[Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

Fri Nov 11 12:54:31 UTC 2005

--- SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > case of press credentials but it stays their decision. If the wikinews 
> > community wants to hand out press credentials, they should submit their 
> > policy to the foundation and have it approved by the foundation. Since the
> 
> You could make exactly the same claim about any editorial policy on 
> Wikipedia.  The effects of a change in tagging, AFD, NPOV, or other 
> quality-related policy on EN:WP likely has far more of an effect on the 
> external perception of the Wiki[pedia] trademark than a press credential 
> policy (be it on WP, WN, or even Commons).

Those policies only relate to what happens within Wikipedia. So I don’t see how
that applies to cases where the Wikinews name and logo are used in the real
world. That may not be a trademark issue, but it does bear on the reputation of
Wikinews and the foundation to the outside world. ‘Press Credentials’ also has
a very specific meaning in many countries and legislation of those countries
and/or press union rules provide guidelines that organizations need to follow
to give out credentials.

> Once you stop trusting the community to develop sensible processes, every 
> policy on every project eventually needs to be vetted by the foundation 
> (whatever that means - special weekly Board sessions to review new 
> processes?  expedited treatment of minor process updates?).  Every policy, 
> no matter how small, affects Wikimedia trademarks in some way -- and the 
> way they are percieved in some external relations.

Nobody here that I’ve seen is advocating changing the already developed
Wikinews accreditation policy. All I want are some high level safeguards built
in so that the foundation can protect its good name and for the foundation to
give its permission for its marks and logos to be used on press badges. 

-- mav

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