WikiPedia Founder Wales Speaks About Wikinews

sebFlyte writes "One of Wikipedia's founders, Jimmy Wales, has given an interesting interview to news.com.com.com about the new WikiNews project. He talks about his dissatisfaction with IndyMedia's bias, the problems with traditional news media and how to make Wiki content credible (a problem WikiPedia faces, as previously reported)."

Comments

Re:What is this guy's problem?

[Captain Nitpick]

Did he get screwed over by Wikimedia or something? He's being very vocal lately (or is /. just getting around to reporting his rants).

You've confused two people. Larry Sanger is the one who had the kuro5hin rant posted recently accusing Wikipedia of anti-elitism. Jimbo is Wikimedia's current benevolent dictator.

Re:A Prime Example of Wikifailure

[Staplerh]

This is an excellent example of a shortcoming of Wikipedia. I try to contribute as much as I can, due to my academic interests in History, and I must say I've never seen such an example as yours. Of course, that may be due to my sticking to obscure 'corners' of the Wiki project.

The Talk page that you linked too is reprehensible to say the least. This is why 'real' academic work needs peer-referencing for credibility.

If I ever hear anybody planning to use Wiki as an authoritative source I'll be sure to point them to the Tokamak program example.

We[re very 'neutral" the mans sez

[qadmon]

Yep thats very very true.

I found Wikinews by accident. They had a 'drinking fountain/watercooler' area where anything seemed to be ok as far as metadiscussion.

I made a few posts and was rudely slammed by the clique residing there. They take you post and alter it at will, move it other places and do as they jolly well wish.

You can complain there but the 'mafia' just ignores you.

I decided it was a waste of time.

In my view therefore WikiNews sucks big time.

If you have a place for conjecture on the site then don't trash it with your 'supposed'neutrality. By the way who judges the neutrality? A bunch of folks who make the decisions. This is NOT NEUTRALITY. Its bullying in just a new skin but its still the same.

I repeat...its sucks.

Re:A Prime Example of Wikifailure

[ZorbaTHut]

I went and looked at that link. To be honest, I agree with them. If the letter is genuine it should exist other places than your website, and judging from what else is on your website, I wouldn't necessarily trust you if you said 2+2=4.

Sorry.

I'd ask if you can prove it's from the person you claim it is - to be honest I haven't been able to look at it though (your geocities site is out of bandwidth) and so maybe it's a lot more genuine than I'm imagining it. But in any case, I'd still look for a more authoritative site that corroborates it.

Otherwise we might as well start worshiping Gene Ray as a prophet.

Re:A Prime Example of Wikifailure

[Little Brother]

Um dude, although I agree with the importance of the importance of your document, I can kinda see their point. You really should find a refrence elsewhere to the document you have, in a newspaper or such, that is hosted by somebody other than geocities. I could type up a confession by Bill Gates that he is a pedophile and buys boyslaves off of Michael Jackson, digitaly affix a signature, post it on gocities and cite it. But Wikipedia SHOULD remove my link in that case. Why is your case different? Well, possibly because your document is real, but how can I tell?

On the other hand, they did treat you like shait on the discussion board page dismissing you instead of telling you what you needed to find to authintisicate your claims. They made ad-hominium attacks against you and were basicly jerks. So see if you can find a link to a newssource that mentions the origional document, if so, link to that newssource and they won't have a leg to stand on.

-LittleBrother

Re:One thing

[LuSiDe]

I agree with that viewpoint I'm not trying to say this example is a trend or something but i decided to surf around at the Wikinews beta project to search for a news item which i know a bit of background on.

Little bit later i stumbled upon Pinochet arrested after Supreme Court ruling and i read the article. What striked me was the following sentence: The crimes where a part of "Operation Condor," an attempt to supress opposition to the government. The dictator ruled from a 1973 coup, overthrowing the elected socialist Salvador Allende, until 1990.

This statement is true, but not accurate. Its not news either, its background information for the uninformed reader. From here, the power of Wikipedia (or any other encyclopedia) could be used to link to history but the nice thing is that this is the Internet and that websites and Wiki's can easily 'connect' to each other. That'd be a good way IMO. Because now it misses all the facts of the CIA which were involved in this coup and who have blood on their hands, which is regulary censored or evaded (comes down to the same). I verified, and yes the wikipedia entry for Salvador Allende contains some information on this piece of history of Chille.

I'd like to know why they don't link to the encyclopedia for background information...