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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)."
I must say that I was impressed with the interview with Jimmy Wales. I've had my misgivings with the Wikinews project in the past, despite being an avid reader/contributor to Wikipedia. Yet from the article Mr. Wales lays out the project well:
The bloggers are the editorial page and response to the editorial pages, and we're the response to the front page. We'll synthesize what's being reported in a variety of sources.
Brilliant! That's exactly what WikiNews should be, and what it would excel at. Now, it will be simply a blog, but sort of an.. uber-blog. I'm just glad that Mr. Wales isn't looking too far, and acknowledges the shortcomings of the Wikinews project - the accessibility to foreign lands, important peoples, etc. In short, the power to break many stories. Not that bloggers haven't broken a few stories, but the lion's share will continue to reside with the big media sources.
All in all, a great interview. Kudos to Mr. Wales!
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
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?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
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.
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?
I for one, welcome our news.com.com.com.com.com overlords.
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.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
You linked to a scanned image on geocities?
And expected people to take you seriously?
A link to a site where anyone can place material is not a link worth having on wikipedia.
To prove my point - I can put a scanned image up on geocities purporting to be from you, saying you were wrong.
Would that prove anything? No - and nor does your link.
My pics.
Was it part of the McVeigh-UFO conspiracy also reported on your page before geocities axed it?
Fusion power research is known for bitter blood feuds and with nothing but some non-viewable jpgs on a geocities page (the google cache is accessible but it didn't cache the images) I see it as proof of Wikipedia's abilities of self-regulation that your change was reversed.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Here is a sample of a fact only news article that I just made up:
Police responded to a 911 emergency call at 123 Maple Ave last night at 3:22 AM. Mr Raymond Maynard called police to report that several persons were trying to break down his door, and asked for help. The police dispatcher could hear the sound of banging and hammering, and then Mr Maynard stated that the door was giving in, and that he had to put the phone down.
When Police arrived on the scene, they found Mr Dumbo Mcnutt, Mr Metoo Imdumb, and Mr Gang Banger on the floor of the house in the hallway leading to the master bedroom. Handguns were found by the bodies, and Mcnut had $6400 on his person. Mcnut, Imdumb, and Banger were pronounced dead at the scene from multiple shotgun wounds. The intruders all had previous records for assault, robbery, rape, and stampeding cattle thru the Vatican.
Police do not expect to file any charges against Mr Maynard.
Last month, the Governor signed into law the bill that bars lawsuits on the behalf of persons injured or killed while commiting a crime. Instances of home invasion have dropped 62% since the city mandated that each homeowner be armed last year.
### Now here is another story about the event, with a particular bias:
Another tragedy occured in the city tonight, and its cause was, as always, an armed citizen. A vigilante viciously gunned down 3 young men of color, innocent victims of Bush's oppression of the poor, the homeless, those who never had a chance in society. Police responded to a complaint by Mr Maynard that someone was knocking loudly at his door, and that it was past his bedtime. When officers arrived at the scene, they found a scene of bloody carnage. Mr Maynard had killed these three young men, claiming self defense. These sorts of senseless and unneccesary killings must be stopped now!. If only guns were outlawed, then citizens like Mr Maynard would be unable to act as judge, jury and executioner.
In an added tragedy, The Republican Governor last month signed a bill, over the objections of the UN , Cuba, and the ACLU, which prohibits the relatives of the victims of these attacks from having their day in court. Fatal shootings of persons accused of entering peoples homes without permission have risen sharply following the citys bloodthirsty mandate that all homeowners be armed to the teeth.####
I could do a 3ed version which puts the bias of the second version the other way, but I've spend too long on this already. In any case, you can see the first version reports only facts. The second version uses emotional language to press the readers buttons.
Most of what gets put into the mainstream media should be marked as troll or flamebait.
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:
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.
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