Erik Moeller wrote:
One of my key arguments for Wikinews is that it can be immediately useful, even without any original reporting - just by being a good summary of the news on a wide variety of subjects. Even if we start out by say, having primarily Linux-related news, we can still be a wiki-based competition to something like Slashdot or Linuxjournal. And as we get more volunteers, we can expand our focus.
(Preface: This isn't either a criticism or a proposal, just a comment.)
One thing we already do somewhat is provide fairly good summaries of news-type events in Wikipedia proper. For example, [[Hurricane Ivan]] was being updated minute-by-minute with information as it became available. It'd be nice if we make sure that this still keeps happening---that is, that anything "encyclopedic" from Wikinews gets folded back into Wikipedia, preferably in real time so our Wikipedia articles on newsworthy subjects stay up-to-the-minute. I'm not sure how to best do that, but some sort of linking between a news event and corresponding Wikipedia article(s) to make sure people keep them in mind would be nice.
(Actually I think it might complement it nicely as long as we make sure that happens, because people have a tendency to put in news-type stuff that doesn't really belong into Wikipedia articles now and then, so some linking in the other direction might be nice too.)
(So you can count me as withdrawing my initial objections, at least to the extent of being willing to see how it works out.)
-Mark
(PS - Aren't parentheses wonderful?)