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One of the more interesting aspects of having an RSS reader is that, assuming you catch the original post, you can see when someone publishes an update to their original post. Take for example this set of postings from Slate magazine, shown in order of most recent publication:

I am not sure why they chose to change the word “jihad” to “war”, especially considering that the article title still uses “jihad” in the title. Either way, I’m curious whether or not major (and minor, for that matter) media publications should disclose when they make changes of any sort, no matter how innocent, after publication. I can see how the argument can go both ways. On the one hand, some weblogs, such as Boing Boing, use the strikeout font to indicate when they’ve made changes after publication, usually to correct for factual errors. As you can imagine, this is perhaps the stupidest way an awkward to achieve such disclosure. On the other hand, the corrections page tends to get buried in the back of a publication, leaving the more attractive space free for errors. Even with the corrections model, though, it is becoming easier to have a permanent space for corrections (the message being “we are always going to make mistakes”).

This particular instance is probably more benign than in other instances, where substantive content is radically changed. I also receive alerts from Reuters, and those articles always contain a summary of the changes that were made as a caption at the beginning, although the specific details are not disclosed. This may be the most reasonable balance on the internet, since the corrections pages will not necessarily be stumbled upon as it would be in a print publication.

My question is this: is it better to have a full disclosure policy (à la Boing Boing), a limited disclosure policy (the Reuters model), or to simply make changes and hope no one notices (the Slate way)?

UPDATE: Ironic, I know, but the entry was edited so the pop-up image would display correctly.

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