As I've mentioned on the Water Cooler page, I think that a responsible
news organization needs to provide some sort of a response to such a
huge worldwide disaster. You will notice that there are plenty of
organizaitons that make exceptions for this event: Google has a link,
most news sites list relief agencies, and Wikipedia itself has a
prominent link on the homepage.
I agree that long-term this type of content needs a different home.
Much like the 9/11 wiki, it will need to get archived eventually. But
for now, we can easily live with it. The Tsunami Help pages also serve
another purpose: they introduce lots of people to Wikinews. These
people might eventually become readers or even contributors on other
topics.
The right approach needs to be to corral the content created by the
Tsunami Help bloggers into its own area separate from the rest of
Wikinews (already done), to not permit any copyvio (removed when we
catch it), to place proper warnings about the content (done where it
matters), and to then start making it less POV (in progress, thanks to
Davodd and others).
So in summary -- I believe that the pages are valuable, that it is
correct for a wiki-based news organization to allow that kind of work
in times of severe crisis (especially on a temporary basis), and that
the benefits of the Tsunami Help pages both to society and Wikinews
outweigh the negative problems of the fact that it doesn't fit into
our current policy dialogues.
-ilya
On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 02:17:42 +1000, Craig Franklin <craig(a)halo-17.net> wrote:
Scríobh David Speakman:
This group:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Tsunami_Help
Seems to be hijacking wikinews. I posted a concern in the watercooler on
this topic. Also I have nominated a few of their non-English posts for
deletion.
I've noticed this too, and posted in the water cooler. Basically, I feel
that their intentions are honourable, but Wikinews is not the place for such
things, unless of course they've gotten permission from higher-up. There
are also a few established Wikicontributors in there, like IlyaHaykinson - I
don't know if they've just jumped in because they feel it's a good idea, or
what.
Basically though, I agree, they're actions are "hijacking", and their
project would probably be better served elsewhere.
Regards,
- Craig
-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.
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