On 11/8/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Credentials are given by organizations - not by just some people on the Internet (which is all any Wikimedia project is by itself). Using that term - in the real world where it has a specific meaning - to describe that process is very misleading.
But you could also say "encyclopedias are written by organizations - not by just some people on the Internet (which is all any Wikimedia project is by itself). Using that term - in the real world where it has a specific meaning - to describe that process is very misleading."
I trust the content of Wikipedia because I trust the community behind it. I don't expect the Board to have approved the people editing it, or to have approved the content itself, and yet I'm still happy for it to be called an "encyclopedia", even though that term has meaning in the "real world" which implies a traditional process of peer review and publishing that Wikipedia doesn't have. I don't see the difference between this and Wikinews. "Press credentials" have no more or less meaning than "encyclopedia". If we're challenging the "traditional" model of an encyclopedia by letting a community write it, why would we not do exactly the same for press credentials? Challenge this model of a higher authority and let the people involved work out who can be trusted. It's the only scalable approach, and the only one that will work across all 15 language editions.
Angela.