Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

wikitorial

Much has been made recently on some of the online journalism lists/sites I read about this weekend’s “wikitorial” experiment by latimes.com, in which users can rewrite the day’s editorial column. (“A Wiki for Your Thoughts” - 06/17/05)

I have to say, I don’t really get it.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the concept of a wiki — basically, an online collaborative space for people to pool information, where anyone has “powers” to add or edit content. In the proper context — say, information-sharing within a work group, or (perhaps the best example) the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia — I think a wiki can be an incredibly useful means of pooling an audience’s collective knowledge and expertise.

What I don’t understand is how the wiki concept might be applied to editorials and opinion columns. I tend to see the opinion section as more of a give-and-take: op/ed pieces, followed by more op/eds that react to the previous op/eds, or letters to the editor. Perhaps better put, I see it as more of threads on a message board, where views are exchanged and reacted to, rather than a collaborative effort to fashion one collective opinion. I just don’t think such a thing is possible, not with opinion content.

That’s not to say that I’m not intrigued by news Web sites’ experiments to encourage greater user interaction. I just don’t think wikis are the proper tool for the job in this case. Blogs or messageboards might be a more appropriate means of soliciting reader response in such a way that the various available arguments and points of view may be seen and publicly evaluated.

Meanwhile, the latimes.com editorial wiki has been taken down for the moment, replaced by this note:

Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material.

Thanks and apologies to the thousands of people who logged on in the right spirit.

I think E-Media Tidbits contributor Amy Gahran has a better idea about how news sites might employ wikis:

On a related note, when I first heard the term “wikitorial” I thought is was related to “tutorial,” rather than “editorial.” Now that I think of it, maybe that might be a more constructive and less spam/troll-prone direction.

Here’s my idea: News organizations could offer wiki-based backgrounders and tutorials on important public topics — with a focus on the news value and public-interest aspects. I know this approach would be a bit tamer than wikified editorials, but maybe it’s worth considering. All news needs context, and this could be an especially rich source of context.

Context is key. Sure, I could do a news archive search for, say, recent articles about Iran, but all that will do is tell me what’s happening now. I’d have to do a little work to suss out how this weekend’s elections fit into the larger picture — the tension between reformists and the religious government, Iran/U.S. relations, Iran’s role in the Middle East, etc. A (continually updated) news reference-oriented wiki might serve as a good “get readers up to speed” feature.

Related stories:
• Online Journalism Review: “And why not a wiki?: Blogosphere lights up over ‘wikitorials’” (06/16/05)
• E-Media Tidbits: “What the Heck Is a ‘Wikitorial’?” (06/13/05)