Ivan Davydov. Good-natured slyness

Good-natured slyness
Interpol Issue 67

Ivan Davydov

Date of publication: October 16, 2001

With howl and native, of course, closer to the body. Therefore, let's start with a description of both existing and upcoming changes in the citation rating of online media , which is published weekly by SMI.Ru.

Babies news

Last week, the rating added another participant - the small but proud specialized publication Netoscope joined the fight against the industry giants. A priori, it was assumed that the result of this kind of implementation would not be particularly impressive: the other participants are publications with a more socio-political orientation, and the same type of media dominates the source base. All this directly provoked a forecast: the citation rate of Netoscope would, at best, not be particularly high.

Contrary to everything, “Netoscope” made its way to the very center of the rating in the first week of its participation in the rating, and in the second week, although it passed, it was only slightly. Moreover, the specialized publication dedicated to the Russian Internet market is quoted not by regionalists, who are traditionally greedy for free information, the main source of which is gradually becoming the Network, but by quite reputable central publications. We can only sincerely rejoice at the success of our colleagues: it is evidence of the overall success of online media. The fact is that the presence of a request for professional information about the Internet coming from the leaders of the offline information market (to which Netoscope’s position in the ranking is direct evidence) is a significant moment. The environment has finally ceased to be perceived as marginal. That is: there is another reason to think - everything that has been done in recent years on the Internet has not been done in vain.

“Netoscope”, on the occasion of its own success, burst out with a solemn article : “According to SMI.ru, the level of influence of an online publication is determined by the number of links from it in various offline media.

And it was precisely by this criterion that “Netoscope” overtook some of the old participants in the rating, among which were SMI.ru themselves, and Vesti.ru, and even NTV.ru. Ahead and by a large margin, however, there are such giants as Gazeta.ru, Strana.ru, Lenta.ru ."

For the archive, we note that an article about the rating also appeared in NG. Not unknown to many in our narrow circle, Pavel Chernomorsky, an ardent publicist and partly analyst, exposes the machinations of dishonest online businessmen:

“Often, managers of online media themselves call their projects influential, citing high attendance ratings. This is done, most likely, out of deceit, in order to attract advertisers, who often have little understanding of network issues. Advertisers, by the way, are themselves in captivity myths about the Internet and are often sure that the Internet is full of their clients - rich, bored, ready to give money for anything. The myth about such a user is shattered by elementary statistics. But this was not the case. Practice shows that advertising companies invest money in network projects, but then inevitably get disappointed . "

“This is most likely being done out of deceit” is a phrase recommended by professionals for use in information wars. Please note that we are giving away know-how for free.

But the appearance in the Netoscope rating, by the way, is not the only, and not even the main - sorry, colleagues - news related to the citation rating (which is also, in moments of sinful self-confidence, usually called the influence rating) of network media in the "mass media." RU".

The main one is like this. Since the opening, news agencies have been rushing into the ratings, starting with monsters like RIA (that’s right - starting: RIA representatives were the first to send an application), and ending with smaller game. At some point, the developers (that is, yours truly and his colleagues) simply had no strength left to restrain this pressure. In this connection, a short announcement: a specialized rating for news agencies within the framework of the Citation Rating project on SMI.Ru will start in the very near future. Tentatively, next week. Details will be published in SMI.Ru in the near future. It’s worth making a reservation in advance: the enterprise will be more modest in scale than the original rating. Simply due to greater labor intensity.

By the way, the most observant part of the audience could have guessed about the impending changes in advance: a week ago, SMI.Ru conducted a survey on the topic “What is Lenta.Ru?” . It was not carried out by chance, of course. The answer options testified both to the editorial staff’s considerable sense of humor and to the editorial staff’s good relations with some colleagues (or, rather, to some colleagues). The options are: “Network media”, “Network agency”, “Household service”. The survey has ended and the results can be viewed. The author of these lines, if you are interested, agrees with the majority of citizens who took part in the survey.

Citizen lied

From the survey conducted by SMI.Ru, you can move with equal ease to two others scheduled for today: revelations - regarding surveys in general - from the editor-in-chief of the revived Internet.Ru, or to news from the life of Lenta and its chief editor. I don’t even know where to start: the word is right, both are equally significant.

Let's start with polls. That is, from the Internet. Internet.Ru published an article by Alexey Kovalev, “Internet polls: congratulations, Mr. Lie . ” Actually, articles in Internet.Ru (for now, oh, of course, for now) appear so rarely that each of them can be announced as an event. Regardless of quality. Interesting editorial policy.

This same article, in addition to the fact that it appeared on the site, is also interesting in itself: firstly, the author describes a quite interesting (albeit criticized within the same article) experiment to determine the degree of reliability of online surveys. And it smoothly leads us to the conclusion that loud statements about the results of online surveys are made, most likely, out of deceit. Next, a number of tips are given on how to make an online survey on your own website reliable, for which we refer the reader to the article, and we will quote only the first:

“It is advisable to leave the first line of an online survey blank or fill it with an answer that is not interesting to you, in order to cut off those who mindlessly press buttons . ”

This thought is so deep that your humble servant never got to the bottom of it. Recommended for morning meditation. But regarding the rest of the advice, there is one remark: no matter how you formulate the questions in this kind of votes, you cannot especially hope for their reliability. Due to blatant unrepresentation. And the author of the article presumably understands this. And he talks about the opposite, most likely out of deceit. Out of good-natured slyness.

