(09:44:11) Dan100: is anyone live? (09:44:16) Dan100: I need help ASAP>(09:44:28) Dan100: explosions across London

Underground

(09:44:32) Dan100: it's chaos

Oh yes, I got help alright.

We were the first on the web with the news, anywhere: http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_L...

Within a few hours, a team of people were working to create the most up-to-date and most authorative news article anywhere on the Internet. Co-ordinating ourselves largely through the IRC channel (which anyone can access with just their browser using a simple link), we had people from both around the world and right in London searching for photographs, getting permission to use them, taking notes from spokesmen and press conferences, and constantly updating and fact-checking our articles.

Twenty-four hours later, our main article -

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_L...

has had some 60,000 hits from Europe (excluding France) alone. (Thanks to Kate for the stats.) As most of our traffic comes from North America, it's reasonable to assume that we had well in excess of 100,000 reads that day. Small in comparison to any major news service, but it proves we're on the map.

Our articles were listed on the Main Page as they were written. The lead articles were updated in moments. Everyone arriving at the site instantly could see what was happening and where to go to read more. Due to our much more rigorous fact-checking, our articles were consistently more accurate and more update-to-date throughout the day than the single Wikipedia article. To sum - with Wikinews, you could find more information, which was more accurate, in less time, than with Wikipedia.

And tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, we'll go on reporting the news of the world with equally high standards of journalism. The difference between a dedicated news service and an encycolopaedia.

Yesterday, we proved that the model of massively distributed citizen journalism not only works, but works extraordinarily well.

So I want to ask the board to do this: begin promoting Wikinews as widely and as loudly as Wikipedia. We proved ourselves yesterday; now we should recieve the support and promotion we deserve.

Dan

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Just a couple of comments, quickly :-)

1) This is great news :-)

2) Here are a few relevant references, which indicate they were very impressed by wikipedia and wikinews report yesterday : http://www.pointblog.com/past/2005/07/07/explosions_a_londres.htm http://pisani.blog.lemonde.fr/pisani/2005/07/sinformer_vite_.html (not an editor, but use us a source frequently) http://www.agoravox.fr/article.php3?id_article=1440

Note that all three are in french... and refer to en.wikinews and yesterday coverage :-)

2) I would be VERY curious to know why stats are from all Europe but exclude France. I do not understand what you mean here. Why would stats exclude my country ? If this is related to the 3 Paris squids, as far as I know, they serve other european countries. And not all France hits go through squids. Please clarify your comments about excluding France.

3) About your last comment (the board should BEGIN promoting wikinews) My but-last published interview : http://www.neteconomie.com/perl/navig.pl/neteconomie/infos/article/200505021... mentions wikinews (last question at the bottom of the interview) and actually refers to the whole concept in its very title. Actually, I even use NOWHERE the word wikipedia. I realised that just a few days later :-)

My last published interview : http://www.01net.com/editorial/282414/presse-en-ligne/le-wiki-a-l-ecole-de-l... which was done in a hurry in something like one hour on the spot ... also mentions Wikinews... and actually mentions it MUCH more than Wikipedia. Admittedly, it was done so much in a hurry that the journalist does mention me by my pseudonyme only ;-) so it is not board support. Well, I answered this interview from my job place in a hurry, so...

I have more difficulty to promote other projects, but generally Wikipedia, Wikinews and Wikicommons are quite easy to promote.

My BIGGEST problem in promoting wikinews is the ... very stubbish french one... which makes it difficult to show the journalist the idea is VERY successful. Fortunately, most of them read english so admit the english version sounds real nice and exciting ;-)

My second biggest problem in promoting wikinews is that I lack sometimes information which journalists are hungry for. The last two questions I had and was unable to answer is

"when will you set a proper RSS feed" and

"what is your audience in terms of numbers" (hit)

I had *no* idea ...

ant

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