Wikinews

From Wikinfo

For the Wikinews site, see Wikinews.org

Wikinews logo

Wikinews is a free-content news source and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikinews allows anyone to report news on a wide variety of subjects. Its mission, as stated on the main page of the English version of its website, is to "create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events".

Unlike Wikimedia's other projects, Wikinews contents are mostly available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 or later.

History

In January 2003, a two-line proposal under the title Wikews was created on the Wikipedia community's Meta-Wiki by an anonymous post by Daniel Alston (who uses the name "Fonzy" in Wikimedia projects). Alston, however, was not involved in the development of the project, and the proposal was redeveloped by Erik M�ller (known as user "Eloquence"). The proposal suggested the creation of a sister project covering "news on a wide variety of subjects, unbiased and in detail."^[1] In 2004, the discussion about when and how such a project might start became more active. Early opposition from long-time Wikipedians, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summaries ("Current events"), gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Image:Wikinews-logo-old.png

The beta version logo, used until February 13, 2005.

In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show how such a collaborative news site might work. In 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 Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ukrainian, Italian, Serbian, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Norwegian, and Chinese (in that chronological order) were set up.

On Sunday, March 13, 2005, the English edition of Wikinews reached 1,000 pages in the article namespace of the wiki.

On Saturday, April 29, 2006, the English edition of Wikinews reached 5,000 pages in the article namespace of the wiki.

Additional projects

While Wikinews focuses primarily on text articles, members are expanding the philosophy into other media. These projects include Audio Wikinews, which delivers Ogg Vorbis audio files, and Wikinews Print edition, which is a daily edition intended to be printed. A new project, WikiNews Network, a 24-hour live television and radio news network, is in the process of being developed.

Criticism

Wikinews has been criticized because it allows investigative reporting and original research, such that the news articles produced are based on information collected by citizen journalists rather than reporters from other news agencies. Wikinews policy requires, the reporter's notes to be posted for all original reporting. Due to the nature of a Wiki, Wikinews can be temporarily used by advertisers or factually inaccurate.