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The Media The Internet

Wikinews Project Launched 207

Posted by michael from the they-report-you-decide dept.
Eloquence writes "The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other wiki-based projects, has just launched the English and German editions of Wikinews, a free news-source created collaboratively by volunteers around the planet. See my article Wikinews and the Growing Wikimedia Empire for more on this and other recent developments in the Wikimedia world."
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Wikinews Project Launched More

Wikinews Project Launched

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  • This whole things seems kinda weird.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Demogoblin ( 249774 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:17PM (#10993181)
    compared to when you take a look at this interesting take on the future of news and media delivery:

    http://www.letitblog.com/epic/ [letitblog.com]

  • Wikinews launched... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:18PM (#10993187) Homepage Journal
    more at 11.

    • Re:Wikinews launched... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by xott ( 815650 )
      I hope that their strict adherence to "Non Point of View" holds here. Bias in media reporting is a major problem in the spread of news, and Wikipedia users will have the own type of bias (against large companies, restrictive laws).
      I see this as being very useful for eyewitness accounts, and much better than Fox News, but I will hestitate to use it over traditional Newspapers. While Newspapers have gotten it (very publicly) wrong more than a few times recently, they do have departments of people fact-checki

      • that's the goal (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Trepidity ( 597 )
        In the discussions setting it up, "not becoming Indymedia" was definitely an explicit goal of the initiative.
      • There is no such thing as "No Point of View." Everyone has a point of view, and it will show in their writings. Based on the typical person who would write in this, I'd expect it to quickkly form leftist leanings.

        As for your moanings about Fox News, NBC, CBS, and ABC all lean left, to different degrees. Fox News leans right, so if you moan about Fox, you need to complain about the other news channels as well.

        • Re:Wikinews launched... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by xott ( 815650 )
          As for your moanings about Fox News, NBC, CBS, and ABC all lean left, to different degrees. Fox News leans right, so if you moan about Fox, you need to complain about the other news channels as well.

          OK.
          All the other news channels have leanings in various directions. It's extremely hard to get the real story behind many widely reported news stories. A lot of journalists are total idiots who entirely miss the entire point of most stories. A lot of editors have no idea what great news reporting is.
          My poin

        • Re:Wikinews launched... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by guet ( 525509 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @07:39AM (#10995639)
          As for your moanings about Fox News, NBC, CBS, and ABC all lean left

          Actually a news source can attempt to allow different opinions framed in a non-confrontational way, not in opposition but by choosing a measured position on each topic, and occassionally allowing quotes from one side or the other to show how they diverge. Le monde and BBC news do this well for example. Far better than any newspaper or news channel in the UK or the USA that I've seen.

          This doesn't mean 'Fair and Balanced' à la Fox which leads the viewer to think that both views (however extreme) chosen by the programme to frame the issue may have merit. To put ideas in a gladatorial fight to the death like that doesn't help understanding, it just encourages the viewer to pick a side (ie : I'm from the left. I'm from the right). Jon Stewart's interevention on that 'Crossfire' program in the US recently was interesting in that regard.

          It's an old fashioned idea, but people and the media should STOP thinking in terms of left and right, and attempt to evaluate ideas for social security or whatever else on the basis of merit, not on the basis of whether it's advanced by 'the most liberal senator... blah blah' or 'that crazy Bush'. That might require more thought than most are willing to devote to their politics though. Most of the myths in politics about the other side are downright wrong - eg Democrats in the US 'Tax and Spend' and Republicans are fiscally responsible, Privitisation is always bad (from the UK) etc etc.

          PS
          As I'm sure you're aware, what you call 'left' in the USA is generally what the rest of the world would call center. The way you talk about 'leftist leanings' makes it sound like the word communism in the 50s.

      • Re:Wikinews launched... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Deag ( 250823 )
        I think wikipedia do a fairly good job on a balanced approach, ff you look at the talk pages on some of their articles, the main wiki population do seem to be reasonable and accept compromise (of course this NPOV is sometimes taken to its extremes - the talk page on the Santa Claus article has someone saying it's non NOPV because it states Santa is a myth!"

