Visitor Comments

xensen — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:22:40 +0000

MEMO
FROM: Anita Gidway, Visitor Services manager
TO: Director’s office

Dr. Thom:

As you know, we have begun providing comment cards for visitors to fill out when they leave the museum. So far we have accumulated 33 cards. I thought you might like to review the comments, which I have sorted by department in the attached spreadsheet. We will continue to monitor this.

General Comments

Fabulously courteous staff

Too salty

Galleries are crowded — try to control the thongs

Unhappy that derelicts are allowed to loiter, litter, and intimidate your visitors freely, but we have to pay

This museum is a joke

Café Folly

SUGGESTIONS

Children should eat in a separate, soundproof, closed-off area

KUDOS

The “chef’s surprise” was larger than I expected

Curatorial

SUGGESTIONS

The Bush Adminstration Wing was so enormous that we could not complete it in a full day, so we missed the rest of the museum. Can anything be done?

As one of the most richly endowed cities in America, I found your approach narrow

KUDOS

We liked the way some objects are presented upside-down

Development

SUGGESTIONS

I was trying to find the Gustave Flaubert Room without success. …you need a system to keep track of donor rooms. A person could be lost in here for days

Education

SUGGESTIONS

Explain how other nations were looted and pillaged to put together your collection.

The woman leading the 11:00 tour was behind schedule and tried to out talk the man leading the 11:30 tour. They started going faster and faster, and it was hard to keep up.

Exhibition Design/Labels

SUGGESTIONS

There are lost of typos in descriptions

On the third floor, gallery 8, the second panel from the left, paragraph 4, line 6, word 7 there is a typo. I will not be back!

Black type on white paper makes the labels hard to read

Membership

SUGGESTIONS

I signed up for a museum membership, but when I went to the Member’s Lounge I was startled to see how literally you take the term “members”

Operations

SUGGESTIONS

Did not like the funhouse mirrors in restrooms. Can we have at least one ordinary mirror?

Elevator doors only open from the outside.This seems wrong

Loved your exhibit, however it caused heavy feeling in lungs, plus watery eyes and nose.

PR and Marketing

SUGGESTIONS

Do you have a website? I have searched in vain for information about the museum online.

Security

SUGGESTIONS

I was disturbed by the loud alarm every time someone slipped through a nonpublic doorway, and space was a problem when they would rush back out with their large bundles

Dammit, give the damned officers the tools they need to keep the damned visitors moving along through the damned galleries!!! Let’s show some discipline!!! Dammit.

KUDOS

Guards Bert and Ernest were helpful. We lost our camera and they gave us a sketchpad.

Store

SUGGESTIONS

A product in the store got turned on and wouldn’t stop vibrating. This was for a friend

The store should sell more books, also little screens, matches, and spoons

Visitor Services

SUGGESTIONS

It would be a great honor to be able to levitate on the 3rd floor, possibly 1 hour a week

How about discounts for government personnel and for-profit organizations?

Visitor was struck in the rear repeatedly by a gentleman using a wheelchair in the third floor galleries. What is your policy?

Hours are too short. Consider adding more minutes

Volunteer Services

SUGGESTIONS

Your information people should be made to eat at the café

KUDOS

Information desk person Don was cute. What is his home number?

Who does your hair? I like it

Visitor Comments is a post from: museum of folly

“Text is not likely to be stupid”

xensen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:12:57 +0000

MEMO
FROM: Membership department
TO: Director’s office

Dr. Thom:

Have you seen something call the stupid filter? We are concerned that this insidious software, which “can detect rampant stupidity in written English,” will interfere with our current membership drive. By filtering stupidity out of the internet, materials for new acquisitions may diminish, and we will have difficulty hosting special exhibitions. Also, according to our colleagues in Marketing and PR, if stupidity is removed from the internet our ability to promote the museum will negatively impacted.

Listen to this:

Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.

[The filter] will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree.

We plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a WordPress plugin.

Concernedly,

– Membership department

***

MEMO
FROM: Director’s office
TO: Membership department

Membership department friends:

There is no cause for concern. There is no way to remove stupidity from the internet as long as people keep developing content and surfing the web. Remember, Numerus stultorum est infinitus: The number of fools is infinite.

I visited the site you reference and tried their beta demo. I tested all of our installed labels as well as our promotional and educational copy in it. In every instance the software returned the message “text is not likely to be stupid.” As we at the museum know, text is actually very likely to be stupid. So I think we have nothing to fear.

Onward!

– TWX, director

“Text is not likely to be stupid” is a post from: museum of folly

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Visitor Comments

“Text is not likely to be stupid”