[Foundation-l] Formal request: Wikinews project

Sun Oct 10 06:29:01 UTC 2004

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:45:46 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Given that on en: at least, Current Events is fairly mediocre in
> quality, is there a need for an entirely separate site?  Why not work to
> make [[en:Current Events]] a truly good summary of current news, and
> once that happens, expand to original reporting?

Current Events is getting an awful lot of hits for something
supposedly "mediocre". After Hurricane Ivan and the Main Page, it was
the most visited page last month. [[Current events]] is also the most
edited page on the English Wikipedia. Of the 20 most edited pages
across all Wikimedia projects, the current events page, and its
equivalent in other languages, shows up four times. This demonstrates
a huge interest in not only reading the page, but also in
collaborating in its creation. I believe this level of interest
demonstrates that Wikinews will be a success.

Wikipedia does not allow original research, and it will never be the
ideal venue for in-depth news reporting. A news report simply is not
the same as an encyclopedia article. It does, of course, feed into
Wikipedia though, and having a free, neutral, news resource will be of
great value to Wikipedia's topical articles, and to the current events
pages.

I strongly support the creation of this project. 

Angela.