LA Times Pulls Wikitorial, Blames Slashdot 678
ubermiester writes "The LA Times pulled down it's "beta" wikitorial after people began inserting obscene content faster than the editors could remove it. Though there is nothing on the LA Times editorial page or in the general coverage, the NY Times notes (free reg req) the fact that the bulk of the vandalism occurred after a posting about the wikitorial appeared on Slashdot and goes on to quote a member of the LA Times editorial staff as saying, "Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious". " Apparently Michael Newman thinks that all half a million daily Slashdot readers are malicious, although I personally would guess more like a 60:40 split myself *grin*.
Great attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
And you're proud of that? I'm not sure it's as funny for everyone who might have benefitted from the service that's been taken down.
Can't say I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
1.) The using a shotgun to kill mice [slashdot.org] method for banning users. To paraphrase: Banning entire subnets to catch a single troll, and, therefore, banning tons of innocents in the process. They use vinegar to lure bees instead of honey. Lets face it, the moderation system isn't good, and its just forcing more and more malcontent and loss of posting.
2.) AC's. Really, that's what kills slashdot. If AC posting was removed, there would be a lot less crap. Making an ID is free, easy, and doesn't require you to give out any personal information. Why not tie stuff to an ID so its easier to get rid of the crap? Instead of IP bans, you can setup an IP 'greylist' that means if you create an account from the greylist, they can't post much or have to wait a couple days after registration to post.
Instead of trying to suspend everyones posting to stop trolls, how about we use a little insight and postive effects to combat trolling and crapflooding?
It was a silly idea in the first place (Score:5, Insightful)
What the major newspapers should do however is allow comments (a la slashdot style - include user moderation and some basic spam/troll protection). This would let them to two things:
1. Make more money off of ads (Google or otherwise) as people come back to see who's commented on their comments.
2. Readers can point out errors or omissions - yes, this can have an echo chamber effect such as when a group of liberals and conservatives fight it out about who's got the bigger penis and/or breasts, but overall it might be useful if a anonymous commentator could point a reporter towards another source or more information, or bring another opinion in.
Again, wiki's can be a great thing, but perhaps the format they chose was not the best one. And to blame Slashdot readers is a little silly - I'm sure there were many, many other people who wanted to just grief the article to death. Slashdot just helped people know about it.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
Slashdot giveth, and slashdot taketh away (Score:5, Insightful)
Why blame /. for Wiki problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, the person blaming
Way to go guys (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope you're happy.
wikipeida (Score:2, Insightful)
with
maybe the LA times needs to take a lesson
on content management from a open source project.
Re:T'ell w'tem all! (Score:4, Insightful)
While I perfectly understand why that would piss off people at the NYT, and how Slashdot is known for obliterating webservers in minutes, calling Slashdot malicious because of the famed Slashdot Effect is like calling an elephant malicious because it steps on a hamster.
We're probably better off. (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, it's good to give them a shot. An online community of sufficient size is clearly capable of producing quality content and dealing with constant vandalism. Slashdot and Wikipedia are examples of this. There are just too many people watching to let bad content stay around for long. It's too bad they got hit so early; if there had been a chance for more people to get involved, it probably would be self-regulating.
We kemo sahbee? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
The only protection they had in place for dealing with the masses of the Internet was, "gee, I hope we don't get popular." Slashdot has a readership of about a half million. What if they were featured prominently in the NY Times, and on CNN, and a few million people realised that they could say "Bob wuz here." Slashdot wasn't the problem. You don't have to be tech savvy to edit a wiki.
They could have made a system of moderation like slashdot has. They could have allowed a trusted community of editors. They could have done something more than expect that a few official editors could keep track of a public space in the Internet, and keep it clean. Bad web developers, no twinkie. Imagine if Commander taco had to remove every troll post from slashdot by himself!
Wikis do not give equal voice. (Score:5, Insightful)
The online version of the paper started its "wikitorial" experiment last week. It was meant to give readers a "voice".
It was suspended after it was bombarded with inappropriate material.
The grad student who taught a tech for pre-service teachers class the semester before I took over was researching the use of wikis for his thesis. He kept preaching about how wikis give everyone a voice.
It was finally one of my history teaching majors who pointed out, "Wikis only give a voice to the last person who spoke."
Yes, you can look in the document history and all that, but who does? If the last person to speak was a liar, or wanted to put up some p0rn, or even wanted to spam the page with viagra adverts, that's what you get.
