5 ms·

Damn. Never thought I'd see a BuzzFeed article here. About as low as the web gets. This is surprisingly good from them, however.

alternize 13y ago
this was quite unexpected, indeed. the article is well written and has a good narrative.
danso 13y ago
Buzzfeed, AFAIK, was blacklisted from HN for awhile, but it looks like the new mod regime has taken off the blanket ban...and that's a good thing. The majority of Buzzfeed is still linkbait but they do have sections written by real reporters, with some of the best writing and research I've seen from online outlets. My personal favorite was this in-depth exoneration of MSG: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlikely-formula-for-success http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlik... disclosure: one of my former colleagues is a Buzzfeed editor (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/02/03/buzzfeeds-investigative-unit-taking-shape/5084213/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/02...), and he's been in charge of hiring an investigations team. He's a Pulitzer winner himself and just hired one of this year's Pulitzer winners, as well as a Pulitzer finalist (HN user jsvine)...the late Michael Hastings was doing investigative reporting for Buzzfeed before his untimely death. So the investment they're putting into non-listicle-journalism is non-trivial.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dublinben 13y ago
  It's really too bad that they're mixing the in-depth coverage and the crap on the same domain. It indelibly taints their better articles with the stink of their low-quality drivel. On the whole, the site is a worthless spam farm that steals content from reddit and other sources. The existence of a handful of good stories isn't enough to overcome that reputation.
rtpg 13y ago
Buzzfeed has some great longform articles too. Their piece on the history of the AUMF is great (especially for those who weren't paying attention/were too young to care at the time). http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-of-the-most http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...
dang 13y ago
Buzzfeed seem to be partly rebranding themselves with high-quality long articles. I thought this was excellent: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer (and posted it to HN to no avail). So yes, we've upgraded Buzzfeed from banned (stories get auto-killed) to lightweight (stories get a penalty, which moderators can override). A moderator saw the OP and marked it as solid. Lightweight sites are an uncanny valley for HN. We can't un-penalize them without the site being overrun with fluff. But we don't want to miss any solid articles, either. It requires human intervention to tell the two apart, and we neither see everything nor necessarily see things in time. I have some ideas for writing software to help with this conundrum, but won't be able to get to that (or the dozens of other things on our list) until my ongoing moderation-comment blitz subsides.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Buzzfeed have done themselves very considerable harm with their earlier tactics. Enough that I look on the URL with extreme prejudice. I've got a custom CSS I apply to the site (I refer to it as "unbuzzed") which strips all the viral crap from it. And checking quickly w/o my CSS applied, I see that while some of the site's content may be quality, much of it still matches my recollection of it. Given that, I feel that supporting the site in any way condones a behavior which is, IMO, very highly toxic. I'd prefer "banned unless moderator overrides" be in place, and I think actually, keeping the ban in place would be even better. It's weaponized clickbait. More: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23twec/weaponized_clickbaits_days_numbered_dont_tease_us/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23twec/weaponiz... As for lightweight stories: they're, net net, toxic. If there's lightweight coverage of a topic, there's almost certainly a heavyweight coverage somewhere. Almost always upstream (source study, report, release, comments), occasionally in a detailed analysis commentary. My focus for much of the past year and some has been "big issues": population, resources, sustainability. Of which a significant component is energy. The good news is that there's huge amount of research going into advanced energy technology: new methods of capturing, converting, storing, or using it. And virtually ALL of it is absolute, total, complete, 2000% bullshit in terms of actual informational value. In one case (the Haberno enhanced geothermal well project in Australia), I found that reading the company in question's own financial filings with the Australian securities regulator was far more informative than the ... whitewashed is putting too pretty a face on it ... completely useless press "progress" report. If attaining 2% of your initial generation goal in 5x the time and 10x the budget is "success", well, I don't know what to say. The problem is when the crap reporting of useless bullshit makes it difficult to see through crap reporting of the good stuff out there. The US Navy Research Lab's recently (past month) publicized research on electricity-to-fuel synthesis from seawater was abysmal. But the underlying technology and story are actually among the better prospects out there in terms of not only providing moderate-scale liquid fuel sources for the future, but very large (national or global) potential, with high-but-tractable costs, and with applications to utilizing surplus intermittent generating capacity for fuel synthesis and long-term storage (diesel fuel stores well). But the 1) profusion of crap elsewhere and 2) abysmal quality of the reporting on this technology made this almost impossible to see. I still think my own write-up (which could use some improving) is among the best there is on the topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy_electricitytofuel_synthesis_papers_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy_... So: my war on Buzzfeed remains.

