Rap Genius Returns To Google Search Rankings 115
theodp writes "After being punished by Google for manipulative SEO tactics, a contrite Rap Genius says it's back in Google's good graces. 'It takes a few days for things to return to normal, but we're officially back!' reads a post by the Rap Genius founders. 'First of all, we owe a big thanks to Google for being fair and transparent and allowing us back onto their results pages. We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked.' Rap Genius credits some clever trackback scraping programming for its quick redemption, but a skeptic might suggest it probably didn't hurt that Rap Genius' biggest investor, Andreessen Horowitz, is tight with Google."
Rap "Genius"? (Score:2, Funny)
Q: Rap Genius?
A: Oxymoron
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Re:Rap "Genius"? (Score:5, Informative)
* Rap Genius is a website that provides crowdsourced text annotation services.
* It got it's name because it originally provided "decoding" of rap lyrics so little Joe Schmoe could figure out what "beez in the trap" means.* But now they want to provide text annotation to documents of all kinds of subjects.
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Really? Zero talent? So when is your number one album going to debut at number one on the charts?
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Ad hominem attack, nice to see you keeping it classy!
1) Popularity does not always equal quality, but I never claimed it had to be quality. You said it took no talent therefore anyone can do it.
2) I never claimed talking = music. I consider rap to be more akin to poetry. But you will find rap in the music charts, along with many other "artists" a lot of people also consider to not have any talent.
3) You're claiming it takes no talent and with a payout like that why wouldn't you? Unless of course it does tak
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Re:Rap "Genius"? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is about as bigoted as, "Geeks are people that have no social skills, yet still insist on pushing their electronic 'tools' on people. It is hardly possible to be more arrogant and incompetent as a human."
I don't particularly enjoy rap, but it is evidently a musical form, and - just as with any art - doing it badly is easy, but doing it well is hard.
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I wish I had mod points for you.
The "I'm smart and don't like X, so people who like X must be stupid" mentality on here is getting near YouTube levels. I've recently switched to ArsTechnica for most of my news, but still have the /. RSS feed which I monitor and occasionally click through. This article struck me as interesting because I ended up at Rap Genius yesterday after searching for some lyrics to a rap song.
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Another simple mind, that does not get it. Humanity is comprised mostly of idiots, apparently, and the Dunning-Kruger effect is making it far, far worse.
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Seriously dude? You're a fucking idiot if you don't understand that music is a subjective art form. The Dunning-Kruger effect lies solely on you.
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Just my point. I also believe that quite a few "Rappers" are actually pretty competent scam artists that use bogus "cultural identity" memes to sell their trash. Seems to be working well. There is a sucker born every minute...
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Just my point. I also believe that quite a few "Rappers" are actually pretty competent scam artists that use bogus "cultural identity" memes to sell their trash. Seems to be working well. There is a sucker born every minute...
A lot like the wrestling shows on TV, a guy making money by portraying himself as somebody he isn't to sell their trash
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You need to look up the definition of objective, because you really don't have a clue what it means, nor have you produced any evidence supporting your subjective opinion.
Unsurprisingly you didn't mention what type of music you happen to like. It's only childish trolling to criticize others while not exposing your own interests and likes.
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Some rap is lacking in harmony or melody, but that doesn't make it objectively bad music any more than a savoury meal is "objectively bad" just because it lacks sweetness.
It's frankly embarrassing how our culture likes to attach metrics to everything while failing to notice that the final judgment always comes down to how you weight your inputs.
And if you want bad lyrics, listen to opera.
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And if you want bad lyrics, listen to opera.
OK, I'll bite. Treat yourself to a little "Gilbert and Sullivan". A very famous example lyric is the Major-General's Song [wikipedia.org], which is very cleverly triple-rhymed. (Let's see Eminem top that!) It has inspired a host of parodies, one of which is so well done as to merit a Wikipedia entry of its very own [wikipedia.org].
And Sullivan's music is every bit as brilliant as Gilbert's lyrics. Once you get over the fat lady's singing, G&S truly is one of the good things in life. The recordings by the Welsh National Opera ar
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And if you want bad lyrics, listen to opera.
