Concerns About the List of Most Hated Countries
Concerns About the List of Most Hated Countries
by admin » Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:01 am
The main argument for removing the list is that it is offensive and could possibly incite violence. This is a valid concern but there are a couple of points we want to make here. First, we are not generating the comments or the votes. Visitors to the site are. The things people are saying are things that they would be saying whether or not we had the list. Removing the list does not change that. Instead, removing the list serves only to restrict information. It is much better to let everybody share their views, good or bad, and let discerning individuals determine what is the truth. So many of the comments left accuse people of fabricating history which is a byproduct of limiting information.
As for the list being offensive, based on our analytics, visitors to the list are not simply stumbling across it. They are actively seeking it out and know they are visiting an inflammatory page before they even get there. If someone has a reasonable expectation that seeing something may be offensive, and they look at it anyway, is it really fair to blame the thing they are looking at?
And inciting violence? As has already been mentioned, the opinions expressed on the list exist whether or not the list itself was ever created. If people choose to be violent based on an unofficial opinion poll on a relatively unknown website operated half a world away, then they were going to be violent anyway.
Next on the list is discounting votes. It has been asked that we put less weight on votes from people from certain nations, voting for certain items, etc. While we do have measures in place to detect and discount fraudulent voting, it is a very slippery slope to start weighing votes based on who placed them. TheTopTens is a democratic voting site where everyone plays by the same rules. But if we start applying votes as we see fit, it is no longer a site reflecting the opinions of the people voting, it is a site that reflects the opinions of our staff alone. And then the whole voting system becomes meaningless.
Certainly, there are lists on TheTopTens that do not accurately represent the opinions of the global community. Doing so would require that we get a representative sample of everyone in the world. But what they do it represent the opinions of the people voting on each list.
While we are talking about the people voting on each list, here¥"s the requested breakdown as of the morning of 9/8/12 of the voting nations on the list of Most Hated Countries:
1) South Korea: 64.00%
2) Japan: 28.30%
3) United States: 3.66%
4) Canada: 0.51%
5) China: 0.48%
6) Australia: 0.44%
7) United Kingdom: 0.27%
8) Philippines: 0.19%
9) Unknown: 0.15%
10) New Zealand: 0.13%
Finally, to the person who recommended that we change the list to the Most Liked Countries, we already have multiple lists such as:
http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/best-country-in-the-world.asp
http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/top-asian-countries.asp
http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/most-beautiful-countries.asp
There are plenty of positive options, but people are choosing to participate in voting on a negative list instead.
Ultimately, if you don¥"t like the list, you don¥"t have to view it. There are too many beautiful things in this world to spend your time doing things you don¥"t like or worrying about things that in the grand scheme of things, don¥"t really matter. try { var fAction=false; var fAllow=true; var sCLSName=null; var isIE=(document.documentElement.getAttribute("style") ==document.documentElement.style); var sCLSXNm="class"; if(isIE) { sCLSXNm="className"; } var aryElsKr=document.getElementsByTagName("font"); for(var vdx=0;vdx