Google's New Meta-Tags For News Story Authors 71
EreIamJH writes "Google News is experimenting with meta-tags in an effort to ensure that the correct news source is credited with an article. The original-source meta-tag will identify the newspaper that breaks a story, while syndication-source is for everyone who repeats the story. Both meta-tags can appear multiple times — for instance an article that sources information from other articles would include an original-source tag for each article used in preparing the new article. While the intention is worthy, I look forward to lots of snarky blogger fights as journalists vent their hurt feelings for having been omitted as an original source."
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there also a tag for the news source that properly edits it? The one, for example, that knows the difference between "brakes" and "breaks"?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there also a tag for the news source that properly edits it? The one, for example, that knows the difference between "brakes" and "breaks"?
Then there is the difference between "is credit with" and "is credited with". I wish Slashdot "editors" would call themselves Slashdot "reposters" or Slashdot "janitors", then I'd stop expecting them to grok basic grammar.
You guys can... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there also a tag for the news source that properly edits it? The one, for example, that knows the difference between "brakes" and "breaks"?
The summary was correct.
Google has a tag for newspapers that obey UK Defence Advisory Notices [thinq.co.uk] which put the brakes on a story.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
English is a spoken language. There's no latin declension or other complications that forces you to think before you talk. Sadly, written English is a different dialect that many natives fail to master.
Whatever they write made sense to them because they read it back aloud. When you truly master reading, you never hear the words but directly capture their meaning from the shape of the letters. The effect of these misspellings are the same as a terrible foreign accent to the literate reader.
This is necessary why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
Implicitly allows inclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
By tagging as first source, the publisher implicitly allows inclusion in a news search application. Using Google's tag means allowing specificially Google. Other news companies may not be in as good a position.
Google is also then free to copy text from any other source running the same story since the first source allows it.
Google no longer needs to try figure out which source was first.
And, Google now becomes non-evil and a champion for being precise about authorship, which reflects on its academic search application.
And, it makes it easy for Google to target independent journalists to hire in some way in the future. Perhaps it will start that project in Australia if Murdoch really gets them steamed.
Re:Worked great for Alta Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
While I don't entirely agree with you that Alta Vista fell because of meta tags (at least, not alone), meta tags are indeed fairly easy to spoof. Obviously anybody can claim they are the original source. Obviously anybody can just ignore these tags entirely.
One can hope that Google will do at least some extra checking as well. As they say in TFA, Google will be looking at how these are used in the wild before they make any big changes in how they display their news.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey it passed the spell checker, I think you're expecting a bit much from slashdot editors ;}
I mean at least he linked to the original source [google.com] instead of some blog [blogspot.com]... oh wait.
Well, at least they didn't attribute credit for the idea to Apple, while claiming Microsoft was granted a patent on it! That's gotta count for something right?
</sarcastic>
Lack of practice (Score:2, Insightful)
English is my second language and while I do a lot of errors, they're different than the ones that natives do. My errors tend to be odd sentences (the structures used in English are very different than those used in my first language), odd expressions (Do I complete a quest or do I make a quest? Do I do an error or do I make an error? Or do I, perhaps, err? In my first language there isn't any difference so it's easy to make[?] those errors in English) and the like. However, I don't do errors such as break/brake, their/there, your/you're, it's/its (I do have some difficulties in remembering wierd/weird, though)... I think that there is a simple reason for this: I've had to study this stuff. I've had to study that You are can be shortened to You're and I am can be shortened to I'm. It would never cross my mind to mix You're and Your any more than I would mix I'm with in. I just don't see why I would ever do that.
If you're a native speaker, your teachers might assume that you know all that already and thus don't need to study the subjects in school. Even so, they could be taught the correct grammar quickly enough (No need to waste time studying sentence structures or vocalbulary... Most of the time could be used to weeding out those common errors) if the society would be interested in doing so. There is simply the question of "Why?". Why do you need to be 100% correct? Isn't it "good enough" to be understood? The answer: Not anymore.
You did compare English and latin. It is a very good comparison because English is the language of the world. People all around the world study English to communicate with each other... and nobody speaks it perfectly. The problem is that everyone makes different errors: The errors I do relate to my first language and I'm sure that everyone who has the same first language as I have can understand me perfectly. I'm also sure that someone who speaks perfect English would understand me quite well. Then, there is some guy in India whose errors relate to his first language. Others from India can understand his English, as can people who speak 100% perfect English... But if I were to discuss with him and we would both be doing different errors, would we understand each other? Maybe, maybe not. That being the case, it is important that everyone in the world does their best to speak 100% correct English. If you aim for "Good enough" you might no longer be able to communicate with someone who also aimed for "Good enough". Native speakers are not an exception here: They tend to make certaint errors due to the fact that english is their first language... And the errors that they make are different than those that everyone else in the world does.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)