OK, I'll bite. Treat yourself to a little "Gilbert and Sullivan"...
I really like Eminem and Kid Rock. They are sarcastic and very funny. Will they still have the same appeal after 100 years? I doubt it. Gilbert and Sullivan has endured.
I don't especially like G&S (I prefer what someone else called "traditional arias" e.g. full chorus "Ode to Joy"), yet I can completely relate to, understand why you are fond of G&S. A live G&S performance is music and art.
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Oops, forgot to sign in. Also, s/broad/vague/
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Even if I accept your premise that rap is "bad music", I have heard rap that is very good poetry. It takes a skilled linguist to write good rap as it does to write good poetry and there are good and bad examples of both. To me rap is modern day poetry with a beat. look outside the pop charts for the good stuff and you will find it.
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...It takes a skilled linguist to write good rap as it does to write good poetry and there are good and bad examples of both.
Linguist! The professors of linguistics that write University of Pennsylvania's Language Log are skilled linguists. I don't think that has anything to do with their ability to write poetry. Or rap, although it would be fun to ask!
Rap is words, music and visuals with attitude, and usually post-production effects. Poetry is written words on a page. They aren't comparable.
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Before either poetry or rap is spoken aloud they can both be words written on a page. Both can also not be written on a page. The page is just a recording medium. or can poetry not be recorded on a CD and still be considered poetry?
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I don't know why I am replying to this.
Rap music is not so much about harmony as it is about rhythm and rhyme. Basically, rap is about poetry.
You wouldn't know that because you are an idiot.
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Blimey, someone needs to get rid of the twist in their knickers.
Rhythm is merely the absence of harmony and melody.
What sort of crazy rubbish is that? High sounding nonsense that is.
As with any art form, there are good practitioners and bad practitioners of the art, and the lyrics to rap range from the downright awful to the absolutely brilliant. And the skill of the delivery ranges from the clumsy to the sublime. As with anything else in life.
And when it comes to harmony, there is plenty of it in rap come to think of it. Basically, when rappers ride the be
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Pathetic, almost literal rip-off. And completely besides the point. Surely you can do better? Oh, wait, likely you cannot....
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I'm not a real fan of Rap either, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its place or that it sin't high art in some way. When it first appeared I thought that sometimes it was quite poetic, even with all the dialect and swearing, and like any art form that is current, most of it is pretty hum drum,
What caught my eye is that the application that got Rap Genius in trouble was a linguistics application. I wonder, really, what arm twisting Google was able to do to get Rap Genius to change what it was do
who? (Score:5, Informative)
who?
Re:who? (Score:5, Funny)
The people who bought this ad space.
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Well, you've heard of them now . . .
Time to drive the hipsters out of the industry. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been in the computing industry since the 1970s. I've seen trends come, and I've seen trends go. I've seen people come, I've seen people go. I've seen companies come, I've seen companies go. I've seen technologies come, I've seen technologies go.
But over these several decades of experience, the worst, and I mean the very worst, people I've ever had to deal with are the hipsters that have weaseled their way in since 2008 or so. They've advocated for some of the worst technologies we've ever seen (JavaScr
Static typing writes unit tests for you (Score:2)
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The preferred term is "brogrammer".
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Sounds like a great way to induce an age discrimination suit.
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There's apparently a website called "Rap Genius" and it's apparently popular among those who aren't geniuses. Hence, the rap part.
Re:Who gives a...? (Score:1)
I know that Mark Andreessen funded it, but he isn't right about everything.
Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Delete this stupid article and smack whoever posted it. what a load of useless shit.
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Slashdot keeps on pushing the boundaries (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it's the boundaries of how un-newsworthy content can be and still be called "news".
Someone I've never heard of does dodgy SEO, gets banned by Google, then gets the ban lifted (+- unproven allegation of favouritism) and I'm supposed to give a shit?
Happens every day, almost entirely to other people I've never heard of either.
