Yahoo Faces Questions After Discovery Of Comment Replication

An anonymous reader writes "Someone noticed that certain Associated Press stories on Yahoo seem to be appending old comments to new stories in a way that was highly misleading (suggesting new stories had a lot more interest than they really did). The initial theory was that this was some sort of nefarious scam, potentially by Yahoo and the AP. However, Mike Masnick at Techdirt dug into the details and found evidence that it's more about incompetence in the way Yahoo built its comment system, combined with the way that the AP pushes and rotates its articles to partner sites."

Comments

How does that saying go again?

[Monkeedude1212]

Never attribute to nefarious scams that which can be adequately explained by incompetence?

Or something like that anyways

Re:How does that saying go again?

[SilverHatHacker]

You pulled this exact post, word for word, out of my head, at the exact instant I thought of it. You've got to teach me how to do that!

Re:How does that saying go again?

[Michael Kristopeit]

Never attribute to nefarious scams that which can be adequately explained by incompetence

if this sentiment was universal, all truly nefarious people would simply hide behind the protection of incompetence.

i'm attributing this to orchestrated incompetence.

Re:How does that saying go again?

[Monkeedude1212]

You have to purchase my 10 DVD Box set on how to read minds through the internet. 11 small payments of 30 dollars + shipping and handling*

*dvd's shipped seperately

Re:How does that saying go again?

[marcello_dl]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
(attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, born 1769 - likely competently poisoned to death in 1812)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I#Cause_of_death

Re:How does that saying go again?

[techoi]

I am thinking of my address and credit card number right now. Please send me qty 2

Sloppy programming

[dgatwood]

Well, in this case, they're treating the last path part as a unique identifier, which it obviously is not. I read the article half expecting it to be an integer overflow bug....

Re:Sloppy programming

[Lazlo Woodbine]

It's pretty common in newspapers (and AP) to recycle slugs. A slug is the internal identifier that's used for a story since the title is often the last thing written. The slug is typically only unique for a specific day. Also, Yahoo is fairly incompetent when it comes to technology for a company its size.

Yahoo Answers

[Itninja]

Kind of OT, but Yahoo Answers comment system is wonked out too. My favorite part is how I can edit my answer after it's been modded up (or down). I can say something like 'To fix your WAP you need to reset to factory defaults and reconfigure', and get modded very high. Questions come in very fast and most are off the main page withing a few minutes, so I can go back 10 minutes later and change my answer to something like 'Call the company at 202-456-1414 and complain. they will give you the runaround, but the secret word is 'potus'. Demand to talk to potus and you will be fine.'

Re:Yahoo Answers

[nurb432]

So you are the bastard that got the black vans to my house when i had that wireless problem !!!!! potus my ass!!!

timeline of Yahoo quality

[blair1q]

Kinda lame, but useful
Still lame, not as useful
Somewhat better presented, less useful compared to competitors
Kinda flashy and a little more useful than before
Crufty and deliberately defeatured
Kinda buggy and simplistic compared to competitors
Definitely suffering bit-rot, not any more useful
Total crap with pockets of new development of script-kiddie webdev showoff crap that makes it no more useful and often worse than useless