[Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

[Ilya Haykinson]

As someone who initially proposed and helped implement the
credentialing process, I'm chiming in on this issue.

On 11/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > They're calling themselves Wikinews journalists, which is what they
> > are.
>
> Anybody who works on Wikinews can say that. Yes. This is about a sub group that
> wish to say they have Wikinews press credentials as a means to gain access to
> press events. That is *very* different.

This is not a sub-group. The process is an open election, allowing
trusted Wikinewsies to be given a status of "Trusted Wikinewsie". This
involves the user providing their real name, and being listed on a
protected page. The real-world slang for "trusted wikinewsie" is
"credentialing".

> It is very different. They wish to use these credentials and the Wikinews name
> to gain access normally only granted to credentialed journalists.

Wikinews aims to create citizen journalists. Since these citizen
journalists have to operate in a world of non-citizen journalists,
they have to use the outsiders' terms for some things. How else do you
give credentials to a citizen journalist? This method is as good as
any I've seen so far.

> Not so. They do not have permission to use the Wikinews trademark in a way that
> implies they are officially credentialed by Wikinews or Wikimedia. They are
> not.

Nowhere does it say that we are credentialed by the board of the WMF.
I might not own the trademark "Wikinews", but I do own some copyrights
to parts of its contents, pursuant to the site's license. I do not
give up the right to say that I am a contributor to Wikinews. Neither
do I give up the right to say that I've been trusted by the users of
Wikinews -- which is what this policy-based process implies.

> If  you thought I meant that, then I'm sorry I was not clear. All I want is for
> the board to either place their stamp of approval on what is already going on
> and help with its administration (such as providing a phone line for people to
> check the credentials of people who claim to have them), or stop it the whole
> thing completely. The current system for selecting the people who are
> considered to have credentials seems to be OK.

I would like to point out that this process was mentioned by Erik on
this list before; and that this was described in the State of the Wiki
(which is supposed to be read by the board)

In the future, before raising "trademark violation" alarms about a
process that's been around for 9 months, I would appreciate a quick
question/post on some public place on the project, or an email to the
project list, lest we sow confusion into the minds of any potential
press pass givers who might be on this list.

-ilya haykinson
 bureaucrat / en.wikinews