[Wikipedia-l] Wikinews?

Wed Mar 24 18:36:03 UTC 2004

Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>One of the areas where wikipedia is better than other encyclopedias
>is in our coverage of current events. However, the current scenario
>has a couple of disadvantages:
>* The amount of information about a particular event that can 
>meaningfully be incorporated into the article on the person/thing etc.
>is quite limited
>* The info. is often dispersed among more than one article
>* Readers have to scan the whole article to get to the one line or
>paragraph about the current event
>
The depth with which a current event can be covered is very limited. 
 Daily newspapers have deadlines that need to be met, and often don't 
have the leisure to consider the subject in any serious depth.  The 
advantage that we have in current events is that we can link to 
background material by doing nothing more than adding a pair of square 
brackets,   TV is in a worse position, and those personel are sometimes 
just as compulsively caught up in events.  The 9/11 events were 
understandably all-consuming for the TV networks on that day.  Here on 
the West coast there is a 3-hour time difference from New York, so the 
hits took place before I got out of bed that day.  Almost nothing else 
was in the news that day, and I soon found that TV coverage was highly 
repetitious.  How many times can you watch the same plane hit the same 
building before the event ceases to inform?

A weekly publication is able to give a more comprehensive picture, and 
eliminate the repetitious.  A quarterly is in a better position to 
evaluate the event and begin placing it in an historical context.

>So why not have wikinews? A collaborative news wiki.
>
>It would be somewhat like indymedia, but with important differences:
>* Wiki
>* NPOV
>* News about an event would be integrated into a single comprehensive
>article rather than having a collection of articles written at 
>different points of time
>
>So how about it? (Don't know if this has been proposed before...)
>
I think that something of the sort is periodically suggested by various 
people.  NPOV in current events may only be the ability to refrain from 
editorializing.  I don't know if a single comprehensive article about 
the event is always attainable.  That is normally the domain of the 
quarterlies, but we are in a position to present "quarterly" information 
more quickly than the quarterlies, and that's a big advantage.

The other point. for having a credible current events service is 
maintenance.  Putting ourselves forward as offering that kind of service 
requires disciplined and regular attention to such things.  (Even though 
I don't like what has happened to the general layout of the Main Page, I 
can still take notice of the fact that those who are involved have made 
considerable efforts to keep the material fresh.)

My suggestion to Arvind, since he does contribute from India, would be 
to start [[Current Events in India]].  He is in a position to provide 
current information about what is being reported in the Indian news 
media to people whose understanding is limited to the belief that India 
is about to drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan.

Ec