This is a very important topic to discuss here on Hacker News. I'll put it out there, as a person who had a different educational background and profile of activities in my teen years from most hackers, that most hackers have remarkably poor preparation in evaluating sources and figuring out which sources are reliable sources.
as those sources often attract a lot of discussion, as we all desire to be healthier if we can.
The most embarrassing example I have seen of people using a good search engine (Google) to find lousy sources was when Larry Page posted a Google+ message
about his donation of funds to help young people in San Francisco obtain vaccinations. That resulted in a lot of anti-vaccine cranks decrying his donation, with one of those writing, "Just google it and do the research it's readily available" when asked to back up a statement decrying vaccines. The Internet is full of trash sources, and Google still spiders and indexes many of those as it searches the World Wide Web. Without thoughtful human brains thinking about which sources are reliable, the link structure that Google relies on in part as a signal of quality will include noise as well as signal.
gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site guidelines. The welcome message distills the basic rules into a simple statement:
"Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."
But it takes actual reading and thought to know what's a crap link. And since stories once submitted can only be flagged (not downvoted), it is still dismayingly easy for crap links to gain top position on the main page--I saw it happen only yesterday.
To follow up on this topic, I'll mention that other Hacker News participants have informed us all about two frequent sources of submissions that really aren't much good at all, namely the press-release aggregation sites PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit. ScienceDaily is just a press release recycling service, nothing more. Users here on HN think there are better sites to submit from.
"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.
" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily."
"What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures. (2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own site(s).
"Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg."
"Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or (2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value. (Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the original source."
To sum up, yes, as the interesting original blog post kindly submitted here points out, it is EASY to fool online news sites. And it is easy to fool whole groups of bloggers, and thus to fool news aggregation sites. Read a source carefully before submitting. Don't submit at all if the source is dodgy. Save the submissions and the upvotes and the comments for reliable sources that take care to verify factual statements.
I try and debunk/explain [shady] biological science news wherever possible here. In fact, it's typically my only contribution, but one I feel is highly important.
Your perpetual (and totally correct) crusade against PhysOrg reminds me there are others doing the same, and for that I thank you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...
That's especially regretable when sources about human health and medicine are submitted here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...
as those sources often attract a lot of discussion, as we all desire to be healthier if we can.
The most embarrassing example I have seen of people using a good search engine (Google) to find lousy sources was when Larry Page posted a Google+ message
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LarryPage/posts/32xY3Z1zckL
about his donation of funds to help young people in San Francisco obtain vaccinations. That resulted in a lot of anti-vaccine cranks decrying his donation, with one of those writing, "Just google it and do the research it's readily available" when asked to back up a statement decrying vaccines. The Internet is full of trash sources, and Google still spiders and indexes many of those as it searches the World Wide Web. Without thoughtful human brains thinking about which sources are reliable, the link structure that Google relies on in part as a signal of quality will include noise as well as signal.
The Hacker News welcome message
http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site guidelines. The welcome message distills the basic rules into a simple statement:
"Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."
But it takes actual reading and thought to know what's a crap link. And since stories once submitted can only be flagged (not downvoted), it is still dismayingly easy for crap links to gain top position on the main page--I saw it happen only yesterday.
To follow up on this topic, I'll mention that other Hacker News participants have informed us all about two frequent sources of submissions that really aren't much good at all, namely the press-release aggregation sites PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit. ScienceDaily is just a press release recycling service, nothing more. Users here on HN think there are better sites to submit from.
Comments about PhysOrg:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869
"Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249
"Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ (press release),
http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ (video),
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien... (paper).
"PhysOrg: just say no."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888
"The physorg article summary is wrong, I think."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857
"Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong."
Comments about ScienceDaily:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206
"Blogspam.
"Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing):
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dn...
"Underlying paper in Science (paywalled):
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1...
"Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on similar topics:
http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603
"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.
" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily."
Comments about both PhysOrg and ScienceDaily:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185
"Why hasn't sciencedaily.com or physorg been banned from HN yet?"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529
"Original source:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry...
"What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures. (2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own site(s).
"Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361
"Those sources don't have RSS feeds, and ScienceDaily and PhysOrg have a bad habit of not linking to such things."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766
"Added value in PhysOrg article: zero.
"Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or (2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value. (Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the original source."
To sum up, yes, as the interesting original blog post kindly submitted here points out, it is EASY to fool online news sites. And it is easy to fool whole groups of bloggers, and thus to fool news aggregation sites. Read a source carefully before submitting. Don't submit at all if the source is dodgy. Save the submissions and the upvotes and the comments for reliable sources that take care to verify factual statements.