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Editorial Wiki Debuts At LA Times
jgarzik writes "The L.A. Times newspaper has launched a new form of editorial, the wikitorial. The LA Times editorial staff introduces the new feature in this editorial, and the first wikitorial, War and Consequences , has already been posted. Is this an innovative new way to interact with readers, or will it be constantly defaced by reactionaries?"
Why would radicals not also be capable of defacing it? And why use the word "deface" anyway? Are any opposing opinions automatically supposed to be "defacing" it?
...because when radicals do it, it is simply another form of honest protest.
You can be a "member" of LA Times and let us fill your mailbos with shit, or you can not be a "member" and read our articles off the google cache.
Thanks, I think I'll stick with Google.
What's currently important is not the question of "will it be defaced?", but "will it help removing some of the trenches that are in the US public opinion? Will it add positively to a constructive dialogue between the people?"
I think that it will not, because the predominant circles active on the internet today fall pretty nicely in line with the LA Times readership, so there are not that many dialogues between the rivaling parties. But add a editorial wiki to a bible belt newspaper, and there will surely be dialogue going on indeed.
Wikis are good if you're trying to build something that does not contain opinionated material. Or at the very least you want to contain the editors to have pretty similar opinions. If you open it up to the public, there is no way you can come up with a coherent, opinionated view, because by definition people have their own opinions. The Wikipedia works because it has as one of its most fundamental rules the Neutral Point of View. Additionally, it's an effort to build an encyclopedia, which is meant to represent facts as they are. Wikis are also good for building documentation, which is pretty objective in its matter. Wikitorial has none of these qualities.
In using wiki to maintain editorials, the paper is effectively telling the users to alter the content to match their own opinions and beliefs (since that's what most people would tend to do). Digestion of news is usually best done through reading many different opinions, each with an accredited source, to be able to form your own from the information. One 'unified' article in the wiki style doesn't seem to fit with this model, and I'm concious that a lot of people are trying to force wiki's to become the new 'blog' style phenomenon of internet publishing.
To me, a traditional comments thread would be far more appropriate for news reporting. A clear example of the suitability of these two methods can be seen here on slashdot as using wiki for a substitute to comments.. clearly something that would be cumberous at best, and most likely completely hopeless at effectively digesting stories.
Business Voyeur
The circles YOU go to may be in line with the LA Times but many of them are not.
You will also find that Republicans are far more tolerant of other people's ideas than Democrats. See, Red States don't have the luxury of hiding from Blue State ideas. They are constantly exposed to them via TV, Film, Radio, etc. Only Blue Staters have the luxury of isolating themselves from opposing points of view.
Case in point, the Speech Codes in force on most US college campuses today. These Codes expressly restrict speech (often at government run institutions) on threat of expulsion. These Codes are meant to close down the free marketplace of ideas and protect the entrenched majority at colleges FROM ideas. These speech codes create what Orwell called Thought Crime.
I assume you are correct that a Bible belt newspaper would have a more open dialogue than the LA Times. The reason being that there would not be enough Blue State Bigots. It is often impossible to debate ideas with these people because the Left has become so intellectually bankrupt that they can no longer debate ideas. Instead they instantly resort to tactic common in infantile children either pie throwing (see the recent rash of instances involving guest speakers at colleges) or name-calling (Bu$Hilter Chimpy McHaliburten).
The Democrats have devolved into being an group of people driven by hatred. They are just angry all the time. It is impossible to have a rational debate with people that reached this level of paranoid mania. They engage in a daily 5 minute hate ritual (usually over lunches) where they talk about how Evil Bush is and how Hillary will save them (ala Orwell's Goldstein vs Big Brother).
In the Bible Belt, they have to learn how to deal with people who think differently from them. In LA and NY you can just live in your own little homogeneous ghetto and never be exposed to new ideas.
Yes. Kind of like how a crazy shit who agrees with me is an activist, and a crazy shit who disagrees with me is a radical or extremist.
Newspapers need to embrace the Web, but not like this.
