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June 20, 2005
Wikitorial Post Mortem
Posted by Ernest Miller
The LA Times's 'wikitorial' experiment lasted but a few short hours. It was launched Friday morning (LA Times Wikitorial Experiment Begins). Was quite active for about two days (LA Times Wikitorials - One Day Later). And then was shut down abruptly on Sunday morning (LA Times Wikitorial Has Left the Building (For Now)).
Editor and Publisher runs an AP wirestory on the debacle ('L.A Times' Explains End of its 'Wiki'). ZDNET News cites a couple of letters to the editor (L.A. Times Sshuts Reader-Editorial). The NY Times weighs in (Postings of Obscene Photos End Free-Form Editorial Experiment). And, finally, the LA Times itself ('Wikitorial' Pulled After Vandalism).
All of these articles talk about why the 'wikitorial' was shut down: a profusion of pornographic images. In particular. goatse.cx.
But none of these articles bother to address whether the experiment was working up to the point of the vandalism. Sure the wikitorial was forked into a pro and con side, but were either of them any good? The LA Times introduced its wikitorial with an editorial (A Wiki for Your Thoughts).
Do you see fatuous reasoning, a selective reading of the facts, a lack of poetry? Well, what are you going to do about it? You could send us an e-mail (or even write us a letter, if you can find a stamp). But today you have a new option: Rewrite the editorial yourself, using a Web page known as a "wiki," at latimes.com/wiki.
Here are a few questions: were any of the revisions less fatuous? Was there less selective reading of facts or more? Were the revisions sufficiently poetic? (I don't think that changing the title from
War and Consequences to
Dreams About War and Consequences is particularly poetic, but it certainly is fatuous.)
Reporting that the wiki has been shut down is the easy part. Letting people know whether the experiment was otherwise successful is the hard part, and no one in the traditional press seems eager to confront it.
UPDATE 0600PT
Welcome Insta-readers!
Jeff Jarvis provides a much better post mortem than the traditional press has: Wiki Cooties and the Death of Editorials.
Well now the LA Times has given wikis cooties. The New York Times and other media outlets have covered the collapse of its wikitorial project and I've heard more than one old-media person say, well, I see LA tried wikis and it's dangerous.
It is bad enough that many in the traditional media don't understand how wikis can succeed - they can be exceedingly useful and productive. It'll be worse if they don't understand how wikis can fail.
UPDATE 2 1020PT
The Observer Blog from the Guardian has a good summation (Wikitorials. Must Have Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time):
The LA Times probably thought it was inviting the internet to join it on the anti-establishment barricades. In fact it was throwing open the doors to the Winter Palace. That the mob went on the rampage is not all that surprising.
UPDATE 3 1610PT
A commentor claims to be behind the vandalism: Son of Goatse.
Comments (16)
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Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. Ed Poinsett on June 21, 2005 04:07 AM writes...
It was bound to fail. There is no point in letting thousands of people rewrite an editorial. It would have made more sense to have left the editorial alone and have the audience leave comments about it. There are also enough jerks to try and hijack it with porn and nonsense.
Permalink to Comment2. Robert Mayer on June 21, 2005 04:09 AM writes...
Ouch. Goatse is harsh. I still remember the days, years ago, when I would take my friends' vision virginity with the likes of Goatse.
Permalink to Comment3. TEH [M] on June 21, 2005 06:47 AM writes...
They'll never understand geeks like us at teh [M] lol.
Permalink to Comment4. Ilya Haykinson on June 21, 2005 10:22 AM writes...
For what it's worth, I wrote up about some personal experience with the Wikitorial. The LA Times folks are very open to doing things the right way, if they can.
Permalink to Comment5. Ernest Miller on June 21, 2005 10:30 AM writes...
Ilya,
You make some excellent points and I recommend your post, but I'm not sure if whether editorials are the best sort of content for this sort of thing. I think you'll end up with two brochures for the left wing and right wing take, and not something more nuanced and worth reading. It isn't simply the process, but the goal, that is flawed.
Permalink to Comment6. Paul on June 21, 2005 10:57 AM writes...
I printed out a version of the Wikitorial which was in my opinion much meatier than the weak L.A. Times original version, although it contained obvious points of humor and sarcasm. It was around the time of 11 AM on June 17th. Unfortunately, I didn't download the page.
snippet:
"It would be helpful to recite, more than two years after the war began, the sorry litany of the Bush administration's failures in Iraq. However, this would spotlight the media's own failures in reporting them, so we won't. Better to talk about the future than our own culpability in this crumbling enterprise."
Permalink to Comment7. antonymous on June 21, 2005 01:29 PM writes...
I don't really understand fully WHY the la times chose to do a wiki as an editorial in the first place. It seems against common sense to me, as an editorial will always offend SOMEONE, and now you've gone and granted them the power to remove the offending material with something to their own liking.
An idea that I really like is to do a similar to ./ moderation system (-1 through 5, moderated by users) - someone else also brought up the idea of modding things different colors to describe political leanings...both are excellent ideas. Having users who can alter the entirety of an article is not a good idea, as it leaves everyone else with no clue as to what the original idea is. A moderated comment system allows users to ADD to the discussion, not just delete what they don't agree with...
Enjoy in moderation.
Permalink to Comment8. Steve Magruder on June 21, 2005 01:33 PM writes...
I've caught wind that the L.A. Times staff is putting the blame on Internet trolls, especially some coming from the Slashdot membership (and I resent the baseless mean-spirited blame-others-first name calling with respect to Slashdotters!). I'd like to turn that thought around on them. Why didn't the staff make any preparations for the _inevitable_ spamming? To have not made any preparations tends to make me believe they weren't really serious about this project in the first place.
Wikimedia (a little non-profit foundation) had and has a plan for dealing with this reality with respect to the Wikipedia and other wiki projects. Why couldn't the for-profit L.A. Times come up with one? I know it's unusual for corporations to take responsibility for their own failures these days, but that is indeed my request.
Permalink to Comment9. M|22 on June 21, 2005 02:23 PM writes...
Hey guys what's going on in this thread?
Code:[G]ayhem fisted all your mothers!
Permalink to Comment10. Dark on June 21, 2005 02:49 PM writes...
Hey everyone. I am not really dead. I faked my death hahahahahahaha FOR DETAILS VISIT WWW.GENMAY.COM AND ASK ABOUT ME!!! HAHAHA
Permalink to Comment11. M|22 on June 21, 2005 03:12 PM writes...
www.tubboy.net brought to you by the [M]
Permalink to Comment12. I'm not a script, da on June 21, 2005 03:43 PM writes...
In Soviet Russia...
...Slashdot tr0lls vandalize YOU!
What a country!
Permalink to Comment13. laertes on June 22, 2005 01:00 AM writes...
Anyone familiar with the desecration of the Herms in 5th-century Athens just prior to the Syracuse expedition recognizes what's gonig on with the Wikitorial experiment. History shows that pure Athenian democracy doesn't work. Pure democracies have always proven too unstable, too prone to violent mood swings, and too susceptible to demagoguery and spur-of-the moment reckless groupthink adventurism. Modern democracies function as well as they do because they're not pure democracies, but admixtures of a republic (representatives) and pure Athenian-style democracy (the California-style initiative system) and parliamentary system (judicial review, supermajority required to change the constitution and vote cloture on filibusters, etc.).
The internet, alas, remains a gigantic pure Athenian-style democracy...which means, of course, a seething global electronic lynch mob inflamed by the passions of the moment and obsessed to the exclusion of serious matters by any pet-rock-type fad that comes along. The term "troll," unique to the net, represents a form of Newspeak. To understand that bit of jargon, we must translate it from net-speak into colloquial english--
TROLL -- translation: "someone who applies skeptical critical thinking, logic and facts in evaluating the frenzied passions of the mindless lynch mob misnamed `the collective brain of the planet,' AKA the tyranny of the lowest-common-denominator majority."
Permalink to Comment14. Hi, Im Al Gore on June 23, 2005 05:23 AM writes...
And I am proud to bring you the internets.
Permalink to Comment15. Ross Mayfield on June 25, 2005 03:25 PM writes...
Sending in this open letter to the editor tomorrow, would apprecate contributions.
Permalink to Comment16. Ross Mayfield on June 25, 2005 03:49 PM writes...
Oops, wrong link. To make up for it, here are some right ones:
* Wiki page for editing the letter to the editors
Permalink to Comment* Snapshot of the letter
* Kicking off the letter
* Wikitorial Fork
* Initial skepticism