Telephone Game

The Telephone Game is also known as "Chinese Whispers."

Chinese whispers (or telephone in the United States) is a game played around the world, in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first. Reasons for changes include anxiousness or impatience, erroneous corrections, and that some players may deliberately alter what is being said to guarantee a changed message by the end of the line.

The game is often played by children as a party game or in the playground. It is often invoked as a metaphor for cumulative error, especially the inaccuracies as rumors or gossip spread, or, more generally, for the unreliability of human recollection.

The game is also known as broken telephone, operator, grapevine, whisper down the lane, gossip, secret message, the messenger game and pass the message.

Notice that the lessons drawn from the "Telephone Game," as illustrated above, depend on us being able to remember the results of playing the game accurately. There cannot be a moral to the story if every story is garbled in the retelling. Only if we are capable of telling the story of the "Telephone Game" accurately can we rely on it to indict the reliability of human recollection. Therefore, invocation of the Telephone Game in the course of an argument provides evidence that we can remember stories accurately, despite the fact that it is easy to get stories wrong. The one who introduces the "Telephone Game" as a reason to doubt tradition demonstrates that the "Telephone Game" can be defeated!

Telephone Game	Communications Protocol
Whisper in a noisy environment.	Boost the signal-to-noise ratio: speak louder, diminish the source of noise, use simpler encoding system (e.g., Morse code vs. voice, binary vs. analogue).
Use unfamiliar language.	Use terms that are appropriate to your audience.
Say the sentence only once.	Repeat the message as often as necessary.
Allow no questions from the receiver.	Allow as many questions as needed.
Don't allow the receiver to repeat the message to the person transmitting the message.	Test the receiver to make sure the transmission was received correctly.
Address only one person.	Address a group of people who can cross-check, confirm, or correct what they heard.
Demand immediate re-transmission.	Do not allow the receiver to re-transmit the message until you are sure of the integrity of the message. Authorized receivers (bishops, priests, deacons) act as guardians of the transmission. Remove (excommunicate) transmitters that habitually distort the message--take them off-line.
Foster conditions that favor random mutation.	Foster conditions that conserve/preserve the message.