I've read with growing interest recent coverage of the Rendon Group, the privately held company reported to have been hired by Douglas Feith to undertake the disinformation campaign denied his pentagon organisation, the OSI.
There seems to be some difficulty in accounting for all the diaries here covering the subject, and I thought to use this as a vehicle for both applauding and critiquing the recently introduced folksonomy system, aka tags.
Finally I have a suggestion involving tags, URLs, and duplicate diaries.
When I began this diary there was a
diary on the recommended list concerning the Rendon group, in particular the comments of Larry Wilkerson on CNN.
I noted one previous diary on the subject, but wasn't really engaged until I too heard Wilkerson's remarks. On reviewing coverage here at Daily Kos, I realized this was an example of an important story that could be used to briefly illustrate what's right and what's wrong with tags, and how to use tags to make research and commentary at this site more efficient and useful, and perhaps even enable further research on the topic.
Because of the problems, oft noted, with the built in search utilities here at Daily Kos, and because I have my own tracking system for Daily Kos diaries, I can compare a number of search methods. Here are the results.
As of 6:56 this morning, I found 8 stories that contained the string "rendon" in the last 2000 posted. I use the very simple method of storing all the non stop word stems of each diary and looking for my search term (in this case "rendon") among them. I did have to weed out two articles that matched on "Clarendon" only. In addition the article numbered 2 below mentioned Rendon when I first recorded it but in later versions those references seem to have been removed.
Using the tags "Rendon", John Rendon, and "Rendon Group" I found 0, 3, and 4 diaries respectively, all on my search list.
Using the search term "Rendon" in the built in search engine, choosing Diaries and search all sections, I get ... 0 diaries.
Using google search query "site:dailykos.com/story rendon" I get 70 hits.
After sucking all these in and parsing down to unique story urls, these resolve to 21 stories, of which one dates from 2003, 8 from 2004, and 12 from 2005.
Of the 2005 stories, only 4 are as recent as October 12, and only one is from November. That reference, and two others, are comments in open threads, not diaries. Perhaps most interestingly, NONE of the google hits matches the tag hits or my home brewed search hits in the last 2000 posted diaries.
Here are the googled Daily Kos Rendon regular diary hits that I have records of (all in 2005). I've looked at all these, and the Rendon reference in each case is in the comments, not the body.
Here are the google hits that I don't have in my records: they are from 2003-2004, so I can present only reference by date.
- Nov 18, 2003
- Feb 10, 2004
- May 30, 2004
- June 2, 2004
- June 3, 2004
- June 5, 2004
- June 8, 2004
- June 12, 2004
- September 28, 2004
Two final bits of interest: although the Rendon group has a substantial presence on the web, as evidenced by the number of google hits for "Rendon Group" (42,000), it doesn't make the news much: google news hits are exactly 8. Here they are. Note that Knight-Ridders paper, the SJ Merc, joins the Rolling Stone as the sole main stream media outlets mentioning the Rendon Group, at least according to this search.
Google News hits for "Rendon Group". I'm adding these because I've found that results can change rapidly for Google News searches, and this documents the number of hits as of this date and time. The search was performed at 9:19 AM PST, and I just got the same results at 11:26.
- Firm Helps US Mold News Abroad
Media Channel, NY - Nov 14, 2005
The Rendon Group, directed by former Democratic Party political operative John Rendon, has garnered more than $56 million in Pentagon work since the Sept.
- Forged Niger documents tracked to Rome
Toward Freedom, VT - Nov 9, 2005
And Brookes was a member of the Rendon Group, a public relations body formed by the Pentagon to promote Chalabi and his organization.
- The Return of Chalabi
Antiwar.com, CA - Nov 8, 2005
The Iraqi National Congress (INC) originated as a project of the Rendon Group ?~V a public relations firm founded by former Democratic National Committee
- The Plame Affair Leads to Rome
CounterPunch, CA - Nov 1, 2005
Francis Brookes: member of the "Rendon Group," a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.
- PENTAGON TRIES TO MANIPULATE COVERAGE OF IRAQ
Free Market News Network, FL - Nov 15, 2005
One of the firms that the Pentagon is using in this effort is the Rendon Group, directed by former Democratic Party operative John Rendon.
- Firm helps US mold news abroad
San Jose Mercury News, United States - Nov 16, 2005
The Rendon Group, directed by former Democratic Party political operative John Rendon, has garnered more than $56 million in work from the Pentagon since the
- The End of the "Embed?"
PEJ News, Canada - Nov 8, 2005
This is not a good time to be seen as an embed, what with the exposure of New York Times hack Judith Miller as a virtual employee of Rendon Group and its pet
- The Man Who Sold the War
Rolling Stone - Nov 17, 2005
His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal
Just to belabor the obvious, let me summarise the meta points.
Site search is well beyond broken, it is functionally non existent. Can we get some help here?
Tags are useful, but require more user vigilance and manipulation than should be required, and can be misleading. Although I applaud the ability to actually find recent some recent diaries of interest using tags as well as the list of similar tags that is now provided, the shortcomings of using tags as search are very obvious. The most obvious shortcoming: if it isn't tagged you can't find it. This covers a variety of problems, including tag variants, mis tagging, and untagged older diaries.
Google as site search is very useful, but not very current. Using google I got exactly zero hits from the last 2000 diaries that contained my search term, just as bad as on site searching. For people who want to keep up with current trends, or, for example, avoid duplicating diary subjects, google does not render the help needed.
I have two suggestions (for Markos) concerning tags. First, it would be possible to use tags to flag potential duplicates in the diary preview. That is, alert diarists to the existence of recent diaries with the same or similar tags by providing them a list of same, as part of the preview. Second, turn every external url referenced in a diarists article into a tag, using a tinyURL like approach. In combination, these two changes would allow authors to see recent diaries similar to theirs with very little extra effort.
Once again I am amazed to discover that my dinky little search set up here at home gives the most complete recent search results available (to me) for a web site of, without being at all extravagant about it, national standing. This seems beyond peculiar. I hope many who read this will feel moved to recommend to Markos that this situation be remedied soon.
Any non meta content? Keep after Rendon! I hope this helps.