The (old) Licquia Family Blog
This is the old blog site, powered by a simple blogging system called Blosxom. It's here to keep old links from breaking, and for whatever historic interest might remain.
Here's the current site.
This is the old blog site, powered by a simple blogging system called Blosxom. It's here to keep old links from breaking, and for whatever historic interest might remain.
Here's the current site.
Two seemingly unrelated events have had me thinking about credibility issues on the Web.
First, the big news. The Agonist is a weblog that's primarily focused on the Iraq war. It's gotten some critical acclaim for its timeliness and accuracy, even appearing in cable news stories. Unfortunately, the site's accuracy and timeliness came from plagarism of a commercial intelligence newsletter. While the site owner of The Agonist has apologized and added cites to most of his back stories, his apology was disappointing. This has sparked a debate about journalistic ethics (also at the Washington Post, but I don't like using cookie-mongers as primary sources).
The second arose from the first, in the comments to the above plagarism link on Dean Esmay's site. An anti-copyright site took exception in a rather rude fashion in both the comments and on his site, prompting a biting response from Dean.
What to make of all this? My first observation: credibility is to be found in groups on the Web. People are making the point that another weblogger found The Agonist out. Through the magic of TrackBack (what?), people are debating back and forth on the questions about journalistic ethics that the Agonist incident exposes.
Which brings me to the next point: the importance of feedback. That's where the Esmay-Textism "debate", while trivial in itself, has a lot to teach us. The Textism site has absolutely no way of providing feedback to its author: no comments, no TrackBack, nothing. If you're interested in drive-by flamings, Textism seems to be the place to be, but if you believe in the value of debate (like me), you need some way of getting back and forth between the sides. Which means that, for people interested in the debate, Dean Esmay's site had to become the authoritative source. Advantage: Esmay. And it showed, as the comments seemed to come down mostly in his favor. So while it's not a guarantee, fostering debate usually gives you more authority, and on-site feedback mechanisms provide that.
Some of the bigger sites can get away with not having feedback, riding on their reputation from other arenas or over time. That's not where the rest of us are. Which, the way I see it, is a good thing, and should bring the credibility of Web news up over time.
In the meantime, watch what you read online, particularly for engagement with the readers. On the Web, people who don't link to criticism are more likely to deserve it.
DISCLAIMER: I used to work with Dean. I think he's a great guy, and very interesting. If that clouds my objectivity, so be it. Don't say you haven't been warned.
Apr 10, 2003 | Comments are no longer available