Daily Dothttp://www.dailydot.com/Daily Dot Articleen-usWed, 14 Nov 2012 14:00:00 +0000Solving Reddit's mundane mysterieshttp://www.dailydot.com/society/tip-of-my-tongue-reddit-case-closed/<p><img src="//cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2012/11/12/tongue.jpg"></p><p> &quot;There was this movie that came out sometime in the &lsquo;90s. It had Chevy Chase, John Candy, and I think Demi Moore in it and they were all in an old house surrounded by a junkyard filled with traps. Why can&#39;t I remember what that movie was?! This is going to bug me all day!&quot;</p> <p> Chances are, you have faced such a dilemma from time to time. You remember certain details but not a title. You remember a melody but no lyrics. The total amount of information you need is, well, right on the tip of your tongue.</p> <p> </p> <p> Thanks to the sleuths at <a href="http://reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue">r/tipofmytongue</a>, a section on social news site Reddit, you can now get that jump-start your memory needs.</p> <p> The subreddit, started by moderator <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/surfwax95">surfwax95 </a>on Aug. 12, 2009, was created in an effort to reduce such material on r/askreddit, an open forum for questions posed to the Reddit community.</p> <p> &quot;I&#39;m kind of getting annoyed with the barrage of &lsquo;Help me remember the name of this song, film, whatever&rsquo; lately. Arrange and post them <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/">in /r/tipofmytongue</a>,&quot; surfwax95 wrote.</p> <p> The idea was initially met with skepticism from fellow redditors.</p> <p> &quot;Good thing, because was there no place where you could ASKREDDIT anything before,&quot; user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/w0wzers">w0wzers </a>commented.</p> <p> &ldquo;Why isn&#39;t this subreddit called <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/idontknowhowtousegoogle">/r/idontknowhowtousegoogle</a>?&rdquo; <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/mobileupload">mobileupload </a>posed.</p> <p> &ldquo;Because if you don&#39;t know the title of something, but can recount a few vague scenes, Google is useless,&rdquo; surfwax95 answered. &ldquo;Redditors, on the other hand, can be quite helpful in these situations.&rdquo;</p> <p> The skeptics were ultimately proved wrong.</p> <p> Today, r/tipofmytongue is home to over 50,000 sleuths. Moderator <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/sjhill">sjhill</a> told the Daily Dot the subreddit sees 100,000 to 150,000 unique pageviews per month.</p> <p> &ldquo;TOMT doesn&#39;t suffer from a lot of the spam or troll issues that are seen elsewhere, which is one of the many reasons I really enjoy being a mod here,&rdquo; sjhull said.</p> <blockquote> <p> &ldquo;It&#39;s mostly helping out, being nice to people.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p> Users who are looking for information post every detail they can remember as a &ldquo;case.&rdquo; Fellow redditors will then chime in, offering suggestions or additional information. If the OP&rsquo;s, or original poster&rsquo;s, mental bell is rung, they commemorate the occasion by marking the case as &ldquo;solved.&rdquo; Otherwise, it will remain &ldquo;unsolved.&rdquo;</p> <p> For example, user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/fatalisticfatalist">fatalisticfatalist</a> recently requested the assistance of Tip of My Tongue subscribers in recalling the <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/130o6v/tomtbook_a_man_is_sentenced_to_prison_on_an/">title of a book</a>.</p> <p> &ldquo;A man is sentenced to prison on an island where everyone calls each other by their last name and respect is the currency,&rdquo; the post&rsquo;s title read.</p> <p> A few sleuths chimed in with their suggestions and well-wishes, but it was ultimately user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/Gumderwear">Gumderwear&rsquo;s</a> suggestion of <em><u>The Penal Colony</u></em> that led fatalisticfatalist to mark the case as solved.</p> <p> Another <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/131a76/tomtwhats_the_word_for_when_you_complete_a_task/">case</a>, which has since gone cold, involves user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/triscut900">triscut900&rsquo;s </a>quest to find a word for when one &ldquo;completes a task using very few resources, or when something is cost-effective.&rdquo; Terms like &ldquo;efficient&rdquo; and &ldquo;frugal&rdquo; are not quite right. Can you help out with the case?</p> <p> Moderator <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/damontoo">damontoo</a> crunched some numbers for the Daily Dot. Out of the last 1,000 cases posted to the subreddit, 484 have been solved.</p> <p> &ldquo;[In] 48 hours, we have <em>at least</em> a 50% solved rate [of all cases submitted, on average],&rdquo; damontoo said.</p> <p> If Google isn&rsquo;t doing the trick for you, perhaps you can share your own dilemma with the folks at r/tipofmytongue.</p> <p> <em>Photo via </em><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/superfantastic/3986111868/"><em>SuperFantastic</em></a><em>/Flickr</em></p> mike@thedailydot.com (Mike Fenn)Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:00:00 +0000http://www.dailydot.com/society/tip-of-my-tongue-reddit-case-closed/SocietyReddit
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