[Wikinews-l] rules for new wikinews sites

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 1) 2-3 Wikimedia (not Wikipedia) regulars in that language supporting it
> 2) certain key documents being created / translated on Meta (mission 
> statement, Wikinews-NPOV, FAQ, Main Page etc.)

I am not sure that 2-3 people is enough.

> I'm not sure what you mean with "demonstrated that the existing 
> Wikipedia community supports it". Would you like local polls for each 
> language? I'd personally not want to use that approach, because I'm 
> worried about it leading to a loss of coherence within the Wikimedia 
> community over time, just because of some localized statistical 
> fluctuations in such polls.

I'm not sure I follow.  I think there's a much greater risk of loss of
coherence if we let 2-3 people make the decision rather than if we
track a broader consensus of the community with a localized poll.

> Regardless of what approach we use, it will always be difficult to 
> predict the success of a new language edition before it is set up. It 
> really depends on the passion and dedication of the handful of people 
> who start working on it. A single highly motivated volunteer can run a 
> very successful Wikinews edition all by himself.

I think this last bit is what is not true.  Wikinews differs from
Wikipedia in that news is constantly changing, whereas encyclopedia
articles are timeless.  If a single highly motivated volunteer writes
100 articles at a rate of 2 per day, then even if no one else joins,
those articles have permanent lasting value whenever more people do
come along.  With an encyclopedia, laying down a base of work is
always valuable, if anyone helps or not.

With news, though, stories are stale after just a few days.

Therefore, a much higher number of participants than 1 is needed for a
successful wikinews.  If only 2-3 people are involved, it is likely to
falter after a few weeks.

Look at fr.wikinews.org for a demonstration of this.  At the moment, the
top headline is for 15 Feb -- and it is now 3 Mar.

> be deterred. That's why I think a policy based on people doing work on 
> Meta first, rather than on some poll or vote, might lead to better results.

This is a very good idea, yes.

> The problem with just saying "We'll be Beta for two years" is that it's 
> a very top-down approach.

No, I didn't mean that exactly.  It is my prediction that we will want
to be in beta for at least that long.  I do think that some set of
criteria makes a lot of sense of course.

> A lot of people have complained to me about Wikinews being in Beta
> and them not knowing what to do about it and who decides that and
> why.

I think this can be clarified, and I think that the bar should be set
quite high *and* people should know that this is our method of deflecting
certain types of criticism, not a negative thing.

Google News is still in beta.

The idea is: if someone wants to write an article saying Wikinews is
not yet very good, we want to be able to respond: of course, we are
not claiming that it's a released product yet.

> This would also necessarily mean that, for example, the English Wikinews 
> might move out of Beta before the Bulgarian one, which I think is the 
> right thing to do.

Yep.

--Jimbo