DISQUS

Hey Mathew,

Yeah, I was speaking about this same issue with some peeps at the Crunchies (including the Techcrunch guys). The editors and I had already mailed back and forth on Friday night regarding how to include more visible attribution in the editorial guidelines, so those changes were already underway.

Basic issue is this: as team grows (4 to 5 core editors, more than a dozen writers and other staff), you need more and more written rules to cover the stuff that seems obvious to an individual blogger. See my comments on Louis' post for some other points from me.

I gotta go out for the day, but I'll mail you my cell number should you wish to chat.

--Pete

Hi Kyle,

Nope, no copying here. As the "new guy", Paul doesn't have access to mail, so it's not possible that he saw that message. I checked with Paul and he says he didn't see your post.

We don't delete any comments (apart from the viagra ones!), and I expect Paul will reply to that one on the Mashable post. Let me know if you wanna chat.

Best. Headline. Ever.

Firstly, my egalitarian horse is neither higher nor lower than that of the next man - as far as I'm concerned, egalitarian horses are all created equal. :)

I think Mathew hints at what I was getting at with this post and this one - it's not the job of old media companies to define the audience, because the audience defines itself. And being "smart" isn't the same thing as choosing the news stories that people will be interested in. Digg users don't know much about the stories they vote on, but they do have an understanding of what will appeal to other Digg users.

Still, when creating a website it helps if you define your audience in *some* way. Digg defined itself as a tech news site, but the current user-base largely consists of a certain type of technology enthusiast (ie. it's different from the Memeorandum set). You can start out by trying to define an audience, but that audience will evolve of its own accord.

Rob,

I think the "harm in doing so" is pretty clear - lots of bad PR and damage to your street cred. I think it's great to see Google experimenting with new ideas, but they're a major player now and that seems to increase our expectations.

Hey! My blog post called and it wants its headline back! :)

NBC Goes Crazy Litigious

Hehe.