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That is a good thing. I want to see those changes. Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is danger

That is a good thing. I want to see those changes. Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is dangerous thinking. Saying that it's okay to forego transparency because it could be used to bolster people who disagree with you is backwards. That's precisely why transparency should be retained - when you're the person disagreeing, it benefits you.

readthenotes1 5y ago
Case in point: On Jan 6, NPR published an article with a 10AM headline and timestamp about the upcoming Trump rally. Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. Newsmaxx, and thus many if its viewers looked at the headline and headline timestamp and trumpeted "how did they know?! It's a conspiracy!" I had to look into the wayback machine to see the original headline to show to a relative who'd bought the Newsmaxx narrative. I'm not sure they totally believed or even understood what I was telling them, but I am certain it raised some doubt. All of that would was unnecessary, if only NPR had done proper change management on its articles.
- slg 5y ago
  This is the exact same because "conspiracy theorists might use it" reasoning just flowing in the opposite direction. Conspiracy theorists with conspiracy theorize regardless of the level of transparency provided by journalist organizations.
  - a_conservative 5y ago
    What!? NPR's website contains articles with false time stamps. Are you ok with this? Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? Knowing when an article was written is a useful piece of information that is being destroyed by these always evolving articles. It might not be full on Orwell yet, but these always-mutating-articles are opening the door to an Orwellian future. We need to be able to go back and look at the past unfiltered and unmodified.
    - slg 5y ago
      >Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? It doesn't. That was my point. I wasn't praising or criticizing NPR. I was saying that conspiracy theorists shouldn't be a reason either for or against transparency.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. News websites really need to stop continuously rewriting their articles. It's a PITA if you want to cite them as a source, then all the sudden what you cited isn't there. I've had NY Times articles get completely rewritten while I read them (admittedly with some long pauses between when I started and finished), and when I went back to quote something, it wasn't there anymore. I don't think this is nefarious or anything, it's just them trying to adapt to expectations that they'll always be up to date with the latest stuff. You have the same article about some rapidly changing story hanging around their app/website all day (and "most popular articles" facets), and I suppose most people expect those things to be up to date.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    This isn’t any different than Wikipedia. If the news article was more like a Wiki (with revision history), would that be sufficient for you?
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). If they want to be an encyclopedia then be one.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). You're misreading the situation. The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do. They can be "committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish," but then new stuff happens after that time, or they have the time to go into more depth. The news isn't just about accuracy, it's also about timeliness.
        5y ago
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  This kind of thing also makes the internet less searchable. I was trying to find some information on the previous activity of a cop who recently became infamous in my area for beating and choking a man who was pleading for his life, to see if he had ever been in the news before. So I used the time window feature on Google, only to get tons and tons of articles published that same day that were backdated years because of bad change management. See for yourself on the link to a google search below, results are filtered between 2018 and January 2021, but every single article for the first five pages is about the incident that occurred two weeks ago, mistakenly backdated years. https://bit.ly/3xEpCGA https://bit.ly/3xEpCGA
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > See for yourself on the link to a google search below, results are filtered between 2018 and January 2021, but every single article for the first five pages is about the incident that occurred two weeks ago, mistakenly backdated years. Is that the news website's fault, or Google's fault? The first two links are to what look like keyword/topic pages with many articles, and it wouldn't be surprising of Google pulled a different date than what you're looking for out of such a page. Some of the other hits appear to be old articles with a "new stories" bar (not sure exactly what you call it, here's an example: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/15/trump-admits-biden-won-election-then-adds-i-concede-nothing.html https://boingboing.net/2020/11/15/trump-admits-biden-won-ele...). Personally, I don't consider Google date searching to be very reliable, IMHO. They're making a promise with it they can't really keep.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Personally, I don't consider Google date searching to be very reliable, IMHO. They're making a promise with it they can't really keep. It might work better if they searched on first-indexed date, rather than server modification timestamp headers or dates embedded within the page.
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > It might work better if they searched on first-indexed date, rather than server modification timestamp headers or dates embedded within the page. But that assumes they index things in a timely matter, which is likely not true a huge amount of the time. And I don't think that would help in this case, because in many of the cases it appears they got the article date right, but the article page is dynamic and now includes snippets of stuff that post-dates the article.
headmelted 5y ago
Totally agree. If someone’s hell bent on seeing conspiracies they’re going to see them everywhere. Better to be transparent. Just saying I can see how you could rationalise this decision, even if it’s a terrible idea.