Re:Slashdot keeps on pushing the boundaries (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it's the boundaries of how un-newsworthy content can be and still be called "news".
Someone "modded" it up at the Firehose, and Soulskill put it on the front page... It's probably a Slashvert, either paid to Dice or more likely paid to Soulskill.
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Someone "modded" it up at the Firehose, and Soulskill put it on the front page... It's probably a Slashvert, either paid to Dice or more likely paid to Soulskill.
The future is coming [slashdot.org]... and it's ugly and full of ads.
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What I hate about the internet today - by Gus
1. SEO - it's obvious
2. The Cloud - security nightmare
3. Advertisements - pay for your own site, or get it off the internet. You're not doing anyone any favors
4. Social websites - facebook, twitter, google+, you all suck
5. Youtube - posting a 10 minute video explaining how to do something that you could have explained in 1 line of text
6. Web Forums - mail lists are better, you losers
7. IOT - I don't even want to hear about this, it's fucking ridiculous
8. Please
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I'm grumbling myself, having been around (and yes, trolling as AC sometimes) since pre-2000 myself. I changed users because I rather use a handle than my initials these days.
Beta.slashdot.org is awful.
Slashdot is bad, but what is out there is worse:
Reddit just has people cooing about BitCoin and any sentiment to the contrary will get feedback similar to posting to /b/ saying how you can't stand anonymous users and this should be illegal.
Digg is just plain fail. Too many people with lots of accounts that w
Google Abuse (Score:1)
My understanding is that if someone typed in Rap Genius the site would not come up. This to me is simply unprofessional behavior on the side of Google. Yes, demote the ranking if someone uses ano
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agreed with all your points.
google searches are near worthless. most others are also the same, but google is supposed to be 'great'. they once were. they no longer are.
you mean to tell me that with all the genius power and funding google has, they can't weed out the link farms and fake sites that end up at the top of the search? I look for tech info and mostly I get SALES, SALES, SALES!! we want to sell things. we don't want to give info away.
the web is dead, compared to what its dream was and what i
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> google searches are near worthless
You clearly aren't a developer who needs quick answers to edge-case problems which have affected a hangful of other people (including your client), or someone stalking their...uh...forget that - go with the programmer thingy.
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"whatI need is usually within the top 3 results. Granted my searches are usually for a specific error code"
I agree. The problem with many, many result pages are the users queries. Properly formed queries provide useful results.
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Why the hell has the parent post been modded (1, Redundant)? This is the most insightful post I've seen on /. all day. Shame on the mods.
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He was modded redundant because it's bullshit. In the same breath, he complains about useless results due to spam as well as Google's attempt to stop people making the results useless due to spam. And apparently Google's algorithms are "broken" because they "created" a problem, namely SEO manipulation. But then he goes on to explain that AltaVista was subject to SEO manipulation as well. And he's condemning Google for attempting to fix it, while blaming them for being unable to! After using this silly logic
if he was that "tight"... (Score:1)
they wouldn't have banned him in the first place. they would have contacted em and then made them resolve it.
the advertizing genius (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thanks for the info. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
I think my cable company told me basically the same thing when I cut them out of my life 8 years ago, for so much advertizing. Turns out, there's a big push for getting rid of advertizing these days, by many folks. I guess you could get with the fine folks over at Netflix and see if they agree.
You may also be able to get with the folks at slashdot, like 10 years ago. Each article used to draw in at least 350 responses. These days, looks like 100 is about average, 350 is going to have something to do
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this maybe because the tech that was once newsworthy is not anymore. Either not a breaktrough or even so it is so complicated and/or sophisticated that nobody (i.e. fewer than 10 indihviduals) understands. It was once possible to write tools that mattered on your own - what was it last time when it happened?
Looking at different angle - the geeky stuff about say obfuscated C code - how many answers does that get? All the allure and all the geeks are gone. Only some stubborn autists are still out there thinki
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But it turns out that very few other websites want to give you a "free link".
Want to know why? BECAUSE YOUR SITE FUCKING SUCKS!
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