Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday May 23 2015, @08:32PM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday May 23 2015, @08:32PM (#186961) Journal

    Quote sigma's unpublished complaint:

    "I think soylent editors should adhere to a policy of not putting words in the submitter's mouth".
    ...
    The stories we submit are a reflection of our enthusiasms and beliefs, the tone and character of those posts is as much part of the submitter's story as the actual content

    Oh, please post that story so we can bitchslap help set him straight.

    Our submissions should be factual, should not change the original either in Slant or in Content. I find it revealing that sigma to wants prevent editors from "putting words in the submitter's mouth, but seems to reserve to himself the right to put words into the "mouth" of articles he cites.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Saturday May 23 2015, @10:18PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Saturday May 23 2015, @10:18PM (#186983)

    Agreed. I'd go even further. Story summaries should ideally be neutral. I don't come here for clickbait. Save the editorializing and hyperbole for the comments.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @11:12PM (#186991)

      Things were good at first here. But ever since the Michael Brown incident, and the subsequent reporting of it here, I've found the quality of the stories to have gone downhill. I focus on that particular incident, because it's one where it was clear from the very beginning that the reporting here was pathetically bad. The submissions here painted it as a situation involving police brutality, when the obvious reality was that Michael Brown had just robbed a shop, violently attacked the cashier, tried to take a police officer's gun, and then charged at that officer in yet another violent physical attack. I mean, we had very clear footage of Brown attacking the cashier just minutes before he was shot, yet people here still proclaimed his innocence, and tore the police officer a new one just because this officer sensibly engaged in totally reasonable and justifiable self defense. The only one engaging in brutality was Michael Brown. Despite how obvious this situation was from the very beginning, the reporting here was just flat out awful. By setting the bar so low, it allowed other submissions with awful reporting to end up on the front page, eventually leading to incidents like this one.

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:07AM (#187087)
        The video showed Brown paying in cash. Whatever happened with the altercation the store employee decided not to call the cops over it. It was one of the patrons in the store that did. Fox News has a discussion forum, maybe you'd be happier there.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:10PM (#187144)

          The "video" playing in your head is not actually a video of what actually happened.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @05:08PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @05:08PM (#187198)
            The video you saw was released by the Ferguson PD and it was conveniently edited down to just a short clip.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:23AM (#187090)
        To those of you just tuning in: Back when the Michael Brown story first broke on SN the above AC was correctly labeled as a bigot. Basically his position was that the victim deserved death and his evidence was that he has seen too many movies in the 90's. This individual never disputed the details provided in the various stories that SN posted, for example he never said "This is untrue, here's why", he just stuck to his guns based on 10 seconds of video that took place not even immediately before the shooting. He has had a chip on his shoulder ever since. To this day he doesn't understand why the Grand Jury's lack of indictment of Officer Wilson hasn't exonerated him. So what does he do? He brings it up every chance he can get so he can bait the people that have butt-hurt him into an argument. He has actually made a list of specific people he's upset at, I'm surprised we haven't seen it lately. I'm sure it's sitting in a text file somewhere on his hard-drive right now. Maybe one day he'll finally get that argument he wants and find a way to declare victory. In the mean time we can expect this to keep reoccurring.

        "We were wrong about Microsoft!" "I was mistreated in a discussion about Michael Brown!"
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:19AM

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday May 24 2015, @12:19AM (#187021) Journal

      Agreed. I'd go even further. Story summaries should ideally be neutral. I don't come here for clickbait. Save the editorializing and hyperbole for the comments.

      I've been saying the same thing for a while. Nobody is perfect, but summaries should be as neutral as possible. The opinionated crap should show up in comments where it's subject to the same moderation rules as everyone else. If it takes massive editing to make that happen, then maybe the submission should just be rejected with some kind of "Re-submit with neutral POV, please" notice to the submitter.

      Summaries are not a soap box where you can talk shit without fear of downmods. If you want that, make a journal entry or get your own blog.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday May 24 2015, @01:36AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday May 24 2015, @01:36AM (#187037) Journal
    It's not the same thing. Anything submitted is posted with a banner that starts 'Submitter writes...'. It's therefore assumed that anything that follows, unless it's an explicit quote, is from the submitter. It would be equally bad if the submitter then said 'Some article says...' followed by something not in the article (and I'd hope that the editors do check that the articles actually say what is claimed and that quotes come from the article). It's completely fine for a submitter to say 'Look, here is an article that says something stupid, let's mock it' because their name is attached to this and the article's authors have their names attached to their opinions and we can see which one really looks sensible after reading both.
    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday May 24 2015, @03:40AM

      by vux984 (5045) on Sunday May 24 2015, @03:40AM (#187066)

      Anything submitted is posted with a banner that starts 'Submitter writes...'. It's therefore assumed that anything that follows, unless it's an explicit quote, is from the submitter.

      Yes, its the submitters -summary-. The presumption then is that it's an accurate summary of what the article authors said.

      It's completely fine for a submitter to say 'Look, here is an article that says something stupid, let's mock it' because their name is attached to this and the article's authors have their names attached to their opinions and we can see which one really looks sensible after reading both.

      Not if the commenters presume the summary is in fact a summary of the article and therefore don't read the article. (What? Not read the article? Sure nobody does that!)

      I hear what you are saying but we need a summary of the article BEFORE we start tearing it apart. Maybe submissions should be in two parts... a summary, and the submitters response.

  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 24 2015, @04:23AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Sunday May 24 2015, @04:23AM (#187070) Homepage

    Good point.

    tl;dr: "We fucked up; sorry; fixed."

    Speaking as a reader/commenter -- apology accepted. And it takes some balls to admit a screwup given the community's not-always-friendly elements.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.