[Foundation-l] Wikinews

Fri Oct 15 16:22:00 UTC 2004

Anthere-
> "A Wikinews project in a language will be started under two conditions: a)
> that the language is accepted as one of the Wikimedia project languages, b)
> that there is at least one person who expresses an interest in working on
> that language edition."

> I wish that this requirement is modified.
> One person interested is not enough if only for one single reason : if only
> one person is editor, he will also have to be the one person making all
> policies, and the one doing the validation and publication. There will be no
> feedback and no control. No discussion either. This is not a wiki, but a
> blog. This mean that any pov pusher can ask for a wikinews, announced
> himself big chief, and go wild.

That's a legitimate concern. However, I seem to recall that the "one  
person, get started" policy is what we used for Wikipedia in the past?  
Often it will just be one person who does the work of promoting the  
project initially.

One person without sysop access can't do anything that other people cannot  
undo. Anything he "publishes" can be edited by anyone else. It's quite  
possible that he won't be able to satisfy the four Wikinews requirements  
without sysop access.

My suggestion would therefore be as follows:
1) That there will be no sysops until there are at least 10 genuine  
registered users.
2) That the project will not be considered an official Wikinews language  
until it satisfies the requirements defined in the proposal. The  
consequence of this is that it will be listed separately on the Wikinews  
language list, as "work in progress".

I believe this allows individuals or small groups to use their  
wikinews.org domain to promote the project effectively and develop some of  
the required pages, while minimizing the potential for harm to the  
Wikimedia Foundation. Of course any clear abuse would be punished in any  
case.

What do you think about this approach?

> The second point has to do with liability. If an article contains an error,
> but may not be corrected after a week, we will be liable. And this time, we
> wont be able to say "there is a incorrect statement ? Please, do correct
> it".

I have added the text

"Corrections and updates can still be linked to, but the article text  
itself may not be changed."

to the "archival" stage. Does this address your concerns?

Regards,

Erik