[Foundation-l] wikinews and London

Fri Jul 8 13:00:51 UTC 2005

>(09:44:11) Dan100: is anyone live?
>(09:44:16) Dan100: I need help ASAP>(09:44:28) Dan100: explosions across London
Underground
>(09:44:32) Dan100: it's chaos

Oh yes, I got help alright.

We were the first on the web with the news, anywhere:
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_London&oldid=96968

Within a few hours, a team of people were working to
create the most up-to-date and most authorative news
article anywhere on the Internet. Co-ordinating
ourselves largely through the IRC channel (which
anyone can access with just their browser using a
simple link), we had people from both around the world
and right in London searching for photographs, getting
permission to use them, taking notes from spokesmen
and press conferences, and constantly updating and
fact-checking our articles.

Twenty-four hours later, our main article - 

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Coordinated_terrorist_attack_hits_London&oldid=98893

has had some 60,000 hits from Europe (excluding
France) alone. (Thanks to Kate for the stats.) As most
of our traffic comes from North America, it's
reasonable to assume that we had well in excess of
100,000 reads that day. Small in comparison to any
major news service, but it proves we're on the map.

Our articles were listed on the Main Page as they were
written. The lead articles were updated in moments.
Everyone arriving at the site instantly could see what
was happening and where to go to read more. Due to our
much more rigorous fact-checking, our articles were
consistently more accurate and more update-to-date
throughout the day than the single Wikipedia article.
To sum - with Wikinews, you could find more
information, which was more accurate, in less time,
than with Wikipedia. 

And tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after
that, we'll go on reporting the news of the world with
equally high standards of journalism. The difference
between a dedicated news service and an
encycolopaedia.

Yesterday, we proved that the model of massively
distributed citizen journalism not only works, but
works extraordinarily well.

So I want to ask the board to do this: begin promoting
Wikinews as widely and as loudly as Wikipedia. We
proved ourselves yesterday; now we should recieve the
support and promotion we deserve.

Dan

-------------

Just a couple of comments, quickly :-)

1) This is great news :-)

2) Here are a few relevant references, which indicate they were very impressed by wikipedia and wikinews report yesterday : http://www.pointblog.com/past/2005/07/07/explosions_a_londres.htm
http://pisani.blog.lemonde.fr/pisani/2005/07/sinformer_vite_.html (not an editor, but use us a source frequently)
http://www.agoravox.fr/article.php3?id_article=1440

Note that all three are in french... and refer to en.wikinews and yesterday coverage :-)

2) I would be VERY curious to know why stats are from all Europe but exclude France.
I do not understand what you mean here.
Why would stats exclude my country ?
If this is related to the 3 Paris squids, as far as I know, they serve other european countries.
And not all France hits go through squids. Please clarify your comments about excluding France.

3) About your last comment (the board should BEGIN promoting wikinews)
My but-last published interview : http://www.neteconomie.com/perl/navig.pl/neteconomie/infos/article/20050502113617
mentions wikinews (last question at the bottom of the interview) and actually refers to the whole concept in its very title. Actually, I even use NOWHERE the word wikipedia. I realised that just a few days later :-)

My last published interview : http://www.01net.com/editorial/282414/presse-en-ligne/le-wiki-a-l-ecole-de-l-information
which was done in a hurry in something like one hour on the spot ... also mentions Wikinews...  and actually mentions it MUCH more than Wikipedia.
Admittedly, it was done so much in a hurry that the journalist does mention me by my pseudonyme only ;-) so it is not board support. Well, I answered this interview from my job place in a hurry, so...

I have more difficulty to promote other projects, but generally Wikipedia, Wikinews and Wikicommons are quite easy to promote.

My BIGGEST problem in promoting wikinews is the ... very stubbish french one... which makes it difficult to show the journalist the idea is VERY successful. Fortunately, most of them read english so admit the english version sounds real nice and exciting ;-)

My second biggest problem in promoting wikinews is that I lack sometimes information which journalists are hungry for. The last two questions I had and was unable to answer is 

"when will you set a proper RSS feed" and

"what is your audience in terms of numbers" (hit)

I had *no* idea ...

ant

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