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

[Bod Notbod]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.rs> wrote:

>>> I'm proud of Wikinews.  We're so damn good at teaching how to write, a
>> university journalism professor is assigning us to his students as homework.
>
> This is being done on Wikipedia regularly without any extra bureaucratic
> overhead.

I don't know enough about Wikinews to start drawing comparisons
between Wikipedia and Wikinews as projects.

But if comparisons are going to be drawn, can they be in the spirit of
"here's lessons that can be learned, one from the other" rather than
saying "we're better than you"?

So, for example, with the above comment, perhaps it would be helpful
to say how Wikipedia has achieved student/teacher participation
without bureaucracy.

As I understand it the WMF and Wikipedia volunteers have spent time
and resources in grooming teachers and institutions that are amenable
to introducing Wikipedia as part of assignments. Wikinews has less
(fewer?) resources for that sort of outreach. Also Wikipedia has a far
broader potential reach to classrooms since it covers all topics,
whereas Wikinews will appeal specifically to journalism classes
(perhaps others, but the point will still stand).

Bodnotbod