ex-xian

Since the other had pretty much fallen apart, I'd like to continue tracking the meme here. I've done some math modeling, so I pretty confident in that department, but I'd suggestions as to how best to actually aquire the data.

One good idea that I've seen is doing searches with "brights+nonreligious." But I'm not sure if the best. Anyway, for those who know more about web searching, is Google the best? And how should the search be worded?

fando

Might as well use Google. Enter "the brights" including quotations and +nonbeliever. Try their advanced search to adjust specifics, especially the number of results per page. When counting, make sure you don't count the same domain twice (just leave out any results that are indented). Also note that Google refines the search as you page through the results. For instance, if it returns 7 pages initially, it can reduce the total pages to 4 after clicking next a few times.

Vibr8gKiwi

ex-ian,

I'd suggest you just choose something yourself to track. You probably won't get any agreement around here--there's enough people around here geared more towards destruction than construction that it can be a problem. Mentioning the term "meme" was also likely a mistake as now you'll be lectured to and asked repeatedly to provide a scientific basis for memes. Good luck though.

ex-xian

Well, I'm going to go ahead and do it regardless. I wish you would stick around and help out--after all, it was your idea.

Anyway, I tried the search with "the brights"+nonreligious and only got 105 pages. Then I tried "the brights" and got about 3700. I went about 10 pages into the results and the pages were still about the Brights movement. So I think the latter best tracks the meme. Unless someone has a better idea, that's the one I'm going to use.

I'm open to any critisicm of my methodology that anyone has to offer. I'm doing this for fun, but I want to be accurate.

viscousmemories

I recommend that you use 'naturalistic' instead of 'nonreligious'. In these early days most people who use or discuss the word 'Bright' with it's new definition are going to include the wording of the Brights own promotional literature, which includes these comments:

"A Bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview"

"A Bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements."

"The ethics and actions of a Bright are based on a naturalistic worldview."

Good luck.

vm

ex-xian

I searched more deeply into using "the brights" and there were many, many erroneous results. Using googles advanced search, with these parameters, "atheist OR agnostic OR nonreligious OR materialism OR naturalism OR igtheist OR religion AND "the brights." I got right at 1000 pages. THIS is the best way to search. Whaddya think?

fando

Seems comprehensive. Just click next a few times to see what happens to the number of pages.

viscousmemories

Based on a quick look I'd say that's vastly more accurate. In fact I don't think you really need "the brights.", because it's rare that the word 'bright' would be plural in any other context while surrounded by those other words. So I think "brights" would be sufficient.

vm

Vibr8gKiwi

Hopefully the previous thread will have shamed a few people into acting a tad more civilly for you. Have fun.

livius drusus

Sounds good to me. Do you have any thoughts on how to handle duplicate domains? In order for this not to be a massive undertaking, you don't want to find yourself leafing through a thousand pages counting indentations. Did you encounter a significant number of them when you checked for false positives?