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Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News is - for

Is anyone else becoming a touch bothered by the large number of BBC news articles that are being submitted to Hacker News? I love the BBC and BBC News is - for the most part - very good. However, the articles on their website are often lacking in detail and when talking about technology, they are often wrong or show a misunderstanding on the behalf of the reporter. The BBC News definitely has a place - I'm just not sure that it's on Hacker News. I don't mind one or two articles - and I don't mind articles from mainstream news publications - but there are a lot of articles being published from the BBC. Here's the past 24 hours: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bbc&sort=byPopularity&prefix=f... All of that said, they keep getting upvotes - so enough people clearly want them on Hacker News.

butwhy 11y ago
Well go and submit something better.
icebraining 11y ago
Well, in this case, I think the news are relevant, and you're unlikely to get anything much better (unlike, say, in the announcement of a new scientific discovery). That said, here's the original report from the Air Force: http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/589724/air-forces-space-and-missile-systems-center-certifies-spacex-for-national-secur.aspx http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/5897...
gexla 11y ago
Right, submitting them isn't so much an issue because they can get flagged or just not up-voted. I don't often view the "new" articles list anymore. Most often, I feel like I'm wasting my time unless I want to help by up-voting the relatively good articles.
ColinWright 11y ago
Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles submitted: 8 (bbc.co.uk) 9 (techcrunch.com) 10 (arstechnica.com) 14 (nytimes.com) 14 (theguardian.com) 16 (washingtonpost.com) 16 (youtube.com) 18 (wsj.com) 32 (medium.com) 46 (github.com) Of the past 10,000: 40 (kickstarter.com) 40 (reddit.com) 40 (theatlantic.com) 44 (forbes.com) 46 (bloomberg.com) 46 (securityaffairs.co) 47 (theverge.com) 56 (bbc.co.uk) 62 (washingtonpost.com) 68 (arstechnica.com) 69 (bbc.com) 70 (businessinsider.com) 74 (wired.com) 82 (wikipedia.org) 102 (wsj.com) 105 (theguardian.com) 157 (nytimes.com) 159 (techcrunch.com) 163 (youtube.com) 339 (medium.com) 485 (github.com) In case you're wondering, I have a file of all submissions listing ID, userid, URL, and title. Then I did this: $ tail -n 10000 records \ | gawk '{print $NF}' \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | sort -n \ | grep -n . \ | tac \ | head -21
- Ntrails 11y ago
  Could we get some kind of simple mean/variance analysis on "upvotes" by site. Clearly the BBC isn't being spammed to generate upvotes
- kaolinite 11y ago
  Wow, thanks Colin - really cool information. Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? Do you have a script that crawls occasionally? If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose that isn't that many compared to others, but it's still higher than I think it should be. ArsTechnica (which often runs the same articles, such as this SpaceX one) only has 68 / 10,000 and the articles are written with a lot more technical detail. Nevertheless, I'm not really sure what can be done about it. We can't ban the BBC from HN, as with BuzzFeed, because that's over the top - there's some good content. A nice solution might be to remind people, on the submission page, that it's better to go to the source - or at least a good, technical write-up - rather than a news post that is written for the general public.
  - ColinWright 11y ago
    > Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? I download the "newest" and "news" pages every 15 minutes or so, then collate the data. > If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we > end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose > that isn't that many compared to others, It's less than some, but not as many as, say, nytimes.com or techcrunch.com. But it's a major news site, so I'm not surprised people read it and go "Oh, that's interesting, I'll click the HN bookmarklet and submit it." > ... still higher than I think it should be. What do you think it "should be?" > A nice solution might be to remind people, > ... that it's better to go to the source ... I personally find it useful to read a non-technical overview, and then if interested, go and find the technical version. Often the article with technical details borders on unreadable.

butwhy 11y ago

Well go and submit something better.

icebraining 11y ago

Well, in this case, I think the news are relevant, and you're unlikely to get anything much better (unlike, say, in the announcement of a new scientific discovery). That said, here's the original report from the Air Force: http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/589724/air-forces-space-and-missile-systems-center-certifies-spacex-for-national-secur.aspx http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/5897...

gexla 11y ago

Right, submitting them isn't so much an issue because they can get flagged or just not up-voted. I don't often view the "new" articles list anymore. Most often, I feel like I'm wasting my time unless I want to help by up-voting the relatively good articles.

ColinWright 11y ago

Not necessarily statistically significant, but of the past 1000 articles submitted: 8 (bbc.co.uk) 9 (techcrunch.com) 10 (arstechnica.com) 14 (nytimes.com) 14 (theguardian.com) 16 (washingtonpost.com) 16 (youtube.com) 18 (wsj.com) 32 (medium.com) 46 (github.com) Of the past 10,000: 40 (kickstarter.com) 40 (reddit.com) 40 (theatlantic.com) 44 (forbes.com) 46 (bloomberg.com) 46 (securityaffairs.co) 47 (theverge.com) 56 (bbc.co.uk) 62 (washingtonpost.com) 68 (arstechnica.com) 69 (bbc.com) 70 (businessinsider.com) 74 (wired.com) 82 (wikipedia.org) 102 (wsj.com) 105 (theguardian.com) 157 (nytimes.com) 159 (techcrunch.com) 163 (youtube.com) 339 (medium.com) 485 (github.com) In case you're wondering, I have a file of all submissions listing ID, userid, URL, and title. Then I did this: $ tail -n 10000 records \ | gawk '{print $NF}' \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | sort -n \ | grep -n . \ | tac \ | head -21

Ntrails 11y ago
Could we get some kind of simple mean/variance analysis on "upvotes" by site. Clearly the BBC isn't being spammed to generate upvotes
kaolinite 11y ago
Wow, thanks Colin - really cool information. Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? Do you have a script that crawls occasionally? If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose that isn't that many compared to others, but it's still higher than I think it should be. ArsTechnica (which often runs the same articles, such as this SpaceX one) only has 68 / 10,000 and the articles are written with a lot more technical detail. Nevertheless, I'm not really sure what can be done about it. We can't ban the BBC from HN, as with BuzzFeed, because that's over the top - there's some good content. A nice solution might be to remind people, on the submission page, that it's better to go to the source - or at least a good, technical write-up - rather than a news post that is written for the general public.
- ColinWright 11y ago
  > Where do you get the contents of 'records' from? I download the "newest" and "news" pages every 15 minutes or so, then collate the data. > If we merge bbc.com and bbc.co.uk, we > end up with 125 / 10,000. I suppose > that isn't that many compared to others, It's less than some, but not as many as, say, nytimes.com or techcrunch.com. But it's a major news site, so I'm not surprised people read it and go "Oh, that's interesting, I'll click the HN bookmarklet and submit it." > ... still higher than I think it should be. What do you think it "should be?" > A nice solution might be to remind people, > ... that it's better to go to the source ... I personally find it useful to read a non-technical overview, and then if interested, go and find the technical version. Often the article with technical details borders on unreadable.