Track Changes

September 11, 2006 5:12 AM

News Sniffer. It's a site dedicated to monitoring news articles and discussion threads at the BBC. For censored comments from BBC news threads: Watch Your Mouth. And now it has implementation that tracks changes in news articles, to see how things are edited: Revisionista. Here's a couple of examples.
posted by gsb (5 comments total)

It's like the old, dead, Winer Watcher. That was based upon Aaron Swartz's HTML Diff script.
posted by gsb at 5:14 AM on September 11, 2006

I work in a newspaper, and I don't have something as good as this for checking revisions, which is a part of my job. These guys could be rich if they could sell that for a Quark workflow.
posted by bonaldi at 5:30 AM on September 11, 2006

However, if this is not the way to "uncover bias"; it's a way to find dull or moronic comments that were edited, and a mildly interesting way to watch a story developing.

If they think they're going to find a smoking gun where "then Mr Bush ate a baby" becomes "then Mr Bush shared in the joy of a young life", they're badly off the mark.
posted by bonaldi at 5:32 AM on September 11, 2006

These both look like interesting features, but the whole framing of "censorship" is crap.

This is a recent "censored" comment:

Should women over 30 freeze their eggs?
Written by Daniel Greene on Thu Sep 07 15:57:18 BST 2006. 0 recommendations.

Personally, I'd like to see the Government pay for it...

Lynn Harvey, Tyne & Wear, United Kingdom

The government does pay for things! Through taxes you fool! IVF is an option, not a right and the sooner "you women" recognise this sad fact the better! P.S. Men invent everything, not women.

Their poor little heads might explode at the moderation here.
posted by patricio at 5:49 AM on September 11, 2006

I think it's a nice companion site for the BBC threads. Like the 'School dinner' deleted comments. I was browsing through it and came across:

What a ridiculous question, 'Could school dinners be healthier?' Of course they could. What's next, 'Should the government get rid of crime?' 'Who likes good things?'

Supposedly submitted by adrianhon, is that Mefi user 482?
posted by gsb at 5:59 AM on September 11, 2006