Hi,
Le Saturday 16 April 2005 21:19, Erik Moeller a écrit :
Jimmy-
Yes, this is what I had in mind. The French
Wikinews was started
according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to
ensure a proper launch with solid community support. When we were in
Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to
get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this
hasn't been successful.
it is important to note that Wikinews is currently the *only* project
that follows a strict language creation policy. There are:
* 12 Wikinews editions
* 87 Wikiquote editions
* 121 Wikibooks editions
* 173 Wiktionary editions
* ~200 Wikipedia editions
Suffice it to say that a very large number of these Wikiquote,
Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikipedia editions are dead or, worse, spam
magnets. :-(
I advocate blocking projects when there is no real activity until one or
several volunteer(s) come(s) It would prevent them being squatted by spammers
like the Slovak Wiktionary recently (21 articles).
This was already proposed some time ago and a page was made on Meta in order
to have a general overview of the situation. However AFAIK no action was
taken.
The elaborate processes for Wikinews as well as the
nature of the
project have certainly put it in the spotlight of community attention.
I think such a process should be used for any new project now.
But the situation with Wikinews is much better. Of all
the editions,
only one (Bulgarian) is completely dead. It was launched according to
the old, minimal policy. If nothing happens within the next couple of
months, or if it starts attracting spam, I'd recommend locking it down.
The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being
updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of
writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current
events" summary style right on the Main Page:
http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Accueil
This is unfortunate, as it duplicates the page "Actualités" on the
French Wikipedia:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualit%C3%A9s
I hope that over time, the French Wikinews will evolve like the other
editions into a source of genuine stories. But, at least it is not a
spam magnet, and there is a small community there.
I hope that a new promotion campaign will attract new contributors for this
project. This should be started soon as the French Wikipedia is approaching
the 100,000 articles.
The Swedish edition has seen no new stories since
April 2, but was very
active until then; I have heard rumors that this is related to a
conflict on the Swedish Wikipedia.
All in all, I think we are doing quite well. Thanks to a volunteer from
the Romanian edition, Romihaitza, we now even have daily updates on the
number of new articles in each language per day:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Statistics
The new "Wikimedia regulars + start writing key pages on Meta" policy
for new languages seems to work, and I see no reason for any substantial
changes at the present time. Maybe the number of required regulars could
be increased slightly.
Given the success of the English one, I hope to start an international
writing contest soon, which will also help us to track the progress of
the different languages.
All best,
Erik
Yann
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