After the successful wikinews vote http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
the board has discussed and decided to move forward with this project!
In order to continue to work towards as broad a community consensus as possible, we are launching this at http://demo.wikinews.org/ and invite all interested parties (particularly the "no" voters) to come and help work on the site.
We will be keeping the site demo-only until November 22 at least, and at that point evaluating the next step. (Probably to launch en.wikinews.org)
The demo has not yet been publicised widely, and my hope is that an extended demo might convince those who voted against the project to change their views, or to come and influence the project now in a direction that overcomes or alleviates the legitimate objections that have been raised.
This will also give people more of a chance to discuss the proposed policies before the site goes live.
The one thing I want to personally stress right now: this is at this point a pure wiki. We can make of it what we wish. All of the proposed policies are just that: proposed policies, and we should strive to organically create policies that solve actual problems as they arise, rather than trying to a priori make a lot of rules that could constrain us in the early days. This formula worked well for wikipedia: common sense and flexibility.
Be Bold.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
We will be keeping the site demo-only until November 22 at least, and at that point evaluating the next step. (Probably to launch en.wikinews.org)
If so, will the content of demo: be copied to en:, or will it start over? Is the demo: multi-lingual or English language?
regards, Gerrit Holl.
Gerrit-
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
We will be keeping the site demo-only until November 22 at least, and at that point evaluating the next step. (Probably to launch en.wikinews.org)
If so, will the content of demo: be copied to en:, or will it start over? Is the demo: multi-lingual or English language?
The demo will become en:. For reasons of simplicity, it's single language right now. Even if English is approved, it's not yet clear what other languages will be and at which time.
Regards,
Erik
Gerrit wrote:
If so, will the content of demo: be copied to en:, or will it start over? Is the demo: multi-lingual or English language?
It will be moved to en.
Just to be clear, this vote means that wikinews is an official wikimedia project. I'm fully committed to seeing it through. The reason for having it at 'demo' for now is to make it clear to everyone that policies aren't settled, and that we want to do a "soft launch" to get it up to speed first.
In part this is because I think the press is going to be very very interested: holding it at 'demo' for a bit while we get it worked out will help to make sure that we don't get slammed in the press for being too... small or whatever... We don't expect this to be a big community right away, obviously it takes several months to build and grow and get comfortable about exact policies.
--Jimbo
On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:05:46PM -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
After the successful wikinews vote http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
the board has discussed and decided to move forward with this project! This will also give people more of a chance to discuss the proposed policies before the site goes live.
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
The goals of these two news projects seem quite similar to me, and both projects could use the technical and editorial help from people at the other project.
There are ofcourse some challenging issues: - legal aspects (organizations, liability, copyrights) - technical incompatibilities (software, site structures, accounts, lists) - hosting and bandwidth issues - editorial policies and processes
On the technical side, the following questions would probably be important: - Could the MediaWiki software (http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net) be used by the IMC sites? (research: drawbacks/benefits, changes needed, development time, etc.) - Could all the IMC content be imported properly?
In short, it seems to me that if these two projects could join forces, the end result would be more than just Wikinews and IMC separately.
regards,
Jama Poulsen [User:Walden]
Jama Poulsen wrote:
On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:05:46PM -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
After the successful wikinews vote http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Vote
the board has discussed and decided to move forward with this project! This will also give people more of a chance to discuss the proposed policies before the site goes live.
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
In short, it seems to me that if these two projects could join forces, the end result would be more than just Wikinews and IMC separately.
I'm skeptical about this idea. What is the political orientation of Wikinews? Indymedia exists as an alternative media space for the political left (broadly defined). Is Wikinews apolitical, left-leaning, or friendly towards neo-fascists? I've been told that Wikipedia is run by right wing libertarians, so hwo do we know that the volunteer work put into a joint project won't be exploited by venture capitalists when they try to turn Wikipedia into an IPO?
I'm opposed to this partnership until it can be determined how Indymedia would benefit from any partnership with a newly launched project.
Chuck Munson Infoshop News
Chuck0 wrote:
Jama Poulsen wrote:
On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:05:46PM -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo)
Wales wrote:
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
I'm skeptical about this idea. What is the political orientation of Wikinews?
My guess is that it would have the "Neutral Point of View". I've been impressed at how well wikipedia has been able to maintain this goal on controversial subjects.
Indymedia exists as an alternative media space for the political left (broadly defined). Is Wikinews apolitical, left-leaning, or friendly towards neo-fascists?
