Of Experts and Editors

Recently it has become even more apparent to me that experts and editors play an important role, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Slashdot's own Firehose section. While the democratic method of choosing top stories seems to be largely effective, with the best stuff generally getting the most votes, the crowd often skips over the hidden gem that an editor would find, fact check, polish, and post to the front page. My little Firehose rant aside, this is the sort of thing I've been pondering since Wikipedia's Essjay was found not to be the expert he claimed. Call me old fashioned, but I think there is still a call for bona fide subject matter experts and the editors who are savvy enough to find them.

Fact check

[HTH NE1]

Indeed, among the tags of "dupe", "typo", and "error" (under "feedback"), there should be a standardized "check" option for stories that look good but seem a little too unbelievable and should be subjected to some fact checking, such as the story about the Vista delay allegedly being caused by trying to incorporate bogus INTERCAL code planted by Apple to be stolen by a Microsoft mole. (That other sites ran with it didn't lend it credibility to me, so I gave it a "nix" instead of a "nod". If there were an e