Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review, offers some good ideas of how the LA Times' wikitorial concept might work. He suggests variations that differ from the wiki free-for-all that I was envisioning and suspect would be unworkable.
Niles writes:
Talk of wikis inevitably elicit rants about Wikipedia, the free-for-all dictionary where users can create and revise entries, even to the point of rewriting history. Neither (Editorial Page Editor Andrés) Martinez nor (Opinion Editor Michael) Kinsley have publicly revealed details of how their "wikitorials" will work. But the Wikipedia model need not be the only one to guide wiki publishers.
At OJR, we restrict editing access on our wikis to our registered users, who must provide a working e-mail address to register.
A news publisher could limit write access on the wiki to an invited group of readers with first-hand experience on a topic.
Or, a publisher could adopt an "open source journalism" model, opening a wiki to revision for a limited time, with an editor stitching together the best evidence and arguments from its versions for later print publication.
I'd like to see those second and third options in action.
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