LA Times Wikitorial Makes a Hasty Departure

As newspapers experiment with blogs and podcasts, it must have seemed like a good idea to the editors of the Los Angeles Times to see if another element of the social software suite could be put to good use. The notion of a wiki for newspapers isn't new; after all, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Times didn't offer up a citizen journalism effort. Instead, they gave readers the opportunity to collaborate on editorials. Dubbed the Times to withdraw the page. It was Slashdotted, for one thing, but I suspect it had more to do with idealogues on both sides of an issue one-upping each other in less-than-subtle ways. The first editorial open on the wiki, near as I can figure out, was about the US presence in Iraq. I can just imagine how people polarized on the issue used the wiki as a battle ground. It's not unusual. Even Wikipedia is subject to such nonsense. Recently, somebody with an agenda tried to rewrite history by removing Dave Winer's name from the entry on the development of podcasting. This kind of thing is to be expected, and the Wikipedia community generally acts to correct such partisan editing. Besides, as But how could anybody expect anything but partisanship in a wiki based on newspaper editorials? Ross Mayfield of Reader Comments... Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications. As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog