The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news feed

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
User avatar
ericbarbour
Sucks Admin
Posts: 4547
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:56 am
Location: The ass-tral plane
Has thanked: 1099 times
Been thanked: 1797 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Aug 12, 2018 4:57 am

CrowsNest wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Horizon_Air_Q400_incident
Someone manages to steal a medium sized passenger aircraft from a major US airport and successfully commit suicide by crashing it.

I was watching Facebook and Twitter when that happened--and saw all kinds of paranoid ravings about a "terror attack" and "government false flag operation". Some of which was reported with a straight face by "serious media outlets". Bet they were all disgruntled when it turned out to be a depressed Horizon Air employee. We are in the End Times if journalists are watching Twitter ravings for "material"!

It is nominated to ITN, and the thick bastards universally take the view it is more suitable for "Did You Know"......
Oppose this is perfect DYK material. Once it's expanded beyond the current stub state. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:44, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Fully agree with The Rambling Man Openlydialectic (talk) 08:00, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - seems more apt at DYK. Stormy clouds (talk) 08:20, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose this is interesting, but not the sort of thing for ITN, more along the lines of DYK material. SamaranEmerald (talk) 12:00, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Oppose – Per previous – sgt snow. Sca (talk) 13:56, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
That's kind of fucked up in of itself. DYK is where they put silly April's Fools jokes and tedious factoids about potatoes etc, so how messed up do you have to be to think that's where the suicide by aircraft stories go?

One expects no less from dedicated internet site trolls. I bet the reports that Mr. Russell was a nice, quiet, church-attending Christian made them want to de-emphasize the story, because of course "we must not give Christians any favorable treatment, David Gerard style skeptical atheism must rule Wikipedia at all times". They can't mess with existing content so they have to bash any new articles.

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Aug 16, 2018 6:53 pm

In relation to the first post, unsurprisingly, the Italian bridge collapse was posted. Nobody even really bothered to explain why, it's a well accepted rule of ITN by now - lots of people died.

Death count and all that comes from it. This is literally all it takes to turn a significant bridge collapse (as measured using robust and defensible tests of significance) from "minor" or "trivial" to "major" or "significant" for these thicks.

Any pretence that ITN posters consider any other criteria at all, as was implied in the incident in the first post, is pure fantasy.

As for the first bridge collapse, it is unsurprisingly still generating a shit ton of coverage.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 03455.html

That's a local source, provided simply for the detail (local here essentially being the equivalent reach of national news in Britain). But a quick check confirms the story is still being followed right across America, for multiple different reasons, five months later. Just like all trivial incidents.......

Seriously, go back and review what some of those idiots predicted would happen to this story. This was not it.

Do they suffer any consequences for being so monumentally stupid? No, they do not. It's Wikipedia. A capacity for the arrogantly moronic, is practically an entrance requirement.

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Sep 20, 2018 3:58 am

You won't be hearing about the latest developments in the US-China trade war on the Wikipedia home page, because......
Oppose, this is a very slow moving, long-term story not even suited for ongoing because we have no idea when it will be resolved and is not the type of story that has daily happened. Further, The $260B appears to be the sum of the US's tariffs over three different points this year, not one mass sum, and that doesn't include anything China may have imposed. --Masem (t) 01:33, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose we can’t post every single action and retaliation of the trade war onto ITN. SamaranEmerald (talk) 02:11, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Weak Oppose as Masem mentions above, this is a slow story about heated rhetoric, effects are notable and will definitely lead to long-term consequences in the long run, but ultimately this is more-or-less a repeat of similar announcements and counter-attacks made by the two world powers in the previous months. Hornetzilla78 (talk) 18:34, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose this is small potatoes and we really don't need to cover each and every minuscule change that Trump implements at ITN. Honestly. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:44, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose Niche story for economists to argue over and speculate. No impact on general readers, not ITN worthy.. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:52, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose - I am not an economist, but based on my semi-informed opinion, the overall impact of this and thus the newsworthiness is limited and minuscule.--WaltCip (talk) 20:15, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Oppose – Sounds like a broken record (as we used to say in the days of vinyl). Ongoing? Sca (talk) 21:21, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Utterly clueless. I am left wondering if the reason they don't see how big this story is, is because they're all children, or unemployed losers, or old people living off their pensions. Most grown-ups, the people with jobs, the people who have to go shopping, they are sure as shit going to notice the effect of this trade war, if they aren't already. As are the owners of businesses large and small. Hence why, if you looked at the sustained and in-depth coverage of is getting in serious news media, you would not be so stupid as to say the sort of dumb crap you can see above.

