arghyle

This news broke yesterday and I was immediately interested. I always want to know more when a site I read is sold, but this this time it is a tech publisher and Federated Media site so it hit close to home.

I read a number of posts about the sale yesterday, but today when reading RSS I stumbled onto Venture Beat’s post. Rather than the congratulatory back-slapping I had been reading, author MG Siegler (the Paris Lemon guy) mentioned an issue he had with Ars. I won’t get into the whole thing as there is a great post on the matter but some of Ars methods are called into question.

I have heard some grumblings about people’s problems with Ars Technica in the past, but I had never given it much thought. After all, it’s Ars… I’ve been reading the site for what, ten years? Even so, a number of valid points are raised though it’s not totally clear that this is an intended pattern, not just a a few isolated incidents.

Matthew Ingram seems to be the de facto arbiter on all issues like this, so you might as well check out his post.

I think what is comes down to is that linking does not make everything right, but it will solve most issues. Obviously there are larger issues about intellectual honesty, but in a blogosphere where every site has to cover every news item as quickly as possible issues like this are going to arise. Should Ars be more diligent about linking? Maybe. Past that it seems too early to call such a venerated site into question, though the iPhone iRisk map was definitely worth mentioning.

That’s it- I’m not trying to deliver a verdict, but it’s an interesting topic that is worth reading up on.

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