[Foundation-l] Please REJECT the latin wikinews project.inmediatly

Wed Jun 25 07:03:07 UTC 2008

Brian McNeil wrote:
> This is silly. The biggest Wikinews project is English, and we struggle. On
> a good day, we have 10-20 articles, but the days where we have ten or less
> outnumber those. Just how many competent Latin authors do we seriously think
> we can muster? How many articles can they write *per day*? This is seriously
> different from Wikipedia, you have a very short window of opportunity where
> something is news; it just comes across as a vanity idea for those would-be
> dilettantes who might contribute one or two articles a month. You need to
> generate new content day-in, day-out, continually.
>
> I've said it before, and it is effectively a project axiom now, "Facts don't
> cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news".
>
> Efforts would be better directed at working out how to get those guilty of
> recentism on Wikipedia to work on Wikinews, and to getting Wikinews'
> archiving managed such that the project's stories can be used as sources for
> Wikipedia articles.
>   

Frankly, I am not partial to a Latin Wikinews myself for reasons similar 
to yours. Such reasons make more sense than any cookie-cutter approach 
arbitrarily applied to a dead language.
> Simple English is a different kettle of fish, but Wikinews would
> realistically only be provided as an educational project for improving
> people's language skills. I'm afraid it seems we're a long way from
> educators regularly using Wikimedia projects for such purposes. For a simple
> English Wikinews to work those educators would have to be doing the
> translation/simplification themselves, I think we're 5-10 years away from
> wiki in general being sufficiently accepted to see such happen. I hope it
> happens, and I see a great potential for simple English coverage of current
> affairs being an educational tool. Yet, there is nothing stopping people
> from contributing articles on the regular English project that are
> restricted to the simple vocabulary and labelling them as such. I would have
> no problem with less common words having links to wiktionary for a
> definition, and if such were to improve the function of the project in
> spreading knowledge I don't think anyone else would either.
>
>   
I'm relatively far more supportive of the Simple English Wikinews than 
Latin Wikinews.  I find your approach above far more constructive than a 
simple dismissal based on the absence of an ISO code. Having it happen 
5-10 years down the road seems overly pessimistic.  When we have people 
willing to work on the concept it is important to find accomodation 
somewhere for their ideas. We want more people working at what they 
consider valuable.  We want to welcome them rather than having them go 
away with the taste of rejection.  Having Simple English Wikinews as a 
sub-project of the existing Wikinews or even of Wikiversity are both 
possibilities. 

It is very easy for committee members who will never participate in 
these projects to reject them, but much more difficult to help in 
finding solutions.

Ec