The comment about not covering every action and retaliation is particularly ironic, since that's exactly what they do for real wars, both conventional and the war on terror. Still, it is entirely consistent with their primary criteria - body count.

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:51 am

Unsurprisingly, the confirmation of Brett Kavanuagh will not be being mentioned on the Wikipedia front page.

The opposers aren't even really trying to be seen as not retarded.

Still, in a world where the top judge in the most powerful country on Earth is allowed to use his Calendar to prove his innocence of sexual assault, and not in the actually providing an alibi sense, I guess their musings on systemic bias and international significance can be as screwy as they like, nobody seems to care.

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Wed Jan 16, 2019 12:44 pm

The true purpose of ITN is revealed in the fact that an aircrash that killed sixteen people (everybody aboard) two days ago was posted instantly, because it is a "significant death toll". They were so eager to post this rather insignificant news that plane crashes happen and tend not to be survivable, the item has had to be revised once it was realised that in fact one person has survived (less remarkable when you learn the crash was not 'fell out to the sky' but 'tried to perform an emergency landing on a runway that is too short'). None of this was discussed to inform significance. They merely saw SIXTEEN DEAD and got the rush of endorphins that death tolls always gives them.

Meanwhile, they can hardly get their heads around the fact that yesterday the British government suffered its worst defeat in the House of Commons in the history of British parliamentary politics, turning the already chaotic Brexit process into a total clusterfuck. Literally nobody has a clue where this is going, you can find commentators and participants predicting everything from no Brexit at all, to the narrow favourite, the infamous "no deal Brexit", which many people think will see our green and pleasant land rapidly turn into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Every option is apparently still in play, from another general election to another referendum. All this, despite the EU and the UK having had nine months to negotiate an orderly Brexit.

Not for nothing is this defeat dominating the media in this country, far beyond even the largely blanket coverage Brexit has got for the last nine months. Such is the dominance of the coverage of the defeat, and the lead up to it, if it weren't for the Wikipedian's love of death and tragedy, I'd have not even realised this crash had occurred. Now that I know, I can say for certain that I did not really need to know (save for the benefit it had for sustaining my hobby of Wikipedia criticism).

They've registered something happened and are discussing its merits, but they have barely even noticed the newsworthy aspect, the historic nature of the defeat and the genuine lack of any clue what happens next, an observable step change in the level of uncertainty, in a process already characterised by uncertainty. These are the reasons why it would be wise to post this now. Right now. Yesterday even, if the goal is informing readers (putting aside the fact Wikipedia does not usefully inform readers, because it is shit). But no, it languishes in uncertainty. The irony.

There's no excuse, since at least a couple of people have said what makes this significant. If 'biggest ever government defeat ' isn't sufficient context, there have been numerous other attempts by reliable sources to contextualize it.......
Ms May’s defeat came close to breaking another record: the largest rebellion in modern British politics by MPs of a single party.

The 118 Conservatives who voted against Ms May’s deal was 21 short of the largest ever revolt, which took place in March 2003 when 139 Labour MPs defied prime minister Tony Blair and voted against war in Iraq.

This remains the greatest revolt by MPs of any party since the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s.
Wherever the Wikipediots are getting their ideas about what is and is not 'significant ', it is not reliable sources like this. 'Twas ever thus.

Hilariously, it turns out there is something significant to say about the air crash to consumers of a world encylopedia whose watch word is neutrality .......
This is the latest in a series of Iranian plane crashes in recent years.

In February last year, Iran's Aseman Airlines was ordered to ground its fleet of ATR planes after one of them crashed into the Zagros mountains. All 66 people on board died.

And in August 2014, a Sepahan Airlines' Antonov plane crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing 39 of the 40 people on board. It is believed engine failure was the cause

Years of tough US sanctions have prevented officials from purchasing new planes and critical spare parts.

