[Foundation-l] Wikinews has not failed

[Jon Davis]

According to the Wikinews stats page ( http://wmf4.me/3229 ), the English
Wikinews received 7.9 million page views in October 2009.  Compare that to
52 million page views for English Wiktionary ( http://wmf4.me/f8E57 ) or
12.8 million for English Wikisource ( http://wmf4.me/7a12c ) in the same
time frame.  En.wn doesn't have a huge amount of hits in comparison, but it
is nothing to sneeze at either.   You can also take a quick look at the
stats from enwn.net, our URL shortner ( http://enwn.net/stats.php ) and see
that in the last 30 days we've had 17k click through from Twitter & Identica
alone.  So we might not be huge, but we've got a fairly loyal following.

If most news sites go pay wall, as they've been threatening, I think you'll
see see a huge rise in contributions/interest to Wikinews.  Really, that is
the main difference between the popularity of Wikinews and other projects.
When Wikipedia started, there was no other reasonable "free encyclopedia".
Wikinews on the other hand?  We've got to compete with every other news
outlet on earth.  Give us some credit for trying.

-Jon


On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:45, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> In a message dated 11/5/2009 11:29:32 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> rarohde at gmail.com writes:
>
>
> > In a $6 million budget, I'd honestly be disappointed if the Foundation
> > wasn't spending at least $100k on development projects that might some
> > day take off,>>
>
> But that's exactly my point.  Wikinews has had it's chance, for years, and
> it didn't make the grade.  Time to cut the losses and try a new project
> with
> that 100K investment.  Every corporation looks at the brands which have
> lingered around and has to make the decision to cut and re-direct.  How
> many
> more years do you want to give Wikinews to try to make it before you cut it
> out?  Or would you never cut it out at all?  100K on a new project like
> WikiEarth or WikiDirections or WikiStockQuotes or whatever might pay off
> soon.
> Wikinews has never paid off it's investment.
>
> Will
>
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-- 
Jon
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