The Corrections Page .:. grubbykid.com

The Corrections Page

How many times have you read a website, only to see the following phrase (or a variant of):

Weblogs are better than X, because weblogs are self correcting.

Yeah, a Google search brings up over 22,000 instances of this phrase. The phrase has some merit: the more eyes on the ball, the better chance for corrections to occur.

However, we were always ambivalent to the veracity of this phrase; basic human nature always interferes with any grand experiment, even-though weblogs are a great equalizer and offer opportunities not only of expression but of real community building. The problem is the proverbial "bear in woods" situation: if an infinite amount of webloggers correct themselves, but no one listens (because the post scrolls past the front of the page - or the heightened ADD the web finds itself in), are they really correcting themselves?

You would think by now that with all of the talk about self-correcting blogosphere, there would be a place where you could publicly correct yourself. Yes, there are blogs such as Regret the Error, which track newspaper errors, but there isn't a website which chronicles blogger's errors.

So with that in mind, we built the Corrections Page around the idea of creating a shared space where we can all air our dirty laundry. It is our little experiment to see if the weblogging community can really "self correct." In the spirit of openness, we've placed the first correction - a slight one, but we will be combing our archives for errors, omissions, and full-blown wrongness.

The Corrections Page is built using Ben Hammersley's fantastic Movable Type hack which powers the venerable LazyWeb. To place a correction, all you need to do is to place a trackback via your blogging software du jour to the following address:

http://www.correctionspage.org/correcttb.cgi

There is a RSS feed for people to use while following at home. We want to know what people think about this service, so please leave some feedback in this post.

Good Luck! And keep it up, you self-correcting wonder-blog-o-sphere!

Comments

Jw says:

Does having a page devoted to blogospheric corrections do anything more for discourse than enhance the ADD-ness of the web? It would seem that disembodied corrections that I'd have to track back to find out what was initially said could be quite a jarring endeavor. I've personally never had a problem with a particular blog having "EDIT:" or "NOTE" or a strikethrough within their content. Not to mention, when someone is mistaken or has partial information, you can usually find about 4 or 5 comment corrections from readers.

I could see having a corrections page per blog as a positive thing, and I do enjoy the Wikipedias "most recent edits" with categorical explanations for the edits, but I don't think that I'd find myself reading a long list of errors from 100 sites.

Posted by: Jw at July 8, 2005 11:08 AM #

plemeljr says:

Does having a page devoted to blogospheric corrections do anything more for discourse than enhance the ADD-ness of the web?

I don't know - this is more an experiment to see if people will use this service.

Also, this is a bit of agitation, because those who often say "weblogs are self correcting" are those who really never do that. Will this force them to correct themselves? No, but a little shame and agitation are always fun.

Probably no one but me will use it, and you know, that's fine by me.

Posted by: plemeljr at July 8, 2005 11:48 AM #

jw says:

Actually, I think on a smaller scale, the concept is good. But if accountability is still "willing" accountability, it's likely that the people that don't correct still won't correct. Unless there were some sort fo incentive or something.

I do hear a lot about how it's all so "self correcting" but I really think the people that spout that the most often are just trying to make blogs seem more important than they are.

I was thinking about this the other day, how now people are writing/photographing tons and tons of stuff, and that's their entertainment. If you went to someone and said, "I write essays for fun in my spare time" they'd think you're kinda addled, but really that's what the whole "blog" thing kinda is. I wouldn't have thought so many people would want to write all the time.

Posted by: jw at July 8, 2005 1:11 PM #

plemeljr says:

I think that the distributed nature of blogs and the web is both a strength and weakness. There are tools such as Technorati and Blogdex which tries to knit together all of the disparate writing going one, but the lack of a clearinghouse for things like comments, categories, or corrections is somewhat unfortunate.

But what really is unfortunate is the lack of social software which tries to knit together all of the terabytes of data being created. Sure there is Friendster and all of the Friendster clones, but there hasn't been a solution created to knit your Personal Panopticon together. If there was a way to run some sort of distributed Personal Panopticon in which each person has total control over the level of information given out in a range of permissions (public --> friend --> family) then something like the Corrections Page wouldn't need to exist.

I know - the sheer amount of photos and written word being produced is actually pretty amazing. Saying, "I'm a part time editorial writer" sounds strange too. I wonder if this is somewhat analogous to the CB fad in the 1970's and 80's.

Posted by: plemeljr at July 8, 2005 1:41 PM #

Jw says:

Yes, the CB fad... in a way-- a bunch of nobodies shouting out into the darkness, sometimes finding someone to talk to... only with out the lingo.

If you're looking for smokies, good buddy, try channel 9.

What gets me about the internet is its archival nature. There are sites that have existed for YEARS as just a "welcome to my first web page! I'll fill this in with content later". Free space from universities, Geocities, LiveJournal, etc... all just out there, taking up digital space. If it was truly analogous to actual space, we'd be awash in an unstoppable tide of shit. Derelict buildings would never be torn down. Old signage would never be postered over. Spoiled food would never be removed from the shelves. What a horrible world!

Yet that's our Internet.

Does data spoil?

Once you've spoken into the CB, it's said, it's gone. On the internet, What you put up years ago or What someone with the same name as you put up 10 years ago Is still there, rotting away.