[Foundation-l] Re: Swedish, Spanish, French Wikinews set up

[Gerard Meijssen]

This whole huha about the Wikinews thing is in my opinion a storm in a 
teacup. There are some issues though.

First, the wikipedia crowd is just that, the wikiPedia crowd. Many words 
have been used to describe how a wikinews article is different from a 
wikipedia article and, that you can atrackt different people to become 
part of the wikinews crowd. People may be part of both crowds, it is 
their prerogative. I object to the notion that the wikipedia crowd has 
much say over what happens on other projects; walk the talk.

There is more to wikimedia than just wikipedia and, when people are part 
of multiple crowds, there will be a spill over of energy and idea's from 
one project to the next. Have a look at the nl:wikinews and you will 
find that a small community like the nl:crowd just laps wikinews up. 
Much work is done to make wikinews visually pleasing, much is done to 
give it its structure and I am sure it will be cool with great content. 
At this moment some of the best nl:wikipedia editors are working on 
nl:wikinews. It is bound to atract people who will be mainly active on 
wikinews but in the mean time it has a strong bond with the other 
nl:projects and as such it strenghtens the nl:wikiMedia crowd.

The thing is, wikipedia is four years old, so what of it when a 
wikipedia will grow less quickly ... so what ? It will grow and it will 
reach the 500.000 mark for articles eventually. All in its own good 
time. That is one resource we have plenty of, time. One resource we 
should be jealous of is the coherency of a crowd within a language, in 
my opinion this constant bickering is not good for the fr:crowd and it 
is not good for the wikiMedia crowd. Please close ranks, be sensitive to 
each others sensibilities and consider how what you do helps the 
foundation. If it does not help the foundation and its projects, another 
line of action, reasoning is called for.

Thanks,
    GerardM