Donate rice to the hungry with a click

luckat · 27-10-2007 9:02am #1

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

It's a vocabulary quiz; you choose the answers and every time you get one right you donate 10 grains of rice through the UN.

Apparently it's paid for by the advertisers whose ads flash at the bottom of the screen, though there's no identification of who's running the page.

BeardyGit · 27-10-2007 9:18am

Have you ANY idea how MUCH money the idiots who partake in this are making for the owners of that site? The advertising revenue generated by the numver of hits per page/answer will vastly exceed the 'contribution' they make in rice.....

FFS.

This isn't a bargain alert, it's rubbish.

Jesus Wept · 27-10-2007 9:43am

I feel sorry for the poor fúcker who has to count out the grains.

Mr E · 27-10-2007 9:44am

Its kind of silly when you think about it. You mean to say they have employed someone to manage the website and say "OK, Luckat got 9 questions right. Count out 90 grains of rice. One, two, three, four, five.....

luckat · 27-10-2007 9:49am

Heh - I suppose the rice is weighed; I know the 1lb measure, for instance, comes from the fact that 1,000 grains of barley almost anywhere in the world weigh exactly 1lb. Maybe they're doing the same kind of thing with rice.

How much *would* the site owners get from the advertising, by the way?

Mr E · 27-10-2007 10:41am

Peanuts, I'd imagine. They'd need thousands of participants to make any kind of money (I'd imagine... I'm not an expert).

Its a noble idea, but its pretty flawed.

luckat · 27-10-2007 10:51am

Dunno - to me it looks fairly simple. And since October 7, when the site opened, they say they've had 263 million grains donated. If it's straight up, it's a great idea!

At the very least, it's going to improve vocabulary, which can't be bad. Your score is totalled up according to your vocabulary level; on my 1,000 grains I was at 49, which isn't that fantastic.