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

Mon Dec 17 14:54:59 UTC 2007

On Dec 17, 2007 9:40 AM, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/12/2007, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That somehow directing "breaking news" traffic to wikinews would hurt
> > Wikipedia is nonsensical.
>
> If you can propose a mechanism by which we could do that easily and
> without pissing people off, I'd love to hear it...

1) When breaking news hits, lock the page.
2) Post a template: "This news story is breaking on Wikinews. You can
help edit it". Make liberal use of interwiki links to Wikinews
3) Post a template on Wikinews saying "For background information
about this story, see the article on Wikipedia"
4) Use the talk page to discuss how the Wikinews story will be used to
update the Wikipedia article, or to discuss changes to the article
that need to be made and aren't related to the breaking news story.
5) When the Wikinews story stabilizes and is locked (which could be a
week, or a matter of days), reference it on Wikipedia and update the
article.

The editing frenzy can still happen, it would just be on a different
page on a different Wiki. If SUL is ever implemented, Wikipedians
won't even have to log in, and most users won't even be aware that
they've been directed to a new website.

> (No, seriously. The reason these articles tend to be so massive and
> comprehensive is that we get a firehose of traffic to them; I'm really
> not sure how best to divert this to Wikinews without an aggressive and
> very unpopular campaign of nuking edits to the enwp page and saying
> "go write it over there", which doesn't much help the reader)

Protect the page. Say "this story is being drafted at Wikinews".
Create a policy banning additions to Wikipedia articles of events less
then X days old. Work with Wikinews to help make the transition from
one project to the other (and back again) a fast and easy one.

--Andrew Whitworth