Hi,

This is my opinion, I don't think it's a good idea. On a short term, it would be really usefull, but in fact on the long term I do believe it wouldn't be a so good idea. There would be confusion like "is wikinews a Wikinews Foundation project or a Wikimedia Foundation Project." Moreover, you're proposal looks like, to me, like a "Wikinews Chapter".

In France, but I think it should be the same in other countries, in order to have a press card, the main aim of the "Wikinews Foundation" you have to earn 50% in a journalism job. And earn it in France. So Wikinews Foundation won't help the french wikinewsie. For accreditation the French Chapter is helping at it, and actually we are not that bad in having them.

So, what could handle your foundation a chapter couldn't? In my opinion, worldwide, really few, and perhaps even "less". Wikinews is, in fact, a really different project, but I don't think that's a reason to have a "Wikinews Foundation".

By the way, did you asked and discussed for a "user@wikinews.org" adress or other global @wikinews.org adresses recently?

On 21/08/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:

To add to Craig's comment on the effectiveness of users having @wikinewsie.org email addresses... The guys in New Zealand have said the new addresses return a 100% response rate versus a "hope and a prayer" with @gmail, I got a 40 minute telephone interview with the UK Labour party's longest serving MP, Tony Benn, and we have all this for 5 years. There is a long time for the foundation to work out how it could/should be handling this before I'd have to put my hand in my pocket again. Perhaps by that time it will be more generally accepted that Wikinews has unique characteristics? I don't know how the foundation can serve what the current crop of wikinewsies want as output, but an acceptance of the unique nature of the project needs to be more widespread.

Brian.

-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Craig Spurrier Sent: 21 August 2007 23:37 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org; scoop@wikinewsie.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for the creation of a Wikinews foundation

Hello, I am proposing the creation of a separate organization that would allow Wikinews to properly handle press accreditation. The Wikimedia foundation has been unable to do this due to concerns over being seen as the editor and the legal consequences that go with that. Proper press accreditation is however very necessary for Wikinews.

A separate organization with a trademark license would be able to properly handle press accreditation and have very minimal assets at risk. This organization would not handle anything beyond accreditation and tools to provide support for accreditation. I am in no way proposing splitting Wikinews from the foundation or anything like that. We are overall very happy with the foundation, but we have a need that the foundation is unable to provide for.

The problem: The English language Wikinews has an accreditation policy [1]. This allows us to receive press credentials at events and also assists us in getting recognition as media for interviews and the like. The press pass usually allows free access to an event or, priority access to normally off-limits areas.

At the present we have a rather awkward arrangement for accrediting users. Users who have gone through our accreditation process are considered community accredited. The lack of any sort of organization behind creates a problem when the events require a letter from the organization before issuing the press pass (the G8 being the most recent), and we have been unable to get the board/foundation to do this or officially approve the accreditation program. The problem with this is in order to obtain press badges and other press benefits a user must either confuse the person (risking the request being denied) with an explanation of how they are not really representing Wikinews but rather the Wikinews Community or they must mislead the person into thinking they really do represent Wikinews.

There are several other resources the foundation has been unable to provide that are very helpful to us such as official e-mail addresses. Brian McNeil has the wikinewsie.org domain and has offered e-mail addresses with it. The response rate with these addresses has greatly increased. Once again there are legitimate concerns that prevent the foundation from being able to do this, but a separate foundation would be able to.

-Craig Spurrier [[n:Craig Spurrier]]

1. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hello,

I think it is important that Wikinewsies get accredidation if it can help them. Whether that the job of WMF or a separate organisation, I am not sure. I have not seen any formal NO from a lawyer or the board that WMF cannot or should not do it. Was there any?

Christophe Henner a écrit :

Hi,

This is my opinion, I don't think it's a good idea. On a short term, it would be really usefull, but in fact on the long term I do believe it wouldn't be a so good idea. There would be confusion like "is wikinews a Wikinews Foundation project or a Wikimedia Foundation Project." Moreover, you're proposal looks like, to me, like a "Wikinews Chapter".

