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

[Thomas Morton]

n 6 September 2011 12:49, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:32, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > While I agree this isn't a good situation to be in, I'm not sure what
> > the alternative is. The reviewers need to be able to understand the
> > sources and there probably aren't many (any?) reviewers on the English
> > Wikinews that speak Japanese. They could do away with the review
> > system entirely (what purpose does it serve? Wikipedia doesn't require
> > things to be reviewed before being published and it seems to be doing
> > rather better...),
>
> Wikipedia does review In The News submissions before they go on the
> homepage.
>
> Wikinews articles get syndicated out to Google News and posted on
> Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. There's something of a
> responsibility to make sure they are good before doing so.
>
> That said, there are ways to fix the problems: mainly by having a more
> lightweight review process before publication. Have it so that the
> story only has to be newsworthy and not have blatant sourcing/copyvio
> problems, then modify the story after publication as new facts come
> out for the next day or so.
>
> Basically, this is how sites like BBC News operate: they'll often get
> the story out within five minutes of getting it off the wire, then
> rewrite it as they get more information. We may prefer to have a
> slightly slower approach for sourcing reasons, but ideally it'd be
> closer to half an hour than 72 hours.
>
> English Wikinews' problems can be fixed with more reviewers. To get
> more reviewers, we need more editors. To get more editors, we actually
> have to publish their stories relatively quickly so they don't get
> disenchanted and frustrated with the whole process. And to do that, we
> need more reviewers. Chicken and egg problem...
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
>
>
Tom's comment here is *spot on*.

I contributed to WN way back in 2006; none of this process was really in
place then (there were reviews, but not as a technical implementation).
Content made it to the front page quite quickly, but there were quality
issues.

There are good reasons news publishers adopt an editorial policy that
involves someone experienced reading the piece. WikiNews seems to have
adopted this process - which is quite logical, and largely a good thing.

But as Tom say, online media has quickly found that the traditional
editorial process doesn't work so well on the internet. On the other hand
the net does allow very quick rewrite & expansion for a developing story.

It's this last step that WN perhaps hasn't learned or adopted yet.

Tom