        What would concern me is how frequent and up to date it could keep it's stories? I would imagine that it's contributers would be relying on other news s
        • "What would concern me is how frequent and up to date it could keep it's stories?"

          Wikipedia has had a Current events [wikipedia.org] page for a while -- have a look through the archives of that if you want an idea of what to expect.

          Presumably the problem won't be so much getting the current news, as moderating it in time. Imagine a list of the most controversial articles, with most people seeing the article less than a day after it was created, and with not much opportunity to 'lock' articles -- the task of preventing v
      • Wikipedia has pretty much adhered in the past to freezing pages where the neutrality of the subject is disputed. The pages are frozen to the edit before the dispute. Being open source, it only has to be based on what the people using it think, not everyone, everywhere.

        It's very hard to write the news without bias because you lose the human aspect. To me, the most important part of the news is how people react to it, which is why I like, and think most people like, Slashdot so much.

        I love Wikipedia an

    • Wikinews launched ... more at 11.


      No, given that they're the Fourth Estate's competition, it'd be more like:

      "Coming up next: there's a erroneous source of disinformation out on the Internet that could make life dangerous for you, your family and friends. What you need to know, coming up next. But first, reporter Trish Takanawa interviews George Tenet about his new scheme for making the Internet more protected from terrorist attack!"

  • WikiPedia (Score:1, Funny)

    by ReeprFlame ( 745959 )
    Wiki Project is evolving! That is awesome news. Heh News, mayber I should read some of that...

  • Wired Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by KamuZ ( 127113 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:20PM (#10993204) Homepage
    I submitted this story like 5 days ago but it was rejected, nothing personal, yeah right. Anyway, there's a Wired article talking about this with the creators, here's the link:

    http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65819,00. html?tw=wn_story_top5 [wired.com]

    • It can't be anything "personal", unless you think Michael has a list of people on his wall with your name on it or something.

      Also, Eloquence [wikinews.org] a.k.a. Eric Moller is a "lead instigator of the Wikinews project", as well as the "content partnership coordinator for the Wikimedia foundation" (from here [wikipedia.org]).

      Let him have his moment.

  • Good to see... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by laughingcoyote ( 762272 )

    Although, the Web does have some of this functionality already (anyone can publish), a central site would be excellent, especially for those of us in the US who realizes that a world exists outside the border and are sick of receiving less than a bare minimum of news from it.

    I wonder how a project such as this would handle things such as libel? Would the operators of the site or the original poster be responsible for that type of thing? IANAL and I don't really know.

    • in the US (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Trepidity ( 597 ) <[gro.hsikcah] [ta] [todhsals-muiriled]> on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:32PM (#10993307)
      You do realize that from within the United States you may load such websites as news.bbc.co.uk, don't you? I think Wikinews will be interesting, but it's hardly the first online source of non-US news.

      • Can and do, most certainly, also get BBC news on our local PBS station. However, another source is generally not a bad thing, even though its open format will mean that especially new stories will have to be taken with a decent dose of salt. (Seems anymore that's even the case with mainstream news.)

      • Re:in the US (Score:2, Funny)

        by lawpoop ( 604919 )
        C'mon, you expect us to get our news from Europe?! Don't you know that's right next to France ?
      • But they use "u" in color and... stuff.

      • Re:in the US (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jilles ( 20976 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @03:58AM (#10995209) Homepage
        There are plenty of smart US citizens who care to inform themselves and find that they can do just that. The majority however watches Fox, CNN and reads US Today and actually believe what they see & read. That's a problem because this majority gives legitamacy to its government that acts on its behalf (but not necessarily in its interest). And what you see on those media has not much to do with such core journalistic values as truth, objectiveness, completeness, accuratenes, ect. Smart US citizens who care to inform themselves are very much aware of this but that doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

        As a european citizen, I find the fact that the US no longer listens to its more intelligent part of the population the most worrying thing. The problem is not lack of people with a clue but dominance of clueless people.

