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Is a "Wikipedia For News" Feasible?

Posted by Soulskill on from the DIY-journalism dept.

Larry Sanger writes: Online news has become ridiculously confusing. Interesting bits are scattered among repetitive articles, clickbait, and other noise. Besides, there's so much interesting news, but we just don't have time for it all. Automated tools help a little, but give us only an unreliable selection; we still feel like we're missing out. Y'know, back in the 1990s, we used to have a similar problem about general knowledge. Locating answers to basic questions through the noise of the Internet was hit-and-miss and took time. So we organized knowledge with Wikipedia ("the encyclopedia that Slashdot built"). Hey, why don't we do something similar for the news? Is it possible to make a Wikipedia for news, pooling the efforts of newshounds everywhere? Could such a community cut through the noise and help get us caught up more quickly and efficiently? As co-founder of Wikipedia, I'm coming down on the "yes" side. I have recently announced an open content, collaborative news project, Infobitt (be gentle, Slashdot! We are still in early stages!), and my argument for the affirmative position is made both briefly and at length.

7 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. I don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this already a thing?

    1. Re:I don't get it by HBI · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think even-handed coverage is possible, when journalism as a whole is essentially paid trolling for one agenda or another. People just want to read stuff that reinforces their preconceived notions, and I am no exception.

      Find me a story with no slant, and i'll show you a story (virtually) no one read.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  2. Drudge Report and Slashdot by mi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Online news has become ridiculously confusing.

    Nonsense. I take Drudge Report and Slashdot as the news-sites of record — and I have not missed anything important yet. Thank you very much.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re: Drudge Report and Slashdot by sycodon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Drudge rarely, if ever, provides original content. He is simply an aggregator that provides links to news he thinks is relevant or interesting...often to"liberal" sites.

      So get off your ignorant high horse.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  3. US Centric? by irrational_design · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I once spent six months in a foreign country. Upon returning home I was amazed to read major American newspapers and to see for myself how drastically what they were reporting was different than what was actually going on. I knew what I had experienced first hand, and I knew that what the American papers were reporting was flat out not true. (I still don't know what to make of this since it wasn't just one paper, but all the ones I looked at. I'm no conspiracy nut, but how does that happen?). However, the foreign news such as the BBC was reporting the news accurately. Since then I've not trusted anything reported by American papers, after all, if I know that they were mis-reporting something I knew about, how do I know the truth about things I don't know about first hand? I stick to foreign based news nowadays. Fortunately with the internet that is easy to do.

    1. Re:US Centric? by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ever read mainstream news reporting about a topic you were very familiar with? Perhaps something related to technology, or a local issue you were in the middle of?

      Most people have had that experience. The more you know about something, the less the story seems to be accurate.

      Yeah, all the rest of the news stories are about that accurate also, people just mostly don't notice.

      Think about it.... it's mostly some j-school grad who asked a couple people some questions to get quotes, then threw the "story" together. Usually they're lucky if they understood what they were told, let alone can explain it in a manner which actually enlightens their audience.

      My best luck as been with subject matter experts who blog on news topics related to their subject. So I get my economics news and analysis from economics professors (not the pet ones in the NY Times), my legal news from law professors and judges who blog, my technical news from a technical site focused on that part of the industry, etc...

      Even then you have to be willing to read multiple viewpoints to try and see a bigger picture than one voice is going to paint for you.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
  4. Re:Wikipedia is too biased for my news. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wikipedia has another reason for that. The internet is not random sample. It does lean quite liberal, by American standards. Partly because internet culture started off in academic and student populations, and partly because a lot of the english-speaking members are from the UK, Australia, Canada, and other places Americans tend to regard as borderline communist states.