--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
While I am not a fan of the idea of a Wikinews spinoff project (primarily because I think that news and encyclopedia are very closely linked), I do believe that this could be the beginning of an expansion into the news area, and similar agreements might be reached with other publications. It's a fair deal: They give part of their content to the public, we provide them with a steady stream of traffic to their site -- without advertising it, simply by citing it as a source. I'm sure some other independent news websites might be interested in such a deal.
But speaking only about the basics--the wikinews concept is an interesting idea. But just to throw it out there--Indymedia blew it with Google news by virture of not having a means to community edit content. Wiki allows people to edit willy nilly--our experience on wikipedia shows that a community can deal with vandalism, but with an encyclopedia we can take it easy. With "news" there would be a need to have current states of articles in tip top shape, allowing a much much smaller margin of leeway for vandals and cranks, etc. Ideally a sysop pool of maybe 2-300 might be able to deal with issues quickly enough -- some extra protections like limitations on anons, etc would be necessary.
Just throwing it out there-- how much would the Wikimedia ware have to change to meet the needs of such a project?
~S~
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