Hsing, thank you for your academic interest in Wikinews. A focus by academia on various aspects of emerging media is sorely needed. You are doing a great service to society by taking this project on.

I have a few concerns, though. Upon reading your letter, I am confused. It appears you may be starting with a flawed premise.

Sites such as OhMyNews and Global Voices are neither news nor are they collaborative. They are simply collections of blogs that are prone to flawed reporting due to opinion, purposeful inaccuracy, fiction posing as fact and error through lack of news-gathering ability of its writers.

I do hope you keep in mind the long tradition of Western-style news creation and reportage (which Wikinews strives to accomplish) that requires third-party editing, a neutral point of view with good-faith attempts at elimination of bias toward the subject matter and, traditionally, a centralized system of well-reasoned story assignment and selection to ensure broad and accurate reportage. Even Wikinews falls short in the ability for well-reasoned story assignment since it is more haphazard in its approach to news.

----- Original Message ----- From: Hsing_Wei@ksg06.harvard.edu To: wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikinews-l] Survey on Wikinews: Study on Collaborative News Models Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 09:59:08 -0500

Dear Members of the Wikinews community,

I'm a masters student in the Kennedy School at Harvard doing research on collaborative news sites (such as OhMyNews, Global Voices, etc). Every few months, new websites are cropping up with innovative ways of enabling and engaging people in creating and sharing news content. This phenomenon has sparked both enthusiasm and controversy.

I was hoping to get your perspectives as visitors and members on the Wikinews site. To ease the process, I have a short, 5 minute survey set up at either:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=887731774310 (email link)

or

<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=887731774310">Click here to take Wikinews survey</a> (website link)

In addition, I'm trying to reach as many readers and members of the Wikinews community as possible. If it is possible to add the survey links to your personal blogs, I would be most grateful for the help on furthering this research. It is very much self-running once posted. Also, if there is advice on how this survey might be posted for a few days on the Wikinews frontpage, any tips would be great.

Please do not hestitate to contact me directly. Thanks!!

Sincerely, Hsing

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