Talk:Engadget

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Engadget article.

[edit] DPAReview

Looks like we have a revert war starting. Can someone please lock the page or block that anon IP who keeps removing criticism from the article? Rm999 23:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

This whole DPA review thing is absurd. It was a small mistake and it was corrected. Not worth mentioning in the entry Resiny 8:24 PM (GMT), 20 March, 2006

Engadget apologized as well. http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/16/nainworks-ubiquitous-multimedia-informator-pmp/ I also don't think this is really something that will be notable in the long run. --Interiot 03:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
We'll see I guess, but according to the DPAreview people and others, this is a recurring problem on engadget. I don't have anything against engadget, but I also don't see why the criticism should be taken down. Rm999
*shrug* If an issue isn't particularly notable, then I don't have a problem with removing it. It's not the goal of the encyclopedia article to list every single public mistake and retraction Engadget has ever made. If there are sources that can demonstrate a recurring problem, then I might personally think it was notable enough. --Interiot 08:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
If you read the history here http://www.dapreview.net/news.php?extend.3106 it seems to be an ongoing situation between Engadget & DAPreview for over a year, which I've noticed before with a DAPreview article being linked from Engadget to a site that mirrored DAPreview's article, (causing a 1-2 day delay in the Engadget report.) They've done it before except this time they were caught red-handed (thanks to Google's cache.) WiZZLa 16:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
"Notable" is a subjective and relative term. In the context of this article, I think it is notable as it is currently one of the major criticisms of engadget. If the controversy dies down I would have no problem with you taking it down, but right now I think it is relevant information Rm999
Though the URL posted above notes that Engadget fixed mistakes and apologized on at least three separate occasions. Unless there are other citable sources, it seems like Engadget is trying to do the right thing, but makes mistakes. I don't know about the wider range of criticisms about Engadget, and don't have time to research it beyond the URLs posted so far, but it seems like a more neutral statement might be along the lines that Engadget has made repeated mistakes, possibly more than a typical journalism organization, but it's not clear that Engadget is trying to be malicious, as Engadget corrects the mistakes and appologizes when called on it. --Interiot 23:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Again, it's sorta subjective. One side claims they are maliciously being blacklisted and plagarized, and the other side claims they have made a series of mistakes. You are choosing to listen to the latter side when the point of the criticism section is the present the viewpoint of the former. I think it would be great if you included a defense for engadget (most articles i have seen do this), but just saying "the critics are wrong because engadget said so, lets delete the criticism" is not neutral. Rm999 00:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
As mentioned in the comments section of the Engadget story, http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/16/nainworks-ubiquitous-multimedia-informator-pmp/, how can you mistakenly crop an image and then miscredit the image source you just cropped? this is willful behavior and should remain as a valid criticism.
Well, you can always read engadget's perspective on this issue here: http://www.ryanablock.com/archive/2006/03/controversy/ Dario 03:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, the section still seems pretty POV and based on personal opinion to me. Wikipedia's goal isn't to take sides, or even to try to advocate for responsible journalism, admirable goal though it may be. Has the issue been covered by press beyond these two blogs? (no, forum posts in digg or fark don't count). --Interiot 09:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you advocating that we remove it? Should we take a vote? Dario 06:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia be a venue for the airing of petty grievances? These criticisms aren't notable in the slightest and have been completely ignored by the mainstream media. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.181.213.76 (talk • contribs).
"been completely ignored by the mainstream media."
That's a terrible reason to not include something in wikipedia. Many things that get little coverage in the mainstream media are encyclopedia worthy. I've never seen engadget covered in the mainstream media, let's just delete the whole article. To be serious, the criticisms are, in the context of engadget, fairly serious. Many criticisms in other articles may seem trivial to the average person (see EBaum's World), but to the people making the criticisms it is anything but trivial. I have no personal stake in this all, I just like to fight for the little guy and I hate to see past scandals like this forgotten because some editors think they are "petty grievances." Rm999 07:26, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I like to fight for the little guy too, but wikipedia is not the place for that. Here, we document things from a neutral detached position. Yes, the EBaum's article may have problems with WP:WEASEL, but here we're just discussing the issues with this article.
Okay, the facts: Engadget originally obscured the source of the image. DAPreview noted the image had been copied and cropped. Engadget apologized and corrected the situation. That's easy to say, we don't even need other references (fark, digg, etc); DAPreview documents it well, and Engadget admits to it.
In terms of ascribing malicious intent to Engadget's actions, that's... pretty difficult to do, especially in an encyclopedic way. As I said, feel free to briefly mention (with references) multiple past mistakes. In general, I think the current criticisms section is too long, unless it's going to cover more material.
For the section about "homophobic in their choices of content providers", are there any reliable sources for that? If not, it should be removed per WP:WEASEL. --Interiot 19:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
IMO, you are misunderstanding the point of a "Criticisms" section. Criticism does not have to be factual, it is the opinion of someone who is criticising it. I know this can get NPOV, but in this case the "Misattribution" section is not NPOV, from what I can tell. Please indicate what exactly about it is NPOV. It does not say "engadget maliciously did anything," it says something along the lines of "so-and-so criticized engadget for blah, and they also note it has happened several times in the past." It is 100% factual, and I see no point in removing it. BTW, it is not a weasel statement from what i can tell because it cites a specific critic, it is not saying "some people have claimed" or anything like that. As far as the "Politics" section - I think it is poorly written tripe and would not mind seeing it deleted. I will fight to keep the "Misattribution" section though. Rm999 04:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Apple bias

