LA Times pulls wikitorial experiment

By Steve Malone

Posted on 22 Jun 2005 at 10:37

It sounded like a great idea. Why not let the readers write the newspaper? However, when the Los Angeles Times punted out the idea of 'wikitorial', the results were not quite what it hoped for.

After just a week, the newspaper has withdrawn the wikitorial section from its website after being bombarded with what it terms 'inappropriate content'.

The idea came from a number of 'wiki'-type sites on the web that allow readers to contribute their own work to the site. The most famous of these is the Wikipedia that now claims over 600,000 entries, although crucially these are edited by a group of administrators to keep the more puerile scribblers at bay.

The LA Times experiment began with a feature on the website suggesting that the US consider a better exit strategy and invited readers to comment in the manner of a blog. while some of the early responses were apparently thoughtful contributions, the site was soon overwhelmed by the 'inappropriate'.

In a statement, the paper says the experiment would stay offline indefinitely while it works out a way of filtering out the more foul-mouthed contributors.