On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Achal Prabhala aprabhala@gmail.com wrote:
I've been following the Wikinews discussion, and I've been hesitant to comment only because I know so little about it. The little I know tells me that it could be something great, and perhaps the reason it's not quite there yet is because it was ahead of it's time. Turn on the television news today and it's routine to see tweet-ins and live comment feeds from other social media; indeed, a significant chunk of what mainstream American television channels report these days is feedback as journalism. The other big thing happening here in India, for instance, is citizen journalism - a tired, catch-all phrase but nevertheless a firm reality - which forms at least two hours of every major news channel's content per day.
It really wasn't ahead of it's time. It is actually quiet behind its time. Amateur news, bloggers broke that barrier much before.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the world now follows the Wikinews model. But Wikinews started up in 2004...while Twitter was founded only in 2006, Apple's Iphone only hit the market in 2007...and much of the infrastructure that could enable the Wikinews model of journalism in mainstream media was built much after Wikinews was founded as a project. I don't know enough about Wikinews and what's plaguing it currently, but as an outsider it would seem to me that it has the potential to be something really significant.
I disagree, the world follows instant news model. News is faster than it has even been, free and available in every conceivable format. You are treating Wikinews as some distinct model, it really isn't. It's a wiki where they add news instead of articles, nothing more. Let me tell you, what's plaguing it currently- The review process.
As for oral citations, or the idea of using audio and video interviews to record knowledge, all of us who worked on the project would be delighted if there were unintended consequences to the project, like perhaps being of use to Wikinews, which is not something we thought about at the outset. Michel (Castelo Branco) suggested earlier that as Wikinews explicitly allows original research as a policy, it could be used as a workaround for oral citations on Wikipedia. We don't have fixed ideas about this and welcome discussion in general - though I think there is value in facing the boundaries of citation on Wikipedia squarely. We would like to offer up the project as a way to confront the limitations of citations as currently allowed, the problem of knowledge that isn't published in print, and, in time, open up a larger discussion on this. (We'll be soon posting a wrap-up of the oral citations project once a few things are done).
I doubt that would be enough to satisfy the no original research requirement. The idea linking back to a Wikimedia project as a source is not a new one, it has been tried many times and doesn't work.
A related - and interesting - problem/opportunity is the vast amount of audio-video archival material that already exists in the world, almost none of which has any direct effect on Wikipedia. In most cases, tapping into the 'raw' archive would be disallowed within Wikipedia on the grounds of it constituting a 'primary source'. (This is also a problem for Wikipedians who'd like to use private archives - even corporate archives - as sources, but can't). But there is nothing to say that Wikinews could not tap into this vast pool of curated material and create 'news' out of it. In general, it would appear that Wikinews has a set of very flexible policies and practices, and it seems as if they could be put to boundless good use.
Wikinews policies aren't the problem. Wikipedia will still not accept them and it should not. You can also try Wiktionary or Wikiquote. The issue is the research is original, not peer-reviewed or published by a reputable third party and hence, would remain a primary source. And no, Wikinews will not be able to tap into the raw pool. That would be a different project all together. Since covering archives and Breaking news stories are two very separate areas.
Theo