Like the media sources which
preceded it, en.Wikinews is developing an approach or personality on
the news which restricts what it will cover and determines how it will
cover those events. This is not necessarily a bad development, but it
should give rise to the corrollary: the option for another media
source to cover the events which are not being written about, with a
different approach to news.
Amgine,
I'm still fairly new and haven't necessarily seen the big picture, but I've
never seen any evidence that people have been stopped from writing articles
about any area they are interested in. There are discussions about news
values and POV on the talk pages but my impression from the community has
been 'If it's news to you, write about it or make it better'. I've
personally made the occasional effort to make local news publishable even if
it's not what I tend to write about myself it is very valuable. Wikinews is
still in beta with limited numbers, surely it is much too early to talk of a
defined personality?
I haven't seen any evidence of a rise in policy blocking certain types of
coverage, more I've seen constructive efforts to widen participation so that
more people can contribute the sort of news they want to read. I think that
the most fascinating part of Wikinews is that the agenda is set by its users
dependant on what they think is important to tell others about. That can
only become more interesting the more users join. At the moment there are
clear limitations on the agenda because of a relatively small amount of
contributors but it is a very new project.
The English version has the luck of being very accessible to huge amounts of
people around the world who have English as a second language. It would be
tragic if an 'alternative' English wikinews turned the two into defined
products with different audiences trying to please different interests: I
saw the whole point of Wikinews as being a synthesis of different types of
news, piling different views together to form a NPOV and creating a tapestry
view of the world without prejudice.
I hope you'll come back - surely your presence is vital if you do want to
make Wikinews into what you hoped it would become.
Best wishes
ClareWhite