Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Today, Everybody's a Fact Checker

Posted by Soulskill on from the citation-needed dept.

Hugh Pickens points out an article by David Zweig at The Atlantic about the rise of fact-checking sites on the internet, and the power they give to journalists and average internet denizens to sniff out fiction parading as truth. Quoting: "Since the beginning of the republic (not the American republic, I'm talking the Greek republic) politicians have resorted to half-truths and bald-faced lies. And while tenacious reporters and informed citizens have tracked these falsehoods over the years, until now they've lacked the interconnectivity and real-time capabilities of the Web to amplify their findings. Sites like the Washington Post's Fact-Check column and FactCheck.org, which draws hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month, often provide fodder for public fascination with fact-checking. ... Perhaps the masses don't care about inaccuracies. Many Democrats and Republicans alike will believe what they want and ignore or disregard the truth. ... But there are enough experts within a variety of fields rabidly conversing about errors that content-creators—be they politicians, journalists, or filmmakers—are now forced to be on their toes in a way they never have been before. And that's a good thing.'" Zweig also points out Snopes, Prochronisms, and Photoshop Disasters as useful tools for spotting errors or misrepresentations.

37 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. In Soviet Russia... by reiserifick · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... facts check YOU!

    1. Re:In Soviet Russia... by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Funny

      I hate to be crass, but... you may want to check your facts on that one.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  2. truthiness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It would be nice if there were a running tally on each politician for how many times they distorted or lied about something

    I want to know ho much truthiness each of these clowns emit.

    1. Re:truthiness by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Funny

      It would be nice if there were a running tally on each politician for how many times they distorted or lied about something

      Oh, hell, that's an easy one to figure out - just tally up the number of times said politicians' lips move.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    2. Re:truthiness by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not just the number of lies though, it's the scale and scope. If you say "my plan will create 350 000 jobs at no cost to the taxpayers" and some independent analysis says "more like 300 000 jobs at a cost of 10 million dollars" versus "will cost 150 000 jobs, and cost taxpayers 100 million dollars".

      have a look at, for example: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/01/bill-clinton/its-typical-presidential-candidates-release-10-or-/

      Which is rated as half true by politifact. Bill clinton claimed that it's typical to release 10 or 11 years of tax returns when running for president. Now here's the problem, lets take one datapoint. Barrack obama releasing only 7 years of tax returns (from 2000-2007 I think). But he didn't release more than that, because almost certainly the ones *before* 2000 are mind numbingly boring. He was a lecturer, then a senior lecturer, with no other appreciable income. So what are his tax returns going to have? A list of math mistakes he made that was corrected by the IRS and generic pointless stuff about earning a lecturer salary. So they kind of mindlessly ignore why he didn't release tax returns (- as in they weren't relevant-) and just count him as 7 years. Then they add up all of these numbers of tax returns listed out of context, and spit out an average saying bill clinton is exaggerating. Well sure, he's exaggerating, but the fact check itself is based on shitty data analysis that doesn't consider the quality of any of its data points. (other example, John Kerry's returns were only for the period he was with his current wife).

      Lets take a trivial example. True. Sarah Palin, 1 in 7 families are on food stamps (http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2012/aug/02/sarah-palin/sarah-palin-says-1-7-american-families-food-stamps/ ). Ok... there's some trivial calculations to do there, but basically this is a single discreet fact that can actually be measured. So sure, she is telling the truth, but does it matter if the fact she is working from is true if her suggested solution isn't testable?

      On the broad spectrum of minor spoken errors to complete disregards for the existence of reality politicians will have different degrees of lies on different topics, and you can always count on them to lie about each other. But lying about each other isn't actually policy, policy is what matters and trying to gauge the accuracy of proposed policy predictions is still well beyond the realm of most people, or even beyond all but the most specialized of bloggers (and then trying to figure out which specialized blog is correct and which isn't is beyond most people). To me, this gap, in trying to accurately assess credibility is the role the media should have, in finding experts who work with testable models that have track records and giving their assessments to the public. But that's not what happens. And as you say, you want to know how much truthiness these clowns emit, but in practice that's really freaking hard and no one with the capability to do it properly is rising to the challenge. Including, unfortunately, the long respected BBC, who have started to buy into the equal time for competing views even if one is discredited problem.

