Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 5 key questions/It seems increasingly clear that the future of news will include a significant "citizen journalism" component, especially in the form of professional-amateur collaboration.

However, English Wikinews and most other Wikinews projects have failed to reach a critical mass of participation, and many Wikimedians see the current Wikinews model as inadequate and unlikely to succeed-in part because the Publication system of Wikinews prevents the kind of feedback cycle of Wikipedia, where readers are shown incomplete content and given a chance to improve it and write more. How could Wikinews or another Wikimedia project be reworked to provide a compelling way for people to participate in the production and consumption of journalism on a large scale?

- Have someone tell everybody how fun it is to contribute to news/journalism/wikinews, just like Jimmy did by telling everybody how fun it is to contribute to Wikipedia! Dedalus 16:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Wiki ESP could motivate investigative journalism and a curriculum for investigative journalism could be published on Wikiversity. High school and college students could be a primary audience. --Fasten 17:42, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Something like a small text reporting service like tweeter could be considered, something wikipedians can enter easily from their first hand amateur experience along with the ability to u/l pictures instantly.Theo10011 03:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Wikinews needs to stop treating itself like a newspaper and more like a website. In the days of 24 hour cable news and news websites, waiting until articles are fully developed and thoroughly reviewed is just not a successful model, unless you're going to be putting it on paper. It may not be ideal from a journalistic POV, but its what the public demands. If Wikinews becomes more useful, it will attract more participants. Mr.Z-man 05:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - One could purchase content from Thomson Reuters for Wikinews and split news processing into a very fast process (with Reuters content) and a slower process (with content created by Wikinews contributors). