Talk:The Register

Comment Filtering

I was told by several people that The Register filters out comments that don't fit a particular political point of view. I posted many comments to their articles to see if this was true and all of my comments were posted until I started posting pro-WikiLeaks comments on their Julian Assange articles. All of those comments were filtered out. I hope someone will produce some references so that this important detail can be added to this Wikipedia article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.153.85.51 (talk) 16:00, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I've never had that trouble myself and i have publcally supported Assainge on their forums. Here's their explanation of what will and won't make the cut. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/19/comment_guidelines_2010/ Jenova20 (talk) 14:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I have regularly had that problem and so, according to forum comments, have many others. As soon as they post something which contradicts or refutes the editorial stance, particularly of Lewis or Orlowski, the comment is removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.100.108 (talk) 23:23, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I have seen this too. Particularly noticeable on Lewis and Orlowski articles on climate change. Both are climate change deniers, and comments contradicting their claims, sourcing contrary data, pointing out the unreliability of their sources, etc., are routinely rejected. However, I don't see any way to make this observation encyclopedic, given the impossibility of a citation of an unpublished comment? Czetie (talk) 12:59, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Tabloid Journalism

Journalistic integrity rating

Will someone please add a label or rating for the journalistic integrity of this publication? Is there a standard open resource or method for this? Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 20:24, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Editorial bias / style / background under Lewis Page - armed forces procurement cf. climate change stance

Page's history as an author (one book listed on Amazon, "Lions, Donkeys And Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lions-Donkeys-And-Dinosaurs-Blundering/dp/0099484420)) and his lack of experience in the fields which he attacks (military procurement, climate science) have been criticised for an extraordinarily similar style and approach to that for which he has been criticised for editorial articles in The Register and attacks on Wikipedia, as evidenced by the following quotes from critical reviews (http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0099484420/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0)

"Sub-Daily Mail nonsense, 27 Mar 2009:

Sadly the author's limited military experience seems to have not included working in procurement, but did include reading lots of tabloid newspapers. Evidence is selected to support the main rant (everyone in the military apart from him is stupid), any data that gets in the way is ignored or distorted. All your favorite cliches are here: buffoonish senior officers (clearly ranks above Mr. Page's are all idiots); all Civil Servants are exactly like Sir Humphrey. All this without any insights beyond the authors personal and service predudices.

I'd rather look forward to an intelligent insiders view of military procurement. Sadly this is not even close."

"Naive, and media-led, 26 Feb 2006:

It's not surprising that this book has been so well recived by the media. Because it simply repeats all of the tripe that they print. Mr Page has fallen into the trap of believing everything he reads in the papers, without, it seems, pausing to think about whether there might be an agenda behind those reports. So he rehashes old, inaccurate and naive stories and choses to give no credit - because he and his publishers are not interested in doing so - to the huge succeses that there have been in equipment to the front line. Example - why did the UK pay so much more for its Apaches that the Isrealis? Because the Brits bought an entirely different, and much more capable version that has made a phenominal difference to the Army's capability. Der..so not surprising that they cost more is it? But then good news stories don't sell, do they?Mr Page doesn't seem to appreciate that - since nobody has written about it in the papers, actually there is a very sophisticated process for assessing needs, costs and risks involved in buying defence equipment, that has to take into account that this stuff is rather more complex than buying a family car. Sure, it's entertaining, but (aside from the annoying writing style), this needs to be taken as a work of fiction, not fact."

"A Dreadful Book, 13 Dec 2009:

This poorly researched book panders to every prejudice and stereotype that currently passes for comment on military procurement but reveals little of any value. It is remarkable that, despite the catalogue of woe that characterises much (but not all) of defence procurement, his inadequate research and dearth of any of the sort military experience that would give him genuine insight means he repeatedly misses the target. All he ends up doing is a tabloid commentary puffed out by his poorly thought through schoolboy solutions. Don't buy it, you'll only encourage him to write more similar tosh."

"Right wing, sensationist, rubbish., 18 Dec 2010:

Now military incompetence is something I like to write about myself, and military spending is something I'd like to see a lot less of BUT this book is still tripe.

Now it's one thing to say that it's better to build a hospital than a jet fighter, it's quite another to suggest that the military's toys don't actually work.

I've no idea whether any of the gossip and rumour that Lewis reports as fact is actually true, but given that when they get to be used in action the stuff seems to have no trouble blowing bad guys to bits, I doubt it is.

The Apache is a case in point. We could have bought the vanilla version and saved a lot of dosh, but I doubt we could have actually used in in battle. Ditto the Type 45. Do we need it to guard aircraft carriers with no jets on them? Probably not. But could one shoot down the entire Argentine air force single handedly? Probably it could.

As a leftie who wants less defence spending even if it means less defence I wonder just what Lewis's goals are in this book. I suspect his motivation is not that he desires world disarmament, but simply that he doesn't like paying taxes."

• I've removed a section about one Register staffer's science writing that was almost entirely composed of original research – citing no sources, primary sources or search results (!). There were a couple of valid secondary sources in it: [1][2]. I guess if we had a rounded reception section, one could add a sentence saying that some of the site's science writing has been criticised by other science writers, but (1) I am not sure how representative those two sources are (it's basically a Guardian blog post and a Huffington Post piece) and (2) a reception section should cover the site in general (science reporting is a fairly small part of their content) in order to be balanced. Andreas JN466 22:42, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Merger Proposal

Since whoever did this failed to add this either, I'll add my support. I support that Andrew_Orlowski be merged into The_Register. Almost all of the content of Orlowski's page refers to his time at TheReg, and most of that is not substantive or significantly notable. As such, what little notability he has, would be better encapsulated here as it makes more sense. Ktetch (talk) 17:58, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Cash 'n' Carrion

The article states that Cash 'n' Carrion is closed, but they reopened it in November 2014 and it's currently active http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/25/cash_n_carrion_reboot/ 180.216.82.45 (talk) 14:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

"Style over substance makeover"??

What's this? Some disgruntled reader's POV? 86.139.166.176 (talk) 17:38, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Reg logo.svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:51, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

British boffins

Boffin is an affectionate term, not negative. Flexdream (talk) 12:26, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Confusing vs. Undue weight

The text that was flagged as "undue weight" is accessible by clicking on the "headlines and wordings" hyperlink. If the "undue weight" details are not enough, then the newly added links to articles in The Register and The Guardian should satisfy the curious. Somehow, this is a matter of one saying too much sugar/milk and another saying not enough.

The Confusing section tag's wording says "There might be a discussion about this on the talk page." There wasn't. Now there is.

For those who want crumb-cake on the side, the above talk item has a possible word (?ab)used by The Register. Pi314m (talk) 21:45, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Not British any more and not simply a technology website as covers politics with a far-left slant

This is yet another website that uses technology as a "hook" to push far-left politics. It isn't British any more as the lunatics from San Francisco seem to be in charge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olaftheb (talk • contribs) 18:15, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

This is shown by the use of USAian spelling in most articles over the last few years, even when the articles cover British subjects. 217.169.17.163 (talk) 22:39, 27 September 2022 (UTC)