[Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[Theo10011]

English Wikinews has been broken for a while. The entire system is
predicated on the judgement of reviewers, and a handful of rather rude
admins. I saw some rather aggressive posture and a pretty threatening
demeanor employed towards others when I tried contributing early last year.

I once tried to submit an article on Wiknews a couple of years ago. It was
something about a Blue moon on New year's eve at the end of 2009, the story
at the time had a thousand legitimate sources on google news which
apparently wasn't deemed notable enough by a reviewer, several hours later
when the event itself had passed.

Now, compared to contributing on English Wikipedia which has a much higher
visibility rate, activity, and a giant repository of related articles,
Wikinews seemed less and less relevant. The entire policy of editorial
content on Wikinews is counter-productive when anyone can go and contribute
to the larger sister project much easily.

It's pitiful when you realize what it can be in the age of micro-blogging
with a diverse contributor base like ours. We already have more reporter and
contributors in every country than any news/wire service. We just can't
figure out how to use it.

Theo

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, Fajro wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 2:21 AM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org
> <javascript:;>>
> > wrote:
> > > non-Western topics: see http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Category:Chile
> >
> > Chile non-western?
> > Fixed!
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chile&diff=prev&oldid=448703219
> >
> >
> Oh, I took it to mean Western as in (Europe + USA). Cultural imperialist, I
> know.
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
>
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
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