        • well (Score:2)

          by Trepidity ( 597 )
          As a US citizen, I find the fact that Europe no longer listens to its more intelligent part of the population the most worrying thing. The problem is not lack of people with a clue but dominance of clueless people.

          (Have you ever tried conversing with an average European about world affairs? Their limited knowledge is ludicrously biased.)
        • Alright, time to put up or shut up. You listed some media outlets that you don't believe provide accurate information. Now, list some that you do trust. Where do those who "care to inform themselves" get their information? And while not required, I'd certainly be interested in why you trust them.
          • Well it's quite a challenge to find really objective media in the US (or elsewhere) since most are owned by two or three companies. I browse news.google.com, nation.com, nyt, msnbc, reuters, cnn.com on a regular basis. To ammuse myself I also read Fox news sometimes and there are of course many foreign english language publications you can turn to. I generally have more respect for the journalistic quality of the NYT than e.g. CNN. I find that what CNN doesn't mention is often more significant than what it

  • Good luck (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mark of THE CITY ( 97325 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:20PM (#10993215) Journal
    Good luck, Wiki-folk. As long as it doesn't degenerate into a high-noise free-for-all, like, uh, Usenet or /. :)

    • Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:30PM (#10993295) Homepage
      Speaking as a long time Wikipedia admin - Wikipedia occasionally has articles on current events. They typically degrade into cross-fire like back-and-forth debates in article form. These phenomenon doesn't really make me hopeful for the chances of Wiki-news.
      • I think such voices are more likely to stay in wikipedia because of the desire to contribute to the historical account of a recent event. Whereas stories on wikinews are likely to expire in terms of relevance too quick to attract the loud POV-wars that take place over wikipedia articles on current events.

        That said, I really can't see using wikinews too much with so other news sources out there, including blogs that already allow participation.

      • Re:Good luck (Score:2, Interesting)

        by dumllama ( 715921 )
        For what it's worth, I've initiated a new MediaWiki based project, which you could call "wiki-debate"

        http://forum.for-pgh.org/wiki [for-pgh.org]

        Part of the idea is to transfer debates from Wikipedia to a format where they are treated formally. Otherwise, it is meant to be a more productive debate form than mailing lists or forums.

        It is very new, and has no real activity yet, but I'd appreciate any contributions or feedback. I'm announcing it's presence because I'm not really in the MediaWiki loop, and don't want the
      • Yeah, I don't think this is going to work out, either, since this article [wikinews.org] on The School of the Americas is already turning into a shitstorm and not moving out of review.
        I particularly love the guy who is on and on about it being biased and that the school probably didn't do anything wrong and then is talking about not knowing what Argentina's dirty war was. I suspect, along with the parent, that this isn't going to work out too well. Editorial to the lowest common denominator doesn't work out all that well.

  • The problems with Wikinews (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:21PM (#10993217)
    Is that news gets old fast and is delivered fast. If someone edits an article on a popular sites, say CNN and people see on the front page 'Terrorists Bomb L.A., alot of people are going to get frightened and panic before it noticed and removed. Let's hope it doesn't come that far.

  • No Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:21PM (#10993219)
    The project just looks like Google News rehashed by unaccountable writers whose identity is unknown.

    Sounds like a perfect forum for people to push their news thru their own agendas and slants.

    • Sounds like what GE, Disney, Viacom, and Newscorp, and Time-Warner do, huh?
      • No, not at all. GE, Disney, Viacom, Newscorp, and Time Warner own television networks that employ actual editors that can be held accountable for their actions when they screw up. Wikinews is a bunch of anonymous people editing each other's articles, and as such it has no credibility.

    • Re:No Thanks (Score:2, Interesting)

      by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 )
      ORRRRR it is a way for folks in small towns in disperse areas of the globe to write about what is happening to them or in their area and having it reported on.
    • >Sounds like a perfect forum for people to push their news thru their own agendas and slants.
      That happens all the time in other news, so I don't really see the diffrence.
      With a wiki, news that's not proven can atleast be edited/removed.

  • Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by halter-da-man ( 831817 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:23PM (#10993237)
    I have read numorous reports about the credibility (or lack thereof) and about the bias of some of Wikipedia's articles. If Wikipedia launches a news service, I think there is an even greater opportunity for individuals to interject their personal opinions into things that many people believe as the truth. If anyone can submit a news story, there will be many biased or one sided stories. Wikipedia tries to avoid this in its main encyclopedia by hoping that other users will correct any biases in the articles. With news however, it is often not enough time to go through and check each fact. I don't think that Wiki can rely on user editing to insure "fair and balanced" stories.
    • A quick glance at the site shows that they plan on having a peer-review process, whereby certain articles are "locked" when they have been deemed complete and factually accurate, partially locked when only some things remain to be fixed, and open for general editing for new news that needs to be filled out. I think they're working on something similar for wikipedia in the future, too.
    • And this is different from mainstream press in what way ?
    • If you care to share, I'd like to hear about these report on the credibility of Wikipedia.
    • I think there is an even greater opportunity for individuals to interject their personal opinions into things that many people believe as the truth.

      Don't believe for a moment that the NYT or FOX are "unbiased" or "credible": they all have their biases. In fact, just failing to present what they consider "biased views" constitutes a bias in itself.

      Wikinews can probably be improved technologically, but in the end, it should present to you the full spectrum of views and interpretations of an event. And th

  • I love the peer-reviewed content, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by falloutboy ( 150069 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:24PM (#10993246)
    Will this incite editing wars on controversial topics? The open nature of wikipedia is great because historical events have already been scrutinized and understood. Distance lends perspective. Current events are much more subject to an author's personal bias, and the individuals most motivated to put their opinion out there often have the most radical viewpoint.
    • In my experience, wikipedia works best for dispassionate topics. No one really cares whether William Jennings Bryan should've won the 1896 election, which means that you're not going to see a lot of motivated pro-Bryan or pro-McKinley trolls taking potshots at the article. Controversial topics, on the other hand, are a very different thing altogether.

      Seeing an "objective" article that you can edit is just too irresistable for some people... to do otherwise is almost to admit that their opinions aren't obje
      • No one really cares whether William Jennings Bryan should've won the 1896 election

        Speak for yourself, goon! I'd say you're a closet McKinleyite if you're not willing to admit that the most important election of the 19th century was stolen by that blasted benevolent assimilationist [boondocksnet.com]! It's obvious the election was stolen using those new-fangled ink pen ballots manufactured by Ye Olde Diebold. At least one citizen [schoolnet.co.uk] understood that you can cast a vote with a piece of cold steel much more effectively than you

    • It's not just current events that are subject to an author's personal bias! The editing wars concerning controversial topics on Wikipedia are extremely interesting as well, and makes the whole idea of Wikinews flawed. Look up anything to do with the Kosovo war, atheism, heck, Christianity.

      Somebody'll put something up saying that some scholars and historians believe there was no historical Jesus, next thing you know somebody will revamp it to take such things out. Just imagine a news article on a new develo
    • (cur)(last) foxnewsisbest (Changed to Homicide Bomber)
      (cur)(last) BestAnchor (Changed to Suicide Bomber)
      I can't wait.

  • doomed to failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:26PM (#10993265) Homepage Journal
    considering that wikipedia's content is distorted to hell and back by varying trolling factions; I think that reading tea leaves might prove to be a more reliable news source than what's being proposed.
    • Have you ever actually, like, used Wikipedia? Maybe there are a few distorted articles, but that's true of Brittannica too. Wikipedia is by and large an invaluable resource.

      • Re:doomed to failure (Score:1, Insightful)

        by RLiegh ( 247921 ) *
        The difference being that there are proffesionals and editors and solid accountability which serve to keep britannica up to an acceptable level of accuracy.

        With wikipedia, any article you read is only as good as the uneducated prole who wrote it, and the unpaid so-called 'volunteer' who "fact-checks" it.

