I’m not sure what’s going on over at The Inquirer, but recently I’ve seen too many “Article Withdrawn” notices for my liking. It’s really irritating to see a story pop up on NewsNow or Google News only to find that it’s been removed from the original site (and we’re talking hours after the event, not days)
The only ‘friction’ you’re generating is that of peeved readers (or non-readers). Even a notice saying why the article had to be withdrawn, or a polite redirect to an updated article, would be good.
If you are withdrawing your articles because they’re inaccurate, then either do better research in the first place, or update them on the same page.
If you get new information that means the first article is no longer relevant, then place a forwarding link to the new information. The original article is still relevant for archival purposes.
It’s really starting to get on my nerves now. I know the Inquirer aren’t the only site that does this, but they’re the ones I’ve noticed it most on over the past couple of weeks. It really is irritating and I’m starting to avoid clicking on stories that are sourced from the site because it’s simply wasting my time.
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I’m not a real fan of foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay, but on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You tonight he was actually pretty entertaining and in good spirits, taking the mocking (particularly of Paul Merton) pretty well.
He really doesn’t like Antony Worrall Thompson, though, does he?
In one of the ‘Odd One Out’ rounds where one of the characters was cartoon hero Desperate Dan, he made the following comment:
“There’s a statue of Desperate Dan in Dundee. And no-one really knows who Desperate Dan was originally modelled on: ugly face, silly beard, and… too many pies. Here’s my guess:”
Nice one Gordon.
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In tonight’s Coronation Street soap opera, we saw a screen shot of the online auction site that Cilla has been using for the past goodness knows how long.
Here’s the screenshots:
Let’s be geeky and take a look at this mockup in detail:
1. The domain name mybay.org.uk is registered to Click Computer Systems Ltd of Leeds who are involved in, amongst other things, “bespoke software, graphics, images and screen savers to overcome the issues of copyright clearance.”
2. The real life website doesn’t exist (just a holding page) – not even a Coronation Street page which would be cool.
3. The mYBay logo is nasty:
4. Even the Internet browser isn’t identified, it’s just an “Internet Browser”
5. However, the browser does have a messaging service on it:
6. The URL changes from mybay.org.uk on the first page to mybay.org.chopper-bike – I had no idea chopper-bike was a top level domain 
7. Despite supposedly being a British auction site, the spellings are decidedly American:
8. Though the character is Cilla, the person selling the bike for her is someone with a username ‘click-cs’. Hmm I wonder who that could be:
Now they probably weren’t expecting any smartarse nerd to pause the TV picture and analyse it on the web, but if the logo hadn’t been so awful I probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Nice try, CCS, but could do better.
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Keith Waterhouse has gone on an all out attack on bloggers, accusing them of regurgitating Google news, not acknowledging sources, and generally being a bunch of nerdy anoraks who spend all their time surfing the web and stealing stuff, without any original thoughts or content of their own.
I’ve written my ranting response on Tech Digest, and Ashley Norris of Shiny Media has also added his opinion.
What do you think? Should bloggers, and the Internet community in general if you read what Keith actually writes about people who use Google, be tarred in this way? Is this washed up mainstream media journalism? Have your say – better still blog it – and let Keith know how off the mark he is…
Unless you agree with him of course?
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