    3. Re:truthiness by MyFirstNameIsPaul · · Score: 2

      Even beyond just checking facts of a statement is the depth of understanding of the checker. It's been some years, but I remember a fact-check on Ron Paul in the 2008 election about his quoting how much money is spent on defense. The fact checker (it was either the Washington Post or Politifact) claimed he was off by miles, but that was because the person doing the fact checking knew nothing about how Congress makes budgets. For example, the Department of Veteran's Affairs is a separate budget item from the Department of Defense, but to claim that this is really a separate cost from 'defense spending' is ignorant, and Paul's numbers included not only the dollars specifically allocated to the DoD, but also all of the other items that fall under the general umbrella of defense spending.

      What is particularly bad about this style of 'fact checking' is that it will then be cited in places like Wikipedia where people will look up this information and consider it to be solid fact, when it may actually be opinion or ignorance.

      --

      I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.

    4. Re:truthiness by techno-vampire · · Score: 2

      So sure, she is telling the truth, but does it matter if the fact she is working from is true if her suggested solution isn't testable?

      Yes. It does matter, quite a bit. It shows that the problem she's talking about is real; she's not just making up an imaginary problem to get people worked up. Her suggested solution may not be testable, or even possible (I don't even know what her suggestion is, so I can't guess.) but at least she's trying to solve a real-world problem.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    5. Re:truthiness by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The fact checker (it was either the Washington Post or Politifact) claimed he was off by miles, but that was because the person doing the fact checking knew nothing about how Congress makes budgets. For example, the Department of Veteran's Affairs is a separate budget item from the Department of Defense, but to claim that this is really a separate cost from 'defense spending' is ignorant

      ^^^^^This. The "official" number bandied about is ~600 billion dollars, but the real number is more than twice that much. They make it look smaller by, as you point out, excluding things like the VA from defense spending. Ditto for the GI Bill, interest on past military spending, Fatherland Security, military aid to countries like Israel, the Department of Energy managing our nuclear weapons, etc etc.....

      The Real US National Security Budget: 1.2 Trillion

  3. Facts are facts... or are they? by Sebastopol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Political fact checking is actually a lot harder than it seems. I used to follow politifact.com and there were a large number of debates over their assessment of policy statements, largely due to the fact that emperical data for dollars spent or benefits from policy (in terms of dollars) are either not recorded, not part of public record, or are just estimates from various biased "experts".

    There isn't even agreement on how to measure federal spending (e.g., when Bush administration purposefully excluded out the cost of the two wars when computing debt/deficit)!!!

    Sigh.

    --
    https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
    1. Re:Facts are facts... or are they? by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem with Politifact, and in fact much of political reporting, is the cult of false equivalency. If they consistently portray politicians as liars and others as truth-tellers, then they'll be accused of partisanship and lose credibility. So the effect of this is that political figures who are regularly liars and only occasionally speak the truth end up looking no more dishonest than political figures who usually tell the truth but occasionally slip up.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    2. Re:Facts are facts... or are they? by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. This is very important: the necessity to seem "non-partisan" for those sites makes it wayyy too easy for the liars. After all, if you get to lie all the time and the "fact checkers" feel compelled to scrutinise your opponents extra-hard just so they can say that both sides have about the same lying rate, it's win-win!

      There are issues where there are two sides. But more and more, people fight over _facts_ and this means that one side is right and the other wrong, and if you claim otherwise, you are delusional. There is no middle ground to the debate on the shape of the planet. If you say that gay parents cannot raise a child, this is a statement of fact, not an opinion. If you tell me there is no global warming, this is a statement of fact, not an opinion. If you tell me that the gold standard is a good idea, this is a statement of fact, that reducing taxes will increase revenues, and so on, and so forth.

      All things amenable to experimental verification -- and in many case which have been previously experimentally checked -- should not be debated. Journalists should just mock the politicians saying stuff which is obviously false.

