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Myself and other submitters have noticed that articles are being edited to change the tone and intent of our stories.
Soylentil McD has suggested that "Minor edits, spelling corrections, and such, are no problem and to be expected." but "I think soylent editors should adhere to a policy of not putting words in the submitter's mouth".
I agree with that. If the editors want to add their own two cents, they can respond inline like the rest of us. Their role here is to be responsible, not privileged.
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. The community is what makes sites like SN and Slashdot before it, an eclectic community with a wide range of opinions, styles and passions will always be more active and interesting than a bland monoculture. SN's editors should embrace and encourage that diversity, not sabotage it to appease some corporate interests.
So what do other Soylentils think? Should the submissions be allowed to stand as a clear reflection of the community's intent, or should the editors change our submissions to suit their perception of suitability?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Marand on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:56PM
I've seen a fair number of summaries that were just horribly written, or completely inaccurate, or just preposterously provocative in tone. I expect the editors have been changing summaries of that sort, not the ones that are basically fine as they were.
In that case, I would suggest completely rewriting the summary, giving credit to the original author for the link but making it clear that the entire summary was changed. That should help solve the problematic summaries without falsely attributing statements to anyone.
I don't agree, because as I keep saying, summaries are not your* personal soap box to use as you please. Linking to the original like that just encourages creating extremist submissions proselytising the submitter's cause or demonising whatever they hold a grudge against (hi gewg_), while simultaneously putting more work on the editors to turn rubbish into a useful summary.
I already said this yesterday in the apology discussion on the same topic [soylentnews.org], but summaries should strive to be neutral. Nobody is perfect, but that should at least be the goal of both submitter and editor. The summary is not a soapbox where you can talk shit without fear of downmods; write a neutral summary and post in the comments section like the rest of us. If that isn't what you want, maybe you should start a blog or make a journal entry instead of a submission. That goes for editors too, though they've been pretty good about it overall.
To that end, I think the best way to handle it is to simply deny bad submissions. If the submission is potentially interesting but presented poorly, it should be rejected with a message to the submitter. Something like "Submission rejected: heavy bias. Please re-submit with neutral POV." That would take the re-write burden off of the editors, letting them focus on editing instead. They signed on to be editors, not writers, and it's silly to expect them to rewrite bad submissions.
It's equally silly to expect submissions to just get passed through with nothing more than a spellcheck. I'm not just talking content reformatting or other changes; I've seen complaints in the past about editors changing the headline or the dept. line, which is absolutely ridiculous.
* in the general sense, not you specifically.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday May 25 2015, @01:42AM
Addendum: I think it's possible to allow some editorialising while still keeping summaries neutral, rather than being all-or-nothing. I said something about it here [soylentnews.org], and Jesus_666 followed up with a good suggestion about it as well.
TL;DR: if you want to allow editorialising in any form, there needs to be a clear separation of the editorial part from the neutral summary, both in the submission process and the final summary.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Monday May 25 2015, @02:42AM
Neutral, as defined by whom? Do we need to edit summaries on any climate change articles, to repeat the party line about how god couldn't possibly allow us to destroy the planet? Do we need to give al-Baghdadi's side to every ISIS story? Should every Tesla article be followed by adicles for gas-powered cars?
Strict neutrality is boring, and fraught with false-balance problems, and it ultimately doesn't solve the problem of bias because readers are still going to have to look at what's written and check for bias, it's just going to be better-hidden rather than blatantly inflammatory. I would rather have summaries take a reasonable position - if the issue is merely factual, report it neutrally, if the issue is contentious, report both sides, if the issue is clearly one-sided, go ahead and take that side.
(Also, I never said to link to the original summary, just give a credit to the original for bringing attention to it. I don't think having a link would really be a big deal though; I expect it would mainly be read when the published version still sucks, to see whether to blame the editor or the original poster.)