All told, STAR went through almost a thousand rumor stories over the past six months.
The only problem I have with this is including Mac Rumors and AppleInsider.I know that sounds strange, but you expect to see rumors on those sites. They report and aggregate rumor stories for us, which is their whole model.
What I’m more interested in is the sites that publish rumors that don’t say they are rumor sites, but rather reporting news.
Still, fascinating findings.
MacRumours and AppleInsider used to report rumours as rumours, now I feel they report rumours as facts. I think including them is fair.
Would be fascinating if it was accurate, they showed their “work”, or there wasn’t an obvious bias.
9to5mac got everything right this time on exclusive content. It is clear StupidAR has an agenda and isn’t unbiased, if you couldn’t tell from its name.
Said the cockroach to the bug-bomb.
Mr. D., excluding those two sites you mentioned doesn’t change the definition of what a rumor is. If calling yourself a rumor site excuses you from being assessed for accuracy — even for idle gossip — then what are rumors for?
Yes, Stupid Apple Rumors has an agenda. It’s right in the damn title of the site.
Hm. I don’t really get this. There’s a difference between reporting a rumor and predicting that it is in fact true. Isn’t there? I would think so. But I’m guessing the percentage rates that STAR is proclaiming are based solely on the act of reporting because I don’t know what else they would base them on. MacRumors, for example, regularly posts headlines with question marks. To me, as a reader, that is not them making any prediction on the rumor(s) contained within. You could argue that the prediction is what they should be doing, perhaps (i.e. “draw a conclusion, that’s your job” sort of retort), but I can’t otherwise figure out why those items not in fact coming true should be held against them.
Am I missing something?
Rumors don’t have a purpose. They are simply descriptive of ideas being discussed that may be revealed to be true later.
The reason those two sites likely shouldn’t be assessed is because they’re rumor aggregators rather than news sites and they make no (or at least very few) claims, implicit or explicit, to the validity of their rumors. MacRumors has a Page 2 section, and they’ll occasionally chime in with an editorial comment about something being likely or unlikely, but they’ll report on rumors they find regardless of the likelihood, so by their very nature they will have a poor record.
In contrast, news sites make an implicit claim that their information is credible. If the information isn’t credible, it’s not news and shouldn’t be reported. It’s fine for them to post rumors, so long as they have information indicating the rumors are credible. Calling them out on their failure to ensure credibility makes sense.
One example from 9to5Mac:
“iPad Retina Display not coming until version 4”
Now, STFU about how you “got everything right this time…”
“It is clear StupidAR has an agenda and isn’t unbiased…”
We never claimed to *not* have an agenda and be biased. Way to grasp the blindly obvious.
What about news sites that report rumor as fact? We see that a lot in tech reporting now.
If “rumor aggregators” contribute to the likelihood that a foolish idea might be taken seriously (after helping create a fake atmosphere of widespread consensus) by lazy journalists, do they still escape your criticism?
“Rumors don’t have a purpose.”
Actually, they have many. They make money for the sites involved and they have that “I have a secret!” mentality.
“they make no (or at least very few) claims, implicit or explicit, to the validity of their rumors.”
Every time you see any site saying, “our sources tell us…” Or words to that effect, they are making claims to the rumors validity.
It doesn’t include the track record of the Loop?
There are a lot of sites, The Loop included, that don’t post enough rumors over the time period to be valid.
I don’t get STAR. If you actually dig into the rumors, they’ve tagged a whole bunch as ‘false’ even though they came true. Likewise, there’s a whole list of rumors where the predicted date is sometime in Q3/Q4 this year, and they are also listed as false. How can that be possible?
It sounds like the guy behind STAR just doesn’t like certain sites. Just reading his language when he responds to 9to5’s comment shows he’s a bit of a foul mouth.
I wouldn’t take their summary at face value.
“they’ve tagged a whole bunch as ‘false’ even though they came true.” Which ones?
“there’s a whole list of rumors where the predicted date is sometime in Q3/Q4 this year, and they are also listed as false.” Which ones?
“It sounds like the guy behind STAR just doesn’t like certain sites.” That would be me and you’re right. So? Don’t we all dislike “certain sites”?
“Just reading his language when he responds to 9to5’s comment shows he’s a bit of a foul mouth.”
LOL Yes, he does. So?
And if you knew the history of 9to5, you’d have a foul mouth too. 🙂
“I wouldn’t take their summary at face value.”
Good. Do your own research. I would hope that people would start investigating these rumors and web sites on their own.
“I wouldn’t take their summary at face value.”
The funny thing is, so many people are more than willing to take the rumor sites at face value.
OK bear with me as I’m searching from my phone so it’s not easy, but here’s a handful
Tagged as false but came true:
http://stupidapplerumors.com/apple-launching-“easytheft”-and-ship-store-systems-november-3rd
http://stupidapplerumors.com/ipad-3-shipments-already-en-route-us-possible-pre-orders-two-new-products
Due to happen in Q3/Q4 this year but already tagged as false:
http://stupidapplerumors.com/ipad-mini
http://stupidapplerumors.com/apple-open-new-store-within-store-outlets-inside-target
In my small amount of looking at the rumors on STAR they seemed to be flagged as false as soon as one portion was false.
