Readers as editors: Lat experiment terminated

Deluged online with foul language and pornographic images, The Los Angeles Times has canceled a novel internet feature that allowed readers ...

Deluged online with foul language and pornographic images, The Los Angeles Times has canceled a novel internet feature that allowed readers to rewrite editorials on their website. The newspaper launched the experimental ‘‘wikitorial’’ last Friday and closed it two days later under a flood of ‘‘inappropriate content’’. But managers of the newspaper’s editorial and Internet operations said they may attempt to resurrect online editorials written collectively by readers.

The feature relied on an ‘‘open source’’ software that allows multiple users to write and rewrite a single web page. The form’s communal spirit has made the online encyclopedia ‘‘Wikipedia’’ tremendously popular—Times editors said they believed their’s was the first major US newspaper to invite readers ‘‘to wiki’.

Nearly 1,000 users registered to participate in the rewriting of Friday’s lead editorial, ‘‘War and Consequences.’’ Although marred by some initial profanity, the experiment got off to a fairly high-minded start, said Michael Newman, deputy editor of the editorial page, who proposed the wikitorial idea. Voluntarily overseeing part of the discussion was Wikipedia founder Jim Wales. Sometime after midnight on Saturday, Newman said, he stopped monitoring the site for the night—and the porn began to pour in.

Rob Barrett, general manager of Los Angeles Interactive, was called at home at around 4 a.m., and he ordered the feature shut down immediately. Wikis could be brought back to the Times website, Barrett said, but perhaps with a limited group of contributors or with a Times employee reviewing text changes before they could be displayed online. —LAT-WP

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