[WikiEN-l] RE: Current events

[Daniel Mayer]

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>I think we should go further still and shoot for the 
>ultimate goal of creating "Wikimedia." That's media 
>with an "m." It would use Wiki-style rules to enable 
>public participation in the creation and editing of all 
>kinds of media: encyclopedias and other reference 
>works, current news, books, fiction, music, video etc. 
>Like current broadcast media, it would have 
>differentiated "channels" and "programs," each with 
>self-selecting audiences. Unlike current media, 
>however, the audience would also be actively 
>involved in creating its own programming, instead 
>of merely passively watching it.

Way to go Sheldon! I've been raking my brain for months trying to figure out a 
good name for the non-profit / umbrella organization. "Wikipedia Foundation" 
was a placeholder but the "WikiPedia" part didn't seem to work for me since 
we now have Wiktionary, will (hopefully soon) be launching the 
yet-to-be-named source text wiki, and we will almost certainly expand into 
the textbook arena in the next few years (with fiction to follow behind 
that). So Wikimedia is perfect (so perfect that I just registered 
wikimedia.org and will transfer that to the Foundation when it is set-up)! 

However, at this point in time, we simply do not have the resources to do real 
news reporting (which isn't simply rewriting news reports by others but 
involves expensive primary research, travel and interviewing). But until/if 
we do, our process of updating Wikipedia in near real-time as history unfolds 
will do just fine. 

As a matter of fact this is one of the /big/ reasons for our success; many 
people are very interested in current events so they write encyclopedia 
articles that reflect this. It is also no cooincidence that whenever there is 
a hugely important current event that Wikipedia gets a surge of traffic and 
new contributors. This is a point that we are often complemented on and IMO 
is the real edge we have over dead tree encyclopedias. So there is no reason 
to divert these efforts to another project for a long time (if ever). Doing 
so could hurt Wikipedia in profound way.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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