[WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model

[wjhonson at aol.com]

As far as when to remove citations to subscription web-sites and when 
to leave them intact as convenience links, I use the following rule:

Part A or 1) *If* the article lives exclusively online, then it gets 
removed. We should not be requiring or pandering for, commercial 
activity, we as verifiers should have a choice in the matter.  There 
must always be a "free" alternative of some sort.

Part Deux) *If* there is a hard-copy version of the article, and your 
citation to the online version is verbose enough that a normally 
intelligent person could locate the item in a library, then it can stay.

Part Final Bit) *If* your citation to the online article, is so limited 
in content that no one could find the article except by following your 
link.. then it gets removed.

I am vicious and exacting I know.  We should be setting the bar for 
others to follow, not being lazy in citation practice.

Will Johnson



-----Original Message-----
From: Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Fri, Aug 7, 2009 4:33 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Online Newspapers Considering Subscription Model

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 11:20 PM, FT2<ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> The purposes of citations divide roughly into two overlapping needs - 
1/ for
> people who do edit to verify stated content facts, 2/ for readers to 
find
> further information and (sometimes) to check content.

Nicely done, sir.

Yes, as someone who patrols Recent Changes using Huggle [[WP:HUGGLE]]
I come across "referenced" edits that turn out, when you click the
attached link, not to tally with the statement at all. For example, a
recent one I saw I knew looked funny from the outset in that the
statement was quite specific but the citation was to the too general
sounding www.f1.com (the front page of the Grand Prix website). I
searched to see if I could drill down and confirm and replace the
citation but failed.

I will be in a world of frustration and hurt if I am confronted with
"please subscribe for $5 to access this article". I wouldn't *remove*
the citation because, as a previous poster indicated, my failure to
access is not cause to disregard "good faith".

> Accordingly if news did become pay-only WMF may obtain some kind of
> subscription to major sources, accessible to a wide but well defined 
subset
> of editors (users with > 500 edits? users agreed by a community 
process to
> be suitable?).

That's an interesting idea. Could work. I have a feeling they might
ask us to sacrifice Wikinews and stop covering current events as their
price, though. I would if I were them. Wikinews is not only direct
competition but it does (and don't hate me for this) leech off all
their sources. I see no good reason why they should support their
potential competition, no matter how tiddly Wikinews is in terms of
online news. Wikinews might have to be the sacrificial goat. We may
have to say goodbye to great articles like Hurricane Katrina and say
that we'll create articles that refer to things 12 months gone.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l