On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:34, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:02, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
of Wikipedia principles. Wikis depend on eventualism: given an infinite timeline, pages eventually get better. News cannot survive on that. The "decay" of the value of breaking news and eventualism are at odds with each other.
The question is, would paid staff be a healthy temporary boost for sustainability or be futile artificial life support? I fear it's the latter.
-Andrew (above taken from an earlier, longer post)
There are current affairs issues that would continue to be of interest. I've always felt this was an area Wikipedia and Wikinews should pursue: video interviews by Wikipedians of interesting people. Not necessarily celebrities or news types -- interviews with ordinary people, oral histories of certain communities, people who've had odd experiences, etc.
It has been discussed a few times, and I know David Shankbone did some good ones, but for some reason it has been limited. Adding some original videos to our articles (adding them to Wikipedia articles, supplied by Wikinews) would be very attractive to readers, I think.
I agree, and to quote from my reply in another thread:
Where Wikinews has been successful and clearly valuable is in what those in journalism call "feature" content. Interviews with political leaders, photography of events, and investigative pieces. These verifiable forms of reporting are not time critical and don't demand "full coverage" like breaking news beats. The Wikinews interview with Shimon Peres is a good example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_discusses_the_future_of_Israel
And, in Wikipedia's crowdsourced way, potentially a re-oriented, mobilized Wikinews could produce in one week what National Geographic normally produces in one year. This could be a multimedia endeavor that could kick up the Wikimedia efforts in audio and video that seem to have stalled lately.
WMF's mission is about giving free access to "the sum of all human knowledge."
Wikipedia is about condensing and curating knowledge.
Wikinews can be the force to go explore and acquire it.
-Andrew
Yes, exactly. I'm currently working on an article about female genital mutilation. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be if I could find some women who had experienced this, arrange an interview, contact a Wikinews person in London, or Kenya, and ask them to put certain questions to those women?
That way, you can make the interview and the article interactive, in the sense that you could ask the women to address specific points in the article, then link to the video in that section. It would give us a whole new depth of coverage.
This is exactly what it's like to work for an international news organization, where someone in the Timbuktu office has an idea, and collaborates with someone in the local area to produce it. We do have that potential as a movement. It's just a question of how to give people the confidence, and the space to add their material. And to have sensible editorial policies that encourage quality without stifling early efforts.
Sarah