readthenotes1 5y ago

Case in point: On Jan 6, NPR published an article with a 10AM headline and timestamp about the upcoming Trump rally. Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. Newsmaxx, and thus many if its viewers looked at the headline and headline timestamp and trumpeted "how did they know?! It's a conspiracy!" I had to look into the wayback machine to see the original headline to show to a relative who'd bought the Newsmaxx narrative. I'm not sure they totally believed or even understood what I was telling them, but I am certain it raised some doubt. All of that would was unnecessary, if only NPR had done proper change management on its articles.

slg 5y ago
This is the exact same because "conspiracy theorists might use it" reasoning just flowing in the opposite direction. Conspiracy theorists with conspiracy theorize regardless of the level of transparency provided by journalist organizations.
- a_conservative 5y ago
  What!? NPR's website contains articles with false time stamps. Are you ok with this? Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? Knowing when an article was written is a useful piece of information that is being destroyed by these always evolving articles. It might not be full on Orwell yet, but these always-mutating-articles are opening the door to an Orwellian future. We need to be able to go back and look at the past unfiltered and unmodified.
  - slg 5y ago
    >Why does the conspiracy theorist angle matter at all? It doesn't. That was my point. I wasn't praising or criticizing NPR. I was saying that conspiracy theorists shouldn't be a reason either for or against transparency.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Later in the day, they changed the headline to be something like "Insurgents invade Capital building", but did not change the 10AM timestamp up top. One had to read the article to find the update timestamp. News websites really need to stop continuously rewriting their articles. It's a PITA if you want to cite them as a source, then all the sudden what you cited isn't there. I've had NY Times articles get completely rewritten while I read them (admittedly with some long pauses between when I started and finished), and when I went back to quote something, it wasn't there anymore. I don't think this is nefarious or anything, it's just them trying to adapt to expectations that they'll always be up to date with the latest stuff. You have the same article about some rapidly changing story hanging around their app/website all day (and "most popular articles" facets), and I suppose most people expect those things to be up to date.
- kenjackson 5y ago
  This isn’t any different than Wikipedia. If the news article was more like a Wiki (with revision history), would that be sufficient for you?
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). If they want to be an encyclopedia then be one.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). You're misreading the situation. The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do. They can be "committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish," but then new stuff happens after that time, or they have the time to go into more depth. The news isn't just about accuracy, it's also about timeliness.
      - 5y ago
hannasanarion 5y ago
This kind of thing also makes the internet less searchable. I was trying to find some information on the previous activity of a cop who recently became infamous in my area for beating and choking a man who was pleading for his life, to see if he had ever been in the news before. So I used the time window feature on Google, only to get tons and tons of articles published that same day that were backdated years because of bad change management. See for yourself on the link to a google search below, results are filtered between 2018 and January 2021, but every single article for the first five pages is about the incident that occurred two weeks ago, mistakenly backdated years. https://bit.ly/3xEpCGA https://bit.ly/3xEpCGA
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > See for yourself on the link to a google search below, results are filtered between 2018 and January 2021, but every single article for the first five pages is about the incident that occurred two weeks ago, mistakenly backdated years. Is that the news website's fault, or Google's fault? The first two links are to what look like keyword/topic pages with many articles, and it wouldn't be surprising of Google pulled a different date than what you're looking for out of such a page. Some of the other hits appear to be old articles with a "new stories" bar (not sure exactly what you call it, here's an example: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/15/trump-admits-biden-won-election-then-adds-i-concede-nothing.html https://boingboing.net/2020/11/15/trump-admits-biden-won-ele...). Personally, I don't consider Google date searching to be very reliable, IMHO. They're making a promise with it they can't really keep.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Personally, I don't consider Google date searching to be very reliable, IMHO. They're making a promise with it they can't really keep. It might work better if they searched on first-indexed date, rather than server modification timestamp headers or dates embedded within the page.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > It might work better if they searched on first-indexed date, rather than server modification timestamp headers or dates embedded within the page. But that assumes they index things in a timely matter, which is likely not true a huge amount of the time. And I don't think that would help in this case, because in many of the cases it appears they got the article date right, but the article page is dynamic and now includes snippets of stuff that post-dates the article.

headmelted 5y ago

Totally agree. If someone’s hell bent on seeing conspiracies they’re going to see them everywhere. Better to be transparent. Just saying I can see how you could rationalise this decision, even if it’s a terrible idea.