The quality of Mac-Rumors news articles

[the8thark]

The quality of Mac-Rumors news articles
I want to talk about this today. Not to be disrespectful but as a long term reader of these news articles (and their related forum comments), I am slowly becoming disappointed with the quality of the front news page articles here. These are some of the specific issues I have read people posting about over and over again.

1. Writing articles based on information from people that have a long long history of spreading mis-informatiom or just any old text for their page clicks. I know Mac-Rumors aim is not to find the facts. It's after finding the good rumours for us to become interested in. And under that premise it does pretty well. But seriously a little research would be nice. One would hope Mac-Rumors is not the 6pm news which airs any old report from any old hack. At least try to find credible sources for your news articles.

2. Choosing what is front page news. Sometimes here very good news articles are on the 2nd page and some not even posted up at all. While at other times you look at some articles that did make it up to the first page and you go "why??? this is so pointless". And just scratch your head as to why it's front page and not 2nd page news (or not even posted at all) as it should be. Who chooses the news articles here needs to pick which make the first and second page a little carefully.

3. Actually read what you are reporting. One example. Was the recent article about the survey of the WWDC attendees. They surveyed like 45 people. A survey of that size will tell you almost nothing. My point is not about that article per sé but to say some news articles that look good from the title might turn out to be not so good once actually read.

I understand it's a bot that finds the articles. And that's cool. But a bot is only as good as the programming and search parameters it has. And I know people can get busy at times but maybe another (or the same with these points in mind) human eye can look over the articles to be posted and fix these issues.

I'm not saying I hate Mac-Rumors here. I like the website. And I read it a lot. I'm just saying we don't want Mac-Rumors to slide down the pole and be on the low level of tabloid journalism. I'm pretty sure the owners/admin of this site want better.

A lot of people feel the same way and have felt this over a long time. I base this on the large number of unhappy forum posts I have read. This is an issue that needs addressing.

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Rumor sites are by definition tabloid websites.

Maybe so. But I'm sure we want to be one of the better ones out there right?

 

[saving107]

I agree with your first point.

One of my biggest complaints before used to be articles that contained the name Piper Jaffray or the word Analyst, just seeing that I would immediately skip the article (and this is not just here on MacRumors).

piper jaffray and analyst in general have the worst track record that offer no insider information or real information of future product that I described it as being the equivalent to throwing a dart in the dark and crossing your fingers and hoping that you can hit the bullseye, or a the very least, get the dart on the board.

lately it hasn't been as bad,

 

[johneaston]

Totally agree. I've always looked to MacRumors to be the ones who have an idea of what might actually be true (or be noteworthy).

Now I think they just report any old rubbish just to keep the front page changing, keep traffic moving and increase their advertising revenue.

 

[arn]

Hi,

It would be helpful if you can give more specific examples of articles you think shouldn't have been on the front page or articles on the blog side that should have been on the front page.

arn

 

[d4rkc4sm]

any article written by eric slivka that's on the front page, for a start

 

[designgeek]

Hi,

It would be helpful if you can give more specific examples of articles you think shouldn't have been on the front page or articles on the blog side that should have been on the front page.

arn

I was actually about to come here and post about this. I love this site and I don't want to see it turn into gizmodo.

As of now, there is a story about a new seed of 10.6.8 on the Mac Blog page that I think is fairly pertinent and probably front page stuff, there is also a story about the possible release of new MBAs in June that I think would ordinarily be on the front page. And from the other side, I think the article about the New York store being updated and possibly the one about music labels agreeing on the terms of iCloud could be relegated to the blog pages.

any article written by eric slivka that's on the front page, for a start

I'm not sure what you're saying here, I tend to think that his are among the best and most important. Second only to arn of course.

 

[arn]

As of now, there is a story about a new seed of 10.6.8 on the Mac Blog page that I think is fairly pertinent and probably front page stuff, there is also a story about the possible release of new MBAs in June that I think would ordinarily be on the front page. And from the other side, I think the article about the New York store being updated and possibly the one about music labels agreeing on the terms of iCloud could be relegated to the blog pages.

I suppose the logic has been that there are so many seed reports on 10.6.8 which appears to be a minor update, that there isn't that much to report or talk about with each one.

The MBAs in June, yeah, that could have been on the front page. It was put on the blog since it sounds like they were just echoing a previous report, rather than saying anything new.

I do think the music label Cloud agreements should have been on the front page. Esp in the lead up to WWDC. That was the big known announcement and holdup.

arn

 

[designgeek]

I guess that makes sense, and that's why you're the editor. I trust things will smooth out over the next few weeks.

 

[jlgolson]

3. Actually read what you are reporting. One example. Was the recent article about the survey of the WWDC attendees. They surveyed like 45 people. A survey of that size will tell you almost nothing.

I agree with this, but I've been criticized over the past two weeks by a small but vocal minority of the commentariat for being too opinionated.

I very much wanted to write a post tearing up this survey and the other sites that wrote it up, but we felt that it didn't have an appropriate place on the site. Ah well.

 

[Jethrotoe]

Am I in the minority to think that MR articles have actually come up a few notches lately? I've seen a number of posts contrary to my thinking.

With the masses always trying to figure out what Apple is going to do next, people sometimes expect a rumors site to just give them the answers. That's not what it's here to do.

I see the writers trying to make the best with the info they have. Not an easy job. It's all rumors from many sources and these people have to try to make sense out of it. Of course there is going to be opinions and like newspapers, if you don't like someones writing style you don't read their work or read another paper.

The new site design was a little hard to swallow for a week or two but now I like it. I feel the articles are becoming more up to date. I listen to a ton of Apple orientated pod casts and I hear more and more quoting from MR.

If there are a few grammar errors or someone doesn't like someones writing style, there are plenty of other things to read here.

We all keep coming back, don't we?