[Foundation-l] Chinese Wikinews: board action required

[Erik Moeller]

Jimmy-

> Yes, this is what I had in mind.  The French Wikinews was started 
> according to existing policy, but clearly that policy is inadequate to 
> ensure a proper launch with solid community support.  When we were in 
> Brussels a while back Delphine/notafish was making a valiant effort to 
> get it going/get it organized/make it work, but to my knowledge this 
> hasn't been successful.

it is important to note that Wikinews is currently the *only* project 
that follows a strict language creation policy. There are:
* 12 Wikinews editions
* 87 Wikiquote editions
* 121 Wikibooks editions
* 173 Wiktionary editions
* ~200 Wikipedia editions

Suffice it to say that a very large number of these Wikiquote, 
Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikipedia editions are dead or, worse, spam 
magnets. :-(

The elaborate processes for Wikinews as well as the nature of the 
project have certainly put it in the spotlight of community attention. 
But the situation with Wikinews is much better. Of all the editions, 
only one (Bulgarian) is completely dead. It was launched according to 
the old, minimal policy. If nothing happens within the next couple of 
months, or if it starts attracting spam, I'd recommend locking it down.

The French Wikinews is now in a somewhat strange state; it is being 
updated regularly, but not in the way Wikinews should be. Instead of 
writing full-length stories, contributors are writing in "Current 
events" summary style right on the Main Page:

http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Accueil

This is unfortunate, as it duplicates the page "Actualités" on the 
French Wikipedia:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actualit%C3%A9s

I hope that over time, the French Wikinews will evolve like the other 
editions into a source of genuine stories. But, at least it is not a 
spam magnet, and there is a small community there.

The Swedish edition has seen no new stories since April 2, but was very 
active until then; I have heard rumors that this is related to a 
conflict on the Swedish Wikipedia.

All in all, I think we are doing quite well. Thanks to a volunteer from 
the Romanian edition, Romihaitza, we now even have daily updates on the 
number of new articles in each language per day:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Statistics

The new "Wikimedia regulars + start writing key pages on Meta" policy 
for new languages seems to work, and I see no reason for any substantial 
changes at the present time. Maybe the number of required regulars could 
be increased slightly.

Given the success of the English one, I hope to start an international 
writing contest soon, which will also help us to track the progress of 
the different languages.

All best,

Erik