Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Founder Introduces Wiki Magazine Sites
KingJawa writes "Wikipedia blew away Encyclopedia Brittanica, but can the model be used to upset the magazine industry? Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, thinks so. His company, Wikia, today announced three open-source magazine-style sites where users can write about news, opinion and gossip — one magazine wiki each for politics, entertainment, and local interests. Each open-source magazine hands total editorial control to the readers, allowing them to read, write, edit, and dictate the editorial feel for each topic."
It's called MySpace, blogspot.com, wordpress, etc.
User-generated content is good, but it's no mass-media killer - especially when other folks have already gone down this road already.
Interesting idea. The main difference between newspapers/magazines and encyclopedias is of course the timing of information. I can write an encyclopedia article about a subject I know by investing time and research. However, the research for writing magazine articles is much different, relying on interviews, travelling, even subpoenas, etc.
Wikepedia already has certain magazine aspects to it, it is updated with current events quite quickly. But those articles are (usually) simply relaying information obtained from a traditional news source.
I would like to see the attemp though, what's the harm?
Isn't that why I read Slashdot?
Not exactly a new idea, is it?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Clicking through the politics wikimag I was surprised to see (announced as breaking news, no less) the story Anna Nicole Smith 1967-2007 DEAD. And that's politics?
(Now if someone edited the story to make it that GWB had authorised the raising of ANS from the dead, that would be politics).
it'll be interesting to see if the Entertainment Community wiki is embraced or attacked by the MPAA/RIAA. it seems like it would be a great free publicity and endorsement of shows/movies/songs. however, i'm sure once screenshots and clips start to go up the gloves will come off.
Wikipedia didn't blow away Encyclopedia Brittanica. Encarta did. As Bill Gates once pointed out to Brittanica, the Brittanica sales force of door to door sales reps added negative value to the product once it could be put on CD-ROM. Brittanica's problem was a high cost per sale.
Are this magazines competition to wikinews?
The collaborative news project is a supplement to Wikipedia, but suffers from lack of authors and articles. Wikipedians prefer to write encyclopaedia artcles about news stories, which leads to problems: unverified pieces of information appear in Wikipedia articles and are not corrected afterwards.
Considering that it is common to hear a certain popular news broadcaster telling a guest to "shut up", Wikia can't be much worse. I don't think there's a whole lot of civilised discussion going on in the (mainstream) media these days on either side of the political divide. Don't blame the medium, blame the people.
...wikipedia to only allow hearsay, it only seems fitting that if there were to be a magizine based on teh same that it would be one of politics, entertainment or and in summary... gossip.
The difference here is that the policies of wikipedia are such that responsibility is taken off wikipedia, unlike other publications and encyclopedias.
Having no responsibility that could see a court room should say a lot about the trustworthyness of it.
And despite the Wiki crowd's insistence to the opposite, Wiki's aren't user friendly.
They have a complex rule-set for editing, discussion and notation.
Wikia fails the first test of mass marketing technological solutions: Keep it simple.
Blogs may be less sophisticated on the back-end, but here's a newsflash: people who
read gossip blogs could give a crap.
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