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
What is interesting to me is that /. has some defenses against crapflooding and trolling. These defenses have been built up over years and years to react to new threats. Then the /. user population was unleashed on the LA Times page, with no defenses. Of course it was a disaster. /. bred trolls against a brand new site. Good luck.
I hope that this experience doesn't end the experiment for the LA Times. Maybe they need to build some anti-crap measures into their system first and be ready to react.
Re:I can finally say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly Scapegoat (Score:2, Insightful)
Stupid LA Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming Slashdotters for it is even stupider.
Talk about a failure to accept responsibility!
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot giveth, and slashdot taketh away (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot is NOT the site you should point to when you want to discuss the proper use of moderation in filtering out morons
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
What in the world do AC posts have to do with a wiki at the LA times? AC posting does not have anything ot do with the people who click on links to stories on Slashdot. Removing AC posting would not prevent the malicous users from seeing the wiki.
Unfortunately the LA times reporter fails to realize that the bulk of the Internet is lude(by any sane standard). I don't have any sources, but I would guess that something like 60% of the domains on the public Internet are porn. you post a high traffic page that anyone can edit and it is going to be full of advertisements for porn and generally full of smut. If the NYT had linked to the wiki or a story had been run in the WSJ, it would have been ravaged just as quickly. The Internet is a dirty, dirty place. That is why Internet Security is a multi billion dollar a year industry. And things left unsecured on the Internet wil lbe corrupted if enough people are made aware of them through any communication channel.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
This was a disaster from the get-go, and someone should be fired for blaming it on the software instead of their own bad decision making. They WANTED a blog, not a wiki. A wiki is for information management, and information management takes time.... It's not a commentary system like they wanted.
AC or culpability? I'd rather take AC - for now. (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as these kinds of intolerant mods exist whose sole purpose (so it would seem) is to censor down those posts that they merely disagree with, which of course goes against that person's karma, culpability is not necessarily a positive thing. I know that the metamod functionality is meant to keep this sort of thing in check, but considering how quickly non-inflammatory yet dissenting posts get censo^H^H^H^H^Hmodded down, there should be a better way. Apparently, many mods have decided to ignore Slashdot's recommendation to save mod points for elevating those posts that should be elevated.
I agree that trolls need to be kept in check. In that case, those with excessive, provable trolling (above and beyond just moderator opinion) should have their accounts locked completely; however, I also think that mods who use negative moderation frequently (or even exclusively as many mods claim to do) should not be given mod privileges as often. Being cuplable for what you post is one thing; being targeted because your post doesn't necessarily agree with the Slashdot grain is another. It's difficult to have the former when you're subject to the latter.
Just wait and this post will likely become proof of that. I said something negative about certain mods in this post, so it will most likely be shot down in rating.
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wikis do not give equal voice. (Score:1, Insightful)
Correlation Does Not Equal Causation (Score:2, Insightful)
Fact: The trouble started after a /. posting about Wikitorial.
So what? All this proves is that the Slashdot posting and the malicious kiddies happened to coincide. Unless the LA Times editorial staff has proof that the people who posted the obscenities WERE, in fact, /. readers, they don't have much of a case.
Nothing to see here, folks; move along.
Not quite.. (Score:2, Insightful)
It would have happened sooner or later, they should thank us for finding the bugs right away.
Well a big fat thanks to the hordes of slashdot, eh? Mischeivious, us? No, not really, we're as much victims of the same sort or maliciousness. Ever seen the trolls here before they get modded down? You think these people actually get something out of slashdot other than some place to post their rubbish and feel 1337?
To allege these crimes are from the actual readership or slashdot is tarring us with a brush and I don't much care for it.
Re:What did they do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, how dare they.
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
If you experienced the BBS days of old, you know that Slashdot has zero to do with creating trolls.
AC's. Really, that's what kills slashdot.
Speaking as someone with Excelent Karma and who moderates /. about 1x/week, I have to say nope.
Annonymous Coward posts (like this one) start at zero. If you browse at 1 or 2, you will not see this post unless it gets modded up. At that point, maybe it's worth reading?
I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
The
Just throwing up a wiki does not immediately create a community. It could takes weeks, months or years befoire the sane community outnumbered the jerks.
