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

Moderation?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I was around in the early days when Indymedia was being planned. I helped a bit from the technical end, how to set up Apache, which Linux would I recommend, etc. I dropped out of the project because I disagred with their moderation scheme, there is very little accountability.

I'm a flaming liberal, and these days I can't stand Indymedia. Why? Because many comments and stories are hidden by the fascist moderators.

Apparenly I'm not liberal ENOUGH to have my comments read by others, especially when I dare to criticize some Black Blockster when they do stupid shit like setting a trashcan on fire...

Does Wikinews have a similar moderation scheme?

Re:Moderation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indymedia was designed as a *news service* for people interested in doing progressive and radical journalism. The open newswire and the comments area were not the chief goal of the website. Indymedia has bias, of course. It exists for progressives and radicals to report on their protests and to engage in journalism from a radical point of view.

Oh, by the way, I'm an Indymedia volunteer and veteran of many black blocs. I like good news projects and I like trashcans set on fire. It sounds like Indymedia wasn't a good fit for you, so best of luck in your other projects.

A Prime Example of Wikifailure

[Baldrson]

The epistemology of Wikidom has some weaknesses that render it useless for anything where there might be important information. Important information inevitably involves various interests and there is no way to remove the human element of resource competition from those interests.

A great example is what just happened to the fusion power article. Two of the three founders of the Tokamak program have come out against the Tokamak and one of the founders circulated a letter to all of the plasma physics labs as well as to the relevant Congressmen, stating categorically that the Tokamak program was never real -- it was just a vehicle for raising funding so that other more hopeful ideas could be tried.

I scanned the original letter and presented a link to it as an aspect of the fusion power article. This is primary source material -- not original research -- from one of the foremost authorities, indeed one of the fathers of the US fusion energy program. The nothing-better-to-do-with-their-times censored it and quite honestly I just don't have the time, energy or patience to bother with a reversion war with the bottom feeders at wikipedia.

Well...

[euphonaesthesia]

But what's interesting about the way the wiki process works, and the openness of it, is that if you write something and you want it to survive the process, you have to write it in such a way that is broadly satisfactory to people of many points of view.

But what about issues and facts that may indeed offend a lot of people? One of the problems with mainstream media is that they must retain an audience and so they often frame the information such that it is in a view that is pleases as much of its audience as possible. A single issue has many viewpoints, and each of those viewpoints may be presented with a bias. Take nuclear energy for example--one can explore the dangers of it or talk about its advantages. Both can be reported in a netural way, but by highlighting one and not the other, there is another form of bias. They may circumvent some types of political and opionated biased in this way, but they do not eliminate the bias as to what does and does not receive attention.

Re:One thing

[Altima(BoB)]

But the idea is a sound one, in my view. Total neutrality in an abstract sense is not necessarily being 100% non-judgemental, because just about every assertion that one can make involves a judgement. I believe 100% neutrality is when everyone's varied views on a matter are taken into account. What the Wiki projects do is give everyone the opportunity to inject their view on an issue.

The problem is when anyone thinks they are 100% right and, at least in the case of wikipedia, monitor an article to prevent and undermine any changes that run contrary to their views. This is the main failing of the wiki project and it really has no easy answer. The wikinews site offers the advantage that specific articles will be under more intense scrutiny by more people in a short period of time, reducing the potential for sabateurs marginally, but also running the risk that the status quo will dominate the tone and content of the articles more often, drowning out minority voices.

Wikipedia with 'Expert-Certified' Articles

[davide101]

Would it kill a project to have 'expert versions' of pages that have been okayed by a panel (elected by majority vote, of course) of experts? These could be right next to regular pages and inspire a little more confidence in results.... especially in more specialized or scientific areas. Your thoughts?

Re:Wow, very balanced interview

[Leo McGarry]

Boy, did you ever get that wrong. Seymour Hersch is personally responsible for blowing the Abu Ghraib story completely out of proportion.

My favorite Seymour Hersch anecdote comes from Tommy Franks' autobiography, American Soldier. He diplomatically refrains from mentioning Hersch by name, but he refers to an author who fabricated an absurd story during the fighting in Afghanistan. The dead giveaway was the fact that the author -- Hersch --said that the military used X AC-130 Spectre gunships during a certain event, where X was a figure that was larger than the total number of AC-130s that existed in the world at the time.

Pretty funny story. He's not quite in the Robert Fisk or Jayson Blair class for self-described journalists who just make up their stories, but he's awfully close. What a huge waste of The New Yorker's money.

How to make it credible:

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop that asininely silly "Wiki" moniker. I mean really, how do expect anybody to not bust a gut when the word "wiki" comes out of your mouth?

To a man with a hammer...

[bcrowell]

...everything looks like a nail.

To Jimmy Wales, everything looks like a job for a wiki.

Wikipedia was a smashing success, and that surprised a lot of people, including me. But if we step back and analyze why it was successful, I think there are some very specific things that made it work, and that don't apply so much to other types of work:

1. instant gratification -- You can be the one to create the article on Green Day, or crustaceans, or whatever you happen to be interested in, and there you go, half an hour later, it's something useful that you've given to the world.
2. permanent value -- You can tell yourself that your article on crustaceans will be something that will always be there for other people to read, albeit with modifications over the years.
3. factuality -- The job of an encyclopedia is mostly just to describe the world as it is. You don't need to be creative, you just need to describe the facts.

Well, wikinews fails criterion #2, and probably #3 as well -- its writers probably aren't going to be flying to Fallouja to report first-hand, so all they'll have to contribute is their own opinions about the news. The one place where wikipedia really falls flat on its face is topical and controversial articles, i.e., wikinews' entire prospective subject matter.

