[Foundation-l] London 7/7, and Wikinews

[Dan Grey]

>(09:44:11) Dan100: is anyone live?
>(09:44:16) Dan100: I need help ASAP
>(09:44:28) Dan100: explosions across London
Underground
>(09:44:32) Dan100: it's chaos

Oh yes, I got help alright.

We were the first on the web with the news, anywhere:
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_London&oldid=96968

Within a few hours, a team of people were working to
create the most up-to-date and most authorative news
article anywhere on the Internet. Co-ordinating
ourselves largely through the IRC channel (which
anyone can access with just their browser using a
simple link), we had people from both around the world
and right in London searching for photographs, getting
permission to use them, taking notes from spokesmen
and press conferences, and constantly updating and
fact-checking our articles.

Twenty-four hours later, our main article - 

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_London&oldid=98893

has had some 60,000 hits from Europe (excluding
France) alone. (Thanks to Kate for the stats.) As most
of our traffic comes from North America, it's
reasonable to assume that we had well in excess of
100,000 reads that day. Small in comparison to any
major news service, but it proves we're on the map.

Our articles were listed on the Main Page as they were
written. The lead articles were updated in moments.
Everyone arriving at the site instantly could see what
was happening and where to go to read more. Due to our
much more rigorous fact-checking, our articles were
consistently more accurate and more update-to-date
throughout the day than the single Wikipedia article.
To sum - with Wikinews, you could find more
information, which was more accurate, in less time,
than with Wikipedia. 

And tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after
that, we'll go on reporting the news of the world with
equally high standards of journalism. The difference
between a dedicated news service and an
encycolopaedia.

Yesterday, we proved that the model of massively
distributed citizen journalism not only works, but
works extraordinarily well.

So I want to ask the board to do this: begin promoting
Wikinews as widely and as loudly as Wikipedia. We
proved ourselves yesterday; now we should recieve the
support and promotion we deserve.



Dan




	
	
		
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