NewsDiffs: Tracking Online News Articles Over Time

NewsDiffs: Tracking Online News Articles Over Time(newsdiffs.org)

77 points by ashleyblackmore 13 years ago | 13 comments

bliker 13 years ago |

I was working similar idea, but for laws. They also change quite a lot and not very well presented online.

I halted the development after I realized how complicated can word diffs get. I would be interested about techniques that you used. I it is quite good as it is, but I noticed some common problems, such as:

1. Reusing letters from words that have nothing in common:

> fury over a [-hik-]{+n increas+}e in bus fares [1]

2. Inserting few paragraphs into one word (first paragraph) [2]

3. Loads of minor changes, also more of 1. [3]

[1] http://newsdiffs.org/diff/263401/263432/www.nytimes.com/2013...

[2] http://newsdiffs.org/diff/265812/265841/www.washingtonpost.c...

[3] http://newsdiffs.org/diff/265776/265810/www.nytimes.com/2013...

chaz 13 years ago | |

That's ok. There's enough value in elevating the awareness that these things change frequently and providing a change record for those interested in a specific article, that providing a neater/cleaner way of conveying the changes is forgiven. Anyone can figure out how to read the diffs once they sit down to do it, and it still requires a human to interpret the value of changes. A single word can simply be a correction or it can be a complete reversal.

If a better UI is developed later on, it can be retrofitted.

bliker 13 years ago | | |

I agree, in this case MVP is very good strategy. But I was more interested in technical side. Making it more readable is always a good target to have.

istorical 13 years ago |

This is amazing. This sort of technology may not be sexy enough for TechCrunch, but it's going to be infinitely more valuable to posterity than photo filters. Historiography will continue to evolve at lightspeed for the next several decades, and I'm excited to see how this sort of accumulated data interacts with coming advances in machine learning.

hayksaakian 13 years ago |

Could you add disqus or some comment system? Some of these diffs are really notable, and it'd be cool to discuss them.

MarkHarmon 13 years ago |

https://diphur.com does this really well.

scaramanga 13 years ago |

http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/

hnha 13 years ago |

this would be ace as userscript that automatically shows the history if you visit monitored sites

glomph 13 years ago | |

Agreed. Flaggin articles that have had significant revision in line would be cool.

dpatrick86 13 years ago |

Brilliant. That's all. I just wanted to drop a little well-deserved praise.

obilgic 13 years ago |

Show the % of change, and if the title is changed for each change

glomph 13 years ago |

I love this idea but I think it would be made a lot better by having this information available on the news websites themselves with a browser plugin or something.

kmfrk 13 years ago |

(June 2012, FWIW.)