Then there's wikibooks, which fails criterion #1. There may be some healthy, thriving books in there, but as for the physics textbook I've been checking on now and then, nobody seems to have the long-term motivation to write anything past the first chapter.

Re:One thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Instances of home invasion have dropped 62% since the city mandated that each homeowner be armed last year.

You proved the opposite point. In your supposedly unbiased article, you are obviously linking arming homeowners with the drop in home invasion. Those are two facts, true, but putting them in the same sentence is obivously implying that one leads to the other, even when there's nothing other than the author's belief to back that theory up.

It's the same thing that always makes me mad at Michael Moore. He never outright lies, but he lines up facts together in a way that is designed to show you causality where none exists.

Maybe something like this ...

[Ralconte]

This site, culls news services for the most common word. Not the best topic, or most important topic, just counts what people are writing about and lets you see the headlines. It may be the closest thing yet to a non-biased news source.

Re:Wow, very balanced interview

[grcumb]

Does nobody know who Seymour Hersch is any more?

The reason that many in the US Armed Forces don't like Seymour Hersch, besides the facts that he has some of the best sources in the business, is that he was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, where US soldiers murdered hundreds of innocent men, women and children.

That story marked a seminal moment in US journalism, demonstrating the power of the media by uncovering the truth and the lies of the Viet Nam conflict. It was Hersch's work that more or less guaranteed the end of US involvement in Viet Nam due to the huge outcry when the details came out.

Given that you don't appear to know that tiny bit of your own history, it might also surprise you to learn that a young officer named Colin Powell was assigned to investigate the massacre. He claimed to find no credible evidence that the massacre ever occurred. Hersch made a fool of Powell and many others in the military when he convinced one of the soldiers present during the mass murder to go public with his story.

Now tell me that Tommy Franks and others don't have an axe to grind.

Hersch is known to everyone who works in the business as one of the best informed correspondents in the US media. His research is impeccable. Read his columns in the New Yorker if you don't believe me. His writing is clear, and extremely well documented.

My biggest regret these days is that there's no new generation of independant reporters with the skills and determination that Hersch is still showing. I'm glad that someone broke the Abu Ghraib story; I'm only sorry that Hersch is still the one doing the ground work.

Now, to bring this post back on topic *grin*: It's precisely because of threads like this that I like Wikipedia and Wikinews. Someone makes wild-assed claims, backs it with weak evidence from a tainted source, and call it fact. On Fox and CNN, this goes unchallenged. In a wiki environment, it can be corrected and refined quickly and efficiently, and the public get the truth, rather than some shill's doublethink. Hopefully Wikinews will provide the training ground for a few more Seymour Hersches. We need them now more than ever.

Re:biased facts

[ExMember]

You can also introduce bias by choosing which facts to include and which to leave out.

Police responded to a 911 emergency call at 123 Maple Ave yesterday. Arriving at the scene they found three dead from shotgun wounds. When questioned by police, Raymond Maynard admitted to committing the shootings. Mr. Maynard claims to have fired in self-defense, but every one of his victims was shot more than once, aand at close range from Maynard's 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun.

A police spokemen has already stated they do not expect to file charges against Maynard.

The families of the deceased are barred from filing wrongful death suits by new bill recently signed into law by Governor Letgodsortemout. The bill was widely denounced by concerned citizen groups.

This is fun. Let's try it again.

Raymond Maynard, the 48 year old homeowner and 23 year resident of 123 Maple Ave. dialed 911 yesterday at 3:22am to report an attempted invasion of his home in progress. When the police finally made it to the scene they found that the intruders, all convicted felons with violent records, had already entered the Maynard home. Maynard reports that he was able to repel the armed invaders with the help of a shotgun he keeps in his house for defense. All three intruders were found dead on the scene from multiple shotgun wounds.

Maynard's wife of 30 years, Edith Maynard, 49, and his 8 year old niece Emma Freely were both in the house at the time of the incident. They were visibly shaken, but unharmed. Emma still intends to perform in her ballet recital tommorrow night.

Maynard will recieve a special commendation from the neighborhood watch group he has captained for the past five years, in a ceremony Thursday night.

Instances of home invasion have dropped 62% in the fist year alone, since the city mandated each homeowner be armed.

Same story. Nothing but the facts, but very different slants.

"I'm being censored!!" -battle cry of a wikinutter

[deglr6328]

I feel I should chime in here, as the person who originally removed the geocities links from the article.

I removed the link because; number one - wikipedia does not publish original research, two -Jim Baldrson has been a known trollish crazy on Kuro5hin for years and a troll on Usenet for over a DECADE landing himself on a kook-of-the-month list way back in 1994, three -The ideas expressed on his geocities site (which is down now but I'll link anyway, maybe it'll be back up) are just plain insane. Here's a real gem: "Immigration Causes Autism" a lovely little racist tract (also, racist extremists endorse his views), fourth -he started editing wikipedia articles in suspicious anti-semitic and racist ways (see here, though these are merely revivals of his MANY earlier anti-Jewish ramblings) though his changes were reverted by other users fairly quickly, fifth -he seems to go "underground" when he's noticed by others as a problem and then starts posting changes to articles using only his IP. So in conclusion I think its quite clear that neither he nor his ideas or motives are trustworthy. He is closely watched on wikipedia right now and I doubt he will get away with too much shenanigans.

One hilarious bit of irony I can't help but relish is that he came here to cry a river about how he was being "censored" on wikipedia and then had four +5 comments posted below him agreeing with his opposition after recognizing him for the kook he is. Wow, congrats Jim!