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

[Bod Notbod]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Thomas Morton

>> Wikipedia seems to get a lot of hits when it keeps up with the news. I
>> think it reflects well on the project and has a bit of a "wow!"
>> factor. It also gets us press coverage. So I'm all for news in
>> Wikipedia.
>
>
> It's not *news* though - it's supposed to be a historical record. There is a
> lot more content that a news article could/should cover (with a different
> tense & style for starters).
>
> We consolidate news into historical record; and people find that useful.

The old canard, but quite a lovely one I feel, is that "journalism is
the first draft of history". Wikipedia is sometimes that.

Does anyone want to argue for a policy that says "Wikipedia does not
record events until they are x days/months old"?

I'm sure there are hundreds of examples of edits made about current
events that are regrettable and I'm sure BLPs are often plastered with
something that happened yesterday out of all proportion to that
person's life taken in toto. But I think we're capable of dealing with
that.

If the lifecycle of an article that involves current news is:

Stable article -> [news event happens] -> article chaos -> heavily
edited/recentist -> calms down but still recentist -> stable and due
weight accorded to event.

I think that's fine. In fact I think the chaos is what gets people
fired up and drives them to make something really good.

Bodnotbod