Behind the Scenes: When Robots Attack, Part 2

(2 of 3)

It was just the beginning. In June we decided to remove Jesus Christ (as well as the Prophet Mohammed) from the Person of the Century Poll (POC), on the basis that they were not alive in the 20th century. We made the change, posted our explanation, and instantly a e-mail flood of biblical proportions began pouring in. These messages came in two basic categories: respectful differences of opinion and ominous prophecies of doom. Example of the former: "The principle issue here is impact: if people LIVING in the 20th Century have been impacted most by Jesus Christ... then that should be the selection. Of course, on a deeper level, we know He is alive and well today." Example of the latter: "One day SOON... YOU WILL stand before HIM and desire to get into HIS Kingdom and HE WILL tell you: Just as you have taken me off your poll I have taken YOU out of the Lambs Book of Life."

Then along came Hitler. When the evil leader of the Third Reich made his way to a top 20 listing, we received a huge number of e-mails demanding that we take him off the poll (especially, many added, since we did not allow Jesus to receive votes). "I don't want to see Hitler's face on the cover of this year's December edition of TIME magazine," one upset reader wrote. "I don't think that someone who is directly responsible for the death of millions and someone who taught hatred in such an unbelievable way should be called the 'Person of the Century.'" As of yet, nobody has written in to tell us that Hitler was great and deserves to win, but we have kept him on the poll, because of the tradition at TIME of acknowledging the newsworthy influence of an individual over world events (both the Ayatollah Khomeini and Josef Stalin have been TIME's Man of the Year) even if that person is widely considered to be odious.

And then there was the luck of the Irish. In August, a previously unknown soccer player named Ronnie O'Brien shot to the top of the poll when a patriotic e-mail campaign motivated thousands of Irish to vote repeatedly for the obscure sportsman. The voting came in so heavily that it caused the entire poll to crash, and when the digital dust cleared, Ronnie was sitting at number one, edging out Yitzhak Rabin, Hitler and Einstein as Person of the Century. Even though these votes were not robotic, we felt that it was silly to have Mr. O'Brien on the poll — that the votes had been cast as somewhat of a joke — so we picked up the pieces and adjusted the results back to their pre-Irish-deluge level. Immediately after we did so our bulletin boards exploded with angry Gaelic diatribes and calls to "Free the TIME One." Said O'Brien about the whole thing, "It's a bit strange. I must owe a lot of people drinks."

We felt like we needed a couple ourselves, especially after a mysterious "Dustin the Turkey" made an inauspicious run at the number one spot in September. But rather than hit the bottle, we began work on "Botbuster," a second-generation robot-protection routine for the POC poll that was supposed to end our troubles. Then, when Botbuster was still in testing, Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of the Mormon church, shot to the top of the POC poll in classic robot-driven fashion. A few days later, Botbuster launched and deleted out a large number of automated votes for Hinckley, and he disappeared off the top 20. Another storm of e-mail immediately struck as angry Mormons accused us of bias for removing their leader. But the Latter-Day madness was short-lived, and the steady flow of angry e-mail ebbed once the Mormons realized we were not going to reinstate the invalid votes. Since then, Botbuster has hummed along happily tracking robots and deleting bogus votes, and the POC appears to be coasting into the millennium fueled by votes cast by flesh-and-blood human beings. The only e-mail we have received for weeks has been the daily notice from Botbuster, giving us a tally of all the robotic voting it has successfully kept off the poll that day.