And to extend my last comment: Obviously, the LAT effort failed when they took it down. And the LAT planted the seeds for its failure when they took a naive approach toward setting up its registration and user input capabilities. The LAT lost the immensive momentum it had at launch by not anticipating bad behavior and having software procedures in place to head it off. But the upside in the momentum it did generate by trying this ought to encourage second, better efforts by both the LAT and other papers.

I think that the OJ effort would be a bit healthier if a resource were published Mistakes you shouldn’t make.

Again, the wikitorial was a resounding success in reenergizing what had become a somewhat tired publishing format. And had The Times taken the Programming 101 step of not allowing img tags in its edits, there’d have been no crippling ethical problem with continuing.

“But though the occasional failure is inevitable in the quest for innovation, we can’t figure out why, exactly, anyone thought the Wikitorial even had a chance at success.”

Otherwise, your suggestions here are good, of course, but I suppose you might have come out ahead had you posted them before the experiment…

Lessons?

1. If you want high-quality material, you cannot allow users to post anonymously. A registration system must require verification (such as e-mail or credit card) and encourage or require people to post under their real names. The Times had such a registration system in place, but the paper did not do the extra work to have the wiki registration system synch with the paper’s.
2. There must be some cost, even if trivial, to the reader for posting inappropriate or offensive information. Coordinating with the paper’s registration system would have allowed the paper at least to boot offending readers from the entire latimes.com website. If a registration system includes a credit card verification, the paper could take legal action against the offenders.
3. Little works well on its first installation. Successful Web publishers learn, then try again. And again. This is social networking, something that most people take a lifetime to learn well offline.
4. Another possible solution? Limit each registrant to one edit. Make your statement, then move on.
5. Anyone who calls this a failure is letting opinion get in the way of one, very important fact: When was the last time anyone spilled this much ink (and bandwidth) over a newspaper editorial?