

Finding Great Domain Names with Mechanical Turk - matt1
http://www.domainpigeon.com/posts/2-finding-great-domain-names-with-mechanical-turk

======
GiraffeNecktie
Does anyone else find it ironic that the site selling the idea that you need a
short (<6 letter) domain has a 12-letter domain name (domainpigeon.com)?

~~~
matt1
The key is for the domain to be memorable. If you stick two words together,
especially ones that normally don't belong together, like domain and pigeon,
you make it memorable. If you don't stick two words together and you want
something more... web 2.0ish... then you're much better off sticking with
something short than something long.

------
tezza
* Swear words & Double Entendre

Maybe a good check would be :: Does this sound like a swear word in your
language?

A Swedish guy at EuroDjango con said the Finnish chosen domain
<http://muutu.com> is a very bad swear word in Swedish.

* Checking pronouncability values are correct

Is there a sanity check step?

Can you inspect some results to check that the Mechanical Turks are not just
piping in /dev/random to the results?

~~~
matt1
The results show you how many seconds the worker took to answer the question.
You could also do some statistical analysis on the answers compared to the
other people who worked on the same HIT.

~~~
tezza

      $std_human_interval=45
      while true; do
       sleep $std_human_interval
       curl "http://mechanicalturk/answer?value=`random_gen`"
      od

------
terpua
Matt, your site is crawling :( Perhaps you're getting to many HITs :)

~~~
matt1
Nice pun! I've been very happy with Dreamhost, but the shared hosting does
present problems when there is a lot of traffic. It's a good problem to be
having...

~~~
asb
I agree with the others - please look into fixing this. A Linode VPS is great
at $20 a month, many others here will vouch for Slicehost. I like the idea of
domainpigeon, but on the three times I've visited and tried to use it I've had
an awful experience. Soon after I start to navigate the site, I find it
becomes too slow to be usable.

On a different note, I'd prefer it if Twitter names weren't mixed in with
domains in the default view - perhaps it's just me, but my first priority when
browsing domainpigeon is finding domains. The fact the site can be incredibly
slow makes this worse, as switching to 'domains only' can be painful.

~~~
devin
I have to say that if this weren't HN, your site was posted, and it timed out,
I would never come back again. I mean no disrespect; I really like your idea,
but going to a site these days and timing out makes the company look like it
runs out of a cardboard box with a 2400 baud modem.

How many people trust their credit card information to a site with slow
response times.

Finally I would say that your response to the slow site was rather
disconcerting as well. You seem optimistic, like it's no big deal-- When users
are having trouble using your product you need to sound concerned and
proactive, not lazy and optimistic.

~~~
matt1
Great points and you're absolutely right.

It _is_ a big deal--half the posts in this thread are about how slow the site
is. Even now when I load the home page it occasionally says page not found.
I'm losing visitors and missing out on potential customers.

99% of the time Dreamhost is fantastic as the site doesn't receive enough
traffic to be a problem. Unfortunately, its the 1% that's the most important
and we're seeing the results of that right now.

------
asciilifeform
Creativity is hard. Let's go shopping!

------
BRadmin
Where are the majority of these workers located and does that influence their
pronounceability ratings?

~~~
matt1
Can't say what the demographics are of the ones who completed these HITS, but
of the people that complete the polls, something like 80%+ are US.

------
dood
Just clicked the register link
[<https://www.domainpigeon.com/users/register>], got "Internal server error"
with a load of info and a backtrace, which I imagine you don't want to
display.

~~~
matt1
Thanks for the pointer.

I've been working with Dreamhost to fix the Internal Server Errors, which
plague the site. Next time no shared hosting.

------
tomerico
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the costs for the Amazon assignment were over
100$ for 4 people ranking pronounciability for 2 minutes each (On average).
Meaning over 25$ for a 2 minutes (Lousy?) job...

~~~
cschneid
Not quite. There are 2360 individual tasks. Each one would take no more than
15 seconds, perhaps a bit more. Spread those across the several hundred people
that are on MTurk at any given time, and you can get done in 2 minutes.

The 4 multiplier comes because as you said, each individual task is fairly
unreliable for quality. He's testing each individual domain name across 4
people (not the same 4 people each time).

------
wtdominey
The "guest" links don't work.

~~~
matt1
Can you clarify which one you mean?

~~~
ericb
For me, I tried to follow the link for domain names sorted by pronouncability
and they did not work. I assume this is what OP meant.

\-------------------

link href:

[http://www.domainpigeon.com/domains?length=6&sort_by=pro...](http://www.domainpigeon.com/domains?length=6&sort_by=pronounceability)

error:

Oops! That Page Doesn't Exist

You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved.

Please contact support@domainpigeon.com if you have any questions or concerns.

~~~
matt1
The site is very slow and is causing errors.

If you get a page load error, just hit refresh in a few seconds.

Lesson learned...

------
anigbrowl
Automated namespace pollution. Wonderful :-|

------
pclark
genius idea - I eagerly await Hacker News discount on accounts ;)

~~~
matt1
The Hacker News discount was around three months ago when it launched and was
free :)

