Warm Coffee - Reflections of a Web Developer

I’ve just read an interesting piece in the Guardian, concerning post-publication editing of articles, and how the Web has divided opinion on whether print versions of articles should match their online equivalents. Obviously, the nature of the Web allows for minor corrections (typo’s, spelling mistakes, etc) but should journalists have the power to change, or add to their articles once they have entered the public domain, and if so, should any ‘mending’ be made obvious? Does this affect trust and transparency issues?

This piece is obviously angling towards journalism, but I can see parallels with community edited documents, or websites (such as Wikipedia) where savvy users can work out what has changed, but most won’t, and taking a quote from an online source which changes, or at worst disappears can result in issues of integrity in all fields of work (from school homework to journalism and politics). How does this work with the Freedom of Information act, when an article or page on the Web could be changed on a whim, and no record of the original kept? Is this tantamount to shredding inaccurate documents and replacing them? In this current era of the ephemeral and ubiquitous Web, who owns content, and what they can do with it is an interesting question.

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