[WikiEN-l] Re: Current events

[Sheldon Rampton]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>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.

I certainly don't want to push Wikimedia to move into new areas any 
quicker than it can. In practice, however, I think you may find that 
you have more resources than you realize for reporting. IndyMedia 
doesn't have a big budget for travel and so forth; it gets most of 
its materials from people who live or travel on their own dime to the 
places where they report, and they've been fairly successful. There 
are IndyMedia centers in dozens, if not hundreds of cities now. It 
would be nice to see some hybrid of Wikipedia and Indymedia, where 
you get Indymedia's focus on current events and its system of local 
centers, combined with the Wiki technique of peer review editing.

>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.

Actually, there *is* a reason. Wikipedia sometimes suffers from an 
embarrassment of too many riches. It gets so much traffic that the 
server bogs down. One way to achieve scalability might be to direct 
visitors to different "channels". (Of course, that would require some 
serious prior thought about how to avoid redundancies and 
fragmentation.)
-- 
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|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
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