Will a stranger keep a small promise?

The question

If you leave a book for a stranger, and ask them to say where it got to and then pass it on, will they?

Nothing makes them do it. There is no prize for checking a book in and no penalty for keeping it. Nobody is watching. The person holding the book has twenty seconds of effort to give, or not, to someone they will never meet.

Every book in Relay is that question asked once more. Every check-in is one person answering yes.

Why a book? Because it is worth just enough to keep, and cheap enough to give away. A book left on a shelf is not litter and not treasure. It asks for a small decision, which is exactly the thing being tested.

How the test works

1. 1

   A book gets a code

   The owner sticks a plate inside the cover. It says the book is on a trip, and asks for one thing.

2. 2

   It is let go

   Left somewhere public, or handed to someone. From here the owner has no say.

3. 3

   A stranger chooses

   Scan the code and mark where they are, or don't. That choice is the measurement.

4. 4

   It is counted in public

   Each check-in appears on the book's page and on the map at once. So do the silences.

The rules, and why

Each of these makes the site a little worse as a product, and a lot better as a test.

• No rewards. No points, badges or leaderboard. If people passed books on to earn something, we would be measuring the reward, not the people.
• No accounts. A finder needs nothing at all. If checking in took longer than twenty seconds, we would be measuring patience instead.
• No hiding the failures. A book with no check-in for six months fades to grey on the map, in public. Most books end this way, and the page says so.
• No approval queue. A check-in appears the moment it is made. The owner can hide or delete one afterwards, but nothing waits for permission.
• No exact locations. Every pin is rounded to about a kilometre before it is saved, and photos lose their location data. People check in from home.
• No reminders. Nobody is chased or nudged to pass a book on. The only emails go to the owner, and to people who asked to follow a book.

Results so far

Counted from the live record each time this page loads. Nothing here is entered by hand.

Check-ins

24

Countries

4

Distance

34,971 km

Gone quiet

2

• Longest chain: Ajnabi se Ajnabi Tak, through 4 pairs of hands.
• Furthest travelled: When Heart Cries, 11,757 km.
• Gone quiet means no check-in for six months. 2 of 8 books are there now.

What this can't tell us

It would be easy to oversell this. So, plainly:

• It is not a scientific study. There is no control group and no paper. It is an experiment in the everyday sense: try something in public, and count what happens.
• Silence is not the same as failure. A book that was read by five people who never scanned it looks, from here, exactly like a book in a bin. We only see the hands that said so.
• So the true number is higher. Every figure above is a floor. It counts kept promises that were recorded, not kindness that wasn't.
• The people are not a fair sample. Books get left in hostels, cafés and trains, and found by the kind of person who picks up a book. This says something about them, not about everyone.

Who runs it

Relay is run in the open as a social experiment, not a company. It is free to use, for owners and for finders.

What is kept about you is deliberately little. The details are in the guide's privacy section.

Take part

The experiment only has two jobs, and you can do either.

Not sure how any of it works? The guide walks through both.