Slashdot Mirror
Wikinews Project Launched
Eloquence writes "The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other wiki-based projects, has just launched the English and German editions of Wikinews, a free news-source created collaboratively by volunteers around the planet. See my article Wikinews and the Growing Wikimedia Empire for more on this and other recent developments in the Wikimedia world."
compared to when you take a look at this interesting take on the future of news and media delivery:
http://www.letitblog.com/epic/
In the discussions setting it up, "not becoming Indymedia" was definitely an explicit goal of the initiative.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Speaking as a long time Wikipedia admin - Wikipedia occasionally has articles on current events. They typically degrade into cross-fire like back-and-forth debates in article form. These phenomenon doesn't really make me hopeful for the chances of Wiki-news.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Now registered. Thanks for the idea!
I can understand that there's not much need to recognize authorship in something like a science textbook, but for a news site, it is essential.
What I think wikinews needs, and indeed all wikis, is authorship so we can see who said what. If we implement something with PGP signatures, people can build reputations over time, and newcomers can filter out information from authors with no rep.
Imagine freelance journalists posting credible, signed reports to wikimedia outlets from warzones, political protests, etc. No editors, no goverment censors. It would be great!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
ORRRRR it is a way for folks in small towns in disperse areas of the globe to write about what is happening to them or in their area and having it reported on.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
So, exactly what's the difference between this and Indymedia?
The interface?
More publicity?
I volunteer at a radio show, and Writing news is a lot of work, it's hard to find people to do it for free and professionally. Generally the result is poor quality, or just stuff copy-pasted from BBC or other sources.
For what it's worth, I've initiated a new MediaWiki based project, which you could call "wiki-debate"
http://forum.for-pgh.org/wiki
Part of the idea is to transfer debates from Wikipedia to a format where they are treated formally. Otherwise, it is meant to be a more productive debate form than mailing lists or forums.
It is very new, and has no real activity yet, but I'd appreciate any contributions or feedback. I'm announcing it's presence because I'm not really in the MediaWiki loop, and don't want there to be duplication of effort.
"eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" Wendell
I think wikipedia do a fairly good job on a balanced approach, ff you look at the talk pages on some of their articles, the main wiki population do seem to be reasonable and accept compromise (of course this NPOV is sometimes taken to its extremes - the talk page on the Santa Claus article has someone saying it's non NOPV because it states Santa is a myth!"
What would concern me is how frequent and up to date it could keep it's stories? I would imagine that it's contributers would be relying on other news sources for uptodate information, and even the that perosn might go to sleep for a while... what I mean is professinal journalists have their place - you are not goint to see a wiki correspondant from Baghdad (well maybe now, but when all pwoer is cut etc - wikinews will not be as insatnt as CNN ).
So on that vein, I would see such a project as a better anaylis tool then a breaking news one.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, OKAY. The traditional newspapers aren't biased, and Fox News is? PFFFFFFFFFT. NYTimes stories about Abu Ghraib: 50+, frontpage. UN Oil For Food: 1, little corner, until recently. Five or six soldiers vs. billions of dollars in bribes, some of which is US Tax payer money, and some of which went to suicide bomber's families. Uhhuh... wake up, newspapers are just as biased and don't always fact-check.
I share some of the concerns that others expressed here, but I believe there is nich for this new projects that most people overlook. Wikinews would be a perfect platform for covering ongoing complex and controversial events, such as the Ukrain election crisis. Such events usually involve so many factors, people, minor events, points of view, etc., that a major publication simply can't afford to cover it adequately in news, or even editorial format. Their tool for this is in-depth coverage where an entire issue or a significant part of it covers the event, with many articles, opposing views, etc.
But Wikinews format is better suited for this kind of coverage. You can integrate all facts in one article, you can dinamically branch some issues into substories when they gain enough importance, etc.
Wikinews is probably not very well suited for conventional stories like a bus fell into the river in Egypt or something, because there isn't much reediting that is needed. But complex topics can be covered really well (if the project takes off).
Another advantage, as some people noted, is that obscure news stories from remote corners of the world can be covered too.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
No, given that they're the Fourth Estate's competition, it'd be more like:
"Coming up next: there's a erroneous source of disinformation out on the Internet that could make life dangerous for you, your family and friends. What you need to know, coming up next. But first, reporter Trish Takanawa interviews George Tenet about his new scheme for making the Internet more protected from terrorist attack!"