[Foundation-l] Re: Formal request: Wikinews project

Mon Oct 11 17:51:00 UTC 2004

Anthere-
> Requirement on real names are naturally bugging me.

With your objections to any such rule in mind, I have tried to make this  
an option, rather than a requirement. There's a flip side to this and this  
is that without such an option, Wikinews will actually become *more*  
restrictive on what types of stories it allows.

I call it the Abu Ghraib test.

Let's say that our policy is that "any reported information can be allowed  
in an article as long as there is consensus among editors to include it."  
If we had a story like the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal before anyone  
else, and some reporter tried to include it under this rule -- all backed  
up both by good sources and by his credibility -- I am quite certain that  
some people would try to block it through endless discussions from ever  
being reported.

In many cases, where we would have some anonymous whistleblower (a person  
telling secrets about a company, government etc.) willing to give us  
information, I am also quite certain that under such a policy, this  
information would be unlikely to be accepted on grounds of verifiability.   
Again, it is quite likely - as unfortunate as this is - that people from  
the opposite political point of view would try to block information that  
does not suit them.

Therefore, my proposal suggests that we DO allow this type of consensus- 
based reporting from anonymous or unaccredited sources (called "witness  
reports" in the proposal), but IN ADDITION TO IT, we also allow Wikinews  
reporters to use their reputation as currency for publishing original  
reports, and to act as relays for people who want to stay anonymous.

So there is no requirement for real names, but the additional credibility  
offered by verified or verifiable identities guarantees that we can pick  
up stories that we would otherwise probably ignore.

I hope that the proposal is clear enough on the point that original  
reporting by non-accredited persons is allowed as long as there is  
consensus to include their stories.

I would like to emphasize that Wikipedia allows no original reporting  
whatsoever. Wikinews is therefore *much* more inclusive than Wikipedia,  
not less.

> The notion that all wikinews reporters will be necessarily sysops, and
> all sysops necessarily wikinews reporter is problematic as well.

I agree. However, initially, the functionality of "publishing" an article  
will be linked to the tools that we currently have, such as page  
protection. The potential for abuse of this privilege, and the associated  
consequences, are larger than in Wikipedia: Imagine a Wikinews article  
about a massacre in Israel being published without proper review and then  
being distributed in other media. Such news articles can lead to fatal  
consequences.

Therefore, I believe that initially, we need to limit the circle of sysops  
who can publish stories to those we can identify and hold accountable. In  
order to make the process more wiki-like, I am working on a workflow  
system called "Wikiflow" that ensures an article can only flow from one  
state (unpublished) to the other (published) if there is consensus, if a  
certain amount of time has passed, and if it has come to the attention of  
certain people who should see it (reviewers).

This Wikiflow system can also be the basis of peer review on Wikipedia, it  
can replace the current sysop-centric VfD process, and so forth. So take  
this early version of Wikinews like you take something like VfD: It kind  
of works, but it's not open enough in the long term.

> Respective editorials ? You mean editorials can have a view point ? In
> short, Wikinews will be a big change, since we will not any more have to
> respect NPOV rule. But replace it with a collection of viewpoint. If one
> view point comittee is missing, then the viewpoint is missing ?

This was just an experimental aspect of the proposal: to, in addition to  
news articles, have a daily editorial (commentary) about current events  
written by different "factions". This was *never* supposed to apply to  
regular news articles. While I still think it is a good idea to explore  
this, given that this part of the proposal is the most controversial, I  
have taken it out. We can still think about this in the Wikinews community  
once it exists.

> Last, I am not sure that all languages have really heard of this
> project. So, I wish we advertise it a little bit more.

What do you suggest?

> I have not exactly forgotten yet the huge thread in september, saying
> "the board has overstepped authority and blablabla" while we were only
> acting in good faith. With such a reaction, any step from me for
> agreeing for a new project will be *very* careful :-)

I understand. Of course I would like to start working on this project and  
publicize its existence as soon as possible. So I would appreciate some  
more concrete suggestions on how to move it from the proposal and  
discussion phase into the implementation phase. Waiting another month now  
when I actually have time to do some real work on this project would be  
painful.

Regards,

Erik