On 12/4/07, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
My first thought on this was that a private wiki is required, embargoed.wikinews.org or similar. Yet, the story up on Slashdot at the moment, and accusations of a Cabal-esque secret mailing list would not be mitigated by opening another private channel for communication and cooperation. I cannot think of alternatives that would meet the needs of these situations unfortunately.
I don't see any issue with this, and I support a private wiki for the Wikinews community. :-) I've worked on sensitive materials for Wikinews myself, and found it awkward to have to put all information in public. The only question would be the rules governing access - perhaps that could be tied to accreditation?
Moving on from that, and on to a related item; one that has probably been asked by 1 in 5 of every new Wikinewsies that sticks around. "Why aren't we listed on Google News?" The simple answer is we have no editorial control. With an "anyone can edit" approach we fail some of the criteria Google applies when approving or declining potential sources.
That's what they told me when I met them two years ago. I tried to re-establish contact, but their staff has changed, and the new person hasn't gotten back to me yet. The reasons for exclusion that they gave to me then may no longer apply.
In any case, I do support Wikinews being among the first wikis trying out FlaggedRevs; it makes obvious sense.
The other thing I think we need for Wikinews is much better RSS support. I started a small project proposal at MicroPledge for this:
http://micropledge.com/projects/namespacenews-extension-for-mediawiki
Perhaps the Wikinews community can do some dedicated fundraising work for tech improvements like this?