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Apology to Readers, Corel, et al.

Posted by justin++ on from the totally-my-fault dept.

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.

4 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Stuff that matters . . who needs the truth by Money__ · · Score: 5
    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.

  2. Probably should update as well by Gleef · · Score: 4

    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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  3. What can be done about the long-term problem? by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 3

    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!
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  4. Retractions are honest by Outland+Traveller · · Score: 3

    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.