Both major U.S. parties made political history last week: The Democrats officially nominated an African-American for President, and the Republicans effectively chose a woman as a vice-presidential candidate. At a time when much of the convention coverage involves reporters covering reporters who are covering other reporters, let's look at how "citizen journalism" rose to the occasion ...

On Digg.com, the wisdom of crowds made the most popular story on Friday a "prickly" interview that Time conducted with Republican presidential nominee John McCain. The second most popular story - counting from noon on Friday - was an item about a hacker holding Soulja Boy's MySpace account for ransom. A bandwidth block by the Internet service provider Comcast came in third . News about Ron Paul, the candidate beloved by tech types who forget that the government created the Internet, came in fourth.

Over at ireport, CNN's citizen journalism project, the leading story was about how markets in Baton Rouge, La., are running out of supplies as people there stock up for hurricanes. It's a big story, but the first comment says it isn't true, so I don't know what to think. Many of the other top picks consist of on-the-scene reports, such as interviews with convention protesters, or opinion pieces about McCain's vice-presidential pick or Bill Clinton's philandering. Luckily, all this serious stuff wasn't popular enough to push out a story about "Cindy and Jen at American Idol Concert." The upshot: People asked this mother-and-daughter duo if they were sisters! The Times totally missed this!

Over at Wikinews, citizen volunteers did come up with one legitimate scoop: Obama and McCain staffers may be making dubious edits to their candidates' Wikipedia entries.

And who could have predicted that?

Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business and Technology.

When I read the New York Times online, I almost never look at any of the features the paper has introduced in its efforts to move into the new media world. (Usual disclosure: I write for the Times, but I'm using it as an example because I rarely look at other papers online.) If I wanted audio or video, for example, I could easily get it from websites that are really good at creating audio and video. Some of the blogs are interesting, but I sometimes think that most of the news they run just didn't make the cut for the paper. And I don't think I've looked at comments more than twice.

Gawker explained why: Most comments are useless. I like the ability to leave and respond to comments on social networks like MOLI, where writing is just a part of a larger community. But when I read a newspaper like the Times, I want to get the last word on something. The idea that there can ever be a last word on something seems downright old-fashioned, but that's why people read the Times. Indeed, I'd say that's the entire point of the Times: To have the last word.

The Times doesn't create space for comments beneath most articles, although many believe it should. Where it does allow comments, in blogs and some articles, the results aren't exactly encouraging. Let's take Bits, the Times technology blog, which I read sometimes. In a highly unscientific survey on one afternoon, the vast majority of blog posts seemed to attract between one and 10 posts, most quite reasonable. But a post about Microsoft's online services refusing to accept user names that contained "Tibet" drew about 100 comments, only a fraction of which actually said anything. Most insulted Microsoft, some insulted the Chinese - both of whom may deserve it - and a few insulted the reporter. None of the comments were really bad, but none added anything to the original post.

A breaking news post about the death of comedian Bernie Mac drew more than 700 comments, all of which basically said it was a shame that he died so young since he's really very funny. I can't argue with those sentiments, but I'm not quite sure why anyone would say so on the Internet instead of to their friends or family members. Again, I can't argue with the sentiment - I'm just not quite sure what the point is.

I had similar feelings about a news post on the tragedy on mountain K2. Some comments simply expressed regret. Others wondered why any sane person would risk their lives trying to do something that seems rather pointless - which is a sensible, but not sensitive, thing to say after people die.

I don't think that any of these comments undercut Times journalism, but they didn't add to it, either. I can't picture many people actually reading all of these comments. I think they're just there so readers can vent. Until comments cohere into a conversation, though, there isn't any other value to them.

Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business and Technology.

Amid all of Yahoo's problems - the merger talks with Microsoft, the board of directors drama, the declining stock price - the company finally did something right. On Friday Yahoo announced that it will offer consumers the ability to opt out of being tracked and having ads served to them accordingly. I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make, but I'm going to give up Google.

Of course, Google has so much information about me that the company probably knows that already.

And, of course, Yahoo's decision may have less to do with looking out for users than it does with a letter written to Internet companies by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee that asked what information they tracked. But it's a start.

It's not enough, though. Most customers don't know how much information search engines collect about them, much less how it will be used. And we all know what Google's privacy policy is, from comments made by online pioneer Vint Cerf: "There isn't any privacy, get over it."

I've heard many smart people make the same argument - that technology will make privacy a thing of the past. In another variation on this argument, this is actually a good thing, because that transparency will engender confidence.

I don't buy this. As I've said, people who talk as though technology is the engine of history remind me of people who used to talk as though class conflict were the engine of history - smart, but too blinded by ideology to examine the issue. Nothing is inevitable, and we don't have to use every technology we invent. (People used to talk as though the invention of the atom bomb would lead to all-out nuclear war, but that notion now seems absurd.) Rather than allow Google to make important decisions about our society based on their bottom line, the government should step in and act in the interest of the entire population. European countries do this all the time, albeit with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Personally, I'm not sure how much transparency I want. A friend of mine is eager to post his medical records online so everyone will know he's in excellent health, and he argues that everyone should do the same. If too many people do that, it will be safe to assume that everyone who doesn't post their medical records has something to hide. And why would a potential employer want to take a risk on hiring someone like that?

We need to have a national conversation about the fate of privacy in the digital age - and soon. And, while I'm not sure that Capitol Hill is the best place to examine these issues, it's better than the Google boardroom.

Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business.

Back in the early days of the online world, the Kool-Aid was strong stuff. Besides making us all rich - and better looking - the Internet would defeat censorship. If information wanted to be free, who could possibly stop it? As John Gilmore said, "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Except that it doesn't. Even recently, Myanmar was fairly effective in shutting down news about unrest there. And although China all but promised to loosen its restrictions on information before the Olympics, it doesn't seem to have done so. Gosh, who could have ever predicted that a despotic regime would lie to the rest of the world?

But the Kool-Aid hasn't gotten any weaker. Almost a year ago, the techno-idealists at Wired (where - full disclosure - I used to work, but never drank the punch) ran an article about "China's Misguided - and Futile - Attempt to Control What Happens Online." I certainly won't argue that China is misguided (the relaxed attitude toward child labor bothers me more than the censorship, but what the hell).

While I wish that China's censorship efforts were futile, I'm not sure they are. The Wired article points out that China's "Great Firewall" isn't all that hard to get around, which is true. But I think hacker-types tend to confuse a perfect solution with a workable one. For example, many engineers point out that no digital rights management system is perfect - and they're right. But the point of digital rights management systems isn't to be unbreakable - it's to be difficult enough to break that few people bother. Same with the speed limit: The idea isn't that everyone will drive 55 but that most people stay below 65 or so. 

China uses the same strategy. Very dedicated activists can evade censorship - but history shows that very dedicated activists can do almost anything. For the Chinese authorities, the problem isn't how to create a censorship system that's perfect, but one that keeps most of the undesirable information from most of the people most of the time. And it looks as though their system does that.

I have no easy solution to this problem. I wish I did. But I do know that we need to stop buying into the easy solutions of free market worshipers who believe that China's experiment with capitalism will necessarily lead to freedom, or that we can nudge the country forward through engagement.

This year's Olympics are being held in China partly because world leaders bought into the idea that the games would lead to greater openness there. So far, though, China has cracked down on activists and curtailed media freedom, and the allegedly almighty Internet doesn't seem to be helping matters much. How's that Kool-Aid?

Robert Levine is the MOLI View contributing editor for Business and Technology.