Most of the enforced editorial standards on en.Wikinews are about quality control and
NPoV, so they aren’t strictly speaking necessary. Without them article quality will
decrease, but both article quantity and creation-to-publication time will likely improve.
Whether or not en.Wikinews’ editorial standards are good or not depends entirely on what
your priorities for the project are. If you prioritize article quality (I do), then the
current peer review system is an acceptable (though imperfect) way of achieving that. If
you prioritize having lots of articles, then doing away with those standards is a way to
achieve that goal. Because there is a difference of opinion on which of these paths to
follow, I don’t disapprove of the fork, though I do see some problems in the road ahead.
My main concern about the fork is lack of copyright standards. About a year ago news
organizations started suing *individual bloggers* for copyright infringement. Even
individual bloggers that have low readerships. They won’t hesitate to sue a wiki, even if
it only gets a few thousand hits a day.
Now it’s unlikely (though not impossible:P) that they’ll sue over a single infringement,
but if they notice a pattern of copyright infringement they’ll go ballistic on you.
So my recommendation is that you keep one small part of the peer review process – the
copyright section – just to stave off the inevitable lawsuits from the MSM. Newspapers and
their online counterparts feel under threat, so it is of the upmost importance to any news
wiki right now to make sure they aren’t drawing the attention of the MSM’s attack dogs.
gopher65
From: pi zero
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 6:11 AM
To: Wikinews mailing list
Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] We've been forked! [fwd from foundation-l]
You're asking why they created a fork? It's simple enough. Enforcing editorial
standards, as en.wn does, inevitably creates resentment. Some of these folks will have
gone for the fork because they want to try to create a news site without that resentment
(an admirable if naive goal; in my opinion, they haven't fully realized what it's
going to mean for editorial standards, not to mention copyright liability). Some of them
will have gone for the fork because they, personally, resent English Wikinews, and are
eager for an opportunity to strike a blow against it (not such an admirable motive, though
very human). And some will have gone for the fork out of a mixture of those two.
There are complications ---cultural conflict between en.wn and en.wp is notable, personal
feud--- but that's the bottom line.
On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Michael Moroni <michael.moroni(a)mailoo.org> wrote:
HI you all,
I'm an user from Italian Wikinews.
Could someone explain why do some people fork Wikinews in order to
create another project?
- Airon90
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