Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 January 5

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 5

Is there any other way to get great news than search engines?

Is there any other way to get great news than search engines? It seems that all people AND Wikipedia give to me is search engines & stuff like BBC. --SamBrown98121 (talk) 17:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

News about what? There are many meta-news websites, but they are focused on a specific type of news. For example, slashdot focuses on technology and science. 209.149.114.138 (talk) 17:53, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you're expecting if you want a news site that not "stuff like BBC"? How do you want this hypothetical news site to work that's different to http://www.bbc.com ?

My suggestions are very own WikiNews - which you can contribute to as well as read! I don't like it - but http://www.msnbc.com is a large news-only site that a ton of people visit. I like http://www.npr.org

Perhaps you could be a little more specific about what you want other than the BBC style of news website. SteveBaker (talk) 18:29, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I suppose you want to avoid getting your news after they have been filtered by someone else. The solution to this is to navigate directly to the pages of the institutions you might be interested. Nowadays it's rare for any institution (be it the police, government, educational) for not having some sort of information release. In many countries you can also ask many governmental agencies to release some information based on a Freedom of information regulation. Denidi (talk) 20:45, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Another method would be to choose and buy one or more decent daily Broadsheet newspapers (in the editorial sense of the term). Unless one wants to devote one's own life to pursuing comprehensive and balanced news, one will always have to rely on the efforts of intermediary filters: the trick is to find one/some combination which is sufficiently congruent with one's own worldview without shielding one from other viewpoints and facts. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 12:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

"sufficiently congruent with one's own worldview"? Can't you read something totally opposed to your worldview? Denidi (talk) 16:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you can. (eg: I know many hard-core liberals who primarily watch Fox News so they will have something to rant about.) 209.149.114.138 (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Why would you make a source you think is wrong your main source? Sources range from communist to probably Nazi. People who have to read through the lines of everything they see because it's too far from what they are and still might miss something are going to get annoyed. One way to see what others are thinking though would be to read the same story in something left for your country (like HuffPo or the Guardian), something right (like Fox News or Forbes) and something centrist (like a national news show) and maybe something from the British left (like the Guardian) if you're American or American right (like Fox News) if you're not American (since the American center is further right than any other major nation in the world with the possible exception of immigration (and that's getting closer since Trump)). I do this sometimes though not always all four because I'm lazy). Of course one might have uncommon mixtures of left and right like legalize cannabis, kill violent rapists, don't jail nonviolent addicts, make the death penalty more humane, economically liberal so the best single source would only be "it's good enough". If the OP wants lack of filter Google isn't it either because it personalizes it's results to some degree. For perfect unfilteredness you'd have to Google anonymously to a degree I'm not sure of that might just be privacy mode or extend to clearing cookies, using a Tor or even using a special anonymous non-Google search engine that doesn't track you but probably doesn't have as good search technology as Google. I think there's a setting or search prefix that depersonalizes Google results without anything else but you'd have to trust Google (Facebook experimented on users by making their news happier or sadder without telling them and seeing their responses didn't they?). Reuters or AP are the source for thousands of smaller newspapers so should probably be one of the most neutral for when you're too lazy to read a story more than once but those who call everything besides Fox News liberal "lamestream media" or someone lefter than me would probably turned be off by Reuters/AP. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:31, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

One possible interpretation is that you want more positive news stories and fewer negative. Is that what you meant ? StuRat (talk) 18:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Then just watch the nightly national news on ABC. If it's still anything like when Diane Sawyer was anchor then you'll see mushy optimistic stories about one (1!) average Joe family and American manufacturing (lol) for half the program removing time for bad news by definition. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:55, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Positive news stories don't have to be total fluff. There are lots of good things that happen that don't get reported, because they are less sensational than, say, murders. One that comes to mind is that the spread of killer bees, which at one time seemed to pose a major threat to the US, seems to have stopped, since they don't do as well in colder climates. StuRat (talk) 19:11, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes that's true. Fluff is only one of the two ways to have positive news. Did you have a source of more balanced (positive and negative) news in mind? I'd like to check it out. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:43, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

No, but I had heard about a site which exclusively reported positive stories, figuring people get enough negative stories from other sources. I don't recall the web address. StuRat (talk) 19:57, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ ? Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:13, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Yep, that's it. Glad to see the US Congress finally formally legalized medical marijuana: [1].

Speaking of medical matters, exposure to the negative news we typically get may have a negative psychological effect on people, and this news may have a positive effect. StuRat (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2016 (UTC)