[Foundation-l] Is popularity a good thing for us?

Mon Dec 17 11:11:10 UTC 2007

On 17/12/2007, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:

> First off, this sounds like an excellent idea for all language variants of
> Wikipedia to consider and perhaps adopt. Obvious exceptions would be things
> like deaths where you don't wait to put the appropriate date in the
> Wikipedia article - but you don't turn it into an obituary either. You do
> the obit. on Wikinews, and *you can prepare that in advance* on Wikinews.
> [This may sound gruesome, but in reality someone could start a prepared
> story for Terry Pratchett's obit today as he's announced he has early-onset
> Alzheimer's. The media reports and quotes from the man made today will be
> relevant to the final article when he does pass on.]

This has been discussed on en:wp before. Ideally, a Wikipedia article
about a living person should resemble the person's obituary if they
died five minutes ago: a good, balanced, neutral, well-written summary
of what it is that makes this person of interest. This is of course an
ideal to work to.

> Scaling back to something less ambitious would be linking directly from the
> Wikipedia main page's in the news section to appropriate Wikinews articles.
> At the moment, at least on en., Wikinews has one link in the in the news
> section which leads to the main page. This simple step might encourage more
> Wikipedians to dip their toe in the Wikinews waters and see that it can be a
> little different contributing on a sister project, perhaps even what some
> may have experienced when Wikipedia was much smaller and there was more
> uncharted territory to explore.

Basically this needs people pushing Wikinews more on Wikipedia. I
don't think there's so much hostility (in general) as apathy or
ignorance.

- d.