This is my main concern for the creation of a separate organisation.

In France, but I think it should be the same in other countries, in order to have a press card, the main aim of the "Wikinews Foundation" you have to earn 50% in a journalism job. And earn it in France. So Wikinews Foundation won't help the french wikinewsie. For accreditation the French Chapter is helping at it, and actually we are not that bad in having them.

[cut]

Well accredidation from Wikinews cannot be "a professional journalist accredidation" in France, but I think it still would be quit useful. It would be a first step toward the recognition of citizen journalists, as "real" journalists.

Actually this issue is important for every other citizen journalists community / organisation. Even if there are different than Wikinews, they share this same problem. Were there contacted? Indymedia? AgoraVox? others?

Regards,

Yann

For now, I read all the discussions and think about what is written. I have no strict no, nor full yes to propose, I want a legal opinion about the proposition.

ant

Yann Forget wrote:

Hello,

I think it is important that Wikinewsies get accredidation if it can help them. Whether that the job of WMF or a separate organisation, I am not sure. I have not seen any formal NO from a lawyer or the board that WMF cannot or should not do it. Was there any?

Christophe Henner a écrit :

...

Hi,

This is my opinion, I don't think it's a good idea. On a short term, it would be really usefull, but in fact on the long term I do believe it wouldn't be a so good idea. There would be confusion like "is wikinews a Wikinews Foundation project or a Wikimedia Foundation Project." Moreover, you're proposal looks like, to me, like a "Wikinews Chapter".

This is my main concern for the creation of a separate organisation.

...

In France, but I think it should be the same in other countries, in order to have a press card, the main aim of the "Wikinews Foundation" you have to earn 50% in a journalism job. And earn it in France. So Wikinews Foundation won't help the french wikinewsie. For accreditation the French Chapter is helping at it, and actually we are not that bad in having them.

[cut]

Well accredidation from Wikinews cannot be "a professional journalist accredidation" in France, but I think it still would be quit useful. It would be a first step toward the recognition of citizen journalists, as "real" journalists.

Actually this issue is important for every other citizen journalists community / organisation. Even if there are different than Wikinews, they share this same problem. Were there contacted? Indymedia? AgoraVox? others?

Regards,

Yann

Delphine Ménard wrote:

Well, here is an interesting subject if any. I am answering your email Craig, because it seems to be the most thorough in describing the issue at hand. But I will try and take into account the different reactions to it.

I remember an informal talk a few months ago with Andrew Lih, Arne Klempert and Michael Snow about "chapters" and what this "name" really meant. We started with "local chapters" and actually, they are still called that on the Foundation website, but we came to the conclusion that at some point we might be running into interest groups wanting to be formally recognized in some way or others by the Foundation as "chapters".

We thought then of left-handed wikimedians, or maybe blind wikimedians, or why not, wikimedians who speak English as a second language, whatever. In short, we realized that the number of interest groups that could spring out of the community is enormous and that there would probably come a time when the Wikimedia Foundation, which probably cannot address all of those specific issues (for whatever reason, be it legal or else) would have to take them into account, one way or the other. Learning curve...

So now, about a Wikinews "organisation" (I'll call it organisation at this stage in order to avoid the confusion brought about by the word "foundation").

Well, we're exactly there. Here is an interest group, with specific interests, requirements and demands, potentially international, which says "we want to get together". Like Christophe and Florence, I am French so I understand their concerns. I even have been one of the strong advocates of "The Foundation - or the chapters - should *not* issue those accreditations".

But on the contrary to those who have expressed scepticism, I find the idea definitely worth exploring. Because I think that we won't be able to avoid this question of "interest groups" much longer, and I'd rather see the Foundation address it now than have those form outside of any kind of "partnership" or "recognition scheme" and lead to potential disagreements.

There is one thing that bothers me here though. It is that we're talking about starting an organisation to address one (1) problem. It may be a serious problem and an issue that actually impeeds the growth of Wikinews, but my experience has proven that an organisation should not be founded to solve *one* problem, but rather with a real goal. What would a "Wikinews organisation" really do?

I mean, is there a greater goal? Or will we have as a mission statement "The goal of the Wikinews organisation is to issue credential to wikinewsies"? That sounds a little meager to me to go ahead and go through the hassle of forming an organisation altogether.

I would expect we would have a mission statement along the lines of "The goal of the Wikinews organisation is to provide support for Wikinews users in the pursuit of citizen journalism". Not a perfect mission statement :) , but I think that echos my intentions for the organisation. At the moment our number one need is proper handling of accreditation. There are however many other tasks that a Wikinews organisation could handle. Most of these are best handled by a chapter or the WM foundation so as to avoid duplication of labour., but I am sure that if we so desired we could find lots of work for a Wikinews organisation .

I'll go back to Brian's proposed names, which have the merit of asking further questions Wikinews Reporters' Association Wikinews Reporters' Union

I talked about this in my reply of a few minutes ago to Brian, But to quickly summarize the problem with either of these two names is that they will not help us much when we try to get into an event, as they are very clearly reporter membership groups. They also exclude photojournalists :).

Does the organisation *have* to be only centered on Wikinews? Can't it be called "wiki journalists of the world"? Can't it then have an agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation which allows it to issue accreditations with the Wikinews logo on them to Wikinewsies who have gone through the community process? Can't we invite other people who do citizen journalism to join and work in this organisation to change the rules about "what" makes one a journalist (going back to the legal issues pointed out by Europeans)?

I think keeping it mostly focused on Wikinews but supporting other project that share our values would be good. The problem is that we have the need for an official sounding organisation who can issue official looking accreditations. The WM foundation already provides us with a nice platform for community building and many of the other functions a reporters organisation could provide. There is no reason that if done very carefully we could not issue Wikinews press passes to non-Wikinewsies who fit our values and whose work will be reusable on Wikinews. The idea is to build the Wikinews organisation into a group whose press passes are respected and whose reporters are seen as "real reporters". Setting up a trade group cqan only do a very small part of this goal.

Can it be a Union? Should it be?

Maybe, though we do face problems trying to make it international. No :)

Is it US-centric? English-speaking only? International? If it is, how do we make sure that all Wikinewsies, across the world and languages, are going to benefit from it? (Because frankly, if we have to do this every other month with a new country/language, we might as well start having local chapters all over again)

Like the Wikimedia foundation I would expect the Wikinews organisation to be multilingual. At the moment only English speakers can get credentials from Wikinews. This is something that should be changed and something for a organisation willing to provide the logistacal support something that can be changed.

An organisation that has asked itself all of these questions and came out with a "plan" as to what it can be, would definitely be an organisation that I would like the Wikimedia Foundation to support.

Not so much one that says "we've got one problem, we've solved it by now having an organisation, sign here to say you're ok".

What happens when the next problem arises? We all go and start a *new* organisation that addresses that new problem? We've failed from the beginning if we have to do this.

I would hoe if we get this set up correctly that it would be able to scale to new problems, or the foundation or a chapter would be able to handle it. I see starting a new organisation as a last resort. The chapters and the WM foundation are unable to solve the problem so we have to do something else.

Also, aren't there other existing organisations which already have solved the issue of accreditation and with which the Foundation could partner in order to get wikinewsies accreditations? Rather than start our organisation from scratch?

None that I am aware of. Most CJ projects are so set on the idea of breaking down the traditional obstacles to what a journalist is, ignore the immediate needs of press credentials. Indymedia is one of the few exceptions to this and due issue press passes. However any involvement with them would probably compromise our neutrality. -Craig Spurrier [[n:Craig Spurrier]]

David Gerard wrote:

"support for neutral, free content, citizen journalism" ?

That sounds nice :).

Make sure to a reasonable extent it's not a target for lawsuits. i.e., it's not the publisher or editor of material on Wikimedia websites, only any sites it actually puts up itself with its own resources. (The local chapters make sure of this also.)

This is where it becomes rather tricky. We will always be toeing the line of publisher/editor. We would take care to try to avoid the chance of being considered the publisher/editor, but by providing the support that is needed there is always the chance a court would find us to be the publisher/editor. This risk is by far the best reason to form a separate organization as well as try to keep our assets minimal.

Indymedia is hardworking and productive, but very very opinionated and crusading. Which is a perfectly worthwhile style of journalism ... but not what Wikinews does.

Indymedia is a project that has done wonderful things for citizen journalism and journalism in general. Any sort of official involvement would by bad for our NPOV, but we can certainly learn a lot from them as well as work with them to help build free content news.

-Craig Spurrier [[n:Craig Spurrier]]

Erik Moeller wrote:

I support the idea of a separate organization. I also echo Delphine's comments: It would be good if the organization had, at least in its statutes, a broader purview than simply the issuing of credentials, e.g. I could imagine it would be useful to have an organization for:

• helping to organize local Wikinews meetings & editing marathons
• getting journalism faculties involved in writing Wikinews articles
• administering prizes for contests
• maintaining a budget for investigative reporting activities

etc.

These are all worthwhile projects. They could very well be coordinated by a Wikinews foundation, though for the most part they could also be done by a chapter or the WMF. A balance between keeping our assets small to minimize our legal risk and providing these sorts of service will need to be obtained, but I am confident that a balance can be found.

For the organization's name, I would strongly support any name that puts the emphasis on people rather on the project, e.g. something that begins with "Wikinews Reporters" or "Wiki Journalists". It may make sense to talk to Dan Gillmor's "Center for Citizen Media" to see if they're interested in a collaboration:

http://citmedia.org/

I think the Wikinews interest group is different from most others in that it does have a justifiable need for an organizational structure. For many other IGs, it may just be sufficient to have an Ubuntu-like volunteer team that has authorization to use our name for a well-defined set of activities.

The problem with any sort of user group or people over project focus is that for the most part those needs are met by the WMF. The problem is that we have no good way of presenting our reporters as from being from a serious news organization.

Of course there's a risk that the organization might be confused with WMF. The current wikinewsie.org has a fairly clear disclaimer, and if such disclaimers are used consistently on websites, e-mails, possibly even business cards, I think that the risk would be reduced to acceptable levels. I'm more worried about overlap in those countries where there are active chapters; here the organization should have a clear agreement with the chapter about their respective responsibilities.

By keeping a fairly narrow focus we can avoid confusion and stepping on peoples toes. A disclaimer of unrelatedness to the foundation and the chapters is to be expected. The goal is however the implementation of the need to claim unrelatedness with anything official.

The WMF as an organization isn't really the point of anything we do: it's the mission that matters. And if it makes sense to have a separate organization to better serve that mission, I fully support it.

The WMF serves the mission fairly well it is just a few small points for that it can not help us. A Wikinews foundation combined with the continued support of the WMF would provide us with exactly what we need.

-Craig Spurrier [[n:Craig Spurrier]]

Ilya Haykinson wrote:

On 8/21/07, Craig Spurrier craig@craigweb.net wrote:

...

I am proposing the creation of a separate organization that would allow Wikinews to properly handle press accreditation. The Wikimedia

I strongly believe that the development of internal and external organizational structures that support our projects' interaction with other online and offline communities is critical to our long term abilities to sustain the projects. But as Erik, Delphine, and others point out there are some core questions that need to be answered:

• what does this organization do? is it just accreditation or is it

more general support of Wikinews activities?

• what is the nature of this organization's relationship with WMF?

what is the governance structure of this organization?

• where does the funding come from? who gets to set the budget?
• how does this organization interact with local chapters and other

WMF initiatives?

I believe that answering these questions for Wikinews will help create a solution for other projects' needs as well, both for very specific ideas like supporting accreditation as well as more general ideas like interest groups.

I am not a Wikinewsie but I have followed this thread with some interest. Supporting any kind of incorporated affiliates other than national chapters of WMF would be a significant departure from past practice. This means that dealing with the kind of questions outlined above is far more important than it might be with national chapters where there is already some experience.

In the case of the problem Craig describes the issue of recognition needs to be addresses by a believably-named organization that has Wikinews in its name and is international in scope to reduce duplication of effort (and deal with the fact that we need recognition in many more geographical areas than those with established chapters).

This does need to be looked at in the wider context of citizen-journalist accreditation. My concern here is that once we start granting accreditation we are setting up an elite group with powers and rights that extend outside of our projects. A similar situation could have arisen if Wikiversity had decided to grant degrees or diplomas. Accreditation means something more than the ability to fill in the blanks in a computer template, and printing off the results.

I can fully appreciate the difficulty that citizen-journalists face in gaining access to reportable events, but isn't this a problem that should be tackled by the wider community of citizen-journalists?

I suggest the following as a set of answers to the questions from above that satisfies this goal:

1. Create a non-profit organization with an international scope whose

goals are to provide material support for Wikinews community members for the purpose of content creation, issue press cards to any community member accredited by one of the projects, and represent the projects as a central point of contact in interactions with other news-making or news-reporting organizations.

Fair enough. It's a matter of setting this up independently, and determining the relationship that this organisation may have with WMF later. One possible outcome is that Wikinews would no longer be a sister project overseen by WMF.

2. name the organization something that sounds like a news credential

granting organization: Wikinewswire, or Wikinews Press, or something along these lines. The problem with the "foundation" or "union" approach is that traditional foundations and unions are internally-focused and are not known to issue press cards in the "real world".

I don't see naming as a particular problem. If the general idea flies those involved should be able to deal easily with the secondary problem of naming this new entity.

3. set the organization up as a standalone non-profit organization

with its own governance structure, but create a strong set of requirements that the organization must adhere to if it wishes to retain a license to use a WMF-trademarked name. The requirements may be that the organization cannot pretend or be the publisher of core Wikinews material; must not encourage the creation of non-open content; must not represent itself as the WMF; must report on its activities to the WMF twice a year, etc.

These are all reasonable considerations.

4. have the organization be responsible for its own funding, but have

the WMF provide the license for its trademarked names for free, and encourage the WMF to provide small funding opportunities to these kinds of interest groups.

The organisation should be responsible not only for its own funding, but should also accept its own potential legal liabilities. Trademark licences may be initially free, but there should be no expectation that it will always be so. Small amounts of seed funding could be appropriate; however, if we want the new group to be responsible for its own funding this should not continue beyond the fist year.

5. by becoming a partner to the WMF with regards to a given project,

this new organization also becomes a de-facto partner to the chapters. The organization may approach the chapters for help with bureaucracies in certain locales; the chapters on the other hand may use the organization to serve as the point of contact for all Wikinews-related inquiries.

We cannot impose this on chapters if it is not already a part of WMF's agreements with the chapters. As independent legal entities it is up to each chapter to make its own accommodations with this new group.

By creating this sort of a structure the WMF retains some oversight over project-specific organizations, and reserves the right to help these kinds of organizations with funding etc, but at the same time allows them to live and die on their own. If the organization becomes a strong enabler of content creation, the WMF may even choose to internalize some of this organization's functions down the line.

These are possibilities. WMF would still be free to grant its blessing or not.

Ec

Brian McNeil wrote:

What Craig has proposed is an organisation which has minimal assets and is thus not an attractive target to sue. It becomes problematic if such an organisation controls the Wikinews web servers, a legal attack can bring them down because we no longer have something like WMF clout behind us.

Exactly, the more assets it has the better target it is. Wikimedia is mostly protected by the fact that it clearly is not the editor/publisher. We would while of course try for the same, it is very possible that a court will say otherwise.

The other problem with separating from the WM foundation is we would lose out on all of the wonderful benefits the foundation currently provides us. We are overall very happy with the WMF, they are just unable to fulfill one of our needs.

-Craig Spurrier