Often, people have a portal that they sign onto, like Yahoo, etc., where they can also get news.
On such sites, you should have the option of blocking certain news items that keep reappearing that you don't think are newsworthy. Enron comes to mind, but you can insert your own example.
ex.
Enron is still a sucky stock pick. [block Enron]
Hoof and mouth back! [block hoof and mouth]
Clinton tells all. [block Clinton]
Britney Spears movie tops box office. [block Britney Spears]-- seal, Jan 18 2002 Ananova http://www.ananova.comA news web site that has the "turn off major news" button. [Aristotle, Jan 18 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Do you think that this would require some sort of standardized format for the news stories? The filters/rules you set up, if based just on parsing the story for an objectionable word, might block stuff you want to see, like:
Britney Spears movie tops box office. (so, you block Britney Spears)
Next day the headline reads:
Britney Spears Shoots President Bush (which you may want to see [or not])-- bristolz, Jan 18 2002 Just a pass over the headlines on the front page might do.
Stories might be grayed out instead of disappearing entirely, so that important ones -- "Spears Accused of Violating Geneva Convention", "Spears and Bush Exchange Fire, Both Killed" -- can still catch your eye.-- Monkfish, Jan 18 2002 "Spears extinguishes bush fires"-- po, Jan 18 2002 This is virtually baked with the Ananova news site.
For a start all news stories are classified by a wide range of topics. This classification is not ideal as the few stories that are about Iain Duncan Smith (the lastest bald leader of a specific UK political party) are not always marked with his topic but this system works well enough and they are as defined as finely as the idea proposes.
This allows you to mark the topics you want to read about and have your own personal page, which has a 1 paragraph summary of the main news at the top and a band of popular topics in the middle. A halfbaker could set up his or her personal news page to track the latest on Inventions, Quirkies and Buffy the Vampire-Slayer for example.
However another key feature is that when there is a big story, so big that everyone is fed up with it, they have a one-click button that hides the news related to this untill you click on the button to unhide it.
This is not a well known site I have to admit, which was to my advantage when the fate of the WTC caused most other news sites to collapse from the stress of people seeking news.-- Aristotle, Jan 18 2002 Col. Buffy Vampire-Slayer (rtd.) DSO-- hippo, Jan 18 2002 C'mon, "Spears Shoots President Bush"??????????
Even if that happened, you don't think it'd be *everywhere* else on the web, tv, radio, newspapers, etc.?
In other words, I wouldn't worry about real news being missed by blocking "Spears" on your favorite news site.
The REAL problem is frivolous "Britney-type" news taking space away from news stories that I might care about but have been pushed off the bottom of the main page.-- seal, Jan 18 2002 oh, not a block of news then?-- technobadger, Jan 18 2002 // C'mon, "Spears Shoots President Bush"?????????? Even if that happened, you don't think it'd be *everywhere* else on the web, tv, radio, newspapers, etc.? //
Minus 10 points for question mark abuse.
Sure it would probably make the rounds of all the media (though it's more likely Bush would shoot Britney Spears), but that's not what this idea's about, is it?
You're talking about this one site. If you want to claim the 'out' that the story would still show up everywhere else if you have it blocked, that'll happen no matter what the story is. Spears or otherwise.
As Peter points out, the ability to filter out all of the stuff you don't wanna know, and get only that news which fits your view of the world, is quite baked.-- waugsqueke, Jan 18 2002 Waugs, as you alluded to in another topic and as I'm beginning to learn, it's somewhat pointless to argue with you so I'll try to minimize this futile effort.
News sites that I've been to, (Including Ananova) do not have this word or theme-based blocking option. I'm not sure what Peter is referring to.-- seal, Jan 18 2002 Okay, [seal], so I chose a ludicrous example but the way headlines, and news, are often written, it seems to me that it would be easy to inadvertently filter out stuff you want to see.-- bristolz, Jan 18 2002 [Bristolz] Yeah, but with news about Britney Spears or Enron, I'm willing to take that risk. :)-- seal, Jan 18 2002 random, halfbakery