I can’t help but shake my head. The LA Times made a valiant attempt to wiki-fy their editorial page, starting with one story, allowing online readers to link it, comment on it, revise it, improve it, alter it, edit it…but apparently the experiment went down in flames as some people thought it would be amusing to just goatse-fy it. I’m not even sure anymore who these people are: people who will object to their preferred source of amusement/authority/information being offered to mainstream users. I think “defacing” is the right word for this, as an artless and classless black Krylon tag might deface a large and colorful graffiti mural.
I’m suddenly reminded of the following definitions of cool and class, lifted entirely from a t-shirt with a couple cool fractals on it which I purchased in Asheville, North Carolina around this time of year in 1992:
CLASS is the attitude that all should live forever and be my friend.
COOL is the ability to maintain class.
So, to the classless folks who thought slapping unfunny porn all over an experiment in giving citizens a newspaper-based voice was a totally cool thing to do:
You Are Not Cool.
Others on this issue: Jarvis, Slashdot, Where is the Wikitorial?, Chris Anderson, Ross Mayfield.
technorati Tag: wikitorial