That's a bit harsh. Can you point to a single wikipedia article that has been friendly to neo-fascists?
Indymedia is "left-leaning" but could certainly be an automated/semi-automated contributor to wikinews even if there are viewpoints on there that are generally not on Indymedia. Wikinews could have both, like news.google. Wikinews is probably more sympathetic to Indymedia than google as well. See the wikipedia entry on Indymedia--it's current & good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia
Or take a look at their entry on Anarchism (which nicely links to Chuck's infoshop.org): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
I've been told that Wikipedia is run by right wing libertarians, so hwo do we know that the volunteer work put into a joint project won't be exploited by venture capitalists when they try to turn Wikipedia into an IPO?
wikipedia is a non-profit and the articles are under the GFDL. I doubt it will ever go IPO... For more info, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ#Who_owns_Wikipedia.3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
If it ever does turn commercial, you can download the /entire/ database and set up your own wikipedia and do whatever you want with the articles as long as you comply with the GFDL. See: http://download.wikimedia.org/
I wish Indymedia database dumps were publicly available!
I'm opposed to this partnership until it can be determined how Indymedia would benefit from any partnership with a newly launched project.
It could benefit by wider distribution of Indymedia content. Wikipedia has a huge audience, and deservedly so. In general, I'm in favor of collaboration between wikinews & indymedia.
Chuck, stop dissing one of my favorite Internet projects. ;)
Thanks,
-Jeff
jeff wrote:
Chuck, stop dissing one of my favorite Internet projects. ;)
That's what I do best. I'm a librarian, media activist and anarchist. My role is to ask questions and be a curmudgeon.
I've written criticism about Wikipedia on my blog, both positive and negative. As a librarian, I think that it is an awesome project, which really should be better appreciated by people who are stuck in past paradigms about "information accuracy." As an anarchist, Wikipedia troubles me. While the open source nature of the project is very anarchistic, I'm really pissed that right wing assholes are allowed to post falsehoods to the entry on "anarchism." This problem forced me to discontinue my participation in the project.
Chuck
Chuck0 wrote:
jeff wrote:
Chuck, stop dissing one of my favorite Internet projects. ;)
That's what I do best. I'm a librarian, media activist and anarchist. My role is to ask questions and be a curmudgeon.
I've written criticism about Wikipedia on my blog, both positive and negative. As a librarian, I think that it is an awesome project, which really should be better appreciated by people who are stuck in past paradigms about "information accuracy." As an anarchist, Wikipedia troubles me. While the open source nature of the project is very anarchistic, I'm really pissed that right wing assholes are allowed to post falsehoods to the entry on "anarchism." This problem forced me to discontinue my participation in the project.
"*Allowed* to post"? Maybe you're not quite as much of an anarchist as you thought. :-)
Stan
[ Don't Cc: me unless you take this discussion off imc-tech ]
On Mon, Nov 15, 2004 at 04:26:42PM -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
That's what I do best. I'm a librarian, media activist and anarchist. My role is to ask questions and be a curmudgeon.
I've written criticism about Wikipedia on my blog, both positive and negative. As a librarian, I think that it is an awesome project, which really should be better appreciated by people who are stuck in past paradigms about "information accuracy." As an anarchist, Wikipedia troubles me. While the open source nature of the project is very anarchistic, I'm really pissed that right wing assholes are allowed to post falsehoods to the entry on "anarchism." This problem forced me to discontinue my participation in the project.
"*Allowed* to post"? Maybe you're not quite as much of an anarchist as you thought. :-)
Or maybe he's more of an anarchist than you think there might be :-)
The way I see it, anarchism is not about allowing anyone to do anything to you. It is more about opposing the power, which also can be expressed as not allowing anyone to excercise power over anyone else.
If it was really the case that Wikipedia moderators allowed to present right-wing opinion about anarchism as a neutral fact and dismissed Chuck0's objections, that would be a clear example of excercise of power, i.e. something anarchists oppose.
As for the original question, I share Chuck0's concerns about Wikipedia: I also noticed that its NPOV tends to favor mildly right-wing opinion. However, I see this problem as something that can be and should be dealt with: if anarchists and Indymedia activists can get an equal voice over moderation issues (through sufficient transparency and accountability), that would be a great improvement over commercial media who misrepresent or in best case quietly ignore our efforts. It is not a problem that our position is labeled as "opinionated" -- as long as the opposite position is also labeled as such.
