[Foundation-l] [Wikinews-l] Proposal for the creation of a Wikinews foundation

[Brian McNeil]

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>I am not a Wikinewsie but I have followed this thread with some 
>interest.  Supporting any kind of incorporated affiliates other than 
>national chapters of WMF would be a significant departure from past 
>practice.  This means that dealing with the kind of questions outlined 
>above is far more important than it might be with national chapters 
>where there is already some experience.

Indeed, we are constantly telling people that "Wikinews is different". :)

>This does need to be looked at in the wider context of 
>citizen-journalist accreditation.  My concern here is that once we start 
>granting accreditation we are setting up an elite group with powers and 
>rights that extend outside of our projects.  A similar situation could 
>have arisen if Wikiversity had decided to grant degrees or diplomas. 
>Accreditation means something more than the ability to fill in the 
>blanks in a computer template, and printing off the results.

We already have that "elite" you speak of. Wikinews has an accreditation
process, I have been issued with a press pass - and I personally issue the
@wikinewsie.org email addresses. Perhaps you're more concerned that there is
a good process of checks and balances in place - and I'd agree. We likely
need to give this more consideration than the "make it up as you go along"
process that often happens on-wiki.

>I can fully appreciate the difficulty that citizen-journalists face in 
>gaining access to reportable events, but isn't this a problem that 
>should be tackled by the wider community of citizen-journalists? 

My temptation here is to ask to name 2 or 3 other citizen journalism
projects that are neutral. That is the big difference between us and groups
like IndyMedia. Whilst we may have the same objectives in terms of access
our reporting goals conflict and we try to suppress individual opinion
whereas they revel in it.

>Fair enough.  It's a matter of setting this up independently, and 
>determining the relationship that this organisation may have with WMF 
>later.  One possible outcome is that Wikinews would no longer be a 
>sister project overseen by WMF.

Taking Wikinews out of the Foundation is a big step - and one that would
likely kill the project.  At the moment we can go around Wikipedia adding
links using the {{Wikinews}} template to bind the two projects together (we
have plenty of WP links in our articles). As a separate body we'd either
need to be closely associated, or given some exception to have links to us
from Wikipedia without the highlighting "external link" symbol.

>I don't see naming as a particular problem.  If the general idea flies 
>those involved should be able to deal easily with the secondary problem 
>of naming this new entity.

Well, there is support in the Wikinews community - at least the English
speaking one. We want credible press credentials, and something as simple as
an email address has made a huge difference to our response rates. I got to
interview the UK Labour Party's longest serving MP, [[w:Tony Benn]], and I
don't think I would have got that with my ISP or a gmail email address.

>The organisation should be responsible not only for its own funding, but 
>should also accept its own potential legal liabilities. Trademark 
>licences may be initially free, but there should be no expectation that 
>it will always be so.  Small amounts of seed funding could be 
>appropriate; however, if we want the new group to be responsible for its 
>own funding this should not continue beyond the fist year.

What Craig has proposed is an organisation which has minimal assets and is
thus not an attractive target to sue. It becomes problematic if such an
organisation controls the Wikinews web servers, a legal attack can bring
them down because we no longer have something like WMF clout behind us.


Brian.