nytimes.com — Imagine a newspaper with over 2,000 writers, researchers and copy editors, yet no supervisors or managers. No deadlines; no meetings; no chain of command. That seemingly chaotic nonstructure isn't recognizable of the hierarchical editorial control of old media, yet that's exactly how Wikipeida, an essential source for the VA Tech shootings, works.
Apr 23, 2007 View in Crawl 4
insovietrussiaApr 24, 2007
Wikipedia had US$1,508,039 in income last year. There is money - just not enough.(Oh yeah, donate! <a class="user" href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising">http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising</a> )
ningApr 24, 2007
@rm999 Having followed this subject for two days and even contributing on Wikipedia and Wikinews, by all-around comparison i found Wikinews shorter on breadth and timeliness. I'm not sure what to do or how to fix that yet.
rm999Apr 24, 2007
ningPerhaps that's true, and it's understandable why - most people have heard of Wikipedia, and most people haven't heard of wikinews. The problem with news on Wikipedia is that Wikipedia isn't really made for it. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and an article that is included in an encyclopedia should stand the test of time - meaning that it should be notable enough that it will still be in the encyclopedia in a year. The news, on the other hand, is often full of minor events. For example, here are the top Reuters stories right now:-Iran won't back down in atom row: president-Famed Vietnam War reporter Halberstam dies-Nine US soldiers killed in Iraq suicide attackAll of these deserve to be in the news, but the only one that will still be worth a mention in wikipedia by next week is the Halberstam death story, and even then it will only be a few lines added to an existing article. Wikinews, on the other hand, should cover each of these stories with an entire article. This is why I think wikipedia is inherently a bad medium for most news stories, and why wikinews exists.The VT incident is a misleading exception to what I'm saying because it is very notable and deserves mention in wikipedia, even years from now. My guess is that more than 95% of news stories are not notable, however.
kevptimApr 24, 2007
Here is a time-lapse youtube video of the VT Shooting's Wikipedia page in the 12 hours following the event.<a class="user" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrCQ9dUsfqU">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrCQ9dUsfqU</a>Wikipedia is a fricken living organism.
Closed AccountApr 24, 2007
Despite its flaws, Wikipedia has become a *necessity* nowadays. It's not a luxury anymore. It's not something that's "nice to have". It's something that's very, very hard to live without. Kids and adults, men and women, all nationalities, ethnicities and religions, all read it and take information from it. There probably has never been - in the entire history of mankind - a story like this, i.e. people from around the world absorbing information from one source.
acceptab1eunameApr 24, 2007
I *THINK* (not absolutely sure) that Wikinews requires one to cite 'old media' (verifiable, notable, etc) as sources for their stories - basically making Wikinews little more than a collection and conglomeration of already-published news. You won't find anything late-breaking there (unless the MSM has already reported on it).
krinthekuzApr 24, 2007
@vicissidudedigg comments work similarly. in an argument, someone stating a dislikable but true fact will be buried in minutes. it's incredibly annoying and one of the major shortcomings of digg@ningyou're getting buried because of self promotion and a link to newsvine. newsvine is a competitor to digg but has a much nastier model which promotes copying and pasting of entire articles so that users stay on the newsvine page... either that, or it's always the equivalent of digg's blogspam. some non-scholarly dumbass with just as little credibility as bill oreilly opines on a subject with which he has little or no experience. it's never impressive.
rye419Apr 24, 2007
@ cwo655321: often times better than 1 opinion *cough*foxnews*cough*ideally, the law of averages should take effect and end up presenting a rather neutral article (in theory anyway)