---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> Date: 28 Mar 2008 16:23 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Photographer IDs To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Only the English Wikinews has an accreditation process. The policy is here, http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy Requests for accreditation go here, http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:AR There are also a few other pages which those link to. The Wikinews phone hotline is one of the methods that can be used to verify credentials. We have one contributor who takes people's personal details and makes up laminated press passes that get posted out; in the past, this got a reporter preferential access to NHL (hockey) matches and a seat in the press box. What seems to have made the biggest difference though was the purchase of the wikinewsie.org domain and use of that for email addresses. This was something I took upon myself to do and it seemed to have an impact in landing my interview with Tony Benn and David Shankbone getting his Israel junket and interview with Shimon Peres. It certainly looks a damn sight more professional to have firstname.lastname(a)wikinewsie.org instead of some hotmail or gmail address. From a personal perspective, I'd love to see Commons institute something similar and have accredited photographers. An alternative to having two separate processes might be to move the Wikinews accreditation process over to meta and work from there across multiple projects. We've had a number of people from non-English Wikinews projects apply for accreditation with mixed results. However, that being said it might be best if Commons hammered out their own rules to start with - particularly requirements that those applying had good equipment and demonstrated a dedication to the project and a good eye for photography. From a Wikinews perspective it would be fantastic were there a pool of Commons photographers who could be contacted to attend events with an accredited reporter and cover said event. If you've any further questions on WN accreditation, feel free to ask on or off-list. There are problems in the majority of countries that work under the Napoleonic code and official, government sanctioned credentials are unavailable unless you make the majority of your income from your journalistic pursuits. However in a recent case in Belgium brought against an Indymedia reporter the judge threw it out and specified that the case should treat the person in question as a journalist and go before a different court and apply a different law. This is great news for all citizen journalists in the country as the law in question has not been applied - successfully or otherwise - for many years. Brian McNeil -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: 28 March 2008 15:41 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Cc: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Photographer IDs On 28/03/2008, Adam Brookes <adambro(a)aebrookes.co.uk> wrote: the Yeah. The problem is not making up a badge, it's all the legal issues and project politics surrounding "accreditation". Is there a nice page somewhere summarising how Wikinews editions deal with accrediting reporters, which might serve as a comparison? - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l