When we reporters go out and gather information and write a story, there needs to be a way for readers who know the topic to say, "hey, this is wrong," or "hey, you forgot this key point." After all, the reporter is almost always less knowledgable on any given article that he writes than his sources and certain readers.
I could see a wiki or wiki-like technology being useful in correcting news errors (*cough* avoid jayson blair *cough*) or adding new perspectives (*cough* slashdot writ large *cough*) or even gathering story ideas. What's more, such technology would turn newspaper websites from electronic reprints into something even better than the print edition.
But an editorial is supposed to be the voice of the newspaper itself. It is supposed to be an opinion with special significance, informed by all the reporting and editing the newspaper does over time, backed by an awesome institutional storehouse of knowledge.
In short, the whole point of an editorial is that it represents one particular viewpoint, whether you agree with it or not. If the Wall Street Journal as a collective entity repeatedly slams Congressional Republicans for pork-barrel politics and fiscal irresponsibility, as it has in recent weeks, that carries particular weight, because the WSJ backs the Republicans more often than not and because it arguably keeps closer watch on the intersection between the economy and government than anyone else.
Likewise, there is reason to care when the LA Times forms a new opinion about California government, the entertainment industry or myraid other subjects at which its expertise is authoritative. If you disagree, fine. You can write an op-ed opinion piece, or letter to the editor. You should certainly be empowered to post a comment on the LA Times website or a trackback to your own weblog post.
But why on earth would I, LA Times reader, want you monkeying with the actual text of the LA Times' editorial? Why would I want to read a version of the editorial you defaced? If I care about your opinion -- maybe you're a film director who disagreed with the LAT on an entertainment industry editorial -- I would much rather read something you wrote from scratch than your own "version" of the LAT editorial.
This seems misguided and frankly I am baffled why opinion editor Michael Kinsley, who used to helm Slate.com -- does not know better.
[1]Too many Iraqi troops have deserted, been overrun or are so poorly equipped that they should not be counted as trained forces
[2]But today you have a new option: Rewrite the editorial yourself, using a Web page known as a "wiki," at latimes
[3]For that reason, when you click below to enter the wikitorial area, you are acknowledging that the Los Angeles Times is not, and cannot be held, responsible for the words or actions of other readers on these pages
I do have a problem with those who would codify their religious beliefs and hold all others to them (see Islamic law or the Spanish Inquisition) but to say that only atheists or nonbelievers in $FAITH need apply for public office is just plain wrong.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
There's already a revert war in progress between some user Jim Hall, who wants to title a section Downing Street Memo: The Left Questions Bush's Intentions on Buildup to War in Iraq) and another user Alainbloch who wants to title it Downing Street Memo: An Intent to Deceive?. The changelog contains comments such as "removing falsehoods" and "adding fair commentary". I predict this is going to devolve into an all-out edit war from between both "liberals" and "conservatives" with too much time on their hands -- like what happened to the George Bush and John Kerry entries on Wikipedia during last year's election, but magnified by a hundred times because of the LA Times' higher visibility. Wikis are useless for contentious topics meant to be reader-editable; each reader will inevitably inject his own bias into the article -- some will even try to eliminate what they perceive as existing bias. On Wikipedia, say in an article about the history of Macs, a fanboy may end up putting in too much of Steve Jobs' bio...relatively harmless. Here, in the Colosseum of the LA Times Wikitorial, gladiators from the left and right will battle it out over "falsehoods" and "fair and balanced"...to no end whatsoever.
Traditional dead-tree newspapers these days are scared to the death about their own survival because online news sites like Google News are luring Joe and Jane Click-Happys away from them. Putting aside the stern journalistic theories, LA Times might be onto something by creating this "Wiki Wrestling Arena" for political partisans to congregate and fight it out, thereby boosting its sagging readership.
Wiki is a fascinating technology. The jury is still out on its virtue. Will it some day replace blogs? Personal journals? Social networking sites? Or perhaps instant messaging? We'll see. I've recently begun to test a free wiki hosting service called "PBwiki", which has a unique function -- it has a password-protection mechanism that lets the creator of the account decide who can edit his wiki pages. I've created a test wiki at: http://sunandfun.pbwiki.com/, which has a link to the page where you can create your own account with them.
