[Foundation-l] On Wikinews

[Sarah]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:34, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:02, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> of Wikipedia principles. Wikis depend on eventualism: given an
>>> infinite timeline, pages eventually get better. News cannot survive on
>>> that. The "decay" of the value of breaking news and eventualism are at
>>> odds with each other.
>>>
>>> The question is, would paid staff be a healthy temporary boost for
>>> sustainability or be futile artificial life support? I fear it's the
>>> latter.
>>>
>>> -Andrew (above taken from an earlier, longer post)
>>>
>> There are current affairs issues that would continue to be of
>> interest. I've always felt this was an area Wikipedia and Wikinews
>> should pursue: video interviews by Wikipedians of interesting people.
>> Not necessarily celebrities or news types -- interviews with ordinary
>> people, oral histories of certain communities, people who've had odd
>> experiences, etc.
>>
>> It has been discussed a few times, and I know David Shankbone did some
>> good ones, but for some reason it has been limited. Adding some
>> original videos to our articles (adding them to Wikipedia articles,
>> supplied by Wikinews) would be very attractive to readers, I think.
>>
>
>
> I agree, and to quote from my reply in another thread:
>
> Where Wikinews has been successful and clearly valuable is in what
> those in journalism call "feature" content. Interviews with political
> leaders, photography of events, and investigative pieces. These
> verifiable forms of reporting are not time critical and don't demand
> "full coverage" like breaking news beats. The Wikinews interview with
> Shimon Peres is a good example:
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres_discusses_the_future_of_Israel
>
> And, in Wikipedia's crowdsourced way, potentially a re-oriented,
> mobilized Wikinews could produce in one week what National Geographic
> normally produces in one year. This could be a multimedia endeavor
> that could kick up the Wikimedia efforts in audio and video that seem
> to have stalled lately.
>
> WMF's mission is about giving free access to "the sum of all human knowledge."
>
> Wikipedia is about condensing and curating knowledge.
>
> Wikinews can be the force to go explore and acquire it.
>
> -Andrew

Yes, exactly. I'm currently working on an article about female genital
mutilation. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be if I could find
some women who had experienced this, arrange an interview, contact a
Wikinews person in London, or Kenya, and ask them to put certain
questions to those women?

That way, you can make the interview and the article interactive, in
the sense that you could ask the women to address specific points in
the article, then link to the video in that section. It would give us
a whole new depth of coverage.

This is exactly what it's like to work for an international news
organization, where someone in the Timbuktu office has an idea, and
collaborates with someone in the local area to produce it. We do have
that potential as a movement. It's just a question of how to give
people the confidence, and the space to add their material. And to
have sensible editorial policies that encourage quality without
stifling early efforts.

Sarah