Should Engadget's pro-Apple position be mentioned? The comments regularly point out how Engadget praises Apple products while bashing a virtually identical product from any other company. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.76.30.78 (talk • contribs).

How is that different than any other tech publication. I don't think they are Biased. They like to talk about Apple but Apple is a major gadget maker. --8bitJake 16:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd say they're a less biased than TWiT or Diggnation. I don't know, it seems like, from their comments on the podcast, they have an accurate grasp of, say, the iPod market (eg. that the iPod clearly dominates, even though similar products that are somewhat more featureful and/or somewhat less expensive, don't sell nearly as well). I think they've explicitely said part or all of that, haven't they? --Interiot 17:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that is different than any other tech publication. I mean PC world magazine does not really cover an iMac or Linux distro than a specilized publication. Engadget is a specialized publication on tech products that the editors are interested about. --8bitJake 17:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Advertising

Per the advertising criticism section... Blogs are almost never a reliable source. Period, end of story.

Regarding the criticism specifically... regular readers quickly realize that all of the content is in the upper-left-hand part of the single-post page, and once you focus on that rectangle, there's http://paperlined.org/tmp/engadget/engadget.png (only perhaps 10-20% of ads) that get in between the top of the page and the content that you want to read. If Engadget put 100km of advertisements below the comments, it wouldn't really matter, as everyone would ignore them. --Interiot 15:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you have to argue that this is an *unreliable* source, meaning that it is *possibly* untrue. They give evidence for their claim - I don't know how much more reliable one can get. I think when the guidelines say a blog is an unreliable source they mean more like when a blog is reporting something (eg. I heard this guy say something) not when they do some research. If they took the word "blog" out of the url would the source automatically be more reliable? Of course not, that's ridiclous. There are plenty of articles on wikipedia that use webpages as sources.
I would argue a page with 100km of advertisements would be hard to navigate and take forever to load. I know you are exaggerating, but this criticism exists for those same reasons IMO. Rm999 06:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
It is becoming increasingly obvious that RM999 has some sort of unexplained bias against Engadget and/or Weblogs Inc. It's people like him that are ruining Wikipedia. Wikipedia is intended to be a comprehensive source on matters of note, not a laundry list of petty grievances. Have ANY of his contributions to this page been on matters of note or true importance? Not in the slightest. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.192.181.6 (talk • contribs).
I'm not going to respond to that because it is a personal attack on me and does not further your own point. You have to argue the issue, not attack the people who support the other side. Based on the fact that you removed my additions without being able to argue your own side leads me to believe you are the one with the unexplained bias. Oh - and please don't vandalize my user page again. Rm999 03:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Right, the layout of the page is clear enough to anyone, but the conclusion (that the page features an abnormally high number of ads relative to competing blogs or media, that readers are likely to be annoyed at the difficulty of finding the desired content among the ads, or that page loads or renders abnormally slowly) is not especially well-supported. If conclusions such as this were published by the New York Times, for instance, the section would be unassailable. Since Engadget's layout isn't particularly academic or noteworthy, it's difficult to pin down what counts as a reputable source for commentary on it. However, since http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=p&q=&size=medium&range=&url=photoshopblog.net (photoshopblog.net has a relatively small number of readers), I don't think it has much more credibility than any editor on wikipedia would have, and therefore, I think the conclusions are best classified as original research. --Interiot 20:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

