Jens Ropers (ropers@ropersonline.com) [041203 11:47]:
(1) While WP compatibility might seem like a real important and convenient thing, IMHO coming to that conclusion is fallacious (as in [[logical fallacy]]):
- WP compatibility is pretty much only needed if people want to
DUPLICATE (ie. not rewrite) content from the WP.
- Wikinews was was expressly advertised as a project that would NOT
simply duplicate WP content. Thus, I believe the "requirement" for WP license compatibility is much less than one might think.
I'd disagree, actually. Have you noticed how a breaking news story article comes together on Wikipedia? It's like seeing a newsmagazine feature being composed before your eyes. And a lot of stuff on wikinews-l is actually newsmagazine-quality writing, not necessarily simple-grammar inverted-pyramid newspaper-style information. So I think a lot of the stuff on wikinews, we really will want to just copy from Wikinews to Wikipedia.
(2) I would ''strongly'' argue for a public domain "license". As they say: Yesterday's news is used to wrap fish tomorrow. For a news site like Wikinews, the biggest asset will likely turn out to be an active, striving contributor community. Yes, a PD "license" would dramatically lessen Wikinews' control over content reuse, but any static copies will quickly become outdated and only serve as far as their archive value goes (real obnoxious automated content grabbing sited could be blocked). Users will thus figure out pretty quickly that the real McCoy is at wikinews.org. So little is lost by going PD and PD is what news should be. Any writing "for posteriority" (where you might have bigger concerns over content reuse) probably belongs at wikipedia.org anyway.
This is probably true. I suppose it depends what the contributors want. I do know of at least one professional journalist who is really very excited over Wikinews, and who I've contacted suggesting they weigh in with an opinion. Something that would attract professional journalists who can't help but write news but would like to write for someone other than Rupert Murdoch would be marvellous.
- d.