Those Wacky Wikis…

Interactivity is the new buzzword of the young, hip, and terminally self-absorbed, and the results are decidedly mixed. The Los Angeles Times recently abandoned traditional editorials in favor of an interactive “wiki-torial” page, which was almost immediately flooded with abuse, spam, and porn come-ons. Other supposedly serious “wiki” pages remain densely clogged with stupidity, and even the original Wikipedia (an encyclopedia written by its readers) is notoriously unreliable. The lesson, says Alex Beam, is that there is still room in the online world for people who are actually skilled at what they do, and sucking up to the masses doesn’t actually make them any smarter.