Slashdot Mirror


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."

3 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Yahoo Answers by Itninja · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.'

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  2. Re:Sloppy programming by Lazlo+Woodbine · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:How does that saying go again? by techoi · · Score: 5, Funny

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