        The general rule of thumb is that wikipedia has some excellent articles on niche internet phenomenons. ..but outside of cult net interests, it fails miserably; particularly when compared to encarta or brit
        • Do you have any specific examples? I am not trying to start an argument with you, I'm just curious, since I started contributing to Wikipedia just days ago. The impression I have gotten from the various FAQs etc on the WP-site, is that the more popular topics tend to end up on the watchlists of people who actually have real knowledge, and thereby are able to correct mistakes. I know I could try to check the truth of this myself, but I'm not an expert in any field, and don't have enough time to look up rando
          • I'm just curious, since I started contributing to Wikipedia just days ago.
            I'm not an expert in any field, and don't have enough time to look up random topics and do real source comparisons

            You are not an expert in any field. You have no time for research, and, on the face of it, no ambition or curiosity, no willingness to work. Tell me why I should think you have anything useful to contribute to an encyclopedia.

    • If anything, distortion of the news is a factor of success.
    • Well I don't know about that. To get the news as filtered through the mindset (brainwashing) of the times, you turn to CNN. To get the impressions left upon people by the outcome of these events, a historical record of people's opinions, and how they may be reinforced, or changed, over time, a wiki seems quite appropriate. I believe the versioning history will show how interesting, controversial and important any particular piece of news is. You read the entries, then make up your own mind about how you fee
    • What's the "undistorted" view? Your view? What FOX presents you? What the NYT presents you? When the NYT creates the impression that there is a single "neutral" view of an issue, or (when they are making a feeble attempt to be balanced) present only two moderate, opposing views, that in itself represents a serious distortion of the issue. In fact, every major news organization distorts the news in that way. That's in addition to the way in which major news organizations distort the news in order to "p

  • Wiki-pedia, Wiki-quotes, Wiki-news, Wiki--- (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am still waiting for Wikip0rn!

  • still no atributions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @08:49PM (#10993451) Homepage Journal
    C'mon folks. With wikipedia, it's at least tolerable. However, part of modern journalism is the credibility of the reporter. I just checked out several articles, and they appear to either be written by no one or God itself.

    I can understand that there's not much need to recognize authorship in something like a science textbook, but for a news site, it is essential.

    What I think wikinews needs, and indeed all wikis, is authorship so we can see who said what. If we implement something with PGP signatures, people can build reputations over time, and newcomers can filter out information from authors with no rep.

    Imagine freelance journalists posting credible, signed reports to wikimedia outlets from warzones, political protests, etc. No editors, no goverment censors. It would be great!

    • RESOLVED: WORKSFORME (Score:2, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      MediaWiki software stores the nick of everybody who contributed to an article, and any user can extract diffs to see who contributed what.

    • I really like that idea. It reallys puts accountablity on the author, but the one flaw I see is that, since you can just edit a small bit of the page, how would you show who put what? I mean, I have changed a single word of a wikipedia article once, would this make me the author of one word?

      But, overall, it is a nice idea, but I do not know how you could implement it on a wiki.

    • Re:still no atributions (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Sir0x0 ( 732087 )
      The history feature in MediaWiki software records every change made to the page. You can go through it to see exactly who said what and when they said it. Many users choose to use their real name, or at least mention it on their user page, so either by recognizing a user name or knowing the real name, credible users shine through. Just click the "History" tab on top of any article.

      In fact, this is integral to Wikipedia as the GFDL requires attribution to the author.

    • Re:still no atributions (Score:3, Informative)

      by Doomie ( 696580 )
      I can understand that there's not much need to recognize authorship in something like a science textbook, but for a news site, it is essential.

      Well, The Economist has no authors as such for the articles published in it. It doesn't diminish from its value, though...
    • What I think wikinews needs, and indeed all wikis, is authorship so we can see who said what. If we implement something with PGP signatures, people can build reputations over time, and newcomers can filter out information from authors with no rep.

      The basic form of this already exists. You can view the history of modifications for any article, and even see the diffs between any two versions. Here's an example. [wikinews.org]

      Granted, this isn't exactly what you're suggesting; it's just the same 'good enough' approach

    • Re:still no atributions (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @02:21AM (#10994902)
      However, part of modern journalism is the credibility of the reporter.

