[Foundation-l] Intent to launch pt., pl., ro. Wikinews; further procedure

[Erik Moeller]

Nicolas Weeger-

> And how can you check the
> translation is correct unless you speak the language? :)

How do I know the "regular" is not actually a troll without speaking the 
language? How do I know that the only reason he wants to start a 
Wikinews isn't that he hates Wikipedia after having spent several months 
there? How do I know his intentions are good? You could require one of 
the people to be a sysop, but that seems like an onerous requirement. An 
algorithmic contribution check is *not* a quality check.

Let's be realistic here. What kind of person would intentionally 
manipulate policies and get away with it under the auspices of other 
users: a random person who's never been involved in our projects, or 
someone who is intimately familiar with them? Furthermore, remember that 
there would still be a requirement of *multiple users* participating. 
How likely is it that a malicious person would get away with 
deliberately falsely translating something like NPOV when working with 4 
others?

And let's not forget about 
http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AssumeGoodFaith - the very idea of a 
wiki is to be open and welcoming to newcomers, rather than requiring 
people to be members of an existing "clique". If the risk of malicious 
people ruining the project was so big, then Wikipedia itself could never 
have been started. Yes, Wikinews is different -- but a Wikinews edition 
which is likely to attract attention from the outside is also likely to 
attract attention from the inside, allowing us to deal with malicious 
users. Yes, Wikinews is different -- and that's why we should be 
welcoming to *people* who are different and not yet part of our community.

Regards,

Erik