[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's 'In the news'

[Andrew Turvey]

> From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> 
> > Something that has often confused me is Wikipedia's 'In the news' 
> > section. 

Personally, I'm a big fan of Wikipedia's "In The News". It offers something very different to Wikinews - an analysis and backgrounder on current affairs. Wikinews doesn't accept stories that are more than a couple of weeks old, which means if you're interested in, say, African elections, you need to be really quick off the mark to get a story written in time. On Wikipedia, I can come back and update it at my leisure. There's no deadline, as they say in WP! 

I also love the fact you can read ITN and discover some really interesting facts about, say, the discovery of an ancient fossil, which has been totally ignored by the "news" media. 

If you have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events you'll see they've started to link into wikinews, so you can see the news stories from the two projects side by side. In addition, articles often have the {{wikinews}} template added in, cross referring readers to a story in Wikinews. 

One thing I do think ITN should do is start rejecting stories which don't have any substantial wikipedia article behind them - if the purpose is to showcase articles, there's not much point reporting a story that only links to, say, the country where the event took place. 

Andrew 

----- "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote: 
> From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> 
> To: "Wikinews mailing list" <wikinews-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
> Cc: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org 
> Sent: Monday, 25 May, 2009 12:53:12 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikinews-l] Wikipedia's 'In the news' 
> 
> > Something that has often confused me is Wikipedia's 'In the news' 
> > section. 
> > 
> > More often than not, the stories are the exact same as Wikinews', and 
> > in my opinion the presence of this section on Wikipedia actually stops 
> > people visiting Wikinews, as they can get all their important news off 
> > Wikipedia. 
> > 
> > To me, it seems counterproductive that a news story (I know Wikipedia 
> > doesn't do news, but current events often is effectively a news story) 
> > has to effectively be written twice (once on Wikinews and once on 
> > Wikipedia, due to licensing issues) when both projects are hosted by 
> > the same people and share a common goal: to provide free content. 
> > 
> > Could the two somehow be linked closer than a mere hyperlink? Could 
> > Wikipedia grab Wikinews' feed for the 'In the news' section or could 
> > content be copied off Wikinews onto Wikipedia once the new licence has 
> > been implemented? 
> > 
> > Would Wikinews not really benefit if current events editors on 
> > Wikipedia moved over to it? 
> > 
> > I'm sure this has been discussed hundreds of times but I am curious 
> > what the past consensus has been. 
> 
> The current events section on Wikipedia has been a feature of the front 
> page almost from the beginning, long before Wikinews was a project. It is 
> simply a partial record of the major stories of the day, not an 
> independent report of the news. (This is not quite true as those 
> Wikipedians who control the front page have some editorial influence on 
> what is highlighted). It is rather mediocre and spotty in its coverage, 
> including some very minor stories and missing some major stories. It 
> definitely needs attention by people who are news oriented, although it 
> could go in different potential directions. The stories included 
> contribute to article development with active work often occurring on the 
> subjects of the stories, thus it is part of the dynamics of how Wikipedia 
> works. It would be a shame to disrupt that dynamic. 
> 
> Fred Bauder 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> 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 
>