The stated problem was that vandalism was ocurring at a rate that was faster than the sane people could prevent it. Until there was a sufficient number of people that cared enough about the site to actually perform the required level of moderation, the vandal problem would be the same.
Re:Slashdot giveth, and slashdot taketh away (Score:5, Insightful)
On most other subjects moderation seems to be pretty reasonable. The more tech related the subject matter is, the better the moderation is. Of course, it's also easier to detect trolls, dimwits and other degenerates, which helps.
There's no perfect system, on
Re:I can finally say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Needless to say, a politician has neither.
Re:Wikis do not give equal voice. (Score:1, Insightful)
A Wiki article, on the other hand, comes with no background and no indication of where the author was coming from. You don't know what sort of bias to expect, and therefore you can't know how to read it. So its usefulness is somewhat limited.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
If there is one thing that I can say of a Slashdot reader, it is that that reader has the freedom to chose what they want to read and how they want to interpret it, rather than the 'pre-digested' and outright biased reporting that is available from the media at large. This openness is the key to developing the independent, 'out of the box' thinking; the generalists of the evolving age of Information and Knowledge.
So kudos to Slashdot and their outspoken and many faceted readers.
Well, to their credit (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, while they shouldn't be scapegoating Slashdot, I don't blame them for being supprised and angry. It is amazing the amount of crap some people online will spew and how far they'll go to wreck things for everyone else.
Re:Mischievious and Malicious??? (Score:4, Insightful)
(and since the moderators obviously missed that one... it was the NY Times quoting the LA Times)
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see this as a bad thing. Why are people afraid to say things in person that they can say online? Because they fear reprisals, of a physical or social nature? Threatening physical violence is illegal and a gross overreaction to mere words. And social reprisals (ostracism, humiliation, exclusion) often are not based on logic or reason but pure emotion.
Words are just words. They don't hurt like a stick or a stone. People should feel that they can say anything they want to, at any time.
Re:Great attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wikis do not give equal voice. (Score:3, Insightful)
And how is history any different?
Wikis suffer from the same thing all human endeavors suffer from... too much noise in our communication channel. And by noise I mean information loss (yes noise itself is information but if the objective truth is our goal we want a type of modal information) . You try to describe an event to someone and you have to use words. Plus these words are filtered out by personal perception and biases.
The thing that make these faults so glaring on Wikis is the nature of the internet. The internet tends to speed things up. So the faults of history dont become obvious until maybe a lifetime has passed. However with wikis you see these faults in a day or so.
It's NOT broken (Score:3, Insightful)
I can still find the interesting and insightful content on Slashdot and I'm convinced NO moderation system on a public site like Slashdot could ever make any difference.
There is still good content, and still lots of trolling, but I just ignore the trolling.
And I'm happy. Happier than I would be if I gave a crap and started trying to "fix things".
That way lies madness.
Re:Not quite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It has to be this way because its free. Or at least as free as anything can be. Its almost as free as in air, even if its just free as in beer.
The innocence and idealism which created the internet to be open and available to anyone with access to a modem or university network in that late sixties and early seventies has been pushed aside by a harsh reality. People behave in evil ways when there are no constraints. They do so until they choose to stop.
That is the cost and the benefit of freedom.
In the long run its worth it, but right now, because there are so many who strike out looking for attention and who love creating disturbances, the internet is a bit like the old west: untamed and just a bit out of control.
What happened with the LA Times is they simply didn't think it through. If they had asked any guy on the street what would happen if they let anyone edit an article on the internet, his quick and non-surprising answer would be, "Oh someone will put up porn!"
Well Duh! Everytime someone invents a new medium, what's the first content?
Porn. Its always porn.
If someone invents a holodeck kind of thing, you can bet the first thing he makes with it will be a walk through porn movie.
LA Times should have thought it through. I think the idea can still work, they just need to put in more safeguards...
Raydude
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that AC posting isn't limited to trolls. New readers just wanting to chime in, people who don't want to say something that will be linked to them (you see a lot of non-troll AC posts in threads dealing with personnal, hard issues... depression/suicide, sexual preferences, etc).
Re:Mischievious and Malicious??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They should have ridden it out... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
We started to go wrong when treating the symptoms became easier (or at least, more profitable) than treating the disease. Too dangerous to go outside? Let people pee in the bus. Much cheaper than actually dealing with the crime. Even cheaper if you don't install a toilet.
