5 ms·

Reflections on the Recent Boston Crisis

20 points by Lightning 13y ago

danso 13y ago
Strange to see this modded down. This was a milestone in many ways in the area of online citizen journal. This letter itself is kind of groundbreaking. Rarely does a media company write a full-throated apology letter, and almost never for the actions of users/readers who break their rules. I doubt we'll ever get any such apology from the New York Post
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  I think it's probably the title. When you look just at the title and domain name, it looks like it doesn't belong here (thus people downvote on the "New" page without reading). If the title was different, perhaps people would read it before downvoting. Just idle speculation though!
- chaz 13y ago
  I agree. I think this was an important closure to a situation that was spiraling out of control. According to the Washington Post, one of the reasons the FBI released the photos of the suspects on Thursday was to curb the vigilante detective work. “Find people carrying black bags,” wrote the Reddit forum’s unnamed moderator. “If they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images.” The moderator defended this strategy by arguing that “it’s been proven that a crowd of thousands can do things like this much quicker and better. . . . I’d take thousands of people over a select few very smart investigators any day.” In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-the-investigation-of-the-boston-marathon-bombing/2013/04/20/19d8c322-a8ff-11e2-b029-8fb7e977ef71_story.html?tid=pm_pop http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside...

20 points by Lightning 13y ago

danso 13y ago

Strange to see this modded down. This was a milestone in many ways in the area of online citizen journal. This letter itself is kind of groundbreaking. Rarely does a media company write a full-throated apology letter, and almost never for the actions of users/readers who break their rules. I doubt we'll ever get any such apology from the New York Post

ScottWhigham 13y ago
I think it's probably the title. When you look just at the title and domain name, it looks like it doesn't belong here (thus people downvote on the "New" page without reading). If the title was different, perhaps people would read it before downvoting. Just idle speculation though!
chaz 13y ago
I agree. I think this was an important closure to a situation that was spiraling out of control. According to the Washington Post, one of the reasons the FBI released the photos of the suspects on Thursday was to curb the vigilante detective work. “Find people carrying black bags,” wrote the Reddit forum’s unnamed moderator. “If they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images.” The moderator defended this strategy by arguing that “it’s been proven that a crowd of thousands can do things like this much quicker and better. . . . I’d take thousands of people over a select few very smart investigators any day.” In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-the-investigation-of-the-boston-marathon-bombing/2013/04/20/19d8c322-a8ff-11e2-b029-8fb7e977ef71_story.html?tid=pm_pop http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside...