Erik Moeller wrote:

So, in that respect, Wikinews is quickly growing beyond the point where the effect you mention is highly significant. I also think that in terms of "quality content", the community has produced some excellent material so far - on par with the best Wikipedia has to offer.

As unfortunate as the recent conflict on en.wikinews.org is, it also demonstrates that Wikinews is growing large enough to *have* such conflicts. Wikipedia did have similar conflicts in the early days -- big fights between LMS and Cunctator, H.J. and 24, the Spanish fork, and so on. You don't know what a huge deal it was when Wikipedia got its first trolls! Learning to deal with conflict is part of growing up. Call it the puberty phase of the wiki. :-)

The next level is that the community becomes large enough for conflict to generally be accepted as a part of life, and for conflict resolution mechanisms to be developed, refined, and applied regularly. From the perspective of the rest of the Wikimedia community, seeing Wikinews grow up may be disturbing. What has the kid done this time! But please do recognize that this is a natural process, and it needs to happen. While babies are cute and innocent, they can't do much besides screaming, consuming food, and excreting waste products.

Disputes themselves are not surprising and part of normal development, I agree. In this metaphor, what I'm worried about is not the child's growing pains, it's the issue of who is raising the child.

Out of interest, I took a glance at the lists of administrators for some of these projects, because admins are often seen as role models and help set the tone for a project. The most administrators on any project outside of Wikipedia is barely over 20 (not counting meta and commons). Naturally, at any given time several of such a group will have dropped out of activity. That leaves more like 10-15 people to provide guidance. In this dynamic, a group of even two or three problematic admins can lead things seriously astray.

I hope that as more major events improve Wikinews' profile as an independent project, it will grow out of this stage. My comments are directed just as much to the other projects, and potentially apply to small language Wikipedias as well. Wikinews is moving more quickly toward maturity than some of the other projects, but its community is still too small to be sure it will keep going in the right direction. And I think that the ability to be confident in Wikinews as a community, more than anything else, is what would allow us to feel secure in moving it out of "beta".

--Michael Snow