Talk:UK's 'ban Trump' petition passes half-million mark

NYT
Behind a paywall for me. I'll have to do something about that; deferring decision on what. --Pi zero (talk) 19:26, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Search for it using Google news, that bypassed the paywall for me. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:28, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Verified in private browsing, with search "trump bar muslims widely condemned" and it comes out top plus accessible. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:31, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I managed to verify what was needed here, but my means only worked because I knew precisely the quotes needing verification. It's been a long time since I've been able to get around NYT's paywall altogether by that technique.  Bottom line, best to avoid NYT when I'm going to be reviewing.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:02, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Recess
The recess dates are in the external links section. The petition site is pretty obvious on the 100K requirement to be eligible for a debate, but that's not going to happen until after parliament reconvenes. Already corrected where you'd lost "debate", but might be better with the actual date they reconvene being in there somewhat as was previously. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:47, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * By my reading of the table, they aren't in recess yet. Makes things complicated.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Petition 'appearance'
To clarify on this:

The petition would've been up on the site within 48 hours of being submitted. It wouldn't appear on the front page of the petition site until it started trending. That's easily confusing, but there are hundreds of active petitions and only the most-frequently signed ones get featured. Sloppy writing from the Gruniad, I'm afraid. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:50, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Hate being wrong, but checked the JSON data... petition opened: "2015-12-08T16:39:59.718Z". I'd speculate it's sat, ignored by civil servants, until they'd heard Trump's moronic comments. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:54, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Likely. --Pi zero (talk) 21:10, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Original Research
Just done a little hacking on the JSON data. Count up 500+ signatures stating they're from MPs! That's a majority of the House of Commons. Those are verified signatures, they all end the name field with " MP", and have some special identifer field of "mp" in each data item.

Just in case some are faked/forged (Like George Osbourn's) want to put in that a majority of MPs have signed it. That allows for ~150 fake sigs. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:13, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * By my understanding of the word, a signatory is someone whose signature appears on a document; so even if they were all fake it would be true that those MPs are signatories. Double-checking after the fact, I find not all dictionaries pick up on that nuance; Witionary doesn't, the second Random House unabridged doesn't, but my hardcopy compact OED (the real OED, not the modern thing) agrees with me.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:32, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Whatever works. 3:) --Brian McNeil / talk 21:35, 12 December 2015 (UTC)