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This is a topic that comes up all too often in comments, lambasting editors or praising them.
As it stands, editorial is a black box, they accept submissions, fettle them, then they appear as stories. Recently, the Original Submission link appeared on stories so you can see what went in and what appeared out of that black box, yet still the complaints come.
Just how much transparency is necessary? (This is an open question not rhetorical)
I like to believe that SoylentNews is the people that form it as a community, and the editing should reflect that.
Should we adopt some version control for subs so everyone can see who edited what through the pipeline that goes from sub to front page?
Thoughts on a postcard please.
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META: Editorial Transparency - What do you want?
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 29 2015, @11:30AM
1. As you can see here, when you put it to the readership, they're completely supportive of our editors.
2. If somebody, particularly somebody who wants to post highly inflammatory "everyone who disagrees with me is a moron" kinds of stuff on the home page, is truly unhappy, then that means that the editorial team has done their job, and done it well. An editor who is not pissing off some people is an editor not doing their job.
3. The way to handle opinion pieces that you still want to post is to be very clear that the piece is the opinion of a person/organization that has a particular ax to grind. Find out what their overall position is, and announce it along with the story.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @04:41PM
"they're completely supportive of our editors." Great politco line.. false, if you read it all.
The issues is simple. If an editor believes something was written with the wrong voice, they change it, BUT still assign the original poster as the writer. That at a minimum is a lie and possibly libelous.
Now, how do we fix that broken problem. Showing before and after does not fix it, since how many actually compare, so original poster is still "charged" with writing the something he did not. In news, the editors do not get to rewrite a report and place the original reporters name on it. Yes, they can fix minor flaws like spelling and grammar, but whole sale rewrite it to be something the original writer did not say. They can reject and TELL the reporter to fix it. If the reporter does not want to fix it, can shop it to others or drop it.
We need better ground rules.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday May 29 2015, @05:04PM
The 'fix' that we came up with was something we intended to do all along and may have missed in a few cases:
In a case that editing requires modifying the intent or ideas being presented by the submitter (rather than paring down, removing bias, proofreading, etc.), then the submission should be rejected. Alternately in the case that the story runs: the byline should not read "NickName writes:" and instead read "NickName informed us of a scoop" or "Originally submitted by NickName" (or similar) and the submission should be mostly re-written.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday May 29 2015, @05:07PM
I'd also like to add we are planning on adding wording to the guidelines and submissions page that indicate that by submitting a story, submitters understand and agree that their submissions will be edited based on our Submission Guidelines [soylentnews.org].
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @05:28PM
On that much, we agree. Make it very clear that this is the opinion of a person or an organization.
But this, I'm not so sure about. It doesn't seem to me to be the job of the editors to inform the rest of us what the overall agenda of a person or organization is. At most, I think it would be a fair call for an editor to point out the affiliation of the person who wrote the opinion piece. The rest seems best left to the comments. YMMV.