Dmitry Borodaenko wrote:
If it was really the case that Wikipedia moderators allowed to present right-wing opinion about anarchism as a neutral fact and dismissed Chuck0's objections, that would be a clear example of excercise of power, i.e. something anarchists oppose.
Wikipedia promotes the idea that individual entries are the collective wisdom and writing of many smart individuals. Wikipedia claims that, more or less, articles get more accurate with more eyes (and edits). The problem is that contentious topics are not just the target of mischief, but are battlegrounds for partisans with differing opinions. Traditional reference materials addressed this problem with something called "authority," which is related to the concept of "neutral point of view." Wikipedia has no effective mechanism to draw a line in disputes on contentious topics, which is why I find it hard to fully support.
As for the original question, I share Chuck0's concerns about Wikipedia: I also noticed that its NPOV tends to favor mildly right-wing opinion. However, I see this problem as something that can be and should be dealt with: if anarchists and Indymedia activists can get an equal voice over moderation issues (through sufficient transparency and accountability), that would be a great improvement over commercial media who misrepresent or in best case quietly ignore our efforts. It is not a problem that our position is labeled as "opinionated" -- as long as the opposite position is also labeled as such.
Frankly, I think Indymedia needs to develop its political principles before it undertakes big partnerships with other projects. Right now across the network, there is this problemmatic liberal belief that our newswires should be total free speech zones. Right wingers are allowed to attack leftists, activists, and independent media people. This doesn't just alienate potential participants in Indymedias, but we are providing our enemies with the rope to hang us. These fucking bastards control the media, yet we allow them to crap all over the little media that we've fought hard to establish. Indymedia really needs to get its own shit together before it undertakes new partnerships.
Shit, we can't even keep our servers online after minor attacks by right wing attacks. We've got lots of basic shit to take care of right now.
Chuck
On Nov 16, 2004, at 12:29 PM, Chuck0 wrote:
Dmitry Borodaenko wrote:
If it was really the case that Wikipedia moderators allowed to present right-wing opinion about anarchism as a neutral fact and dismissed Chuck0's objections, that would be a clear example of excercise of power, i.e. something anarchists oppose.
Wikipedia promotes the idea that individual entries are the collective wisdom and writing of many smart individuals. Wikipedia claims that, more or less, articles get more accurate with more eyes (and edits). The problem is that contentious topics are not just the target of mischief, but are battlegrounds for partisans with differing opinions. Traditional reference materials addressed this problem with something called "authority," which is related to the concept of "neutral point of view." Wikipedia has no effective mechanism to draw a line in disputes on contentious topics, which is why I find it hard to fully support.
On the contrary, Wikipedia is evolving a number of mechanisms - imperfect and provisional as they are - to deal with such problems. Wikipedia represents the "most bearable consensus". Not the best statement of the state of affairs, but the one which the community at large can live with. It is rooted in documentation, neutral point of view, debate and, ideally, judicious use of sysop powers with levels of appeal and accountability. There is seldom a "final say" on most issues.
The downside is that maintaining a section becomes a continuous effort, but this is true of old houses, works of music and almost anything else: a point of view exists as long as it has people who take the time for it. The downside of their being no "final say", is that there is equally seldom a "once and for all".
There are many points of view which rest on documentably false assertions, or on interpretations of evidence which are not credible. Part of the value of Wikipedia is that there is a constant annealing process, by which points of view are defended, reworked and sympathized with. Anyone working a contentious issue should be able to make a strong case for opposing points of view, and these will strengthen ones own ability and understanding.
In a society that is rapidly polarizing into sources of information which appeal to basic bias, this is a crucial project, and one which is being noted by more and more people. Having a small minority point of view can be difficult in an ocean of consensus, which is why it is often important to be honest: are you documenting? Or doing original work? If the latter, then perhaps it is time to do that work, and document only as far as the already established work allows.
If your objective is to be the source for ideas in an point of view, then Wiki is probably not the right place. But that does not mean you should not "support" wikipedia.
With a softer opinion of Indymedia than Jimbo, I would however say that I support him here. I do not think we should develop particular strong relationship and collaboration with Indymedia.
Indymedia is clearly biaised. It does not matter that many of us appreciate Indymedia, or even that some of us participate to it. What is important is that we are different, and we must stay different, not only in concept but in our readers view.
