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

Tue Oct 12 19:59:10 UTC 2004

Erik Moeller wrote:

>One of my key arguments for Wikinews is that it can be immediately useful,  
>even without any original reporting - just by being a good summary of the  
>news on a wide variety of subjects. Even if we start out by say, having  
>primarily Linux-related news, we can still be a wiki-based competition to  
>something like Slashdot or Linuxjournal. And as we get more volunteers, we  
>can expand our focus.
>  
>
(Preface: This isn't either a criticism or a proposal, just a comment.)

One thing we already do somewhat is provide fairly good summaries of 
news-type events in Wikipedia proper.  For example, [[Hurricane Ivan]] 
was being updated minute-by-minute with information as it became 
available.  It'd be nice if we make sure that this still keeps 
happening---that is, that anything "encyclopedic" from Wikinews gets 
folded back into Wikipedia, preferably in real time so our Wikipedia 
articles on newsworthy subjects stay up-to-the-minute.  I'm not sure how 
to best do that, but some sort of linking between a news event and 
corresponding Wikipedia article(s) to make sure people keep them in mind 
would be nice.

(Actually I think it might complement it nicely as long as we make sure 
that happens, because people have a tendency to put in news-type stuff 
that doesn't really belong into Wikipedia articles now and then, so some 
linking in the other direction might be nice too.)

(So you can count me as withdrawing my initial objections, at least to 
the extent of being willing to see how it works out.)

-Mark

(PS - Aren't parentheses wonderful?)