[Foundation-l] The Wikinews fork: updates

[Tempodivalse]

Hello! Thanks for the show of support; I was expecting the response to be more 
lacklustre than this. I can't answer everyone's comments individually, but I'll try 
to address some of the more common questions.

To be clear, OpenGlobe was not created due to a dispute with the Foundation. 
The main reason for forking was the perceived hostility and rudeness among Wikinews editors, 
especially to newbies and outsiders, which makes it difficult to get anything done 
and drives off new recruits. Bureaucracy also 
played a role: article standards have become so high that very few stories 
make it to the front page; the project currently averages fewer 
than two published pages a day and 75%+ of stories are deleted as old news before they see 
"daylight". The stories that are published generally go live only after a lengthy delay and 
some time after the event has taken place, making their usefulness questionable.

Re how we're going to be different from Wikinews: OpenGlobe is still in the developing 
stage, so I'm not sure what direction things will take, but two important things are on our 
agenda: make publication of articles much easier and more rewarding, and put the focus on 
quality, in-depth reporting, and articles on underreported but relevant events, 
instead of just rewriting an article done by AP or Reuters. We also might allow more 
"human interest stories", that are unbiased but thought-provoking, as an addition to the
more typical coverage. (There's been a complaint that I've created several articles from the PD
Voice of America, but rest assured I don't want to do that on a daily basis; I just needed "filler" for the main page 
until better articles could be made.)

We probably can't keep up with the MSM with sheer manpower, but we can sure be a lot 
less biased/superficial. That, plus the fact that we're open-source, and anyone can 
contribute, gives us our own little (but important) niche. I think citizen journalism has 
become more appealing to the public over the past few years, and we're in position to 
take advantage of that.

We have a freenode channel set up at #openglobe, and we're frequently brainstorming 
in there, so you're invited to join if you want to see what's going on (and have your own 
say).

I've suddenly become quite busy with this new project, so please don't expect frequent replies 
to this list.

Regards,

-Tempodivalse (http://theopenglobe.org)