A landmark 2015 deal between Tehran and Washington brought renewed hope that the situation would change - but this was dashed last May when the US pulled out, reinstating sanctions that had been lifted.
This escaped the notice of the Wikipediots, it didn't factor into their decision to post at all, and exposure of the article to the Main Page has done nothing to motivate anyone to add it to the article either, as useful contextual information. Almost as if Wikipedia's entire model does not work. But that can't be true, surely!

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:00 pm

They just about decided it has to be included in "Ongoing", and even then The Rambling Man pouted and whined that it would have to stay there for three months. Which is doesn't, but hey, let the baby have his bottle.

Honestly, he had an absolute tantrum over the idea anybody could see that historic defeat as important enough to be posted on the Wikipedia front page. Always in love with the sound of his own voice, people were left in no doubt what he thought......
just another facet ......just another step in the process........local politics, has not affected the process one iota, and is merely one step in a seemingly infinite number of steps.......historic in a parochial sense. Like a minor league baseball record or something.......late-March, possibly later, as these kinds of blips will be taking place between now and then.......a blurb for this micro-decision is unnecessary. This event has changed literally nothing.......This vote is parochially notable but actually absolutely meaningless in the overall Brexit process. .......The actual result was "so what". A big deal in British political history, but not unexpected and changes nothing. Like posting a minor league baseball record. Who cares? Whether it was lost by 1 vote or 200 votes, the result was utterly predictable. We wouldn't expect to post such stories from the US or any other country in the world, why is the UK any different? Nothing changed, nothing unexpected happened. Next.
What a muppet. This historic defeat changed nothing only in the sense nothing was advanced. He is right that it was predicted, but not by this magnitude, and just because people predicted it, doesn't mean it was a routine step in the process. To interpret it as having no significance or impact on either Brexit or UK politics, you really do have to be brain dead.

What happens next will be guided solely by this defeat, what it signalled about the impossibility of getting a deal that can gender any majority, and therefore the likelihood of a no deal or a Brexit betrayal, neither considered a good outcome by commentators. It has arguably gathered more significance than the referendum result itself. The Prime Minister is being laughed at for trying to act as if it is business as usual, the irony being, because of how badly it has gone before, all the things already tried, people can now only laugh, there are no concrete ways forward if she doesn't voluntarily move aside, which it seems certain she won't.
You'll note a significant number of people (some of us from the UK) are opposing this nomination. I think we have a clue. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:20, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
No, you really don't.

To give this further context, all this chaos is happening because, for the first time in British history, the British public were presented with a referendum, and voted against the government. Parochial politics indeed.

User avatar
CrowsNest
Sucks Maniac
Posts: 4459
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:50 am
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Mar 04, 2019 7:08 pm

Prodigy frontman Keith Flint "wasn't transformative"
-The Rambling Man
The Prodigy brought electronic music into the manstream, they were the first electronic music band to headline Glastonbury, and were one of the biggest bands in the world during the 1990s
-the BBC
I imagine Keith would have been honest about it too, he didn't really write any of those seven number one albums, he was a performer, a front man, but not a Lennon or McCartney for the outfit.
-The Rambling Man
I was never the brains behind the band - that was always Liam. But together we were a complete package.
-Keith Flint
Flint's lyrics for their breakout hit Firestarter were the first he ever wrote for the group.
-the BBC

As ever, the difference between what reliable sources say, and what these dickheads say, is marked.

Guess who always gets to decide what goes on the Main Page?

User avatar
ericbarbour
Sucks Admin
Posts: 4547
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2017 1:56 am
Location: The ass-tral plane
Has thanked: 1099 times
Been thanked: 1797 times

Re: The sick (and thick) controllers of Wikipedia's news fee

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Mar 06, 2019 6:49 pm

CrowsNest wrote:
Prodigy frontman Keith Flint "wasn't transformative"
-The Rambling Man
The Prodigy brought electronic music into the manstream, they were the first electronic music band to headline Glastonbury, and were one of the biggest bands in the world during the 1990s
-the BBC
I imagine Keith would have been honest about it too, he didn't really write any of those seven number one albums, he was a performer, a front man, but not a Lennon or McCartney for the outfit.
-The Rambling Man
I was never the brains behind the band - that was always Liam. But together we were a complete package.
-Keith Flint
Flint's lyrics for their breakout hit Firestarter were the first he ever wrote for the group.
-the BBC

That is pretty damn low, even for him....

Post Reply