Apology to Readers, Corel, et al.

Yesterday, I posted a story speculating that Corel might drop WINE in favor of (what isn't really) a competing product. This was a huge mistake on my part, and I hope Corel, Wine developers, and the Slashdot readership in general will accept my apology. Normally on a blooper like this, I'd update the story, but I think this needs to be noticed by everyone who read the original.

Comments

Stuff that matters . . who needs the truth

[Money__]

I would like to thank /. for putting up a retraction after getting a story wrong. This is good to see. Thanks for being up front and honest about the situation. Sometimes fast moving news isn't always firm. I would rather see the fast moving news keep coming (with an ocasional oversite) than see the speed of /. slow down for editorial reasons.

Re:Stuff that matters . . who needs the truth

[Psiren]

I agree. We all make mistakes sometimes. It often takes guts to own up to it, especially to the net in general. What I would like to see from /. is less US bias. Perhaps there should be more non-US folks posting stories. Here in the UK nothing much gets posted until mid afternoon. There surely must be something interesting to us europeans submitted once in a while. Is this too much to ask?

Re:Stuff that matters . . who needs the truth

[Chalst]

Well, the BBC Sci/Tech news site gets cited pretty frequently. I don't think the UK does so badly, unlike continental Europe whose representation is really dire, especially considering what a high proportion of Linux development goes on in Germany.

No problemo!

[deefer]

And I'd like to think those who slammed you yesterday will find forgiveness in themselves also.
Congratulations on having the guts to admit your mistakes.
I forget if it's a traditional, or some eminently quotable source, but "If you've never made a mistake, you've never made anything".

Good on yer, Justin and /.

[Get Behind the Mule]

For some people, "I was wrong" is the hardest thing to say. Can't say that I'm good at it, either. If posters had karma, Justin's should be bumped up.

the "buzz"

[Hard_Code]

Part of slashdot is being in tune with the "buzz" of the industry/community, whether or not that "buzz" always turns out to be true. Just as long as slashdotters know to take a rumorous story with a grain of salt, and that articles are being totally fabricated, it's cool.

Probably should update as well

[Gleef]

Justin, you probably should put an update on the story as well, perhaps pointing to this one. That way people searching through the archives later won't get confused if they just find the older story.

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Slashdot can CONFIRM *some* stories & still B fast

[Sleepy]

Hey, mistakes happen. I won't pretend I haven't made them, publicly. You won't see the "big media" - which probably snickers at the mention of Slashdot - run front-page apologies. We've heard only bare whispers of retractions when the media jumped the gun on Egypt Air. And they never retracted on their "profiling" of the Columbine killers, and playing into the hands of the would-be bookburners who want to begin with video games and movies...

ANYWAYS, I don't want to see Slashdot slow down, but there's a lesson for you here in facts-checking. It's not always the case, but here you had month old press releases which contradicted the gist of your post, links which the Slashdot Peanut Gallery was more than quick to provide. :)

If all goes well, we'll see just a little more fact checking on some of these posts. I'd rather see some of the stories last a little longer than 36 hours, and carry some real back and forth debate like the old /. (it seems like some stories get rolled off while still news, and active posting).

What can be done about the long-term problem?

[Paul Crowley]

I'll join the chorus of people giving Justin kudos for running this, and I'm sure that you're giving some thought to how you can try and prevent similar incidents in the future. It's not a trivial problem - I think we, the Slashdot readers, should be thinking about it too!

This was quite a big mistake, so it needed a prominient correction, but little mistakes slip into /. stories all the time, sometimes spelling mistakes, other times misunderstandings of the slant of a story; it ends up that you *have* to read at least the highest scored articles on a story if you want to know whether there's any truth to it. What can we do in future to try and make it easier for the /. editors to post accurate stories?

Here's an idea. Could be shot down, but might inspire workable ideas along the same lines. Nominate a group of "slashdot helpers" from among the higher scored volunteers (like moderators). When ./ editors post a story, they can choose to put it in a queue waiting for a helper to give it a once-over; helpers will be notified that there are stories awaiting their attention. Helpers can either accept the story as is, or bounce it back to the writer with a comment, or perhaps a suggested modified version (the original is of course preserved). When writers resubmit, they can choose to put it back in the queue or put it straight on the pages.

I bet there are a hundred or more /. readers who would make good helpers for this sort of job. I think you could choose some good helpers and still have no story waiting in the queue for more than ten minutes. And I'm damn sure it would improve the spelling and factual accuracy of some of the stuff here!

You could even give helpers specialities - I for one have often wished I could have commented on a crypto-related story before /. posted it...

I'm sure this idea has problems. Consider this put in the queue - let's see what ideas people have!
--

Re:What can be done about the long-term problem?

[Chalst]

Well, there is no guarantee that any of the helpers knows anything about the story, and it would delay the time that news takes to surface, kind of defeating the purpose of this kind of site.

In the current case, what would have made a difference would have been if Justin had asked Corel whether or not this affected their plans for supporting WINE. Slashdot really should establish relationships with open-source friendly companies to ensure they can get quick responses to these kinds of questions.

Re:does this mean more apologies?

[kir]

Ummm... don't you think you were just a tad-bit too hard! This whole thing (/.) started off as a couple of college guys with too much time on their hands ;-) and has turned into (in my opinion) one of the best OS/Technology/general-geek-stuff websites in the world. As someone earlier in this thread mentioned, it's not like they retracted this story 2 months later with a small print blurb on page 107 (as most "respectable" print publications do)!

Thank you /. for keeping me up to date on all the coolie-cool geek stuff in the world. Thank you /. and Justin for posting a prompt and honest apology. Now if I could just get the USAF (my current warde... umm... employer) to apologize for years of hell and give me that raise I so dearly desire (letting me becoming a civilian), the world would be perfect place!

Actually, you can teach a donkey how to sing, but he will still sound like an ass...

--
Kir

Retractions are honest

[Outland Traveller]

I'm very glad to see such a visible, open retraction. Every publisher (especially news publishers) make mistakes. What seperates a site with integrity from a site like, say, anything ziff-davis is the ability to admit mistakes.

I want my news to be simply informative- retractions don't take away from that. The kind of places that don't care about retractions are usually trying to use their position as a news provider for more self-serving ends. They don't care so much if the news is true, so long as you get it from them.

a general problem with news on the internet

[TheCodeMaster]

It's been said before, but it's still true. The quicker news cycle (i.e., from time story is first acquired by the news outlet to the time is it released to the public) is shortening by the minute, and the primary victim of this reduction in time is complete fact checking before publishing.

It's always been up to the reading public to demand complete verification of stories from the news outlets they use, just now people are required to be on top of the media, to demand quality from it.

Direct from wine-devel

[Ian Schmidt]

Corel showed 6 of their apps compiled with WineLib at COMDEX: WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations,
Paradox, CorelDRAW, and Photo-Paint.

There are some screenshots of some of the apps here:

http://newmedia.corel.com/webcast/gallery.htm

Update the prior Article Too!!

[jelwell]

You should also update the previous article for those people link directly to slashdot. Joseph Elwell.

Damn you Justin!!!!!!!!!!

[Nexeslad]

Damn you Justin! Damn you to hell!!!!! I lost everything becuase I thought Corel was dropping Wine. My Wife, my family, my job. If you had just gotten the facts rights the first time none of it would happend. I belived you when you said Corel was dropping linux, I trusted you. Damn the day you were born!!!!!!

Well Said

[Bruce Perens]

Well Said. It takes strength to admit a mistake.

Bruce