BlogWorks: Rethinking the wikitorial

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June 20, 2005

Rethinking the wikitorial

This just in: the wikitorial, a DIY editorial attempted last week by the Los Angeles Times, had a very short life, as it was immediately hijacked by trolls. Now, who could have seen that coming? Some interesting takes from other blogs:

Back Seat Drivers, a news commentary blog from Ireland, had details on the actual offenses: "But, along with the expected participants on the Times wiki site were some unexpected activities. First, one user managed to change the headline on several pages to read "Fuck USA," Kinsley said. Editors managed to remove the offensive headline, which went up at about 2 p.m. EDT, but lost some other input from readers at the same time.
"We had to sort of take it all down for a while and some stuff was lost," Kinsley said. "We don't know who it was, but he has been locked out."

Teleread says the LA Times shouldn’t give up yet, and sees a possible conspiracy: Newspapers need to engage readers with interactivity, and that’s what wikis and related forums can do. If the trolls are a problem, the answer is old-fashioned human editing. No everyone will like the results, but in newspapering, what else is new? If those people really do give up on wikis prematurely, then we really do need to ask a question raised by a commenter in Ernie Miller’s blog. Did the Times undertake the experiment to discredit wikis? Or wait. I have another angle. Did wiki fans set out to sabotage the Times because they disliked the notion of the MSM making money off the wiki approach?

Ernie Miller's blog examined the first 24 hours of the wikitorial, attached to an editorial about the war in Iraq.

In Dan Gillmor’s blog about the persistence of trolls, Glenn F commented: “You should see the horror show over at SF Gate where people trying to post comments about the young copy editor who has a very poor prognosis for a rare form of cancer are battling trolls: at least one person is posting over and over, "so die already" and similarly unpleasant, unconstructive remarks."