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A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

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Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#31

Post by haarts »

This project deserves more credit than it gets. It is vital to have a clear, unbiased view of our leaders, large and small. For investigative journalism but also for the curious citizen. Being sanctioned is no small matter and being able to find the source opens the door to recourse.

I'm happy to see that OpenSanctions choose to become sustainable by allowing companies to get a license to use their data.

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#32

Post by dang »

jessaustin wrote: post #8

Quoted post unavailable.

If you keep posting flamebait to HN and using the site for political battle, we're going to end up having to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We've had to ask you about this many times already. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28039859 (Aug 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24537038 (Sept 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23242575 (May 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22783030 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22212130 (Feb 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20538796 (July 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20220277 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241078 (Feb 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17615385 (July 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447998 (July 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16758976 (April 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739604 (Nov 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950922 (June 2016)

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#33

Post by bertil »

rjmunro wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about the inclusion of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as separate entities, but listing Governors etc. of dependent territories at the bottom of the UK (Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Pitcairn) which, although they are quite small places, are more independent than Scotland and Wales. I wonder if it would be worth separating US states rather than putting all…

What criteria would you apply for independence? The ratio of the locally decided budget over overall government spending in the region?

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#34

Post by bertil »

toyg wrote: post #13

This is the sort of thing that really newspapers should take on collaboratively, since they would all benefit from it every day. Sadly, it's a field where egoism rules. Not the only one for sure, but you'd expect better from the class that we, as a society, basically authorize to preach us every day about the values of our time.

I’ve been positively surprised by how leading newspapers have been, notably in open-sourcing their software. It’s far from perfect but some teams internally see the value of what they do, and a handful of managers get that by commoditising certain aspects, like software or hopefully basic facts, they can highlight their unique contribution.

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#35

Post by hffftz »

dang wrote: post #32
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Quoted post unavailable.

If you keep posting flamebait to HN and using the site for political battle, we're going to end up having to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We've had to ask you about this many times already. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28039859 (Aug 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24537038 (Sept 2020) https://news…

Politics is OK only when it suits your views?

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#36

Post by rjmunro »

bertil wrote: post #33
rjmunro wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about the inclusion of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as separate entities, but listing Governors etc. of dependent territories at the bottom of the UK (Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Pitcairn) which, although they are quite small places, are more independent than Scotland and Wales. I wonder if it would be worth separating US states rather than putting all…

What criteria would you apply for independence? The ratio of the locally decided budget over overall government spending in the region?

I would restrict the top list to UN member states + a few places that aren't covered by the UN. Scotland and Wales are covered by the UN via the UK, so they shouldn't be listed. Ideally I would have them as separate pages within the UK.

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#38

Post by pvaldes »

haarts wrote: post #31

This project deserves more credit than it gets. It is vital to have a clear, unbiased view of our leaders, large and small. For investigative journalism but also for the curious citizen. Being sanctioned is no small matter and being able to find the source opens the door to recourse. I'm happy to see that OpenSanctions choose to become sustainable by allowing companies to get a license to use their data.

> It is vital to have a clear, unbiased view of our leaders, large and small

Having in mind what CIA has done typically with many leaders in the past, there is a non-negligible probability to this project be used for very bad things also, sadly. Turning the project into an extortion list would be the less concerning of them.

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#39

Post by pjc50 »

rjmunro wrote: post #30

I'm not sure about the inclusion of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as separate entities, but listing Governors etc. of dependent territories at the bottom of the UK (Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Pitcairn) which, although they are quite small places, are more independent than Scotland and Wales. I wonder if it would be worth separating US states rather than putting all…

> but listing Governors etc. of dependent territories at the bottom of the UK (Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Pitcairn) which, although they are quite small places, are more independent than Scotland and Wales.

This is largely an artefact of the UK's weird internal governance structure, which seems determined to leave everything as sui generis rather than have some kind of system. In the US or German or Swiss system the answer to "is this a state or federal power?" rarely depends on which state is asking.

(Yes the US has its non-states as well, DC and PR, which should probably also get regularized)

Re: A CIA website was out of date about who runs the UK

#40

Post by adhesive_wombat »

> Unfortunately Wikidata's single-item-based view, coupled with inconsistent modelling across different countries, makes it really difficult to see what's missing or incorrect...

Wikidata modelling is a complete disaster: basically nothing has a solid, documented and maintained model, and no one appears to be working on it very much compared to the amount of poorly-modelled data being poured in.

I'm surprised anyone gets anything of use out of Wikidata. Which is an enormous pity, because it's got incredible potential. But that's what I thought 10 years ago, and it's not really got much better, except now there's so much data it times out more often then not unless you are lucky with your query optimization.

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