On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:28 -0500, Jimmy Wales wrote:

Brian,

Just let me know where I can help. I understand that some in the wikinews community were dismayed at something I said in an interview recently about Wikinews having "struggled" for a long time - but I want to emphasize that I didn't mean to disparage Wikinews... part of the problem is that people go to Wikipedia to write things that they should be doing at Wikinews... and one solution is to use the massive traffic power of Wikipedia to drive traffic to Wikinews.

I'd also like to have a private discussion (i.e. not on a public list, because because I wouldn't like to see random ideas I might throw out in a brainstorming session reported on as "news" about Wikinews in other press) with leaders (admins + active editors) of Wikinews about "the future of Wikinews".

I'm sure we could arrange a private list, or schedule an ad-hoc IRC chat. And, I do know that some within the MSM will take the worst possible fragment out of any sentence that they can - it does not seem unreasonable that they might gleefully do so to jab at a potential competitor like Wikinews.

The below link is - to me - the best hope we have. It offers a "fresh field" for contributors (re: the Ortega research and chicken-little media reaction), it covers Mike Peel's musing about WMUK issuing a press release mentioning Wikinews as "The paper that's not paper, and won't vanish behind a paywall".

I deliberately copied you on this because of a few things Mike Halterman said, I thought the below proposed changes on Wikipedia fitted best with how he characterised your opinions on Wikinews and its promotion.

Lots isn't up to me, but I'm eager to see Wikinews flourish, and would love to throw around some ideas.

From the Wikinews perspective, we kept banging away at getting WP:ITN to more prominently feature our project. That would be a good area to revisit; I know some Wikinewsies would like this a full list of the project's articles, but I appreciate it is on an encyclopedia and playing a longer game of getting people to wrie articles on Wikinews.

Brian McNeil wrote:

...

I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once again, try and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than lipservice to Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates

These appear to be most of the enWP templates which caution that a section of the encyclopedia relates to *news*. You can see the additions I've made to highlight Wikinews coverage where it exists, and if not, urge people to contribute on Wikinews.

This went down quite badly last time. I'll bite my tongue and just describe the reaction to such a link on Ted Kennedy's death as "hostile". Realistically, this needs to come as a significant push from someone like Jimmy.

Anyway, any thoughts on fine-tuning this? Please note, I've put tooltips on all the given links. There are cases where a long Wikinews title would mess the template on Wikipedia, so I hide the title in the tooltip.