One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias is in our coverage of current events. However, the current scenario has a couple of disadvantages: * The amount of information about a particular event that can meaningfully be incorporated into the article on the person/thing etc. is quite limited * The info. is often dispersed among more than one article * Readers have to scan the whole article to get to the one line or paragraph about the current event
So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.
It would be somewhat like indymedia, but with important differences: * Wiki * NPOV * News about an event would be integrated into a single comprehensive article rather than having a collection of articles written at different points of time
So how about it? (Don't know if this has been proposed before...)
Arvind
Arvind Narayanan schrieb:
So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.
the idea itself is interesting. Have you considered any transistional phase, such as expanding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_events?
The more I like this idea, the more I fear of doubling almost the same work.
Mathias
Arvind-
One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias is in our coverage of current events.
Indeed. However, Wikipedia's current events are not a news service, they are a summary service, similar to news.google.com, but with human-written, free content summaries. These summaries are useful and should remain within Wikipedia.
I envision a Wikinews project as something that incorporates elements of independent media organizations like Indymedia. That means that Wikinews reporters would actually have go out, do interviews, make photos etc. Wikinews could become a source for Wikipedia's current events, but it would not (only) be a summary service, but a real news service.
I believe the totally open wiki model is unsuitable for such a project. There should be an editing phase, and after the editing phase is over, material is approved and published, at which point only typos can be corrected, and factual updates need to be clearly labeled as such.
In this model there should also be a limit on who is allowed to do original research. We cannot allow any anonymous user to claim "I was in Jenin today and I saw the Israeli troops massacre 100 Palestinians". There need to be two levels of editing; one that is strictly limited to writing and correcting summaries (this could include anonymous users), and one which is allowed to do original research.
People who want to do original research would have to do so under their real name (possibly verified by phone), and their privilege to do so could be permanently revoked.
Such a project needs to be well planned before it is launched, because structural reforms are hard to implement once a project is up and running. I would love to work on something like this full-time, but one has to pay the bills somehow ..
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller schrieb:
I believe the totally open wiki model is unsuitable for such a project.
Hi Erik,
when I read your mail, it reminded me on the typical reactions of some people who did not know wikipedia and heard about writing an encylopedia bye allowing anyone to post :)
When I read your suggestion about limiting and certain steps of editing an open news project, I was reminded on Nupedia somehow.
Indeed, wikipeadia was one of the best resources on March 11 when the bombs hit Madrid and people outside wikipedia have noticed it.
By the way: There is an increasing number of articles containing the following phrase: "according to wikipedia". This is great and I guess there are more occasion when journalists used wikipedia to get facts without citing the source in their article.
Has anyone an idea how to intensify this? Does anyone work for a newspaper or a news agency? It's a simple tradeoff: They are delivering keywords what they actually need in the near future and interested people might write something about it in wikipedia...
Mathias
Mathias-
when I read your mail, it reminded me on the typical reactions of some people who did not know wikipedia and heard about writing an encylopedia bye allowing anyone to post :)
Actually, there's a key difference. We have a "no original research" requirement on Wikipedia for exactly the reason that we can't rely on original research by anonymous contributors (also, because it goes beyond the scope of an encyclopedia).
Controversial information in Wikipedia has to backed up with sources and citations. Anyone can provide a citation, it doesn't matter whether they are anonymous as long as the source is obtainable and can be verified by others.
For a real news service, original research is of course essential, and for original research to be credible, there have to be reputation and accountability attached to it. One of the worst mistakes we can make is to treat wiki as a dogma. Wikis should be the basis of all Wikimedia projects, but the exact parameters in terms of policy and technology should be varied depending on the individual project needs.
Regards,
Erik
I've started symbolwiki.org, as a place to work out a theory. Now that the basic principles are fairly well established, it needs some acoutriments (some of which are well in development) to make it come alive.
I'm considering donating it and its content to WikiMedia. If the idea is considered something worthy of pursuing by peoples in the community, please say so, and I will take steps toward putting it into community hands.
Thanks, Stephen Cooney eikeiei 戴眩
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 10:02:42AM -0800, Steve Cooney wrote:
I've started symbolwiki.org, as a place to work out a theory. Now that the basic principles are fairly well established, it needs some acoutriments (some of which are well in development) to make it come alive.
I'm considering donating it and its content to WikiMedia. If the idea is considered something worthy of pursuing by peoples in the community, please say so, and I will take steps toward putting it into community hands.
