On Apr 2, 2007, at 5:34 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 13:13:10 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The issue becomes how it's being reported,
then. Is the list of cars
being compiled in relation to cars, or in relation to the list-
makers? If it's the latter, it's much more like FA cup results.
The article is on the Top Gear Cool Wall. It lists the cars which Top
Gear put on the Top Gear Cool Wall, grouped by the section of the wall
in which the Top Gear presenters and audience decided to place them.
It is broadcast as part of Top Gear, a copyright BBC programme. There
is no objective standard by which the list could be independently
derived, the way it is derived is an intrinsic part of the Top Gear
show. Specifically, one of the criteria is "would Kristin Scott
Thomas be seen driving this?" And this is not based on asking her, as
was made abundantly clear when she appeared on the show and trashed a
number of the cars which Clarkson had rated as cool using the Scott
Thomas test.
Put that way it looks a bit less ambiguous than even I had thought...
I disagree entirely. If this is a list within an article on the
content of the list then I don't see a meaningful difference between
it and the FA cup results being yanked from the FA website. In both
cases we're taking primary source information directly. We're not
offering it as a list about the coolness of the cars - we're offering
it as information about the tastes of the cool wall, which is wholly
sensible for an article about the Cool Wall.
I'd agree with you entirely if we were talking about cars here, but
we're not - we're talking about the ranking system itself. Thus the
subjective judgment of the rankings is immaterial to the discussion.
-Phil