L.A. Times suspends Web site participation experiment
By Gary Gentile, The Associated Press
A bold Los Angeles Times experiment in letting readers rewrite the paper's editorials lasted all of three days.
The newspaper suspended its "Wikitorial" Web feature after some users flooded the site over the weekend with foul language and pornographic photos.
The paper had posted on its Web site Friday an editorial urging a better-defined plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. Readers were invited to add their thoughts. Dozens did, with some adding hyperlinks and others adding opposing views.
Ref. https://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-...ikitorial_x.htm
A bold experiment? I think it's a little odd, personally, although the whole idea of "Wiki" was foreign to me until today. Blogs I can understand, because folks can respond to them without changing the actual content, and I believe that these can be monitored. Apparently, the "Wiki" can't be controlled in any way.
I'm not surprised at all by the malicious interference they received.
Apparently those that decided to conduct the experiment are either too naive or have no clue about what goes on in the internet. Maybe they can learn well from our rules / policies system. I am sure the real problem is that they hired no one to monitor the content, something that is constantly being done here and we receive far less hits.