Wikipedia:Pending changes/Testing/4

File:Wikinews logo.png

The firstErik Möller: [http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/History The history of Wikinews and my role in it] Wikinews.org, accessed July 2, 2010 recorded proposal of a Wikimedia news site was a two-line anonymous post on January 5, 2003, on Wikipedia community's Meta-Wiki.[http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikinews/Archive&oldid=4306 Archived log entry of the anonymous post] on Meta-Wiki. Daniel Alston, who edited Wikipedia as Fonzy,[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Fonzy&diff=prev&oldid=1315899 Archived log entry of the userpage of User:Fonzy] on the English Wikipedia, which states his real name. claimed to have been the one who posted it.[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews&diff=prev&oldid=27867383 Log entry of User:Fonzy editing this article] on the English Wikipedia. The proposal was then further developed by German freelance journalist, software developer and author Erik Möller. Early opposition from long-time Wikipedia contributors, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summaries, gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show how such a collaborative news site might work. A month later, December 2004, the site was moved out of the "demo" stage and into the beta stage. A German language edition was launched at the same time. Soon editions in Italian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Norwegian, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Hungarian, Greek, Esperanto, Czech and Albanian (in that chronological order) were set up.

{{Wikinewspar|English Wikinews publishes 10000th article}}

On March 13, 2005, the English edition of Wikinews reached 1,000 news articles. Just a few months later in September 2005, the project moved to the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_switches_to_Creative_Commons_license Wikinews switches to Creative Commons license] It reached 5,000 articles on April 29, 2006, and 10,000 on September 5, 2007.

File:David Shankbone and Shimon Peres.jpg in 2007.]]

Wikinews reporters have conducted interviews with several notable people. In December 2007, Wikinews interviewed Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres.{{cite news |url=http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205604529 |title= Wikinews Gets Big Interview: Israeli President Shimon Peres |author= K.C. Jones |newspaper=Information Week |date= January 14, 2008}}

{{cite magazine|first=Adam |last=Rose| date=January–February 2009 |url=http://www.cjr.org/on_the_job/the_wikinews_ace.php |title= The Wikinews Ace: Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone | magazine= Columbia Journalism Review| accessdate=2012-05-11}} Other notable interviews have included writers, actors and politicians, such as Augusten Burroughs,{{cite magazine |url=http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/04/books/david-shankbone-with-colleen-asper |title=David Shankbone with Colleen Asper |first=Colleen |last=Asper |magazine=The Brooklyn Rail |date=April 2008 }} 2008 Republican nomination hopefuls and independent/third party candidates for President, Tony Benn, Eric Bogosian, Nick Smith and John Key, and World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau.

Wikinews—like Wikipedia—is criticized for its perceived inability to be neutral or include only verified and true information. Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica criticized the credibility of the project:

{{quote|Above all, the central question about the Wikinews effort is its credibility. Making a newspaper is hard...Someone who wants to do it but doesn't really know how hasn't solved the problem by gathering a lot of other people who don't know, either.}}

McHenry was skeptical about Wikinews' ability to provide a neutral point of view and its claim to be evenhanded: "The naïveté is stunning."{{cite news |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/technology/circuits/10wiki.html?_r=1&oref=slogin – |title=Jimmy Wales, president of Wikimedia, where articles written by users are open to revision by others |first= Aaron |last=Weiss |newspaper=New York Times |date=February 10, 2005 }}

In a 2007 interview, Sue Gardner, at that time a special adviser to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and former head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Internet division, CBC.ca, dismissed McHenry's comment, stating "Journalism is not a profession ... at its heart, it's just a craft. And that means that it can be practiced by anyone who is sensible and intelligent and thoughtful and curious ... I go back to the morning of Virginia Tech – the morning I decided I wanted to work here [WMF]. The conversation on the talk page that day was extremely thoughtful. I remember thinking to myself that if my own newsroom had been having a conversation that intelligent (I was offsite that day) I would have been delighted. So yes, [in my opinion] you absolutely have proved Robert McHenry wrong. And you will continue to.""Interview with Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation", Wikinews; October 24, 2007.

Wikinews has also had issues with maintaining a separate identity from Wikipedia, which also covers major news events in real-time. Columnist Jonathan Dee of The New York Times pointed out in 2007 that "So indistinct has the line between past and present become that Wikipedia has inadvertently all but strangled one of its sister projects, the three-year-old Wikinews... [Wikinews] has sunk into a kind of torpor; lately it generates just 8 to 10 articles a day... On bigger stories there's just no point in competing with the ruthless purview of the encyclopedia."{{cite news |first=Jonathan |last=Dee |title=All the News That’s Fit to Print Out |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01WIKIPEDIA-t.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=2007-07-01 |accessdate=2007-12-31 }} Andrew Lih and Zachary M. Seward commented on the continuing issue in a 2010 piece in the Nieman Journalism Lab, "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project." Lih wrote "it's not clear that the wiki process really gears itself towards deadlines and group narrative writing" and that "if you're trying to write something approaching a feature piece, it's much harder to get more than two or three people to stay consistent with the style."{{cite web |url=http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/02/why-wikipedia-beats-wikinews-as-a-collaborative-journalism-project/ |title=Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project |last=Seward |first=Zachary M. |date=2009-02-08 |work=Nieman Journalism Lab |publisher=Nieman Foundation for Journalism |accessdate=2009-02-09}} Lih considers Wikipedia's stricter "formula" for article composition an advantage in a large wiki with many editors.

In September 2011, a "large portion" of the Wikinews user base announced that they were dissatisfied with the site and created a fork called OpenGlobe.{{cite web| url= http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/10/wikipedia-isnt-journalism-but-are-wikipedians-reluctant-journalists290.html |title=Wikipedia Isn't Journalism, But Are Wikipedians Reluctant Journalists?| publisher= PBS| work=Idea Lab (blog)| date=October 20, 2011|first= Heather |last=Ford |quote=In September, a large portion of the Wikinews contributor base announced on the Foundation-l mailing list that they had forked the project and started OpenGlobe" after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews." |accessdate=2012-05-11 }}{{cite web| url=http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068277.html | title= A Wikimedia project has forked | work= [Foundation-l] | date=September 12, 2011 | author= Tempodivalse | publisher= lists.wikimedia.org| quote= I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of Wikinews' contributor base has forked into its own project.| accessdate=2012-05-11}}

Wikinews members have at times expanded the site beyond text articles. Examples include Audio Wikinews, Wikinews Video 2.0 (test phase) and Wikinews Print edition, and Wikimedia Radio.

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{commons category|Wikinews}}

• [http://www.wikinews.org/ Official website]
• {{cite magazine|first=Adam |last=Rose| date=January–February 2009 |url=http://www.cjr.org/on_the_job/the_wikinews_ace.php |title= The Wikinews Ace: Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone | magazine= Columbia Journalism Review}}

{{-}}{{Wikimedia Foundation}}