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

[Florence Devouard]

Craig Spurrier wrote:
> The last we heard about it Jimbo was going to ask Mike to look at it. If 
> Mike says the WMF can do it, Jimbo says we could "fundraise on wikinews 
> itself to get the money for the Foundation to hire a "Wikinews community 
> liason"" (a job I would be very much interested in :) ). If the WMF can 
> not do it then we need a separate org. Wikinews needs proper press 
> accreditation. One recentish example of this need is we had a reporter 
> covering a protest whose WN press badge saved him from getting arrested 
> and worse. The fact that it worked may very well due to the fact that 
> the police were rushed and had no idea what Wikipedia is. If they had 
> taken the time to really read the card and saw the big disclaimer that 
> says the person is not really affiliated with anything or if they knew 
> about Wikipedia only from one of the anti-Wikipedia articles, there is 
> no telling what could have happened, we could have had our first 
> reporter in jail.
> 
> Until we hear back from Mike, there is nothing we can really do, but the 
> need is still very much present.
> 
> At the present there is fairly mixed support from the Wikimedia 
> community, but very strong support from the Wikinews community.
> 
> -Craig Spurrier
> [[n:Craig Spurrier]]


Mike gave us a feedback, which basically contains what is below

"
I think that if Wikinews (or some renamed entity) wanted to
embark on the project of setting up, say, an open-source version of
Associated Press or Reuters, the best course of action would be to to
spin it off, and out of the Foundation entirely.  (I'd suggest some
rebranding as well to avoid confusion, but that's not a high priority.)

Administering press accreditation and acquiring it and keeping track
of what different national governments required strikes me as a huge
project.  I don't think we have the manpower for it.  But because
Wikinews is already "going its own way" in a lot of respects (there's
already lots of duplication of function between Wikipedia current
event coverage and Wikinews press coverage), the logical thing it
seems to me is to spin Wikinews off.  Give it the associated
trademarks as a sign of good will.  Donate server space even
(although I'd prefer someone like Wikia or Google to do that.)

There are search engines that are notably deficient when it comes to
generating original content.  Google and Yahoo! come to mind.  What
it would take to make this work is someone with the vision of
building a Wikinews-type project and seeking funding or other
financial support from a company like Google that already has a hole
in its product lineup.

I actually think it would be a sign of health of WMF if it showed a
willingness to launch an independent child project into the world.


--Mike
"

Then he also added

"In nations that focus on accreditation, there's typically a class of
journalists or a journalistic organization that officially takes
responsibility for content.  In the U.S., any journalist or
organization (e.g., the New York Times) that takes responsibility for
content *expressly exempts itself* from the Sec. 230 safe harbor that
protects Wikipedia and most other WMF projects from liability (for,
e.g., defamation).

So, in that sense, there's legal-liability divergence from other WMF
projects, at least potentially."


Which kinda answer the issue of legal risk. Would there be a legal risk 
if WMF was handling accredition ? Yup.

The three main solutions left are consequently
1) full spin off
2) a separate organization, part of a more global network. And with 
shared values with WMF
3) working with chapters

I am not sure chapters are to be considered good solutions really due to 
all the comments previously made (partial coverage in particular), 
though I believe they are part of the story.

As for the full spin-off being the best solution, I do not share Mike's 
opinion on this, nor does Erik. Other board members did not give a feedback.


I hope that help :-)

Anthere