Sue Gardner has done a lot of great work from what I have read over the years.
I think this comment of hers merits a lot of thought: "a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens". It is happening on Wikipedia too. The main problem in my opinion is the walled garden at Meta-Wiki.
Please move Meta-Wiki to the Wikimedia Commons. The Commons is the place far more people go to and watchlist. -- Timeshifter ( talk) 04:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I am looking forward to hearing about next steps, best wishes! FYI, the article's link to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Program is no longer active and I believe should point to http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grantbow ( talk • contribs) 15:57, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
I think WikiNews could work for Wikicomunity as a central of what is going on just like signpost which includes news from other sister project but is held inside wikipedia. I'm not sure if meta is the right place to such information but wikinews could be used perfectly (IMHO) to this missicn: A central mission of what is going on inside wiki comuunity in all projects. About arguments I read here, I agree that news don't grow over time such kind of fails about the wiki process. Regards! OTAVIO1981 ( talk) 16:15, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Wonderful! It is fantastic to see that the Signpost bothered for non-neutral reporting, where verifiability is not even on the agenda. Well, despite one or two of the contributors to the signpost obvious vendetta against the project (because they could never get their work published on Wikinews because they wouldn't know neutral and verifiable if it reached over and bit them in the ass), it is extremely highly unlikely that the Foundation will close the project. Let's see the Signpost editors try to meet Wikinews standards for reporting in their next update. (hint: it will never happen.) -- LauraHale ( talk) 01:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
To Nemo and Laura Hale, yes, I did suggest specifying the authorships, but this might have been lost in the hefty last-minute job of editing that was left to Ed, who like other Signpost journalists is exceptionally busy at the moment. Now that I've returned from a brief trip, with very bad connectivity, I'll do what I'd always intended: declare that I had nothing to do with the WN story; this was on purpose, since to have been involved would have breached our standards of neutrality and played into the hands of those who are keen to see bad faith. Sorry, we have to disappoint you on this occasion. But it's good to see that you both read the story. I haven't yet read it myself, and will soon. It was rather generous of Ed to put my name first: he did most of the work for this week's "News and notes". Tony (talk) 12:40, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Of course Wikinews – as most other Wikimedia projects do – lacks of support by the foundation. But worse: they do not just only not give support but indeed the WMF does not have any idea how to promote Wikinews, Wikibooks or Wikiversity. For instance, about ten months ago we asked, after the question was discussed in the German wikinews pressroom, how the foundation sees the legal circumstances concerning a change the configuration for the German Wikinews so that if an image is not available locall< the fall-back source was first the German Wikipedia and only after that Commons. There are images like logos or freedom of panorama works which are legal within the U.S. and Germany but can't be uploaded to the Commons for other reasons. The last news from Frisco was they'll tell us within ten days. That was ten months ago. Another thing was when I requested a feature like the gadget which helps to include citations, three years ago or so, just a short time after the Cite drop down was implemented here in the English Wikipedia. It is just boring to copy and paste title, URL and date from the source you're using while a smart browser widget similar to the since Firefox 3.0 not continued add-on WPCITE.xpi could save work and time. I don't have a clue how to code such a gadget but I think a professional could finish this within half an hour if so long at all. I never heard from the so-called "usability initiative". And like this, most of the Wikmedia projects other than Wikipedia do need just some little tricks to dealing better with the fact that MediaWiki wasn't developped for writing a newspaper or a book but we're don't get anything. We don't know where to ask, who to ask and still if we ask we wait for answers months and years. As a German Wikinews editor for five years and sysop for three years I know that Wikinews is serious business. But does the foundation know as well? -- Matthiasb ( talk) 22:02, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
If I remember my history correctly, wikinews was formed as topics currently in the news received lots of attention from editors here. So it was decided to fork this off to its own site. I always though this was a problematic fork for a number of reasons: it created a divide between wikipedia editors and wikinews editors, separate log ins enhanced this split you could not easily go from editing a history article to a current event. This split created specialist journalist editors as opposed to the generalists on wikipedia. The other big problem was visibility, as the news site didn't have the en.wikipedia.org domain name the outside would simply didn't find the site, the domain name was the most valuable asset and we threw that away. There are numerous examples of current event articles receiving lots of edits here, and for some stories wikipedia can be the best source there is, so the concept of a wiki-news articles can work, but it needs to be part of a bigger pool of editors on a high visibility site. I'd propose creating a [[News:]] namespace here and merging the site back in.-- Salix ( talk): 13:24, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
I've read in this page that Wikinews is useless. Well, we can discuss about which of the current Wikinews edition is good or bad, and how they can be improved. But I strongly believe that it's a very relevant format and should be strengthened.
Having actual journalists who cover events, search for news and do interviews would be amazing, and I hope that we eventually do that. Doing just rehashes of press agancy pieces isn't so great, I agree. But Wikinews can get much better articles than that, even without professionals.
Most of current news articles have the format "somebody said something". Once a news company has journalists, it's cheap, their journalists put a microphone in front of people, ask them questions, and publish the answers. News isn't just that: it requires to describe the context in a historic perspective, compare opinions of different people, etc. We can do that. I've done that with a few articles on motorsport this past March. The news could be written in two sentences, but I wrote several paragraphs about the rest of the story. It takes quite a bit more effort, but it's worth it.
One of the arguments is that the wiki format is meant for things that grow over time, whereas news are finished once they are released. That's true. But I disagree that news are useless after a few hours or days. News articles are useful to see how people thought back then. So, the news about a politician getting elected president will describe the political context at that time. A Wikipedia article would be rewritten over and over, so when you read the latest version, you have a different perspective. It's good to have the original one too. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 19:22, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Wikinews cannot cover even major news stories to any depth, and its hostile environment means that very, very few editors work on it.
The only reason it still exists is because Wikimedia lacks any real way to shut down vanity projects, which can mobilise a few supporters to "snowball" polls before anyone else can come in. The project itself has to be notified - which seems fair enough, except that no other projects have to be, so the votes are skewed to the few people that actually put up with the site.
Wikinews should have died years ago. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 22:46, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi,
as far as I can see Wikimedia Armenia is the 39th chapter and not the 40th, as Wikimedia Kenya was disapproved some months ago. Regards, --
Jcornelius (
talk)
22:48, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
← Back to News and notes