[Foundation-l] Re: Swedish, Spanish, French Wikinews set up

Sun Jan 30 22:43:24 UTC 2005

Daniel Mayer-

>I have to agree with Anthere here. Since there is a lot of overlap between
>keeping the encyclopedia up to date and reporting on the news, there *must* be
>a critical mass of people working on that type of thing already on Wikipedia
>before it makes sense to have a separate news site. 
>  
>
I disagree. The work being done on Wikinews is, as I have already 
explained before and as is also described in the Wikinews FAQ, very 
different from the work done on Wikipedia: in-detail coverage of 
individual events rather than summary-style overviews of a series of 
events. To give you an example, one of the first French Wikinews 
articles is this one about polling stations in Paris for the current 
Iraqi elections:

http://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/%C3%89lections_iraquiennes_en_territoires_%C3%A9trangers%2C_Paris

It includes original research by respected Wikipedian "Submarine". Of 
this article, perhaps one photo would have been accepted into Wikipedia, 
but most of it would have been ruled out on the grounds of "no original 
research". It would also have been considered too detailed for a 
Wikipedia article about the Iraqi elections, given that such polling 
stations exist in many countries and there's no particular reason to 
focus on the ones in Paris, nor are small, individual observations of 
any relevance to an article which is meant to be read 5 years from now.

Now, how's the critical mass supposed to build for these types of 
contributions to go to Wikinews if they wouldn't be allowed on Wikipedia 
in the first place? The only way to build that critical mass is to have 
a wiki. "Participate in Wikipedia, so that you can participate in 
Wikinews when we have enough people to participate in Wikinews!" - It 
just doesn't work that way. The two projects are too different.

Because it is different, Wikinews attracts different contributors than 
Wikipedia. When RSS and category news display functionality are added 
(MediaZilla:1411 works towards that), this makes the operation of the 
site very similar to that of a blog, attracting bloggers who often have 
no idea how Wikipedia works. By instituting a vague "critical mass" 
requirement, we exclude those types of contributors who are not at all 
interested in working on Wikipedia, but who get excited about Wikinews. 
On February 5, we will have an IRC chat specifically to get bloggers 
involved. What am I supposed to tell them? "Oh well, we don't have a 
Wikinews in your language yet, try Wikipedia instead" - and have them 
give up in frustration, because Wikipedia works nothing like a news 
site, and all of their work is immediately deleted by busy WikiGnomes?

We're not in a position to tell people what they should and shouldn't be 
doing. We should give people the option to work on Wikinews if they want 
to. The only thing your proposed requirement would accomplish is pissing 
off volunteers who are ready to put time and energy into a worthwhile 
project. For these reasons and many more, I am strongly opposed to it. 
Wikinews editions should be started when people want to work on them, no 
sooner and no later.

Regards,

Erik