Why a noble idea descended into pornography

Wired on Friday: If you could re-write this column, what would you say? That was not a hypothetical question for the readers of the Los Angeles Times online "wikitorial" experiment last week, writes Danny O'Brien.

They were presented with the text of a future editorial from the newspapers' august pages, with the offer that, for now, anyone could re-edit the text; add to it, or delete from it. The final result, collectively rewritten by the Times' readers, would be printed alongside the original in the Times' famous editorial print pages.

The result, as you might first envisage, was chaos. Within a matter of minutes, the editorial split into two rival groups tugging to move it in different directions. Then came the mischievous sprites of the internet, whose fast moving fingers (and, one suspects, custom-written computer code) inserted "inappropriate content" into the po-faced ruminations faster than its editors could remove it. Within a few hours, the site was shut down.

The editors' optimism that things might turn out otherwise seems bemusing: unless, of course, you know that many websites thrive on such a policy of open contribution.

The Wikipedia is the best known: the net's own encyclopedia, where any page may be edited by any reader at any time. A handful of the Wikipedia's most knowledgeable reader/writers were there at the birth of the Times' wikitorial.

Wiki veteran Ilya Haykinson and Wikipedia founder Jim Wales were among the first contributors, attempting to organise and guide new visitors. But even as they helped out, they must have been quietly slapping their heads at the mistakes the novice wiki-wranglers made. As Haykinson wrote afterwards, "the people at the LA Times ... simply didn't know how to properly run a wiki".

But doesn't a wiki run itself? Aren't the readers the editors? Isn't this supposed to be a distributed anarchy?

But an apparent lack of control does not mean there is no structure. The Wikipedia itself has a very finely-grained set of controls, and ethics. There are "non-negotiable" requirements for Wikipedia content, including a "neutral point of view". While anyone can edit, regular Wikipedia contributors have a battery of tools to deal with those who abuse the editing process.

Those who balk at these minimal controls are free to "fork": take the freely distributable Wikipedia content, and start up their own site. Many such sites exist, including an Anarchopedia, which prides itself on dispensing with the hierarchical power-structure of the "Wikipedia ... with its English-only GodKing presiding over his vile mailing list".

The Wikipedia is not an anarchy; indeed, what Wikipedia has, most of all, is a sense of collective ownership among its contributors, and a vast sense of communal investment. Some Wikipedians spend hours lovingly tending the encyclopedia's pages, gently arguing with the most irascible of contributors, outlasting any vandal who breezes past.

What it also has is trust.

The Los Angeles Times had, to begin with at least, none of these. You may love this newspaper, and you, I hope, own this copy of this newspaper. But do you feel invested enough in it to not be tempted to meddle a little?

Those who own and work at this paper, as those who do at the Los Angeles Times, have rather more to lose from your messing around than you do. The spirit of collective ownership that runs through the Wikipedia is nowhere to be seen here. You'd be tempted to cock a snook (or at least play around). And the newspaper owners would be very tempted to ban you as soon as you spoke out of turn.

As the real editors of the Los Angeles Times watched their experiment veer so wildly from their expectations, they might take little consolation that the term wiki itself is a word that has wandered unrecognisably far from its origins. It was originally chosen because "wiki wiki" was the Hawaiian for "quick" - the first WikiWikiWeb was intended to be a fast, easy to edit website. In fact, there's a good chance that "wiki" is the English word "quick", absorbed into Hawaiian pidgin, then re-adopted back. Like Wiki pages, no one is quite sure of who really "owns" that word.

It's a quaint mirror of the muddling of responsibilities in a wiki. Everyone knows that Jimmy Wales doesn't "own" the Wikipedia content, as anyone can walk off with it and start their own encyclopedia. But at the same time, no one can truly believe they control any part of it because anyone else might walk on and re-edit their content.

The Los Angeles Times wanted it both ways. They wanted to start with their content, and end up with a piece that was suitable for their newspaper. They wanted their readers to become Los Angeles Times editors. Well, said the readers, if you want that, you can pay us like your editors, and set about instead turning the space into something they wanted. And mostly, it appeared, the internet collectively wanted the Los Angeles Times' pages to show a gallery of obscene pictures.

And if newspapers like the Los Angeles Times really want to engage with their readers, they may have to find more neutral territory than their own hallowed pages. The Wikipedia still lets anyone start their own page on its site - and the "Wikitorial", as of writing, is still gloriously blank. Maybe they should start work there. It would let them take more risks - and it might be a little safer for everyone.