A network of pigeon owners?
July 26, 2011 4:28 PM Subscribe
I'm trying to find a reference to a story I heard of, possibly here but maybe not. It was about a society of pigeon owners that had a voting scheme that worked along the lines of PageRank, where the value of your vote was based on the number of other members voting for you, calculated recursively. It was an old system, possibly around the French Revolution. My Google-Fu is completely failing me. Does any of this ring any bells?
Response by poster: No, definitely not. This was a historical thing, not just a Google joke. It was some sort of network involving pigeon owners & somebody uncovered their records & did a topological analysis of the network.
posted by scalefree at 6:10 PM on July 26, 2011
posted by scalefree at 6:10 PM on July 26, 2011
This is the longest shot I've ever posted to AskMe, but is there any chance you are confusing the lovely Jacobin pigeon with France's Revolutionary network of Jacobin clubs, which often used a majority-rules version of black-balling to choose new members?
Here's what makes me think maybe it's the Jacobins you are thinking of:
1. In some versions of black-balling, if the new member fails, his nominator and second must resign from the club, meaning new member votes are actually votes of confidence on the nominators as well.
2. Many rural Jacobin clubs were wicked "inbred," to steal a term from Michael Kennedy, who says of the Jacobins, "in every club register one finds groups of people with the same family name, distinguished by cognomens like 'pere,' 'fils,' 'aine,' 'cadet,' 'oncle,' and 'neveu.'" This might have given the election of new members a different feel.
3. If it isn't the Jacobins, I will go mad.*
By "go mad" I mean "watch this question closely in the desperate hopes that someone answers it because I SWEAR this was a reference in Kennedy somewhere about those damn voting chips being traded or weighted in value or SOMETHING and now I can't find it and my Google-fu is useless and I haven't done any real work in an hour-and-a-half OH TARTUUUUFE."
posted by Snarl Furillo at 7:00 PM on July 26, 2011
Here's what makes me think maybe it's the Jacobins you are thinking of:
1. In some versions of black-balling, if the new member fails, his nominator and second must resign from the club, meaning new member votes are actually votes of confidence on the nominators as well.
2. Many rural Jacobin clubs were wicked "inbred," to steal a term from Michael Kennedy, who says of the Jacobins, "in every club register one finds groups of people with the same family name, distinguished by cognomens like 'pere,' 'fils,' 'aine,' 'cadet,' 'oncle,' and 'neveu.'" This might have given the election of new members a different feel.
3. If it isn't the Jacobins, I will go mad.*
By "go mad" I mean "watch this question closely in the desperate hopes that someone answers it because I SWEAR this was a reference in Kennedy somewhere about those damn voting chips being traded or weighted in value or SOMETHING and now I can't find it and my Google-fu is useless and I haven't done any real work in an hour-and-a-half OH TARTUUUUFE."
posted by Snarl Furillo at 7:00 PM on July 26, 2011
Response by poster: There was definitely a network formed by the membership of the group & they used a weighting system for their votes, which is what was measured by whoever brought it to light & caught my interest in the first place. I didn't even know there were Jacobin pigeons, so unless someone else got it confused in their relaying it to me that's not likely. I know this is a real thing, I just can't find it.
posted by scalefree at 7:38 PM on July 26, 2011
posted by scalefree at 7:38 PM on July 26, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by madmethods at 5:54 PM on July 26, 2011