Hoi,
Jimmy has a project that does exactly that.
Having said that, what we could do is have a project investigating the
missing information in Wikidata. The bias in Wikidata is alive and well. I
doubt for instance that there is one city in Africa whose mayors are all
known in Wikidata.. For Northern America and European towns this is common.
We do not even know all the national ministers of African countries for the
twentieth and twenty first century.
Fact checking starts with having facts in dispute and we don't even have
many of the basic facts. That is a project that we could and should have.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 20:17, Leinonen Teemu <teemu.leinonen(a)aalto.fi> wrote:
Hi all,
Has there been any discussion to start a new Wikimedia project focusing on
fact checking?
Fact checking of course is in the core of editing Wikipedia, but I was
thinking about dedicated wiki-site that is dedicated for fact checking of
current events and news. Why this would be important?
(1) There are many fact checking site in the English speaking world but
much less elsewhere. I am afraid that there is still greater need for fact
checking in the rest of the world. {{Citation needed}}
(2) Our community is very well educated to do fact checking the wiki-way.
Again internationally, many of our community members are real fact
champions in their home countries and language groups. The practice of
Wikipedia could be applied to fact checking of fast moving current events
and news, too.
(3) This could help us to get new young people to the movement, as editing
Wikipedias is not anymore so easy to start (because they are so good
already).
(4) In many parts of the world, fact checking can also be dangerous. With
our anonymous and community driven practices and services we could protect
the fact checkers in many parts of the world.
I am not sure what is the state of the Wikinews, but my impression is that
it is not really working. It was a good idea, but maybe wiki or wiki-way is
not the way to produce news. Also the beautiful idea of citizen journalism
has not really become reality. Maybe we could try if wiki and the wki-way
works better in fact checking.
Peace,
- Teemu
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