So I think your arguments are twofold: the criticisms aren't well supported, and that the source isn't reputable. As far as the claim not being supported - someone made the criticism, IMO that means it is supported by someone. Beyond that, it is a bunch of opinions, as the claims are subjective. Maybe 30% of the population agrees and 70% disagrees - I don't think it's wikipedia's job to do this second step unless it is exceedingly and obviously one-sided.
You use the number of visitors to the site to claim it isn't popular and therefore not reputable (this reasoning sort of escapes me, but whatever). Look at your link again... There were 15 MILLION visitors the day they made this claim. According to your reasoning does this mean it was reputable that one day? You also claim that the layout of Engadget isn't noteworthy, but I would disagree simply because this is an article ABOUT engadget! If only 10% (or whatever) of the layout of a website is devoted to its main function (in this case articles) I would call that interesting and worth noting. Rm999 03:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't quite understand. Since the claim is supported by one person, that makes the conclusion not original research? Two, it's not 15 million visitors, it's 15 / 1,000,000 visitors. Three, http://digg.com/design/Engadget.com_-_A_Visual_Breakdown. (one dugg story) on one day does not a reliable source make. Maybe the blog has a lot of standing among the web layout community or something, but from what I saw, the blog didn't seem to be much more reliable than a blog I'd start tommorow, for instance. --Interiot 06:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, you are right, it is 15/1000000. I'm not sure if that's a lot or not, but I don't see how many people read the page should matter anyway. I think the validity of the criticism should be what is at stake here, not how many people read the blog by the guy who came up with the criticism. The blog was a medium for a person to make a criticism just as much as the editoral page of the new york times would have been.
To answer your question directly, I do not think what I added was original research. As I understand it, the only way you could make that point is by arguing that my source is not reputable (because I cite a source). I think that is impossible to argue because they are simply stating a fact. If a blog with 1 reader states that 37294923 + 2458293 = 39753216, I would not call it original research for me to add that to wikipedia even though it is not listed anywhere else. This is because it is a fact that cannot be countered.
It seems to me like you're other argument is that this is not that big of a deal, in which case I entirely agree. At the same time, I see no reason why a sentence in the article should matter so much as it can only add to the reader's general understanding of the subject matter. I'm getting kind of tired arguing about petty things like this, but at the same time when I see people fighting so hard to remove my edits (which, by their nature, regardless of the article, tend to be criticisms because I think wikipedia needs more of them), I question why. I have nothing against engadget, I am just trying to present more opinions about it. Why have both criticisms I have added met with so much resistance? I feel like there is a constant push on wikipedia to offend no one by removing anything that criticizes anything. Anything as big as engadget will have its critics. Rm999 10:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Coming up with the fact that "30% of Engadget's single-post view pages are advertising" or "5% of Wall Street Journal webpages are advertising" is NOT AN ISSUE in the slightest. What's original research is the opinion that the percentage of advertising is too much, or that it's a widely held opinion.
It IS relatively unimportant, thank you for acknowledging that. One issue is neutrality... for Wikipedia's articles on spyware programs, it's probably appropriate to dedicate 80% of those articles to criticisms, because that most accurately/objectively represents society's response to those topics. For Engadget, it's not appropriate to dedicate a large percentage to criticism, because I think the most neutral/objective/accurate way to portray Engadget is that society's response has been largely positive.
Another issue is notability... The non-criticism sections of this article don't delve into every possible little fact about Engadget (where an editor lives, where they grew up, what they ate for breakfast this morning), so it's also not appropriate to detail every little criticism either. In fact, as far as notability goes, the standard is currently fairly strict... I removed the list of Engadget writers, not for censorship reasons, but because other articles on major newspapers don't list their full staff, and it's probably not good to portray Engadget as being significantly more important than the largest newspapers out there. If the full staff list of Engadget isn't important enough to be included, then many of the criticisms aren't remotely important enough to be included.
Another issue is OR/Verifiability, or whatever you call it... it would not be appropriate to ask a random person on the street "what do you think about this front page of Engadget?" "Oh, I really don't like that shade of blue", and then add that statement here. People say crazy random things sometimes, and it's not the goal of wikipedia to document every crazy random thing someone says, even if you can find a few people from Digg who would agree to a given statement. --Interiot 19:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
So, I think I am going to give up on this, you do make some good points, and frankly I think I'm wasting my time. About the criticism section, IMO this is what we should do: remove the Politics thing (it's a pointless criticism), keep Misattribution, remove the layout thing (which I see has already been done) but link to the cited article. I'll add the link, and I probably won't check to see if it gets removed, so use your best judgement if you do (ie. don't remove it because you are biased and think engadget is beyond *any* sort of criticism, ahem 70.193.136.218). Rm999 20:58, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Rm999 is clearly biased, just because a criticism has been made does not make it noteworthy. Please note that his view of what should be in Wikipedia differs significantly from established standards for inclusion. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.193.136.218 (talk • contribs).

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