The practice of open source reporting, still nascent, can take many forms. News organizations are experimenting with methods to open up the reporting process to their readers in an attempt to find the best methods.

Scientific American had reportedly been “kicking around the idea for months,” and received its opportunity to take a stab at open source reporting when the story of “Lucy’s Baby,” the recently discovered reportedly 3.3 million year old skeleton of an ancestor of human beings called A. Afarensis and nicknamed Selam, made headlines. The story, however important, was placed on the backburner since Scientific American’s news line-up was already too full to squeeze another story in – especially one that demanded a greater attention to detail like this one.

As CJR Daily reports:

“[Scientific American published] a feature-length article for the magazine’s Web site describing the Selam discovery and the significance of what scientists had already learned from her bones. Next to it was a sidebar that urged readers to “Be part of our publishing experiment.”

The call to readers explained that another version of the story would be crafted for the December issue of SciAm with extra reporting guided by reader suggestions. Through a simple blog, readers would comment about information on the Selam discovery and the subsequent research, which was left out of the original article.

Scientific American also open sourced their gadget guide – about a third of what eventually got published were user suggestions made through the blog, said a SciAm editor.

Though using a blog comment system is not exactly “Wiki-Reporting,” as the title of the CJR Daily story implies, it is an excellent example of an open source reporting method using very fundamental tools.

True “Wiki-Reporting,” such as that done by the L.A. Times to solicit “Wikitorials,” has not exactly been the picture of success. All that exists of the project now is an explanation of its absence.

“Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material.”

One might even begin to argue that perhaps the reason Scientific American had such a success was because of the fact that they did not use a true Wiki system, which relies on a mostly egalitarian method of article modification. A system such as that is a magnet for trolls, who flock to websites desiring nothing more than to irritate.

Wikipedia has been notorious for having significant problems with spammers, and other trolls. The fact that there was some moderator in control of the Scientific American “publishing experiment” might have been the key ingredient that kept things from getting out of hand.

Neurofreak enjoys blogging and reading about the many facets of neuroscience at Neurointerests.com.