      I think people overrate the "credibility" of professional reporters: many of them seem to follow a "code of conduct" and operate in an environment that pretty much guarantees bias and inaccurate reporting; they just dress it up nicely.

      I can understand that there's not much need to recognize authorship in something like a science textbook, but for a news site, it is essential.

      These days, it is completely unnecessary and highly irresponsible to judge the credibility of news stories based on who wrote them; you can evaluate the facts behind almost all news stories yourself, using official data, on-line eyewitness reports, digital media, etc.
  • So how long before someone writes a bot to scrape Google news and submit it? :)

    It's funny ~and~ sad at the same time! Someone will end up doing this just to get their name on the Wiki!

  • Wikipedia will have a booth at the Southern California Linux Expo [socallinuxexpo.org] this February. Might be a fun place for Wikipedia contributors to get together at chat! You can get a free expo hall pass by using the promo code 'free' on the SCALE website [socallinuxexpo.org]. Another option is a discounted full-access pass, which gets you into all the talks etc, by using the promo code 'wiki'

  • Save time... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...just mirror Indymedia [indymedia.org]. They've even done all the hard work of attracting the troll community for you.

    • Re:Save time... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by asadodetira ( 664509 )
      So, exactly what's the difference between this and Indymedia?
      The interface?
      More publicity?
      I volunteer at a radio show, and Writing news is a lot of work, it's hard to find people to do it for free and professionally. Generally the result is poor quality, or just stuff copy-pasted from BBC or other sources.
  • Wikinews may be useful, but only as a useful sidebar to the news. This is for two key reasons:

    (1) The author's bias - at least we know the slant of CNN, FoxNews, CBS, etc. News is subjective, and even more so when it is a random person out there in cyberspace.
    (2) Original news gathering - Will they have the budget? Is the quality of coverage everywhere going to be the same?

    This is like blogs, in terms that it will end up being uneven. Useful for commentary, but not for original news gathering. This is a g
  • I think this isn't as good for up-to-date news as it will be for keeping people updated on old news. Many news stories have further developments (such as the suicide bombing delivery pizza man from last September) that are impossible to find on mainstream news. I hope it will be soon in showing that this functionality will prove worthwhile.
  • Wikinews explicitly allows original reporting, making it somewhat similar to Indymedia, while adhering to a strict Neutral Point of View policy.

    That is a real shame. Personally, i was looking forward to doing some http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S_Thompson [wikipedia.org] GOZO REPORTING...

  • As Winston Churchill once said... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aseidl ( 656884 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @09:34PM (#10993690)
    History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
  • A long time ago, I started my wiki, with the goal of just being a place where people would go to add their knowledge.

    Consider that you've never heard of my wiki, and you have heard of wikipedia.

    So clearly the Wikimedia people did something right. How did they get to this point? What sort of "marketing" did they do? Did they have some group of dedicated editors who started it off with a couple hundred quality articles? What was their magic sauce for making something so cool that's now so popular?

  • News written by random people? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brokencomputer ( 695672 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @09:40PM (#10993735) Homepage Journal
    And how do I know if its true? This wiki fad might be useful for things like software manuals(We use them at Gentoo to let the end user help take a lot of the weight off our (the developers') shoulders, and it works quite well. Its easy to weed out the errors[of which there usually are] before we encorporate them into the actual gentoo docs), but using a wiki for news really strikes me as odd. I really have trouble trusting sites like wikipedia for things such as history, even if their technology articles seem to be a little less inaccurate.
    • I always thought man pages should be a wiki snapshot. There is so much crap or overly-confusing info in man pages, when all you need to know is the default use of the tar command for tar.gz files, for example

      A wiki could add/delete/cleanup any information needed, and a couple moderators keeping a heads up on changes to be safe. When it is time for a product release you run your snapshot script, make man pages out of the html and BAM. Up to the date documentation.
    • At least with wikipedia, the chances are that the article on marsupials was written by someone who is an expert on marsupials, simply because nobody else is likely to do it. But:

      Our mission is to create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events.
      In other words, they're specifically trying to create journalism done by people who don't have any journalistic skills or qualifications?

