Wow, ok, so I can see a few problems with that. Sure, you might be able to catch “Barry Bonds” talking about how he’s thankful to God and Genentec via his “barrybonds_526@gmail.com” account, but what’s going to stop someone else posing as a smaller news-maker? How will they know which of the thirteen people who are “that guy who witnessed the I35-W bridge collapse” is the legit one?
Plus if the Google news commenters are anything like the trolls and sociopaths that used to hang out on Yahoo! News, I’m guessing that this experiment probably won’t last too long.
I agree with jr. Nice idea, but with a staff deciding who is legit to post or not . . . backlash is certain. “I am a part of that news story because of x,y,z and Google does not allow me to post and they do so-so-and-so. How unfair. They are supressing my voice, etc.”
Unless they have a really good way of first determining who is the person they claim to be and, second, how close enough to a story you must be to comment on it (both are very hard) this will not last long.
Looking at how Google is approaching this feature, with a very manual process for receiving and processing the comments from the people in the news, I can’t help but notice that this is not their traditional approach of (the software and algorithm approach) doing things. This only shows that Google is onto something here. Frankly I’m not a big fan of the current methodology, but what I like about this is that Google is trying to put something new to the table. This actually produces a more comprehensive and well-represented news culture.
Wow, ok, so I can see a few problems with that. Sure, you might be able to catch “Barry Bonds” talking about how he’s thankful to God and Genentec via his “barrybonds_526@gmail.com” account, but what’s going to stop someone else posing as a smaller news-maker? How will they know which of the thirteen people who are “that guy who witnessed the I35-W bridge collapse” is the legit one?
Plus if the Google news commenters are anything like the trolls and sociopaths that used to hang out on Yahoo! News, I’m guessing that this experiment probably won’t last too long.
I agree with jr. Nice idea, but with a staff deciding who is legit to post or not . . . backlash is certain. “I am a part of that news story because of x,y,z and Google does not allow me to post and they do so-so-and-so. How unfair. They are supressing my voice, etc.”
Unless they have a really good way of first determining who is the person they claim to be and, second, how close enough to a story you must be to comment on it (both are very hard) this will not last long.
Looking at how Google is approaching this feature, with a very manual process for receiving and processing the comments from the people in the news, I can’t help but notice that this is not their traditional approach of (the software and algorithm approach) doing things. This only shows that Google is onto something here. Frankly I’m not a big fan of the current methodology, but what I like about this is that Google is trying to put something new to the table. This actually produces a more comprehensive and well-represented news culture.
Thanks…