Does marking this one false tell the whole story? http://stupidapplerumors.com/apple-ship-ipad-3-march-ipad-4-october The $399 iPad 2 part definitely came true, regardless of anything else it happens to say in there, some of which we can’t possibly mark T/F yet.
Or maybe it’s by headline? But that can’t be it because the headline of this “false” listing is entirely true (some details are true, some not): http://stupidapplerumors.com/next-gen-ipad-upgraded-cameras-slightly-thicker-body
Seems to me taking this writeup’s percentages as given does not tell us much at all. The agenda appears to be to show a signal to noise ratio that’s as low as possible for any site that dares to note the existence of these bits of info. Guessing all the “coattails” sites rack up a false as well as the originator; wonder if that’s the case for the true entries as well.
What am I missing?
I was deliberate in my use of the word “purpose”. They may be [i]used[/i] for profit or to create that mentality, but that doesn’t mean they have that purpose.
And I would certainly agree regarding claims of sources. That said, at least from my anecdotally-driven viewpoint (i.e. I have no sources or facts to back me up), I didn’t think those two sites used their own sources for the majority of rumors they posted. I’ll gladly concede the point if that’s not the case.
As I said, those news sites should be held accountable.
And yes, they do, just the same as the tabloids get a pass from me for having reliable information. Anyone who reads them should know what they’re reading. They make no effort to hide it. If people take every rumor at those sites seriously, they only have themselves to blame.
“I didn’t think those two sites used their own sources for the majority of rumors they posted.”
Majority? No. As we said in the story, Macrumors has published eight original rumors with only two having been proved to be accurate. AppleInsider has published 61 rumors with ten them from their own original sources but only two being accurate.
A fair point.
Even though their focus is, at least in my opinion, on aggregating rumors, my earlier generalization that categorized them as being ONLY about aggregation was incorrect. I would still contend that it’s mostly meaningless to assess them across all of the rumors they post, since most of them do not have an implicit claim to credibility, but analyzing the ones for which they claim sources is certainly a worthwhile effort. You’ve convinced me of that, and I would like to thank you for taking the time to point that out and provide numbers.
Not sure why my comment last night was not added, but it was about partially false, partially true rumors and how they count.
But since you mention the big sites’ stats again, regarding AppleInsider, here’s a really obvious glaring error:
STAR listing of AppleInsider rumor regarding Target store-within-store, January 6 marked FALSE: http://stupidapplerumors.com/apple-open-new-store-within-store-outlets-inside-target
NY Times reporting confirmation of Target deal January 13, even linked back to AppleInsider as one source of rumors the week before: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/business/target-plans-apple-mini-stores.html
How many of these rumors are marked FALSE by STAR when they are not, and how does that affect your calculation of the accuracy rates?
This is an example of what I remain curious about, perhaps this is just a mistake:
STAR listing of AppleInsider rumor regarding Target store-within-store, January 6 marked FALSE: http://stupidapplerumors.com/apple-open-new-store-within-store-outlets-inside-target
NY Times reporting confirmation of Target deal January 13, even linked back to AppleInsider as one source of rumors the week before: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/business/target-plans-apple-mini-stores.html
Would this not affect the calculation of AppleInsider’s accuracy rate?
(I think a couple of comments I tried got stuck in some moderation black hole. Sorry for repeat if that’s not the case.)
This is a great example of the media simply repeating what each of them say and not following up to confirm the information.
The NYT story you linked to says, “A Target spokeswoman, Dustee Jenkins, described the tests as “expanded displays” of Apple products, but declined to say how the merchandise would be arranged or whether there would be Apple Store-like displays to showcase it.”
As I have since confirmed, Target will *not* have a “Store-within-a-Store a la Best Buys – as the rumors “reported”. They will just be expanding the display area of Apple related products. That’s why the rumors were marked as false.
Eh. Seems like splitting hairs there to me. I feel like taking such an all or nothing approach (if every detail is not exactly right, then it’s false) gives a distorted picture from which to draw conclusions. After all, if we’re truly talking about rumors, getting somewhat garbled info is par for the course, or at least that’s what I would expect. Should AppleInsider truly be penalized with a false for comparing this Target initiative to Best Buy in their writeup? They had the info, 25 Target stores would get enhanced Apple sections. When trading in info that is truly rumor and hard to source, that seems like as close to accurate as one might reasonably expect. At least it’s as close as I would reasonably expect. I would mark that one true.
I think it’s fine to suggest the rumor sources are not very accurate. Even as a reader not keeping good track, I can see that. I think it’s quite another thing to grade them this way and then proclaim your results are an accuracy rating. Maybe we could make comparisons among the rated sites since presumably the grading scale is the same for all of them. But as a grading compared to 100% accuracy it looks about as accurate as the rumor sites.