Seriously, you should just learn Chinese ;-)
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
Seriously, you should just learn Chinese ;-)
Ah, Thomas, but that would be too easy. ;)
http://www.symbolwiki.org/index.php?title=Symbolwiki:Critique#Why_not_just_l... Why not just learn Chinese? A set range of conceptually broad verbs and nouns may work, but if you want the same depth of communication present in other languages you will end up with tens of thousands of characters and character-combinations like in Chinese .. and then why not just learn chinese? - Anon Its a good point. But the idea isnt so much that one language take precedence over another, rather that a system is devised by which people can collaborate accross cultures and implement changes to the language, or "a" language. Chinese itself is constantly changing, and these changes are increasingly reflecting the influence of the web. In the context of a true cross-cultural language, the criticism of a language not being as deep as another arent really valid. Even a library of a hundred basic symbols would be far more efficient for the larger transcultural goal, than any of the localized languages can be.
If Chinese were to "be changed", why not let the process be open to a much larger audience? That would mean that it would no longer be Chinese, rather something based on what everyone brings to it. This would include ideas like mine for representing social roles, (and strength yet to be uploaded) which attempt to organize symbols in to contexts, within which small modifiers (usually a single dot or a line) can alter the radical �rather than use the same compound forms that Chinese does. This is the main criticism, that these term-compounds reflect terms that differ accross local languages. My point is that these will not matter - the basic functions can be unified, and the more complex forms can be constructed in different ways - some may have even have redundant meanings, until they are reconciled. -KuniShiro 19:08, 22 Mar 2004 (CET) ----
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 02:49:23PM -0800, Steve Cooney wrote:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
Seriously, you should just learn Chinese ;-)
Ah, Thomas, but that would be too easy. ;)
http://www.symbolwiki.org/index.php?title=Symbolwiki:Critique#Why_not_just_l... Why not just learn Chinese?
Yeah, I've read that, but I still think that if you want to design new ideographic script, you should modify Chinese writing, not make something completely new - some 1/4th of humanity already knows those, and that's a big head start.
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
if you want to design new ideographic script, you should modify Chinese writing, not make something completely new - some 1/4th of humanity already knows those, and that's a big head start.
I agree. That's exactly what it states. Sadly, I wont possibly live long enough to "design" it all myself, as you suggest.
~S
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
Op do 25-03-2004, om 19:02 schreef Steve Cooney:
I'm considering donating it and its content to WikiMedia. If the idea is considered something worthy of pursuing by peoples in the community, please say so, and I will take steps toward putting it into community hands.
Then you just need to change the license from CC BY-SA-NC to BY-SA and GFDL (dual)
Wouter Vanden Hove www.opencursus.org www.vrijschrift.org
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias is in our coverage of current events. However, the current scenario has a couple of disadvantages:
- The amount of information about a particular event that can
meaningfully be incorporated into the article on the person/thing etc. is quite limited
- The info. is often dispersed among more than one article
- Readers have to scan the whole article to get to the one line or
paragraph about the current event
The depth with which a current event can be covered is very limited. Daily newspapers have deadlines that need to be met, and often don't have the leisure to consider the subject in any serious depth. The advantage that we have in current events is that we can link to background material by doing nothing more than adding a pair of square brackets, TV is in a worse position, and those personel are sometimes just as compulsively caught up in events. The 9/11 events were understandably all-consuming for the TV networks on that day. Here on the West coast there is a 3-hour time difference from New York, so the hits took place before I got out of bed that day. Almost nothing else was in the news that day, and I soon found that TV coverage was highly repetitious. How many times can you watch the same plane hit the same building before the event ceases to inform?
A weekly publication is able to give a more comprehensive picture, and eliminate the repetitious. A quarterly is in a better position to evaluate the event and begin placing it in an historical context.
So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.
It would be somewhat like indymedia, but with important differences:
- Wiki
- NPOV
- News about an event would be integrated into a single comprehensive
article rather than having a collection of articles written at different points of time
So how about it? (Don't know if this has been proposed before...)
I think that something of the sort is periodically suggested by various people. NPOV in current events may only be the ability to refrain from editorializing. I don't know if a single comprehensive article about the event is always attainable. That is normally the domain of the quarterlies, but we are in a position to present "quarterly" information more quickly than the quarterlies, and that's a big advantage.
The other point. for having a credible current events service is maintenance. Putting ourselves forward as offering that kind of service requires disciplined and regular attention to such things. (Even though I don't like what has happened to the general layout of the Main Page, I can still take notice of the fact that those who are involved have made considerable efforts to keep the material fresh.)
My suggestion to Arvind, since he does contribute from India, would be to start [[Current Events in India]]. He is in a position to provide current information about what is being reported in the Indian news media to people whose understanding is limited to the belief that India is about to drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan.
Ec
On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 10:36:03AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
[snip]
My suggestion to Arvind, since he does contribute from India, would be to start [[Current Events in India]]. He is in a position to provide current information about what is being reported in the Indian news media to people whose understanding is limited to the belief that India is about to drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan.
ROFL :)
Yes, that's a good suggestion. There are many Indian wikipedians, so this should be a nice project.
Arvind
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org