[Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project

[Andrew Lih]

I'm heartened to hear the "grow it" strategy. Perhaps I was alarmed
because the initial document on meta was quite ambitious. The Slashdot
comparison is intriguing, but I tend to think of their community as a
fleet of pundit robots from [[MST3K]], rather than a solid reporting
crew. :)

Perhaps the biggest question is that blogging and Wikipedia editing is
largely done "in your pajamas" sitting at home. Just what level of
original reporting can we expect to see with Wikinews? Will there be
much pounding the pavement and getting street interviews? Photography?
Phoners? Now that [[Podcasting]] is gaining momentum, the prospects of
radio and TV dispatches is exciting as well. In some countries,
getting access to news events requires official accreditation, so will
this be an obstacle?

Also, a good starting point for recruitment would be to contact the
folks listed at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_Corps

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 12 Oct 2004 17:05:00 +0200, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Andrew-
> > RfA isn't quite a reputation system like Slashdot karma or eBay's
> > ratings. Adminship is a one-time bar to pass, usually for life, and
> > there are is no metric to capture  the highs and lows of a
> > contributor's performance.
> 
> This is the case for Wikinews as well - see the proposal.
> 
> >> * establish workflow - [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]],
> >> [[Wikipedia:Peer review]], [[m:Article validation]]
> 
> > But these are completely optional, and not required at all for article
> > writing.
> 
> That's true, but as you yourself state:
> 
> > There is a notable difference between Wikipedia and Wikinews -- the
> > matter of deadlines and edition time. Wikipedia's content is
> > continually morphing. But for news to be news, it must be frozen at
> > one point in time, and that puts Wikinews within a different dynamic.
> 
> Also, it is very likely that we will have a stable (or milestone) edition
> of Wikipedia, which would make the two processes very similar.
> 
> I don't buy your sharp distinction between Wikipedia and Wikinews. First
> of all, because Wikipedia content doesn't undergo a publishing phase, any
> article at any given time can contain all of the things you mention. I've
> had to remove claims about some guy being a child pornographer or a
> pedophile out of Wikipedia articles which had been there for months and
> successfully re-inserted by anonymous users. If the guy had been hostile
> to Wikipedia, he could certainly have made a case that we haven't done our
> job of policing the content on our site. All of Fred Bauder's nightmare
> scenarios are equally applicable in this context.
> 
> Even when an article has actually undergone community review, many of the
> risks remain. That's why we have disclaimers like "Wikipedia does not
> provide legal advice", and why we have endless discussions about obscenity
> and pornography.
> 
> What it boils down to is this: The Wikinews community has to make damn
> sure that their reports are backed up by hard evidence. The fact checking
> process has to be solid. However, keep in mind that a site like Slashdot,
> with millions of visitors per month, has managed to operate for more than
> 7 years without any serious threats to its existence, even though they
> have virtually no fact-checking in place besides the readers, even though
> they regularly challenge the law by doing things like linking to copy
> prevention circumvention-devices, and even though they do publish original
> reports on a regular basis, much of them hearsay ("I just did this check
> on Microsoft's DRM, and .."), in a field where money is very, very
> dominant and lawyers are always waiting to be unleashed.
> 
> My proposal is much more conservative than Slashdot's model, with a solid
> fact-checking and review process in place before anything is officially
> published. You can't have it both ways, BTW -- making it more open for
> including original reports makes it more vulnerable to legal threats. You
> are in effect arguing for an even more conservative approach, but even the
> current one is being attacked by some as too "un-wiki-like". I am trying
> to find a reasonable middle ground here.
> 
> Wikinews initially will be fairly low-profile and hence at low risk of
> being targeted legally. As the project grows, I am sure we will find
> people who can assist us in the legal review of the articles we publish -
> as we have found such people for Wikipedia. But you will never be able to
> eliminate all risks - not within Wikipedia, not within Wikinews.
> 
> The time is now to start this project, to bring the people together and to
> formulate the rules of publishing. As a journalist, I am well aware of the
> risks. We will tread carefully and gain more confidence as we grow. Such
> is the way of the wiki. Fear is not an option.
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Erik
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-- 
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com