I agree with this analysis. 2011/9/13 <m...@marcusbuck.org>
> English Wikinews is in a market with many, many professional > competitors. Competitors with a paid staff that steadily create > reliable news output quick and in most cases _for free_. While good > encyclopedias were still sold for thousands of dollars in 2001, news > were already available for free back then. So there's no big advantage > for the reader in using Wikinews instead of some other news resource. > > A further point is steadiness. A Wikipedia doesn't loose much value if > you leave it unedited for some days because of contributor shortage. > On Wikinews on the other hand most readers will leave forever if there > are no current news since days. It's very hard to build a userbase if > you cannot guarantee a continuous flow of new news. > > And it's hard to gain authors if you have no readers because the texts > will only be of interest for a few days. If you write a news article > and noone reads it you have wasted your time. On Wikipedia however, if > you write an article you can rest assured that people will read your > text. If not today then in a year. > > Other than a Wikipedia where even a single person can build an > increasingly useful resource over time, Wikinews has a critical mass. > If it doesn't reach the criticial mass of steady contributions, the > project will never lift off. > > > It's my opinion, that Wikimedia should try to support a Wikinews by > paying a editor in chief and a core team of reporters to secure that > the project always stays above the critical mass. > > Ideally that isn't done in the oversaturated market for English > language news but in a language that doesn't have any native language > news outlets. Pick the language with the biggest number of speakers (I > guess that'll be in rural Africa or Asia) that has no own media and > hire an editorial team. Send them out to make contacts into the > diaspora of the language and into the countryside to find volunteer > reporters and correspondents. Let them do a mix of world news and > original local news reporting. Go into print. A few newspapers per > village will probably suffice if you distribute it to the right places > and propagate sharing. > > Provide free and open news to people who haven't had access to native > content before. > > That of course means spending some money. Perhaps it won't work. But I > think it is worth actually exploring it further and trying it out. At > least that would be a form of Wikinews that could actually _make a > difference_. The current model of "give them a wiki and don't do much > else until six years later the project crumbles to dust" does not lead > to anything making a difference. > > Marcus Buck > User:Slomox > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
