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Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

nytimes.com

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Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#11

Post by mirimir »

TACIXAT wrote: post #5
thisisit wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is a meandering and muddles it point but here's the paragraph where the actual point is made: In 2001, an eBay user might have given an eBay seller a low rating for an unsatisfactory packaging job; in 2018, an Uber driver might be dinged if a rider doesn’t like his personality or choice of music. Facebook recently began ranking publishers by trustworthiness, based on feedback from users. Upon discovering…

The other point was sites are often trying to address social issues with market solutions. Facebook's mission is social connection but its profit is attention bidding.

Maybe "stated mission"? Do you believe that Facebook's mission is actually social connection?

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#12

Post by thomasfedb »

jen729w wrote: post #7

Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

As a writer I will jump through linguistic hoops to move uncapitalised proper names away from the start of a sentence - for example, a medical device called "i-gel" which I wrote a paper on. Starting a sentence without a capital is just too jarring in formal writing I find.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#13

Post by jedberg »

jen729w wrote: post #7

Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

It usually happens because they have an unbreakable rule that all sentences start with a capital letter.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#14

Post by Stratoscope »

jen729w wrote: post #7

Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

I don't know if it is large organizations in general, more specifically it seems to be the N.Y.C. media. They are so stuck in their hidebound style guides and rules that they apply them even when they are wrong.

N.Y.C. itself is another of their rules: put the dots in anything that seems like it might be an acronym or initialism, even when when the rest of the world stopped using the dots decades ago. When was the last time you saw NYC spelled as N.Y.C. anywhere, except for the N.Y.C. media?

These organizations will always write I.B.M., F.B.I., C.I.A., H.P., and so forth, even when those companies and organizations themselves do not use the dots in their official names.

What I can't answer, though, is your question: why do they insist on this even when it contradicts the correct usage?

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#15

Post by saagarjha »

voltagex_ wrote: post #10
jancsika wrote: post #8

On the other hand, it's a drag that there isn't something like Yelp for FLOSS. I would have loved to see a rating and some reviews of several development processes before wasting my time posting patches.

I'm getting pretty good at working that out. Note that this isn't a dig at any particular project, I know FOSS is hard and free time is scarce (and so is funding). Quick ones: 1. Date of last commit to main repo 2. Number of issues open on Trac/Bugzilla/GitHub/Jira whatever (note, I'm taking a point off if you use Trac, only because there's still an instance from 10 years ago sending me emails that I can't unsubscrib…

I like to look at the reactions maintainers have to pull requests. Do they usually get merged, or do they end up being dragged through a bureaucratic nightmare and eventually closed?

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#16

Post by koushikn »

jancsika wrote: post #8

On the other hand, it's a drag that there isn't something like Yelp for FLOSS. I would have loved to see a rating and some reviews of several development processes before wasting my time posting patches.

Isn't CHAOSS - https://chaoss.community/software/ that ?

Why isn't it very popular? Why don't people have it like the travis-ci badges?

Edit: https://cauldron.io seems to be a hosted version of GrimoireLab.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#17

Post by voltagex_ »

saagarjha wrote: post #15
voltagex_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting pretty good at working that out. Note that this isn't a dig at any particular project, I know FOSS is hard and free time is scarce (and so is funding). Quick ones: 1. Date of last commit to main repo 2. Number of issues open on Trac/Bugzilla/GitHub/Jira whatever (note, I'm taking a point off if you use Trac, only because there's still an instance from 10 years ago sending me emails that I can't unsubscrib…

I like to look at the reactions maintainers have to pull requests. Do they usually get merged, or do they end up being dragged through a bureaucratic nightmare and eventually closed?

I've never written anything popular enough to really get pull requests, but I can definitely understand not merging a pull request due to not being able to maintain that code or it taking the project in a different direction to what you want.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#18

Post by tonyarkles »

thomasfedb wrote: post #12
jen729w wrote: post #7

Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

As a writer I will jump through linguistic hoops to move uncapitalised proper names away from the start of a sentence - for example, a medical device called "i-gel" which I wrote a paper on. Starting a sentence without a capital is just too jarring in formal writing I find.

Yeah, doing a MSc in CS that references a bunch of companies and open source projects... there was definitely some mangling needed to keep the uncapitalized proper nouns away from the start of sentences.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#19

Post by Stratoscope »

jedberg wrote: post #13
jen729w wrote: post #7

Why do the style guides of these large organisations often insist on the ludicrous capitalisation of "EBay" when it appears at the start of a sentence?

It usually happens because they have an unbreakable rule that all sentences start with a capital letter.

That is no doubt the reason, and it seems like a reasonable rule on the face of it.

But there ought to be another rule that takes priority over that one: when you use the name of a person or company, capitalize and spell it as they spell it. They are the ones who get to decide. It's not the prerogative of a third-party publisher or newswriter to override that.

It seems like a simple matter of humbleness and deference to whoever owns the name. It's eBay, not EBay, and IBM, not I.B.M.

What I don't understand is why a news organization would feel it's their business to override that - and why it's especially prevalent in the N.Y.C. media.

It is entertaining though! :-)

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#20

Post by fyfy18 »

I’m not exactly sure what point this article is trying to make, but as a regular eBay user, these are my biggest issues when using the platform. I’m based in the UK, so some of these may not apply for other locations.

- Delivery times aren’t accurate. When I buy something from eBay I expect it will arrive within a week, but if I want something to arrive in a shorter time I buy it elsewhere. There is no way to filter listings to find which sellers will post an item today, and ship it via a method that will arrive tomorrow. A lot of listings are marked Fast&Free, but those have an estimate delivery date of Thursday.

- Too many Chinese sellers. A lot of items are sold by Chinese sellers who list the item location as in the UK, but in the description say that there is a 20 day delivery time. If I want stuff from China I’ll buy it from AliExpress.

- Too many duplicate listings. If I search for a common item where there are a few variations, I usually see the same item repeated a handful of times on the first page.

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