Sun and Fun
Of course it will. The LA Times is just trying to discredit "Internet Media".
Don't stereotype Slashdot. The membership consists of people who are barely into middle school and those who have their Ph. Ds, and just about every single person you can think of in between.
Not only that, but (like usenet before it) the membership contains a mix of old hands and newbies - including a continuous flux of the latter.
The old hands have gone through the arguments, changed some of their opinions thanks to the insights of others, and now are pretty stable in their current mindsets (pending NEW data or insights.) The newbies arrive with only the opinions they have formed on the basis of their own reasoning and the data and interpretations they have observed elsewhere, ask the same old questions or spout the same old arguments, and are presented with the same old revalations. Many of them absorb some of the insights and become enlightened (in one or more of the many ways available). Some of them contribute conter-insights, and the consensuses are honed. After a while they to become old-hands, ready to present the latest rev of enlightenment to the next round of newbies. And some of them take their newly honed memes to other forums (fora?),
To a viewer who makes the three standard media mistakes of assuming a static population, homogeneous in experience and in opinion, much of the traffic appears to be an infinite-loop debating society, rehashing the same old arguments with no progress whatsoever. In fact there are multiple sets if ideas (often competing) among subpopulations of members and an ongoing process of learning, improving, and spreading the successful arguments both to new participants and to a broader external audience.
Much like a university. Or an interacting collection (NOT a single instance) of political parties or religious/philosophical organizations.
And (like usenet before it), the occasional set-in-his-ways gadfly who NEVER learns and ALWAYS brings up the same old, discredited arguments whenever his hotbutton subject arises, serves a valuable function. He provides a periodic opportunity for the other participants to dissect the errors of the stock arguments and present (and hone) the refutations - bringing up the old subjects (when external events have made them interesting again) so the new participants can see all sides of the issue. You can't count on the current crop of new players to raise the strawman and have it blasted apart every time it's topical. As we used to say in usenet: "If didn't exist we'd have to invent him."
Indeed, very occasionally someone did. But a real true-believer would do it SO much better. So it is fortunate there would usually be at least one of the genuine article hanging around. B-)
The web is teeming with information. Unfortunately, most of it is probably worthless.
Sturgeon's law: "But 98% of [Science Fiction] is [excrement]". "Madam, 98% of EVERYTHING is [excrement]".
It's the 2% that is important. Music hasn't gotten worse since the Classical stuff was written. There was just as much crap back then. But only a few exceptional masterpieces are still being played. Yet there are enough of those to keep orchestras and classical music radio stations in business worldwide.
However, don't become so pessimistic. I don't think that the level of national dialogue has declined. It's probably stayed the same. The internet has just given more ignorant people an easy way to express themselves.
IMHO - honed by half a century of observation - the level of national dialogue has been vastly improved by the unlimited access of the internet.
Yes it gives the ignorant-yet-opinionated an opportunity to spout. And EVERYBODY is BORN ignorant, and at first absorbs a set of opinions from his/her parents, acquaintences, and local authority figures. So unlimited access means there's a LOT of ignorant-but-opinionated spouting. (Fortunately ignorance does NOT equal stupidity OR pig-headedness, and ignorance can be cured very simply.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How do you define "liberal bias"? I hear some people call "bias" when newpapers report such simple and obvious facts as that the invasion of Iraq has turrned into a Mongolian clusterfuck, or that there is a global scientific consensus that human action is impacting the climate.
Newspapers are as "liberal" as the corporations that own them. Much of the bias is better seen as "urban versus rural" - for example, fear of firearms versus the RKBA breaks down better along urban/rural lines than left/right. Acceptance for those of other races, religious, and sexual orientations is more vital when you pass a half-dozen different cultures on your way to work in the morning than when your nearest neighbor is a ten-minute walk away.
And since these large papers are based in large cities, it should be no surprise that their bias tends to the urban.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood