[Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[Tom Morris]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:32, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> While I agree this isn't a good situation to be in, I'm not sure what
> the alternative is. The reviewers need to be able to understand the
> sources and there probably aren't many (any?) reviewers on the English
> Wikinews that speak Japanese. They could do away with the review
> system entirely (what purpose does it serve? Wikipedia doesn't require
> things to be reviewed before being published and it seems to be doing
> rather better...),

Wikipedia does review In The News submissions before they go on the homepage.

Wikinews articles get syndicated out to Google News and posted on
Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. There's something of a
responsibility to make sure they are good before doing so.

That said, there are ways to fix the problems: mainly by having a more
lightweight review process before publication. Have it so that the
story only has to be newsworthy and not have blatant sourcing/copyvio
problems, then modify the story after publication as new facts come
out for the next day or so.

Basically, this is how sites like BBC News operate: they'll often get
the story out within five minutes of getting it off the wire, then
rewrite it as they get more information. We may prefer to have a
slightly slower approach for sourcing reasons, but ideally it'd be
closer to half an hour than 72 hours.

English Wikinews' problems can be fixed with more reviewers. To get
more reviewers, we need more editors. To get more editors, we actually
have to publish their stories relatively quickly so they don't get
disenchanted and frustrated with the whole process. And to do that, we
need more reviewers. Chicken and egg problem...

-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>