a well-organized and committed "few" can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of "the many," I get a little worried. I'd take it down again.
Sincerely,
Allen Wastler Managing Editor, CNBC.com
Paul/McKinney ‘08
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Some 7000 voters out of 169,000,000 is not a very substantial number and not even big when compared to the 2,240,000 who watched the debate.
We've ALL been "FREEPING" poles since I've been around Freerepublic (which is about eight years under my old name). I've just changed to being a Paul supporter since this last debate and it amazes me how much some hate this man. He has the strictest, Constitutionalist message in our Grand Ole Party and for some reason our party hates him for that. That makes me wonder if the Republican party has drifted too far to the left from where I, and Ron Paul, stand.
Poor guy. He doesn't seem to have a clue what happened.
I have made a similar switch, though I won’t act rabid, and DO disagree with him on the War in Iraq, and WOT!
I do think he makes a point, however that Congress should actually declare war on Iraq, Afghani, Irani, or any other when we go to war against someone else.
“That makes me wonder if the Republican party has drifted too far to the left from where I, and Ron Paul, stand.”
I heard out of Ron Paul’s mouth that WE were responsible for 911... Is that where you stand?
It has been a official pasttime of Freerepublic for about a decade to flood unscientific online polls for just about any reason that could be made.
Blame not the power of the grassroots mob for exploiting your corporation’s critically flawed website implementations.
If the Ron Paul online army succeeds only in ending the lamestream media’s use online unscientific polls, that would be a great success for the entire country, and the world.
You have a misunderstanding of the Ron Paul online presence.
Paul supporters are not a single cabal of several thousand drone like people posting threads on web forums and getting everyone to click the polls.
(The follwoing is the bestI can see from what I’ve seen trying to figure out how they get such a huge presence.)
Paul supporters have instead done something incredibly evolutionary, the have a small group of casual users who have signed up for every social bookmarking website available on the internet. When your goals are simple, (Click here, vote Ron Paul) you can create a massive multiplier effect by recruiting just a few moments of random social bookmarking users’ time.
They go further though, and continuously (and probably through a good amount of code writing) submit articles to every social bookmarking website in the Anglophone internet regarding Ron Paul. They get ALOT of eyeballs on every small mention of Paul in the press, RELATIVE to their small numbers.
Now, is a flash mob swarm by Paul supporters any less or more valid than a flash poll by a lamestream media outlet’s website?
It’s actually an admission by CNBC’s staff that Paul’s unpaid volunteers have a larger internet footprint than CNBC does, which is one of the reasons most of CNBC’s staff are worried they are going to lose their jobs.
No matter how much Pauliacs flood these online polls, he still stand a snowballs chance of getting elected.
Falsifying these polls gains absolutely nothing!
Well, is that a surprise from a bunch of nutjobs, 19th century protectionists, and Stormfront asshats (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27461_Neo-Nazis_Heart_Ron_Paul&only)? Of course they have no life. Who would want to share one with these psychotic freaks?
Shhh. Don't upset the Paulians. After all, aren't all TRUE conservatives 9/11 troofers on the side of Stormfront?
Anyone who supports Ron Paul is an idiot, a troofer, a neo-Nazi, or someone so frustrated with the other options that they've lost the ablity for rational thought. Sorry if I've insulted some of you, but the truth hurts. And if this gets me banned, oh well, it was a nice run.
Completely wrong. We don't hate him for that. In fact, he makes some good points on those grounds. Wish some other GOPers would do the same.
However, we hate him for his troofer cr## and other completely wacked-out positions. He's WAY off the deep end, plain and simple. Just because he gets some (important) issues right is no excuse to ignore his other garbage. For an apt analogy, consider that Hitler liked doggies and kids. We didn't hate him for that, and we didn't hate people who liked doggies and kids. We hated him because he was a psychotic bastard, his banality on those (dogs and kids) issues notwithstanding.
And no, I'm not breaking/triggering Godwin's law. The analogy to Hitler here is completely justified given Stormfront's support of Ron Paul.
Actually, both assertions are wrong. The poll was not "hacked" - nor were the Fox polls (the one where Hannity falsely accused Paul supporters of redialing, when that was not possible).
Nor was the CNBC poll the target of the Paul campaign. Paul's support is spontaneous from those of us who are hearing a message that both parties have cynically rejected. The Repubs and Dems are in the business of politics - the power they wield and influence they can sell. The message Paul is delivering has not been heard since Goldwater. Because of this, Paul supporters, though relatively small in number, are far more energized than those who favor other candidates.
Now, if we want to talk about a campaign fixing a poll, how about all of those Romney buses to the Iowa straw polls, plus his campaign buying all of those tickets on behalf of all of those bussed in people? That's how a campaign rigs a poll!
The other candidates may giggle into their microphones whenever Paul speaks, but I bet they're all green with envy over the grassroots organization Paul has.
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