We both occupy the same ecological niche in the news ecosystem, but we do not have the same roles. Both roles are important and must be preserved separate. Our role will be to offer neutral news. Their role is much more to counter balance other biaised news network, which will keep on existing (and which MUST keep on existing). In a diverse world, neutral and biais is important.
However, not only do we want to be neutral, but we want to be **seen** neutral by our readers. It is even more important for a wikinews project, where news will be published in 4 hours. I deeply believe neutrality is a goal which can only be approached after hundreds of careful contributions by many many editors. Neutrality needs time to happen. In wikinews, articles will be published in less than a day. Most are likely to be written by a limited number of editors. This is why, it is even MORE critical for wikinews, to appear INDEPENDANT and UNBIAISED.
If we want to be seen neutral by our readers, we must NOT show in any way that we are linked or collaborating with a biaised news network. It is very very important.
And I say this not implying that I do not like Indymedia. This is just a question of principle and of public perception. We should not make collaboration with our pet websites, just because many of use approve them.
Anthere
Sorry if I appear harsh. As many here may be aware, I did not support the creation of wikinews as an individual editor. I chose not to oppose though on the board level because wikinews was largely supported by the community. However, I think there are several risks in the wikinews project, which might hurt our global project.
I see official collaboration between Indymedia and Wikinews as one of these risks, as it could decrease the public perception of us as a neutral source of information.
jeff a écrit:
Chuck0 wrote:
Jama Poulsen wrote:
On Sun, Nov 14, 2004 at 07:05:46PM -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo)
Wales wrote:
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
I'm skeptical about this idea. What is the political orientation of Wikinews?
My guess is that it would have the "Neutral Point of View". I've been impressed at how well wikipedia has been able to maintain this goal on controversial subjects.
Indymedia exists as an alternative media space for the political left (broadly defined). Is Wikinews apolitical, left-leaning, or friendly towards neo-fascists?
That's a bit harsh. Can you point to a single wikipedia article that has been friendly to neo-fascists?
Indymedia is "left-leaning" but could certainly be an automated/semi-automated contributor to wikinews even if there are viewpoints on there that are generally not on Indymedia. Wikinews could have both, like news.google. Wikinews is probably more sympathetic to Indymedia than google as well. See the wikipedia entry on Indymedia--it's current & good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia
Or take a look at their entry on Anarchism (which nicely links to Chuck's infoshop.org): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
I've been told that Wikipedia is run by right wing libertarians, so hwo do we know that the volunteer work put into a joint project won't be exploited by venture capitalists when they try to turn Wikipedia into an IPO?
wikipedia is a non-profit and the articles are under the GFDL. I doubt it will ever go IPO... For more info, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overview_FAQ#Who_owns_Wikipedia.3F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
If it ever does turn commercial, you can download the /entire/ database and set up your own wikipedia and do whatever you want with the articles as long as you comply with the GFDL. See: http://download.wikimedia.org/
I wish Indymedia database dumps were publicly available!
I'm opposed to this partnership until it can be determined how Indymedia would benefit from any partnership with a newly launched project.
It could benefit by wider distribution of Indymedia content. Wikipedia has a huge audience, and deservedly so. In general, I'm in favor of collaboration between wikinews & indymedia.
Chuck, stop dissing one of my favorite Internet projects. ;)
Thanks,
-Jeff
Jama Poulsen wrote:
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
I think that the culture clash would be substantial. Virtually all of their text content is completely unusable due to strong POV.
I do think that Indymedia should use wikis, because I think that much of their reporting could be strengthened by having an open editing process. Most of their worst biases would not last 5 minutes in an open editing situation. Even activists should learn that neutrality is a powerful means to persuade people, as compared to radical ranting.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
Jama Poulsen wrote:
Has anyone been thinking about how Wikinews could cooperate with the Independent Media Center (IMC) project (http://www.indymedia.org)?
I think that the culture clash would be substantial. Virtually all of their text content is completely unusable due to strong POV.
I certainly would like us to cooperate wherever reasonably possible. Indymedia explicitly does not want to follow a neutral point of view, and that is good -- otherwise they'd be competing with us and we'd have to destroy them ;-). They can take Wikinews content and develop it from a lefty POV, if they want. I for one would be interested in some of their video and picture material. It's perfectly legitimate for Wikinews to cover the same protests Indymedia does, for example, but from an NPOV.
I'll be talking to some of the Indymedia folks in the coming weeks WRT license compatibility. They have already expressed some interest.
Regards,
Erik
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