    3. Re:Facts are facts... or are they? by dynamo52 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem with Politifact, and in fact much of political reporting, is the cult of false equivalency.

      You just nailed the greatest problem with political discourse in this country. Most of the major news organizations have decided that impartiality requires they provide an equal platform to both sides of any issue regardless of where the facts lie. Rather than informing their audience, this type of "balanced" reporting only clouds the debate by giving the appearance of credibility to science deniers and conspiracy theorists.

      --
      Like this comment? I accept Bitcoin! - 153sc8UUBXyp12ofQqfAWDmJrzyiKCYC1x
    4. Re:Facts are facts... or are they? by kaatochacha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The biggest problem isn't a false partisanship, or equality on these.
      The biggest problem is ( and I say this after following politifact and fact-check for about five years now) that EVERYTHING stated in a debate/political speech is at best a huge bending of the truth, and at worse, and outright lie.
      You get so glazed over from BOTH sides consistently never telling the truth.

  4. Fact checking is one thing... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But too many people would rather only listen to facts that they agree with.

    1. Re:Fact checking is one thing... by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      Or moveon.org, The Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, etc and their followers, to varying degrees of rabidity.

      Either way, both sides are making even my puny Facebook page a rotten mess.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:Fact checking is one thing... by swillden · · Score: 2

      I can't hear you.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  5. Re:Bald-faced lies?!?!? by tranquilidad · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh, the correct term?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Barefaced_lie

  6. Who Fact-checks the Fact Checkers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most of the media "fact checkers" are really checking whether a particular statement contradicts the media's narrative. If it does, then it is "misleading" whether it is accurate or not. And they don't check facts unless they contradict a narrative. They also don't check the medias on ingrained urban myths no matter how often they are reported.

    My favorite un-checked fact is the claim that Daley stole the 1960 election for Kennedy. There have been whole articles written about why Nixon didn't demand an investigation in Illinois, especially during the Florida imbroglio in 2000. There is a book out now that attributes this failure to intervention by former Presidents who, according to this story, feared such an investigation would raise doubts about the whole legitimacy of the government. Missed in all this and never "fact-checked" is the reality that Kennedy had enough electoral votes even without Illinois. In other words, its impossible for Daley to have stolen the election.

  7. Big Brother will Take FactCheck.org Offline by ClassicASP · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They're already all over Wikileaks and doing whatever they can to kill that off. I'm sure FactCheck.org is next on the chopping block in the years to come. We can't have the truth out there. Thats not in the govt's best interest! They'll think of some kinda excuse. Maybe it'll be copyright infringement, or perhaps they'll claim its a bunch of propaganda. Whatever the reason, I'm sure in time they'll find one.

  8. Incorrect Corrections by neonv · · Score: 2

    Even more common than fact checking on web is "incorrectly" fact checking. I don't know how many times I've read one fact on an article just to read another article that claims the opposite is true. Think about reading forums on Slashdot, how many times is a statement corrected, to then be corrected by someone else, to then be corrected, and so on ... which one is true?? Most of the time there's no citations! If there were citations, who actually checks them? From time to time I check citations only to find that the truth is being stretched, or downright reversed from the citation! It's hard to know where truth is, what's being exaggerated, what's only partially true, or more importantly, what's being left out. Everyone has a bias, and everyone manipulates data to prove that bias valid. The only way to get an unbiased opinion is to look at raw data, and very few people have time and ability for that.

    1. Re:Incorrect Corrections by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 2

      A good thing WP did for online discourse is to emphasise the need for citations. The bad thing is that people end up thinking citations are what counts. Not true: they must be good citations, as in reputable. But also, if I say something and back it up with logic, I need not have a citation -- except perhaps for the basic facts underlying the debate.

      If I am wrong, you can tell by finding my logic faulty, or my model of the world lacking. If some guy tells you that "the FED has been debasing the dollar" by printing lots of money, and someone else responds by pointing out that inflation is low despite a trebling in monetary mass, you might want a citation for the trebling of the monetary mass. You should have some idea about whether inflation is high or low. But the basic point is that one worldview fits reality and the other doesn't, and that is how you decide who is likely right.