Crime isn't the only situation, the pattern plays out over and over in both business and government, even when the costs of the symptoms end up adding up to more than the original cost of fixing the disease. How many companies don't properly spec software designs or manage the development and then have the project blow up in their face?
Also, consider Florida's satellite monitoring of pedos. Does it fix anything? If a pedo comes within one hundred feet of a school, how many seconds will it take for a cop to arrive? How many seconds will it take for the pedo to grab a kid from the playground and run? Obviously in this case a pound of prevention (like hiring more officers to actually watch these people and make sure they're where they're supposed to be) just wasn't worth the re-election soundbite that a multimillion dollar GPS system was.
the toppic was a stupid choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I can't see a wiki working for an editorial. A wiki could work for movie reviews or restaurant reviews maybe... but what's the value of using it for an editorial?? What they should do is model evil old slashdot and its moderation system... heck maybe even use the slashcode itself... or better yet hire Taco as a consultant. They could post their staff editorials with slashdot style discussion. Maybe even experiment by modifying the moderation to mark a comment red or blue.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:2, Insightful)
They weren't physically hurt. This is the kind of hurt that can be compared to the type I experience when someone makes fun of me or otherwise makes me feel bad. If it's a bad thing, you should be complaining equally about all situations where people are dicks to each other in real life.
Second, it seems like everyone assumes that social constraints are generally bad things. That is wrong thinking. Social constraints exist so that we can live with each other as humans in a fashion where the amount of pain that people have to go through is lessened. Almost all situations in which these constraints are removed tend toward decay.
Social constraints have been a bad thing in my life. I am often afraid to say things in real life because I don't have a confident tone, because I'm afraid that people will ignore me or laugh at me or use emotional instead of logical arguments against me. So I build up a lot of resentment and anger inside, and I can't find an outlet to express it. It's natural that if I can do it online without having all that pernicious non-verbal feedback, I may go wild.
The problem lies with the social constraints. They are oppressing enough people, preventing us from being able to express ourselves, that when those constraints disappear (online), it causes a backlash.
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never trolled as an AC, mostly because it's a cheap shot way of arguing with someone. I've been tempted to bash other trolls as an AC, but in the end my better judgement wins out and I either find a constructive way to post as myself or just not post at all.
So I do think there's value in having an AC. It ends up that you have to tolerate a bunch of yayhoos, but I think that what you get out of anonymous posts has some positive value, too.
Maybe they should hire some people who know (Score:5, Insightful)
One would think a high profile exercise like this would be worth a few bucks getting some real talent in on the ground floor to insure success.
They saw some buzzwords and jumped in and got wet.
Designed to fail ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind that it was badly done, the message is it can't work. People often blind themselves.
Re:Can't say I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
By and large, this system works. Yes, there are germs all over the body. But the body lives.
Putting a naked wiki out there like the LA Times did is the classic example of 20,000 Indians being slaughtered by 200 shit-scared Conquistadores. The Indians had never seen steel. They had never seen a horse. They had never seen armor. They never had a chance.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear Hear!! (Score:3, Insightful)
AC posts are good for:
- leaking info that might have consequenses to the person doing the leaking
- challenging the groupthink
- theraputic posts (face it, we need 'em sometimes)
- capturing casual insights that we might otherwise miss if registration were a requirement.
It's all been hashed out here before. The mod system and later the filtering system were designed to allow each user the choice necessary to get the experience they need from Slashdot.
The primary idea was to keep the discussion totally open to all who want to participate. Closing things down with registration, etc... hurts in that we miss out on potentially great things. So it's all here, ASCII art and all. I've personally benefitted from a few AC gems in the time I've been reading. (And that's nearly the entire time the site was up and running --just put off getting an account.)
This site embodies the concept of free speech and set the bar long ago for how it should be done. Rather than dumb down a great community, dig in and learn from it and be better for it.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:3, Insightful)
You have apparantly never been slandered. Words can cause much harm such as: Ruin a perons career "that doctor molests children", "i have evidence that politician sells cocaine", etc. Or some things like "Yes Mrs. Robinson, I slept with Mr. Robinson when you were away last week."
Or how about this situation...your girlfriend (just humor me here) who you are totally in love with - comes to you and starts saying mean and hurtful things (use your imagination)... Imagine a parent verbally abusing a child.
