On 12 September 2011 22:57, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
From Wikimedia's perspective, I think this is "one down, several hundred to go." Wikimedia has made it clear that its singular focus is the English Wikipedia. All other Wikipedias are peripheral; all other project types are abandoned. Perhaps with the exception of Wikimedia Commons, which is able to pull in grant money, so it continues to receive some level of technical support.
Considering Wikinews was started and pushed heavily by Erik Moller (early on he was personally bailing people up at wikimeets to get them to contribute to it), I suggest your analysis is on crack^W^W^Whypothesises too much cause for what is *entirely* explicable by a small community going insular and going for perceived quality over outreach. This is particularly given that Wikinews explicitly put in the heavyweight review infratructure in order to get in good with Google News. And that review structure is just the sort of thing one would expect to leave contributors dissatisfied and feeling utterly un-wiki about bothering.
I don't know what would be an answer. The new site wants to keep a *lot* less reviewed. But then there's other failure modes for citizen journalism, e.g. Before It's News, which has been pretty much overrun by conspiracy theorists.
- d.