[Wikinews-l] rules for new wikinews sites

Fri Mar 4 18:38:05 UTC 2005

Jimmy-

>>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.
>
>  
>
2-3 people? There was a global vote from October 22 to November 12 in 
which people from most, if not all, major languages participated. That 
sample size is much, much larger than any individual language community 
poll. There was a demo site. The project has been approved by the Board 
of Trustees. 10 language editions have been launched. To have future 
editions meet another test, namely a local community poll, seems like an 
unfair increase of the burden of proof for those language communities.

I have always said that, if there are reasons specific to a language 
community why the project shouldn't be launched, then these reasons 
should be carefully addressed. This is what I tried to do with the 
Wikinews China poll. But I really don't see why we need to question 
again and again and again whether Wikinews should exist at all, and I 
fear that if we do, the decisions that will result will be wildly 
different and dependent on factors which we cannot influence (e.g., one 
local community leader being a very strong opponent of Wikinews could 
have a lot of influence on that community).

If Wikinews is a bad idea which drains resources, then all resources 
should be drained equally; if it is a good idea which leads to 
innovation and progress, then all sites should innovate and progress at 
the same pace. Otherwise we risk losing a coherent Wikimedia identity, 
and just because some French or Russian or Indonesian people don't like 
the Wikinews idea, their local Wikimedia set of projects will develop 
differently from all others.

But if we require these polls, then we should make absolutely sure that 
we avoid a situation where one new language has 49% local approval, and 
doesn't get launched for another year, while another one has 51% and 
does get launched, in spite of both languages having people willing to 
work on Wikinews. So these local community polls could be kept open 
indefinitely, and once a certain threshold is crossed (which could be 
higher than 50%) and the conditions are met, there's no way back and the 
project is launched.

A poll will NOT help at all, in my opinion, to predict the activity on a 
local edition of Wikinews. You could have 100 people willing to work on 
a local Wikinews edition, but 60% of the language community opposing it, 
or you could have everyone supporting it, but nobody willing to work on it.

>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.
>  
>
You underestimate the value of open content archives. A big problem with 
news publication today is that virtually all news site archives are 
locked down after a certain period of time. AP etc. seem to be quite 
keen on making sure that no permanent copies of their content are made 
available for free over a longer period of time. If our hypothetical 
volunteer has written 100 articles, and then quit, those articles *will* 
have lasting value to anyone doing research on the events they describe, 
over the coming decades. Simply put, that content will not be there if 
we choose to make the burden of proof too high before allowing the 
person to write these articles. I would find that regrettable.

>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.
>  
>
Define "falter". I have suggested before that we should simply have a 
frontpage notice if a Wikinews falls into a temporary period of 
inactivity. To me, the real risk is not that the site is inactive for a 
while, but that it is inactive permanently, while attracting spam and 
requiring maintenance. So we need to distinguish between the two.

Furthermore, there's no need to be *too* afraid of a project faltering 
if we have clear procedures, i.e. to make a wiki temporarily read-only 
and require certain conditions to be met before it is made active again. 
What is the risk of that? I understand the urge to become more 
professional, but we should also not forget that wikis rely on wild 
experimentation in open spaces.

>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.
>
>  
>
And since then, two articles for March have been written. I have no idea 
whether they are any good, but the point is, we should allow projects 
time to exist in a slightly embarrassing state -- this is OK as long as 
we make it clear to the visitor that the site is still beta.

>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.
>  
>
OK, I will try to come up with some criteria for the Beta / Non-Beta 
transition.

Peace,

Erik