I want to make two related points before responses to the particular ideas.
The first one is related to the size of the projects. Wikinews communities will be much larger in the future. If everything goes straight forward, it is reasonable to suppose that Wikinews community will be larger then Wikipedian in the next 10 or 20 years. Simply, while work on encyclopedia will require more and more specific knowledge and skills, work as journalist will require more or less the same knowledge and the same skills. However, community which is 10% of Wikipedian community size is very large.
The only body which is able to coordinate work on Wikipedias is WMF and this is a Wikipedian problem. WMF's target is not content, but housekeeping. There is no way how to impose to different projects even some basic principles like NPOV is.
Because of that cooperation on Wikinews wide level is not only a matter of small communities, but it is a matter of thinking about the future. Wikinews community has to be able to say that some language project is not going in the right way as well as it has to be able to make some changes to the particular project. This means that, for example, there should be one policy for administrators, one policy for dealing with problematic users, one policy for giving and revoking accreditations, one organization (so, yes, one "Wikinews Foundation", not separate organizations in different countries, but chapters/offices strongly connected between themselves).
In relation with that I want to say that Adambro's comment at the section for my candidacy for accreditation [1] has a lot of sense: "[...] I appreciate that you have contributions in English which could be helpful in forming an opinion of you but not all users who come here from other languages seeking accreditation will have this and so I must continue to oppose on the basis that I don't think the English community should, or is really in a position to, assess these users to an appropriate level."
It is not only a matter of en.wn community, but a matter of general Wikinews community. How can I know that one Thai contributor is a valid one when I don't know a word of Thai? Or would another Serbian contributor would get accreditation only because they are bureaucrat on sr.wn and I said that they should get it (I really have only good words for both of other contributors)?
But, if not, it would mean that the whole Serbia would be left with only one accreditation for a long time; or that Thai Wikinews wouldn't have any accredited reporter for a long time. This, also, means that, for example, Italian Wikinewsians will try to make their own organization, which would be the beginning of the situation which we have on Wikipedia: factionized community at the lines of the language borders.
So, we need to find some solution. And here are some of my (new and old) ideas for doing so:
- We should start to write Wikinews-wide policies. Of course, such policies should be reasonable and they should leave a space for projects autonomies in the future. They should lead a community from its beginnings to the time when it is enough mature to function autonomously.
- What is necessary for one contributor to become a recognized one? Writing on English Wikinews or English Wikipedia? It may be one of the solutions, but as far as I am able to see, there are some good machine translation engines, like es-en is. Maybe we should recognize such languages and give the opportunity to the people who are contributing in those languages? It is not perfect, but it is one part of the solution.
- There are also other things which may prove someone's work, the most notable are related to previous Wikimedian work. And we should write somewhere those particular solutions.
On 11/15/07, bawolff bawolff+wn@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we should also start some page on meta to coordinate inter-language stuff (in the past though such things have died quickly)
We should try again :)
Maybe have each wiki write sort of reports (translated by google translater?) every so often (~once every couple of months, but just short little things, couple paragraphs at most. nothing like Eloquence's state of the wiki.) describinbg what local events that have happened, what successes the wiki has had of recent, what pitfalls/mistakes they have made, just general thoughts of general wikilife so we're all on the same page.
Yes. It may be a good idea. May we say that we would do that quarterly and the first one at the and of January?
On Nov 14, 2007 5:23 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I agree, each language Wikinews is a relatively small community. We need to work cross-wiki on things like weather, oil prices, and other standard automated news website stuff. Bots that do things like create new day category pages should be moved over to the toolserver and set up to cover all language variants and appropriate interwiki links.
Hm. In the next couple of days I'll start a page on Meta about this issue. For the beginning, we need to see which bots (and other programs) are working and with what purpose.
Craig Spurrier is currently drawing up plans to propose a Wikinews Foundation (name not decided). This will be purposed with the task of standing behind the reporters, verifying credentials, and so on. If that comes to fruition, I'll likely hand over the wikinewsie.org domain to the org.
I saw this at foundation-l a month or two ago and I was wandering what is going on with that. It is good to hear that it is going on well.
[1] - http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews%3AAccreditation_requests&a...