[WikiEN-l] Cooperation with EUobserver

Mon Sep 29 16:59:25 UTC 2003

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> While I am not a fan of the idea of a Wikinews
> spinoff project (primarily
> because I think that news and encyclopedia are very
> closely linked), I do
> believe that this could be the beginning of an
> expansion into the news
> area, and similar agreements might be reached with
> other publications.
> It's a fair deal: They give part of their content to
> the public, we
> provide them with a steady stream of traffic to
> their site -- without
> advertising it, simply by citing it as a source. I'm
> sure some other
> independent news websites might be interested in
> such a deal.

But speaking only about the basics--the wikinews
concept is an interesting idea. But just to throw it
out there--Indymedia blew it with Google news by
virture of not having a means to community edit
content.  Wiki allows people to edit willy nilly--our
experience on wikipedia shows that a community can
deal with vandalism, but with an encyclopedia we can
take it easy. With "news" there would be a need to
have current states of articles in tip top shape,
allowing a much much smaller margin of leeway for
vandals and cranks, etc. Ideally a sysop pool of maybe
2-300 might be able to deal with issues quickly enough
-- some extra protections like limitations on anons,
etc would be necessary.

Just throwing it out there-- how much would the
Wikimedia ware have to change to meet the needs of
such a project?

~S~

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