Words can easily be more painful then a beating from a bat. Words can drive people to kill (themselves or others). Words can drive people to war.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. If they put up an unprotected database, or IRC server, or open mail relay, or unsecured HTTP proxy, then people would use it to do bad stuff. When you design an Internet-facing application of any kind, you have to assume people will try to break it. Always. There are no exceptions.
Slashdot goes through great pains to keep idjits from gumming up the works. Wikipedia has people who monitor it 24/7 to fix mischief as quickly as possible. I have to watch my own little TWiki site like a hawk to keep link farmers off of it. What hopelessly naive sysadmin at the Times thought "it couldn't happen here"?
I'm not saying that it's right or OK for people to try to ruin the digital commons, but I have little sympathy for people who run such a public resource and expect it to take care of itself. That's not the real world, and I don't know why the Times thought it would be different for them.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, I know a guy who thinks I'm a real jerk. He's an asshole, so I don't worry about it. Now, if my best friend says I'm a jerk, I might feel hurt.
The reactions are MINE, not imposed upon me.
That said, people are too damned rude on the internet, but I can ignore them, so it's a wash.
In other news.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who shut down the LA Slimes Wiki? Republicans? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they can (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you are correct in that what effect words have on someone is in part dependent on that person. There are people who just let insults wash over them, there are those that find a way to take even the nicest compliment as a rebuke. However it's not all internal. Words have meaning, and the speaker has a communicative intent behind them. intent behind them. If you are trying to make your words caustic and hurtful, they are very likely to be so.
This line of reasoning that "words don't hurt" is just used by bullies and social misfits as an excuse to be assholes when someone calls them to account for it. Words can and do hurt, and while people need to work on developing skills to ingore and cope with it, that does not give you the right to be an asshole all the time, nor absolve you of responsibility if your words cause pain.
Re:Hear Hear!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why is it that when some dufus crapfloods/trolls/posts badly at my clients proxy (keep in mind this is a 25 floor skyscraper, so hunting him down is not possible), I get banned for 2 weeks when I haven't posted a single thing that has been modded down?
Free speech? Yeah.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry you have social problems, I really am. Growing up, I've had to fight with shyness, insecurity, not being "cool", and being ostrasized. The solution isn't to find an outlet that's hurtful to other people: you're essentially becoming what you hate in the people that shun you.
We have this thing called the "social norm". This isn't always a good thing, but in its purest form, the social norm guides behavior away from things that other people find offensive or hurtful. Does everything always work out as it's supposed to? Of course not. Does it sometimes err too far on the side of being too PC? Sure it does. But, as a whole, it helps keep things sane and civil in the majority of situations.
If you need to vent about the injustices of real life, don't do it in a place where it will cause harm to others. Start a blog or something. Don't embarass yourself by acting like an immature idiot in a well-traveled public place.
To address your final complaint: social constraints aren't opressing you. Your own insecurity is opressing you. Learn to stand up for yourself, and you'll be amazed at how many doors that opens. Sure, that's easier said than done, but there's a very correct saying about how nothing worth doing is ever easy. It's a fact of life; get used to it.
And please. Posting graffiti and trash is not expressing yourself. It's acting like an immature idiot.
LA Times unbellyfeel Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
In nature, animals without assholes simply regurgitate waste orally. Hence a world without assholes would be full of people talking shit. Therefore, I can conclude that there are no assholes on Slashdot and the LA Times is incorrect in implying otherwise :-)
Wrong thing to do as a wiki (Score:3, Insightful)
Editorials are inherently unsuited to the wiki-type format. Wiki collaboration is good for setting out objective data. Where there isn't much heated disagreement as to its content, experience shows that the content will tend to be refined upon and not 'defaced'.
On the other hand, posting opinions -- especially on heated topics -- is likely to cause the exact effect the LATimes observed. It's the same effect you see on wiki pages on other controversial, opinion-heavy topics like abortion and Israel. You are often not going to have a happy middle, but two or more polarised camps each hating the other and 'defacing' the content they don't agree with. It's just human nature.
This is all the more so when the original slashdot story contained the line about the anti-war editorial being ''defaced by reactionaries'', basically tempting anyone who is pro-war and who does not consider themselves ''reactionary'' to go and edit the content.
If the Times had stuck to a wiki about the LA area, or some similar thing, I predict it would have worked. Choosing to make an editorial a wiki is IMHO simply stupid.
Re:Well, to their credit (Score:3, Insightful)
So don't count on much sympathy