Alicia C. Shepard - The New York Times : "A Los Angeles Times experiment in opinion journalism lasted just two days before the paper was forced to shut it down Sunday morning after some readers repeatedly posted obscene photos.
On Friday, the paper introduced an online feature it called a wikitorial, asking Web site readers to improve a 1,000-word editorial, "War and Consequences," on the Iraq war.
Readers were invited to insert information, make changes or come to different conclusions. The model was based on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can add facts.
"Skeptics are predicting embarrassment," said an introduction to the wikitorial in Friday's paper, "like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, The Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than be hip. Nevertheless, we proceed."
What they had not planned for was hard-core pornography, which the paper's software could not ward off. Its open-source wikitorial software allowed readers to post without vetting from editors, who could take down posts only after they appeared.
During most of Friday and Saturday, readers thoughtfully altered the editorial. Some did add profanity but just as quickly a Web master took it down.
"Nothing bad happened really until after midnight on Saturday," said Michael Newman, deputy editorial page editor. At 8:32 p.m. Saturday, a posting on www.Slashdot.org, which bills itself as "news for nerds," directed readers to the Times wikitorial.
"Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious," Newman said. "We were taking stuff down as soon as it went up and staving them off. Finally we had to go to bed. Someone called the newsroom a little bit before 4 a.m. and said there's something bad on your Web site, and so we just took the whole site down.""
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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