[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[Stephen Bain]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 8:24 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>
> Wikimedia has made its decision and the community has largely sat quiet on
> the issue. Wikimedia has made it clear in promotional materials, donation
> drives, and nearly anywhere else that its focus is the English Wikipedia.

Wikinews never had the kind of substantial organic growth that many of
the other projects had. According to Eric Zachte's stats, active
contributors (five or more edits in a month) peaked in July 2005, nine
months after the project was started, and before the Foundation really
had any significant clout in determining the direction of the
projects. And that peak was at just 110 users. New contributors
(making at least 10 career edits) per month has averaged in the single
digits for years.

Certainly there are valid points to be made about the level of support
over the last few years, but which is the chicken and which is the egg
here?

(With the caveat that I'm not now, and never have been, a Wikinews contributor:)

Wikinews offers some outstanding original reporting and interviews,
but that's an extraordinarily scarce resource. The rest is pieces
synthesising news from elsewhere, and in that regard Wikipedia has
needed no assistance in drawing attention and contributions away from
Wikinews. What good is yesterday's synthesis today?

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com