alternize 13y ago

this was quite unexpected, indeed. the article is well written and has a good narrative.

danso 13y ago

Buzzfeed, AFAIK, was blacklisted from HN for awhile, but it looks like the new mod regime has taken off the blanket ban...and that's a good thing. The majority of Buzzfeed is still linkbait but they do have sections written by real reporters, with some of the best writing and research I've seen from online outlets. My personal favorite was this in-depth exoneration of MSG: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlikely-formula-for-success http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnmahoney/the-notorious-msgs-unlik... disclosure: one of my former colleagues is a Buzzfeed editor (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/02/03/buzzfeeds-investigative-unit-taking-shape/5084213/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/02...), and he's been in charge of hiring an investigations team. He's a Pulitzer winner himself and just hired one of this year's Pulitzer winners, as well as a Pulitzer finalist (HN user jsvine)...the late Michael Hastings was doing investigative reporting for Buzzfeed before his untimely death. So the investment they're putting into non-listicle-journalism is non-trivial.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dublinben 13y ago
It's really too bad that they're mixing the in-depth coverage and the crap on the same domain. It indelibly taints their better articles with the stink of their low-quality drivel. On the whole, the site is a worthless spam farm that steals content from reddit and other sources. The existence of a handful of good stories isn't enough to overcome that reputation.

rtpg 13y ago

Buzzfeed has some great longform articles too. Their piece on the history of the AUMF is great (especially for those who weren't paying attention/were too young to care at the time). http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-of-the-most http://www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60-words-and-a-war-w...

dang 13y ago

Buzzfeed seem to be partly rebranding themselves with high-quality long articles. I thought this was excellent: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer (and posted it to HN to no avail). So yes, we've upgraded Buzzfeed from banned (stories get auto-killed) to lightweight (stories get a penalty, which moderators can override). A moderator saw the OP and marked it as solid. Lightweight sites are an uncanny valley for HN. We can't un-penalize them without the site being overrun with fluff. But we don't want to miss any solid articles, either. It requires human intervention to tell the two apart, and we neither see everything nor necessarily see things in time. I have some ideas for writing software to help with this conundrum, but won't be able to get to that (or the dozens of other things on our list) until my ongoing moderation-comment blitz subsides.

dredmorbius 13y ago
Buzzfeed have done themselves very considerable harm with their earlier tactics. Enough that I look on the URL with extreme prejudice. I've got a custom CSS I apply to the site (I refer to it as "unbuzzed") which strips all the viral crap from it. And checking quickly w/o my CSS applied, I see that while some of the site's content may be quality, much of it still matches my recollection of it. Given that, I feel that supporting the site in any way condones a behavior which is, IMO, very highly toxic. I'd prefer "banned unless moderator overrides" be in place, and I think actually, keeping the ban in place would be even better. It's weaponized clickbait. More: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23twec/weaponized_clickbaits_days_numbered_dont_tease_us/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/23twec/weaponiz... As for lightweight stories: they're, net net, toxic. If there's lightweight coverage of a topic, there's almost certainly a heavyweight coverage somewhere. Almost always upstream (source study, report, release, comments), occasionally in a detailed analysis commentary. My focus for much of the past year and some has been "big issues": population, resources, sustainability. Of which a significant component is energy. The good news is that there's huge amount of research going into advanced energy technology: new methods of capturing, converting, storing, or using it. And virtually ALL of it is absolute, total, complete, 2000% bullshit in terms of actual informational value. In one case (the Haberno enhanced geothermal well project in Australia), I found that reading the company in question's own financial filings with the Australian securities regulator was far more informative than the ... whitewashed is putting too pretty a face on it ... completely useless press "progress" report. If attaining 2% of your initial generation goal in 5x the time and 10x the budget is "success", well, I don't know what to say. The problem is when the crap reporting of useless bullshit makes it difficult to see through crap reporting of the good stuff out there. The US Navy Research Lab's recently (past month) publicized research on electricity-to-fuel synthesis from seawater was abysmal. But the underlying technology and story are actually among the better prospects out there in terms of not only providing moderate-scale liquid fuel sources for the future, but very large (national or global) potential, with high-but-tractable costs, and with applications to utilizing surplus intermittent generating capacity for fuel synthesis and long-term storage (diesel fuel stores well). But the 1) profusion of crap elsewhere and 2) abysmal quality of the reporting on this technology made this almost impossible to see. I still think my own write-up (which could use some improving) is among the best there is on the topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy_electricitytofuel_synthesis_papers_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy_... So: my war on Buzzfeed remains.