Insanity posing as "news"

after perusing the quickly closed Lance Armstrong nonsense, it occurred to me that there has been a deluge of asinine posts made lately that claim to be newsworthy. i won't mention names (nor do i think i need to) but i was just wondering why all these "news" stories never get submitted to the wire? is there some sort of bias against the SG infromation avenues? is it because people realise that the spurious claims made by their articles would never pass the SG/News litmus test? for that matter, is there an SG/news litmus test?

i have been thinking about this for the past week and have been meaning to foster soem sort of debate about it, but i've been busy. sue me.

In that the editors are meant to use their discretion in assessing the worthiness of submitted articles, yes there is.

this explains a lot, then.

I wanted to go into the Lance Armstrong thread (thinking it factual, but wondering why it got him so excited as to post it) and say "Blame the French!" but the joke was kinda pointless once I got there.

Not to mention the thread had been closed

Yeah, that's pretty much it. That's not to say that articles don't occasionally slip through the cracks and we end up with a crackpot submission on the newswire, but for the most part I'd say we try to keep unprovable nonsense off of there.

We also have other jobs (this is one of three jobs that I have) so it's not like we have unlimited time to devote to writing/editing articles. If this were my only job then I would make a point of thoroughly researching and reading up on every article that I'm considering publishing, but as it stands I usually don't have time to read more than what the author submitted and the linked stories included.

the whole "cut and run" debacle has got me pretty steamed the past few weeks. i am getting sick of an offhand comment or post garnering attention even though it's generally some psycho-babble rant about the french, or tax cuts or whatever. i mean, i'm all about conflicting opinions. stand up for your beliefs. but don't post an inflammatory article that you drudged up from the bowels of the internet and take up space when you could have found a reputable article and articulated your point through the wire.

mad props to the lovely Clara for agreeing in the above example.

absolutely. i in no way meant to imply that you people aren't doing your jobs well. i'm speaking to the folks who post stories without the signature "NEWS:" prefix. it's like they know they're full of shit, won't submit to the wire because of it, and then post it in a new-article format on the boards. you guys all rock at what you do. in a way, i pity your position!

Don't worry, i didn't take it as such, and I appreciate the compliment.

As for stockula's posting style, well that's current events, and there aren't really any rules outside of the FAQ, so he's free to do/say what he wants (within reason, I suppose.) I don't really understand the whole obsession with the French, but hell, I speak French, have French friends and have even (gasp) visited France and enjoyed myself.

i guess i have witnessed a lot of it in the past week and was wondering if there was some sort of cohesive attack on CE. i realize the inherent headaches involved in letting people's freedom of speech reign. as i said before, i wouldn't want your job (unless the perks meant an awesome penthouse in NYC, gobs of cash, and champagne all around) i love the fact that threads like that can be gang-raped by the intelligent side of the spectrum as well. i don't even really know why i thought this topic deserved a thread. i guess maybe i'm just musing on motivations. why not just submit it to the wire and get the army points? it's like, dude, if you know it's bullshit, why even bother posting it?

i guess it takes all kinds.

TOO HOT FOR SG

Conservatives Gone WYLD

THAT gave me the chuckles for a good minute or so...

i must have been tipsy from all the
santorum

Traitor

Maybe because at one time thats what we did (us old timers here on SG). I still do. I never even bother with it (the news thing).
I hate all the crap that come out of the "NEWS" section. By the time it posts it is old news. Half of the time someone else started a thread about the topic two days before. Then we have to look at two threads on the same subject.
I think the news thing could be much better if they searched for a thread on the topic before it was posted onto the boards. <-

[Edited on Aug 03, 2004 by Mike]

Just to add the NEWS topics that post on the other boards like Music or Lifestyles are all good. Its just the ones in the CE boards that are bothersome.

I also do not think that this: NEWS: Coming Soon: "The goriest game ever made" is very news worthy but I can accept that other people on this site might.

To each his own.

Although I will agree that the Lance Armstong though funny was not what should be on Current Events, yet I find myself questioning your posting of this on current events when this is obviously more of a complaint and should have been posted on "The Site" section.

I think its because they get posted to the boards automatically. I wouldnt mind it so much but there is almost always a thread about the topc already there. The ones that go into the other boards section are new (most of the time) and informative. Granted if its about Danzig getting the crap kicked out of himself that thread is most likely there already.
I guess they(the CE boards) just seem more watered down since the whole news thing began. Before it seemed all the threads were interesting - now you have to look through a bunch of doubled threads and crap to find the good ones.

Exactly.

Here's the reason why this happens. At the risk of alienating some folks here, as soon as something happens in the world, someone will post a thread in CE about it. Often that thread consists of only a link, or the ripped off text of an article. That's it. Which means it takes them approximately 5 seconds to do. Why people do this is beyond me - if you're going to bother starting a new thread, why not contribute something to it? But that's not what a lot of people do.

Published articles on the newswire have to incorporate both current events and some analysis of them. This takes more time. Michael_J_Totten and I agree that we do not just want to have an instapundit style list of links on there, we prefer some original content and analysis. This is always going to take longer than mindlessly regurgitating a link from the AP newswire. So we're left with a dilemma - any piece of hot news will already have a thread about it, for the reason that I've already mentioned. Which means we can either have the newswire articles be about topics that are already being discussed on the boards, or stick to obscure topics that haven't been covered that likely won't generate any discussion at all.

Would there be a way to "move" comments from the old thread to a new one when it comes out in the NEWS format, to help keep out the double posts? I guess this isnt that big of a deal though - probably not worth the effort to do all this...

Why don't you just leave the News in the news section if people wish to see it they can goto new and let people post what they wish on current events that are current events instead of clogging up the boards?


[Edited on Aug 03, 2004 by Tony1970]