[Foundation-l] RE: [Wikinews-l] Editorials

Fri Jul 22 23:30:32 UTC 2005

Anthere-
> Dan seems to imply german wikinews adopted editorials,
> but Elian said they seem to have stopped. I would be
> interested in knowing current situation :-)

I see no evidence that they have stopped. However, it's important to 
distinguish between "commentary" or "op-eds" and "editorials". See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-Ed

The German Wikinews published exactly one "editorial", signed by several 
members of the site when it started:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Editorial

This was basically an open letter asking people to give the project time 
to grow and develop, in light of the media hype surrounding its launch. 
Perfectly fine, in my opinion.

Then there's the so-called "Kommentare", which would be "Op-Ed" or 
"Commentary" in English:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Hilfe:Kommentar

These always have to be attached to a news report: You can't write an 
Op-Ed on anything. The last Op-Ed was published on July 19
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Kommentar:_Zickzack-Kurs_in_deutscher_Raumfahrtpolitik

You can see a list of all of them here:
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Spezial:Allpages/Kommentar

The experiment is currently being discussed at
http://de.wikinews.org/wiki/Hilfe_Diskussion:Kommentar

I've proposed an NPOV alternative to op-eds a while ago:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews%3ADebates

Best,

Erik