Allow and give

But to "Lenta", to "Lenta"! "Lenta", firstly, by covering the course of the war in Afghanistan, in passing added a lot of new things to the understanding of the essence of the Internet environment. Well, that's what the leading online news publication is for. Who should be in charge if not.

So, the unknown hero, translating into the language of his native Aspen the words spoken by an overseas official that bin Laden uses the Internet to communicate with accomplices, told us, in addition to the program, the following :

“As you know, the Internet allows you to maintain anonymity and at the same time makes it possible to communicate in real time . ”

Just like that. Congratulations, sir, without lying. The Internet allows, and at the same time gives. Most likely out of deceit. Although there is still some coquetry here.

But the editor-in-chief of Lenta, Anton Borisovich Nosik, also gives , or rather, gave a press conference on the Izvestia website. The event turned out to be quite protocol, most of the questions were friendly, but also boring, the answers matched the questions. We fix it for the archive. It would be worth quoting the announcement, but it is not preserved on the newspaper’s website, and I won’t undertake to reproduce it from memory: because who would take a word for it. Considering the almost inevitable threat of the presence in this very word of a fair share of not entirely good-natured slyness.

So enough of the slyness. Let's move on to serious matters.

Echo of great construction projects

Perhaps the Motherland has no more serious task than building a civil society. As you know, it is being built on both sides, just as subway tunnels were built before. But since our builders are digging in different directions, they are unlikely to converge. So there won't be a fight.

So, the stages of two great construction projects.

"Charter.Ru" has grown. A colorful insert appeared on the website - “Information Agency of Civil Unions”. Well, as befits an agency, it drives news. For those who are not particularly concerned about the news of civil unions, it is worth reading at least Mr. Pavlovsky’s manifesto - for familiarization, in case it comes in handy?

One of the interesting things there: a point in the debate that has been going on for months about whether there is a civil society in Russia at all. The answer for Russia is almost standard: there is, but it is small and of depressing quality. In the original language it sounds like this:

“No serious attempt was made to form a “society lobby” in any of the areas significant to citizens - defense, security, health, property protection, protection of conditions for economic growth, jobs. Civil unions found themselves outside the real agenda, taking aggressive and defensive positions ". Without offering quick non-partisan solutions in the zone of mass visibility, unions and organizations of citizens, together with the bureaucracy, contributed to the actual depoliticization of the population. Corruption in public structures is at the same level as in state ones. The comparative smallness of the volume does not make it excusable . "

Accordingly, you have to build from what you have. What result to hope for is an open question.

Also open (or rather, in a different way, of course; this is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to play with words) has been “The Bell” since last week , another online publication of another builder of a different, but also civil, society, Boris Abramovich Berezovsky. There is a suspicion that “The Bell” is being opened for the second time, which does not prevent it from being a quite high-quality reference publication.

As for the non-reference material... According to Berezovsky, civil society is a constant fight between salaried activists and representatives of government authorities. Actually, it was not worth opening “Bells” in order to prove this: even from “Fringes” everything was extremely clear. But unfortunately for Berezovsky, the fight doesn’t work out: they simply don’t notice him. Since there will be no fight, there is no chance of shaking fists either during or after. In connection with this, activists on salary wave before, or rather instead of. Shadowboxing is a well-known technique among boxers, but it has the same result: you lose weight. And Boris Berezovsky and his comrades, it seems, were so carried away by a simple exercise that they lost too much weight. And now they simply will not be allowed to compete in the category that they usually count on. A sad and logical result.

Mobile Phone Ban Project

But it’s not our business to instill despondency. Our job is to instill fun and joy. In this connection, we report what “Soviet Russia” reported not so long ago: the website of deputy Shandybin has opened ! “Soviet Russia” also blamed in its message that the liberal press is cowardly hushing up this fact (literally like this : “Our regular reader discovered the official website of the communist deputy Vasily SHANDIBIN on the Internet. Unfortunately, there was no information about his discovery which is still quite difficult to find through search engines. But, nevertheless, we congratulate both the authors of the site itself and its hero! "

Here, I am correcting the sins of the liberal press.

Everything on the site is worthy of careful study. But especially careful consideration is the following passage :

“Vasily Ivanovich does not have a mobile phone, not to mention accounts in foreign banks, mansions, luxury cars and shares. “I’m still waiting for someone to give me a mobile phone,” Shandybin says sarcastically, hinting that other members of the Committee in energy, transport and communications, interested companies in search of favors have long been inundated with gifts. Shandybin would definitely ban mobile phones. “We have a gangster state, and a normal Russian man does not have money for a mobile phone, so either officials or the rich use them, - says Vasily Ivanovich. Fines are useless - the owner of the phone will not even notice the loss of this amount. We need to come up with another punishment . "

I didn’t fully understand what Deputy Shandybin meant. But, most likely, there is some deceit at work here. Some good-natured slyness.