Honestly, there are more important things to life than to be posting random diatribes on a somewhat professional blog. I'm not sure why I read that story (or even the background stories he referenced--hey, its saturday), but after getting a gist of the situation, I have to say to everyone involved: "Get over it. Don't let these personal rants further pollute what otherwise could be a great technology blog." Ah, now I understand people's disgust for TC.

More important things in life, or at least more important things for this community. The top two stories right now are two dudes complaining on their blog. One giving the same old tired reasons why Apple is turning sour, and the other telling a personal vendetta that I don't give a shit about. Sometimes I don't understand this community. There's a few stories on the front page that deserve to be much higher than these two.

I regularly visit the "new" page in attempt to upvote stories (sometimes flag them) I feel will make the home page a better place. I encourage other to do the same.

Isn't this just more of the same old drivel about that Sam whatever-he's-called, but without naming him? Who on earth is voting this pish up and, more to the point, why? I'm genuinely interested.

1 line summary: Reporter/columnist decides he will not honor the privacy request of 'off-the-record' disclosures if he discovers that the source was lying to him.

However, who determines that the source was lying? If the journo in question thinks he was lying to? This would discourage any insider from talking to him anonymously

He's not a reporter/columnist. He works for TechCrunch. Did you seriously think he'd go to jail to protect sources? Look at all the other journalistic ethics they've declared "irrelevant".

Although I'm not a huge fan of Paul Carr, he did work for the Guardian, and now for the Telegraph, so I wouldn't judge him by TC association alone.

I took the word "irrelevant" and its association to actual journalism from his own post.

Since I can't "down vote" is it possible to not see stories from certain domain like techcrunch? YN doesn't get updated at the same rate as other social media sites like reddit and more than half the time there are 2-3 articles from TC. This is seriously annoying since there is not way I can prevent this annoyance from showing up on my YN.

May be this might help : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

Thanks. I don't use GS, but I might have to start using it - will give it a shot.

I don't see what he is so pissed about. Yeah he was lied to but he found out and didn't publish the bad information. Isn't that what journalism is all about, verifying facts?

He's pissed that he didn't have this week's magnet for page views, and he took action by further demonstrating how TechCrunch is an inadequate substitute for real journalism.

This is what bothers me about this: He points out that journalists have a name for one type of sourcing (presumably to indicate that he knows something about journalism). He then mocks them for being irrelevant.

After this, he goes on about his own struggle with sourcing in today's age. He invents his own (probably not unique) rule for anonymous sourcing and announces it and says he's going to spread the word. The "Techcrunch House Rule" for anonymous sourcing I guess.

Aren't these the issues that journalists deal with all the time? That's why they made those rules; the same reason he just made one. His smugness drives me crazy. It's like watching a wannabe physicist mock Newton and then declare that he's discovered this special kind of thing that pulls objects downward.

He assumed that people were telling the truth, let alone their shady affiliation or desire to stay anonymous. Gee, I wonder what they teach in journalism class.

Honestly, I don't get this.

Can someone please help me get out of my ignorance?.

NSFW for me is "not save for work", it doesn't make sense to me.

About the story, I don't understand why this is the second "hot" history. Is it because it is from techcrunch or something, and HNews needs to post every single history there?

"NSFW" is the name of his column: http://www.techcrunch.com/author/paul/

Apparently it's supposed to be edgy or something.

So he's been writing for how long? And just now he's learning the pitfalls of off-the-record covered in Journalism 101?

This will just drive away sources.

It's easy to pose all macho and righteous on this issue. But there's a reason journalists protect sources; on balance it helps them do their job, even with the reality some sources abuse the confidence to dissemble.

And what happens when Carr mistakenly believes a source lied, burns them, but then discovers the source was telling the truth? The betrayal of confidence and repercussions for the source may be irreversible.

Arrignton made a similar pledge that TC would promise to respect embargoes, but then break them. How many embargoes has TC broken since?

I'm just curious: what's the NSFW label for? I don't see any material that seems to warrant it.

It's the name of his column: http://www.techcrunch.com/author/paul/

There's swearing.

I thought not-safe-for-work was that guy's column's name.

... In the title. If swearing bothers you I doubt you'd click a link with a swear word in the title. NSFW is the name of the column.