Most of the enforced editorial standards on en.Wikinews are about quality
control and NPoV, so they aren’t strictly speaking necessary. Without them
article quality will decrease, but both article quantity and
creation-to-publication time will likely improve. Whether or not en.Wikinews’
editorial standards are good or not depends entirely on what your priorities for
the project are. If you prioritize article quality (I do), then the current peer
review system is an acceptable (though imperfect) way of achieving that. If you
prioritize having lots of articles, then doing away with those standards is a
way to achieve that goal. Because there is a difference of opinion on which of
these paths to follow, I don’t disapprove of the fork, though I do see some
problems in the road ahead.
My main concern about the
fork is lack of copyright standards. About a year ago news organizations started suing *individual bloggers* for
copyright infringement. Even individual bloggers that have low readerships. They
won’t hesitate to sue a wiki, even if it only gets a few thousand hits a
day.
Now it’s unlikely (though not impossible:P) that
they’ll sue over a single infringement, but if they notice a pattern of
copyright infringement they’ll go ballistic on you.
So my recommendation is that you keep one small
part of the peer review process – the copyright section – just to stave off the
inevitable lawsuits from the MSM. Newspapers and their online counterparts feel
under threat, so it is of the upmost importance to any news wiki right now to
make sure they aren’t drawing the attention of the MSM’s attack
dogs.
gopher65
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 6:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] We've been forked! [fwd from
foundation-l]
You're
asking why they created a fork? It's simple enough. Enforcing
editorial standards, as en.wn does, inevitably creates resentment. Some of
these folks will have gone for the fork because they want to try to create a
news site without that resentment (an admirable if naive goal; in my opinion,
they haven't fully realized what it's going to mean for editorial standards, not
to mention copyright liability). Some of them will have gone for the fork
because they, personally, resent English Wikinews, and are eager for an
opportunity to strike a blow against it (not such an admirable motive, though
very human). And some will have gone for the fork out of a mixture of
those two.
There are complications ---cultural conflict between en.wn and
en.wp is notable, personal feud--- but that's the bottom line.
_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing
list
Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l