[tptacek]

There was a lot of confused attention surrounding the Dorner incident, in which a disgruntled former LAPD officer rationalized his carefully-planned stalking and murder of the daughter of an LAPD captain who had been partially responsible for his termination.

Part of that attention was due to a Rambo narrative that accompanied Dorner due to his military experience and the fashion in which he was (briefly) believed to be engaging Southern California police officers (no doubt this narrative was abetted by the 24/7 news cycle). Part of it was due to the style in which he wrote his manifesto. And certainly part of it was the fact that his grievances confirmed a lot of the (probably accurate) biases people have about the LAPD.

All that is a prelude to the argument that the annotations on the Dorner "manifesto" do not in fact show RG at its best. Like the Rodgers incident, the Dorner incident is tremendously sad. It was not an armed struggled between a wronged former officer and the police establishment; it was a manhunt that followed the cold-blooded murder of an innocent woman and her fiance. But you might not get that impression from clicking through the animated GIFs, lyrical references, and amplified exposition of Dorner's complaints in the annotations on the site.

Again, I think this isn't so much a problem with reading and studying the output of the mentally ill, but instead with the idea of doing that on a site that encourages random anonymous people to riff off of and respond to that output. It has the effect of turning an artifact of illness and tragedy into popular culture, which to me demeans the site almost as much as the victims.

[nightpool]

I also agree that the annotations on the Dorner manifesto don't show NG at its best. I wasn't around at the time, but News Genius as a brand was just finding its feet, and you'll see examples of both great and terrible annotations on it. For example, http://news.rapgenius.com/1489298 is a great annotation, and perfectly epitomizes what News Genius tries to be—objective annotations on the news, highlighting facts.

But no, we didn't do a good job with the Dorner manifesto, as a whole. Part of that is due to the level of quality increase that the site has seen since then, but maybe part of that should have been a warning.

[thrillgore]

Honestly, I equate the use of RG in this case to be no more different than how the media amplifies the actions of any shooting or tragedy. It's only going to merit attention for a wrongdoing, and this could desensitize people sharing the same mindset as Elliot Rodger had.

It would be a kindness to everyone if RG simply delisted the journal for the immediate time being, and then restored it in the future, possibly a year or so from now.