      You can usually tell who has the big picture right and who is strung up on details...

  9. "Rabid" is an appropriate word by Baloroth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Blogs like Prochronisms look at 'historical changes in language by algorithmically checking historical TV shows and movies.' They utilize tools like Google Ngram viewer to bust Mad Men, for example, for using terms or phrases in dialogue that didn't yet exist.

    Really, no offense (ok, maybe a little offense), but this comes across (to me anyways) as slightly... sad. It's one thing if you are looking up a fact about the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere last year. But this is another thing completely. I think Ratatouille actually put it quite well:

    In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

    The grammar nazi or the fact checker is essentially a critic: someone who is basically incapable, or simply too lazy, to bother creating something worthwhile, so they spend their time criticizing other people's work instead. I think they do it largely to inflate their feeling of self-worth: after all, if they can see the flaws in other peoples' work, it must not be all that great.

    The fact is in many of these cases, whatever "problem" they find is really totally and utterly insignificant. Honestly, I don't care if Mad Men uses phrases that weren't around in the 1960s: it's an enjoyable show with great characters, in my opinion. It would be one thing if it was horribly unrealistic or created a culture radically different from the real culture of the 60s, but the mere fact that they are "busting" Mad Men for using anachronistic phrases... I mean, I suppose you could complain about something more shallow than that, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head (wait, nevermind, speaking of the top of the head gave me an idea: they could complain about the hairstyles being just slightly off. Yeah, that'd be a bit more shallow). Can it be that there are people who literally have nothing better to do than find tiny errors in phrases in a critically acclaimed show? I suppose there is, but there really shouldn't be.

    Of course, this is nowhere near as bad as the people seriously complaining on the Internet about the use of Comic Sans in the presentation announcing the discovery of the Higgs Boson. I don't even have a comment about that, really, besides that it's almost unbelievable, but that's the Internet, I guess.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  10. Re:Nobody actually reads them by xstonedogx · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...it is very interesting that all the women were short slit skirts and very high heels.

    I, too, find this interesting. Fox News you say? I'm going to have to check that out. Thanks!

  11. Re:What a startlingly boring waste of time by The+Mister+Purple · · Score: 3, Funny

    Any anachronistic dialogue in Mad Men can be explained simply:

    Don Draper was way ahead of his time.

    --
    "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
  12. Misrepresentations killing political discourse by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm done w/ politics after what I've been seeing this cycle. It's one thing when there are deliberate distortions coming from candidates, but it's another when media outlets play along to keep them in the news and fueling their programs for a few more days.

    Two examples to be bipartisan. The whole "You didn't build that." comment from Obama. As soon as I heard it and saw the way it was being broadcast on TV chopped up, I knew immediately that the quote was being attributed with a false meaning. Based on past experience, I figured it would be a few more days before I ever heard the full quote. Sure enough...

    As for Romney, he had his "I like to fire people" comment. While poorly phrased, he was obviously speaking in the context of a consumer shopping for services, not as an employer. Maybe a little bit subtle, but not so subtle that an adult wouldn't be able to decipher the meaning.

    This is why our politicians talk like sterilized, focus-group driven robots. Even the slightest stumble in a speech gets blown up into a bullshit storm. I used to LOVE debating politics online, but nowadays you spend all your time debunking spin from a campaign and not really talking about issues. I'll still be voting alright, but I'm not in the game anymore.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    1. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Only one side will outright lie...

      While I absolutely agree with that statement, I am pretty confident that you think it is the other side from the one I do. The Republican interpretation of Obama's "you didn't build that" is consistent with Obama's record. That is, Obama has shown a consistent pattern of considering all money as legitimately the government's and that people should be grateful that the government lets them keep some of it.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    2. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're an AC so I'm assuming you're trolling, but I'll answer. That quote was specifically about a bridge someone uses to get to work. Now, unless you manufacture bridges, you didn't build the bridge or the road you use to get to work.