      How about these:

      • Our mission is to create a diver
  • http://www.indymedia.org These people do a great job of this already. There are places like:
    southafrica.indymedia.org [indymedia.org]
    -or-
    portland.indymedia.org [indymedia.org]
    ...that give direct information about South Africa or Portland, respectively. Thanks for your time and take it easy.
    • I've been looking for an independent "grassroots" news service for a while, and I tried to follow Indymedia. I found it not only to be extremely messy (what sites should I go to?), but also extremely leftist, often opinionated to the point of not being "news" at all, and too often (for my taste) covering anti-globalization demonstrations (there must be other important things going on in the world).

      Then I found Free Republic, and it was just as opinionated, only to the opposite extreme of the political spec
    • Indiymedia was brought up frequently in the Wikimedia mailing lists prior to the lanuch of this project. There are a number of safeguards they are trying to do to prevent some of the abuses from indymedia, and in short Wikinews will have a different "ecological" niche than Indymedia. The two projects can exist side by side as they do serve slightly different audiences, just like /. is not the only geek news website around.

      Much of this is an outgrowth of people wanting to provide something a little more s

  • Needs big changes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by shaneh0 ( 624603 )
    I read 4 articles and without exception, they were atrocious. Say what you want about the NY Times, WaPo and others, they produce a high quality product that consumers have come to expect.

    And these articles just don't cut it.

    The 4 I chose have all completed "peer review" and they all read like a high school newspaper.

    And they're literally "no name" authors--I couldn't find a single byline anywhere. That doesn't exactly stoke my confidence.

    They need to establish a rapport with readers, and this is not th
  • Something about letting any idiot [blog] write the [blog] news just doesn't [blog] sound like a reliable [blog] newsource to me.

    Wikipedia is a neat idea, cause I think people will avoid editing a topic they don't feel they actually are an expert on, but the news is an entirely different matter. Look to blogging for examples
  • Just when you thought regular news was POV....

  • My only comment on the subject (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Friday December 03, 2004 @11:07PM (#10994181) Homepage Journal
    My only comment on this subject is this: Sounds like Jayson Blair's dream come true...
  • NEWS FLASH! It has been determined that President Bush is the dumbest man on the planet! DEVELOPING...

    BREAKING NEWS!! George W. Bush is God's gift to all mankind, women especially! CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS!

  • Wikiniche (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danila ( 69889 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @06:58AM (#10995573) Homepage
    I share some of the concerns that others expressed here, but I believe there is nich for this new projects that most people overlook. Wikinews would be a perfect platform for covering ongoing complex and controversial events, such as the Ukrain election crisis. Such events usually involve so many factors, people, minor events, points of view, etc., that a major publication simply can't afford to cover it adequately in news, or even editorial format. Their tool for this is in-depth coverage where an entire issue or a significant part of it covers the event, with many articles, opposing views, etc.

    But Wikinews format is better suited for this kind of coverage. You can integrate all facts in one article, you can dinamically branch some issues into substories when they gain enough importance, etc.

    Wikinews is probably not very well suited for conventional stories like a bus fell into the river in Egypt or something, because there isn't much reediting that is needed. But complex topics can be covered really well (if the project takes off).

    Another advantage, as some people noted, is that obscure news stories from remote corners of the world can be covered too.
  • I like the Wikipedia project, but at least there I understand where the contributions come from: people who (think that they) understand a particular topic. I'm not quite sure how that is supposed to work with news with the exception of copying (rewriting) what you get from regular news sources. Do Wikinews editors read news.google.com [google.com] regularly and write summaries? I haven't found anything on that in the German tutorial. We'll just have to wait and see.
  • I was wondering if maybe there would be a modeification of the MediaWiki software to accomidate news related features.

    order/file stuff by Date?
    Grouping major events by category?
    should false news reports believed to be true at the time (ex 13 people die in plain crash.) be left up and a new story put up (death toll rises to 17)... or should the origional article be edited or removed?

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