Deprecation notice: ‘mayhem’ category

Today we are announcing a deprecation period for the ‘mayhem’ categories filter. This affects all endpoints that accept the categories filter:

Read on to understand what this is, what is changing, and how it may impact you.

What is it?

The categories filter allows you to refine your search for content that matches one or more of the categories listed here. These cover a range of types of content, from accounting to US elections.

The mayhem category was originally intended to show opinion content that represented a middle ground between left and right leaning publications. In reality, it wasn’t well defined and often lead to confusion.

What is changing?

Our APIs will no longer accept the mayhem category (ID: 22) in the filter section of any queries made after this change takes effect. Queries that include this category will not fail, but they will not return results.

After this change, new articles will no longer have this category applied to them. You may still see the category appear in the API response for articles discovered before this change.

What are the timelines for this?

Date Action
2018-09-12 Deprecation notice by email and on this site.
2018-09-21 mayhem removed as a valid option in all APIs and in our documentation.