      You also didn't run the power lines, pay for the eletrical infrastructure, pay for the fuel infrastructure, pay for the education infrastructure that you're probably exploiting to hire employees who can read, write and count well enough to work for you, you didn't build the hospital just in case someone gets hurt on the job, you didn't pay for the law enforcement to protect your business and the safety of your workers at home and on the job, you didn't pay for the fire fighters who risk their lives should your business burst into flames, you didn't pay for the court system to address your grievances, you didn't pay for the military that protects you from raiding hordes of bandits from Canada and Mexico (and they WOULD exist if we didn't have a military) streaming in to steal our resources, and you probably didn't pay for the *fundamental* research your products are based on.

      Yes, *A* business might have build some of those, but not YOUR business. And it's our collective tax revenue that funds these sweet amenities you call society. Your small contribution to a collective pool is what makes all of this infrastructure possible.

      So, NO YOU DID NOT PAY FOR THAT.

      --
      I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    3. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thank you for illustrating the fact that for Republicans, "truth" is whatever delusion fits their particular belief about what their imagination makes them think ought to have happened.

      You said it yourself: it is not what Obama said, but what you think he should have said to be consistent with the image you have of him. Truth is irrelevant.

    4. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by error_logic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Neither can win while the other denies. Both sides have people blinded by biases--and arguments that do nothing but prolong an imagined war. The real enemy is a mutual lack of respect, yet it runs rampant through the country...and the world.

    5. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by khallow · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I grant it includes the infrastructure as well as the business. It's still a disturbing thing for a sitting president to be saying.

      At least Obama corrects himself, a week later, by attacking Romney for "twisting his words". It's a half-hearted, belated correction. Sorry, that's not sincere.

      It's also worth noting that a few sentences before that, he says:

      There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didnâ(TM)t -- look, if youâ(TM)ve been successful, you didnâ(TM)t get there on your own. You didnâ(TM)t get there on your own. Iâ(TM)m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

      If they paid taxes, and most of those people would have, then they have already given something back. If they contribute to charity and I bet most of them have to some degree, then they've given something back. Why does Obama claim otherwise? Once again we have a block of reasonable sounding prose (though no real reason for saying it) with little controversial phrases spicing it up. Seems part of a pattern to me. Like he meant to say what he said.

      And while there are probably a small number of people who think they did it all, I doubt most people wealthy or otherwise have that illusion. So why pull out what looks to me like a straw man?

      Let's get back to the original statement. Even if we grant that he really was just referring to infrastructure, what's the point of saying it? The business may not have built that infrastructure or made it happen, but neither did Obama. It was the work of a lot of people and it was paid for by a lot of people. Technically, no one person or entity made it happen.

      The business contributed by paying taxes. And they might even have helped make it happen by building some component of the infrastructure in question. Here, I see insufficient gratitude here on the part of Obama, even if we assume he meant what you and he claim he meant.

      Frankly, it looks like a classic Friday surprise propaganda trick. The leader says something controversial while speaking to the base on Friday (July 13 being coincidentally a Friday and the group being Obama supporters). It hangs in the newspapers for a couple of days over the weekend, and then his spokespeople spend Monday cleaning up ("What he really said was...").

      If done well, the speaker gets the best of both worlds. He appears hard core to his base while retaining the appearance of a more central politician to everyone who doesn't watch or read news over the weekend and just reads the correction on Monday.

      In my view, it didn't work this time because the statement was just too blatant. In summary, I think Obama meant to say what we think he said. It's part of a pattern (that even shows up a second time in the speech).

    6. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 2

      Sorry, but from a European perspective, Obama is a rather right-wing guy. In fact from a Republican-from-twenty-years-ago, Obama is pretty much were they stood in terms of implemented policy.

      What Obama is saying is that taxes are necessary for your business to exist, because your business relies on the infrastructure of the nation. That if you think that your sole hard work and ingenuity are why you are successful, you are deluded.

      And he is right, there are many hard working, clever people who don't make it!

      If he were the socialist you paint him to be, he would have pointed out the importance of luck, but he remains an American politician, very much to the right of the World's mainstream. Instead he only pointed out to the importance of the support you get from the surrounding society.

