
Transparent: Chrome extension to see news article edits over time - dkarp
http://www.transparentmetric.com/
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fblp
cool. I've used a similar chrome extension for tracking other businesses
feature and pricing pages. Have you thought about B2B usecases?

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dkarp
I have thought about it. There is a lot of data behind the scenes on how the
news sites are behaving; when they post, when they make edits, what kind of
updates they make etc and also I run some NLP on the stored data to try to
find what edits are more important, that data isn't displayed anywhere at the
moment.

It still isn't totally clear to me who the customer would be though and the
basic features (i.e. how it is now) will always remain free.

At the moment it is still a little buggy, especially displaying the diffs on
the page, so I am focused mainly on ironing that out.

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m0nty
I really like this, and agree that the diffs need to be clearer since it's not
easy to get a Wikipedia-like overview of how a page has changed between the
earliest and latest editions. AFAICT, you have to step through a version at a
time and it can be tricky to see the overall, cumulative effect of all the
edits (please tell me if I'm wrong).

But it's fascinating and very worthwhile to see how the articles change over
time. I've often wondered in broadcast media how editors make their decisions
about which parts of the story to (de)emphasize as it develops during the day,
with earlier versions often seeming to have a completely different spin from
the later ones. I suppose partly they've had time to think about it, more
information has become available, and I also suspect lobbyists and other
interested parties have been on the phone.

Thanks :)

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dkarp
you're welcome, thanks for the feedback.

You're right that at the moment you need to step through each change
separately. I'll soon add some more information to the popup so you can get a
better idea at least of the size of the changes.

Since I started working on the project 6 months or so ago, I've also been
fascinated how much the stories change. I knew before I started that changes
were being made, but the frequency and size really surprised me. Most of the
changes are grammar/spelling, additional content (as new information comes
through) or updating images, which is what you'd expect. But it's surprising
how often I've seen the wording altered to give a slightly different meaning,
perhaps where an editor has come in with different sentiments.

These edits also obviously mean that when you share an article with someone,
what they read is different to what you shared. So I'd also like to add the
option to share a fixed version of an article.

~~~
m0nty
I was surprised at the volume of changes to this article, the first one I went
to:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-yea...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-year-
economic-betrayal-dragging-down-generation-y-income)

Everything below was lost, I wonder why?

> Analysis: what’s behind the problems of Generation Y?

> Millennials are picking up the tab for the western world’s most stunning
> accounting disaster to date. No one expected people to live as long as they
> are, and in such great numbers. Pensions that were promised in the past, and
> seemed ordinary at the time, are now onerously over-generous, and that is
> hurting young adults today.

> Jonathan Gardner, a senior (Generation X) economist at Willis Towers Watson,
> one of the world’s largest insurance brokers and pension advisory services,
> says the retired are hoovering up so much cash that there is no money left
> for salary increases.

> “For various reasons, not enough was paid in, in the past, which is leaving
> deficits and the company [employer] has to pay,” he said. “People say the
> company should pay this and the company should pay that, but it’s like most
> things: if the company is paying something the money comes from somewhere,
> and it tends to affect workers.”

> In the end, said Gardner: “It’s the young who are bearing the burden of
> those past [pension] mistakes.”

> Democratic imbalance

> Pensioner demands are not just beating down the financial prospects of new
> employees. Retirees are also winning more from governments than they did a
> generation ago. Our figures show double-digit, real-terms growth in social
> transfers – what governments give out – over 30 years to pensioners aged
> 65-79, ranging from as low as 26% in Germany to 146% in the UK.

> UK incomes

> And once again, young people are the ones paying the price. Laurence
> Kotlikoff (baby boomer), a professor of economics at Boston University, is
> astounded at what has happened, especially in America. “The US is out to
> bankrupt its children.”

> The former head of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that although
> he believed the issue was paramount, he firmly believed it was not the job
> of central banks to address it. “The types of policies relevant to changing
> demographics are mostly fiscal in nature, and are consequently Congress’s
> responsibility,” he said.

> There is of course the flip side to these startling shifts in demography. In
> most countries in the set studied by the Guardian, young adults are now a
> smaller part of the workforce than was the case 30 years ago. Theoretically,
> this should have resulted in a rise in millennial wages, says James Pomeroy
> (Generation Y), an HSBC economist who published a report on demography last
> year. Fewer workers means more bargaining power with employers, he said.

> However, this has all been turned on its head by globalisation. In the past
> 30 years, liberalisation has allowed companies to outsource aggressively.
> Everything from telephone helplines to legal services to computer
> programmers are now being provided by outsourcing companies in countries
> such as India or China.

> “That global workforce is easier to tap than ever,” said Pomeroy. “That
> means it’s not so good for your ‘in-demand’ 25-year-old.” The result: a
> slump in real wages over the past three decades for 25-29 year olds in
> several countries.

> Once again it is only Generation Y suffering this fate. Using figures from
> 2010, most five-year cohorts from 40 to 65 posted positive pay growth
> compared with people of the same age 30 years earlier. In the US, Spain and
> Italy, the older you are in the workplace, the higher those wage increases
> have been.

> The consequences

> All this prompts an immediate question about the sustainability of economic
> growth as a whole. For example, what will happen to consumption?

> Middle-aged western consumers who are at the peak of their earning potential
> have been the central plank in the development of the world’s postwar
> economy. They have been key to purchasing all sorts of goods from washing
> machines, microwaves, cars and houses, to life insurance, as well as putting
> money away in savings.

> It’s their appetite for more that has powered global growth for decades.
> What then happens in a few years when millennials get older and don’t have
> the disposable income to repeat the same purchasing exercise? Some
> economists believe that the effects of this are already playing out and, as
> a result, the developed world’s economies may now be grinding to a halt.

> Coyle, the author of the Economics of Enough, agrees that the underlying
> facts are blunt. Older people, she said, can’t take all the returns of the
> stock market. “When you’re a pensioner you can’t eat the stock market, you
> need young workers in the economy to be creating economic output that’s
> available for consumption at that time.”

> Pomeroy added: “If you have a load of people who are 20, 25 and they are
> becoming your core consumer over the next 15-20 years and they are less well
> off than the current crop of people in that age group, then that’s not great
> for growth … you’re in big trouble.”

> “We just don’t know whether we can continue growing the economy in the same
> way we once have.”

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dkarp
I just took a look and I can see what happened; A couple hours after the
change where they deleted so much content, there is another change where the
following is added:

Read on: [Generation Y – a guide to a much-maligned
generation]([http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/millennials-](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/millennials-)
generation-y-guide-to-much-maligned-demographic)

So it looks like they decided to shorten the article and take some of the
content to make a separate feature. An interesting find! I hadn't seen any
like that before. Thanks for submitting.

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m0nty
Ah, should have looked more closely ;) Thx.

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kitsunesoba
Any chance that it’ll be open sourced so it can be ported to other browsers?
I’d love something like this but I refuse to use Chrome and I’d be willing to
put in the time needed to port it.

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dkarp
Actually the extension code is really simple, so one of my next tasks is to
make a Firefox port.

The API is simple and open (albeit undocumented), so there is nothing to stop
someone making a third party port now.

