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posted by janrinok on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the mea-culpa dept.

Janrinok writes:

Apology To Microsoft

On Friday, we published a story, submitted by sigma, alleging that Microsoft had attempted to blackmail the UK Government in order to prevent the adoption of UK policy supporting open document standards. Having looked more closely at the linked material provided, the word blackmail is not used but appears only in the submission that we received. As the editor of that particular story I am personally responsible for not having checked the sources sufficiently well and for subsequently releasing the story. I wish to apologise, publicly and unreservedly, for any suggestion that Microsoft attempted to blackmail the UK government. They did not, nor does the accusation stand up to any scrutiny. We have edited the title to prevent any further misunderstanding by our community or others and I hope that this action and my apology to Microsoft is sufficient to atone for my mistake.

Apology to sigma

The editor's role includes that of trying to look at each story from both sides to provide a balanced approach. We are not here to support one particular view in preference to another but to provide material that will inspire discussion between members of our community. I published the story that sigma submitted, but attempted to balance it with the alternative view that suggested it was not specifically a Microsoft trait to defend one's business and that it could be argued that they were also attempting to protect their British workforce. However, I did not make it clear where sigma's comments ended and where my editing began, although I did add an Editor's Comment explaining that the story had been edited and that not all comments were those of the submitter. sigma has, quite justifiably, objected to this action and I must, therefore, apologise to him personally. I do apologise to sigma, again publicly and unreservedly, for any changes that I made to the submission that he feels reflect badly upon him.

Our Role

This was most certainly not my best piece of work and, of course, I must also apologise to the community. The editors do, however, have to edit stories; members of the community should not expect their submissions to be a platform for their personal views. Some stories require more editing than others to be suitable for the front page. In this instance, I made a mistake. We will always try to find a balanced approach to any story that needs it, as described in the Editing Process.

As I have already said, I take full responsibility for the stories that I release, including the one arising from sigma's submission. We value each and every submission, even those that do not make it to publication however, we do ask that submitters do not suggest events or actions that are not backed up by the source material, or are not easily verifiable by other means.

janrinok
Editor

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:15PM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:15PM (#186916) Journal

    Wowza! Does this mean that we've received our first real lawyer's letter! I am so proud!

    Seriously, this does suggest that our little web site is getting attention from some serious places.

    And Janrinok - many, many upvotes for a proper and non-whiny acknowledgement of an error. It's tough to do, and all too rare these days.

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:34PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 23 2015, @06:34PM (#186922) Journal

    No, as far as I am aware we have not received any contact from Microsoft, or anyone else other than sigma - and I'm rather hoping that my sincere and genuine apology will prevent one in the near future too.

    However, thanks for your kind words.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 23 2015, @07:28PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 23 2015, @07:28PM (#186939) Homepage

      Hmm, I think this would have been better-left to a Journal Entry, or perhaps you should have just run sigma's "are editors overstepping their bounds?" story and posted an apology there (as well as getting the pulse of the community in watching that discussion).

      It's for those reasons that I think sigma's meta submission should be run no matter what.

      And let's not bullshit ourselves here -- inflammatory submissions get more attention. We are totally fucking righteous and want to drive people to action fighting the evils of corporate injustice. I have noticed subtle and unnecessary changes to some of my own submissions that made them more inflammatory and those changes actually made me chuckle in their subtlety.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:30PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:30PM (#186997) Journal

        Yeah but one of the purposes of this site was to be the "anti-slash" which means this site needs to NOT be cranking out flamewar inspiring TFAs, avoiding the political bullshit, and basically looking at how DICE is running Slashdot as the way NOT to run this place!

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:13AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:13AM (#187017)

          If this site isn't supposed to be like Slashdot, then why is it so much like Slashdot?

          It looks almost the same (shit, it even uses the same software that used to power Slashdot).

          The story quality is just about as bad here as it is there.

          Hugh Pickens submissions are pretty much guaranteed to end up on the front page of both sites, at almost exactly the same time.

          The moderation here is just as bad as it is at Slashdot.

          I even see many of the same registered users here that I see there.

          Most of the time I don't even bother trying to tell if I'm using Slashdot or if I'm using SoylentNews.

          They're basically the same site as far as I'm concerned.

    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:40AM

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:40AM (#187093) Journal

      The correct word would have been "extortion". Or if you needed to cage it, "apparent extortion" or "alleged extortion". Because what ended up being written was, what sigma pointed out to be "apologist twaddle [soylentnews.org]". I'm sure that everyone tries to avoid twaddle in general. And there are enough M$ apologists floating around, paid and unpaid, on other sites that it's not needed here.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:16AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:16AM (#187103) Journal

        I put great value in honesty - what was published was incorrect and unnecessarily inflammatory. My apology was necessary because of that, and that alone. Some may think it unfortunate that it had to happen with a company such as Microsoft but, as I have mentioned elsewhere, it is not SN's role to support one particular view over another. As an editor, I should try to leave my personal opinions out of the editing task which includes when making apologies for the mistake I made.

        The role of the editor is to present neutral and balanced stories for community discussion. My attempts at providing an alternative viewpoint, although badly executed, were intended to redress the bias of the original submission and to provoke an exchange of views. They have certainly been successful, but not in the way I had intended.

        • (Score: 1) by canopic jug on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:57AM

          by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:57AM (#187117) Journal

          Don't worry. In the larger picture it might not be a big deal, but only if the future "balance" is not faked. The editing here has been mostly quite good. However, the word you were both probably looking for was "extortion" It's not a new activity for M$. In any given situation there it often very little which can paint M$ and its minions in a good light. That's not lack of "balance" that's simply reality. Additionally, going for fake "balance" is a documented tactic. The best documentation on that is buried somewhere in Comes vs Microsoft [groklaw.net] exhibits. There was one (of several) that had a clear description of injecting M$ content into situations where it did not belong, but since I can't find it at the moment, it may as well not exists. A less useful one is Exhibit 2456 [groklaw.net] from that case where several Macintosh conferences were intentionally killed. We see that happening now with Linuxfest Northwest and maybe here with this site. But I hope not.

          What it almost comes down to is a he said, she said situation where UK claims extortion and M$ claims no comment. However, M$ has a long history of such behavior [groklaw.net] that continues unabated.

          --
          Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.