      So no, he did not say what you think he said. And in fact what he said was not very left-wing at all.

    7. Re:Misrepresentations killing political discourse by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 2

      Claiming that the debate is about "how much government" is denial of reality: you are asking "how much" of something which does not have a proper metric. It doesn't mean anything -- any measurable thing you can think of as proxy for the size of gvt, you will find is in fact down under Obama.

      Claiming success depends on the individual is wrong, plain and simple: the single most important factor in predicting success is the wealth of your parents, in the US. It also denies chance: sometimes, you need to be at the right moment at the right place, and this does not depend on you.

      Claiming Obama tries to expand the government is a lie: in the midst of a crisis, federal payrolls are down, which is unprecedented, and in large part responsible for the sluggish recovery. Also Bush expanded the federal budget by unprecedented amounts -- was he a socialist?

      Even your claim that right and left are defined differently in the US is incorrect: no left-wing US person thinks Hitler is left-wing, but they will admit Stalin was.

      Basically, all that you think is fabrication. You seem to believe it, which is to me astonishing, and illuminating. I did not know literate people had this Weltanschauung.

  13. The problem with facts.... by dremspider · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is you can tell the truth, and still completely misrepresent the information. To see how this works, I will differ to Jon Stewart... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/jon-stewart-you-didnt-build-that_n_1705264.html Recently I saw someone post on facebook "how ridiculous it was that olympians needed to pay $9K in taxes to the US". I though.. man that is ridiculous, I am sure very few athletes are going to go and sell their medals, though some athletes would have difficulty paying for that tax bill. Then I do 5 seconds of googling and find out, that they are payed $25K for each gold medal, and are simply paying on that... to top it off, to pay that the athletes would need to be in the upper tax bracket meaning they aren't struggling for cash. In other words, it is simply income and therefore they need to pay taxes on it. I mentioned it and they commented back thanks, that makes more sense though usually people get pissy because it doesn't fit with their idealogy. Then you find out that Romney, Foxnews and everyone trying to convey taxes are evil are repeating this same mis representation of the facts.

  14. Re:Slashdot moderators and facts by Jiro · · Score: 2

    Wikipedia has rules for biographies of living people, many of which are just the same rules used elsewhere, but which they really mean this time.

    One of those is undue weight. Wikipedia is not allowed to put more prominence on an event in a person's life than it actually has. Even if the event is important in showing what he's really like, it's not what he's primarily known for and isn't the first topic that comes up when talking about him (at least not to more than a minority of people). He is known as a politician, not as a bully.

  15. David Brooks (NYT) said it best by whitefox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dullest Campaign Ever - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/opinion/brooks-dullest-campaign-ever.html

    "Finally, dishonesty numbs. A few years ago, newspapers and nonprofits set up fact-checking squads, rating campaign statements with Pinocchios and such. The hope was that if nonpartisan outfits exposed campaign deception, the campaigns would be too ashamed to lie so much.

    "This hope was naïve. As John Dickerson of Slate has said, the campaigns want the Pinocchios. They want to show how tough they are. But the result is a credibility vacuum. It’s impossible to take ads seriously. They are the jackhammer noise in the background of life."

  16. Fact checkers: voluntary DoS victims by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Liars can make things up faster than honest people can check them, and the liars know it.

    Liars have nothing to lose. Their followers won't abandon them. Their followers will be too busy retweeting the next lie to notice that the previous one was disproven.

    Fact checking yields the initiative to the liars and lets them set the agenda. Fact checking hands the liars blank checks payable with the fact checker's time.

    Better to build reputation scores for public figures based on a reasonable sample of their utterances, and stop paying attention to the ones who prove themselves to have no credibility.

  17. Re:GPs point still stands, by techno-vampire · · Score: 2

    (I don't like the term lying, since I do not believe that people know when they are lying for the most part.)

    But if they don't know that what they're saying is a lie, it isn't one. Lying is when somebody says something that the know is untrue. Their statement isn't true, but it's not a lie if they honestly think it's true.

    --
    Good, inexpensive web hosting