UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both [email protected] and [email protected] .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
view the rest of the comments
I think the editors of that publication need to step up and take charge, they're letting a lot of mistakes like this slip through the cracks.
The problem is, if you're quoting someone or something, it is considered very unprofessional to make even the slightest changes, even correcting typos in written materials. That's what the [sic] is for, to denote that this is literally how it's written in the source.
See my explanation in the comment chain below.
The fact it comes from urban dictionary is immaterial. It could come from a Facebook post, a presidential press conference or a YouTube comment and the rules are the same. Journalistic codes of conduct don't discriminate between sources when it comes to the handling of quotes.
The fact is, when you're quoting something, anything, taking such liberties with the quote, even for seemingly innocuous/well-intentioned reasons, is a professional minefield no journalistic publication is going to want to touch.
That's what the [sic] is for. It's showing "here's what the person literally said, to make sure we're not misquoting them."
It's standard practice, as "stepping up and taking charge" would mean substituting someone else's words for your own, which is a slippery slope. "Oh he said X, but meant Y, so I'll write that instead" can very easily be abused by people actively looking to misrepresent other's words.
Source: BA Journalism, who had to use [sic] when quoting non-native English speakers (was part of an immigration story). Whenever possible, I'd try to clarify/ correct mid-interview: "oh, you said A, but I think you might've meant B. Is that correct?" That way, you know for a fact it's still their words.
Urbandictionary.com is a mostly unmoderated wikiish popular-definition site. It does not have editors. It is not a publication. I was using the irony of polite language for that vulgar "publication" to be sarcastic on the assumption that most people know about urbandictionary. It also occurs to me belatedly that "that publication" is nonspecific and could reasonably refer to either the publisher of this article or, as was intended, urbandictionary.
Source: misspent youth
There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_jokes_in_Private_Eye that the guardian used to have a reputation for typos and similar errors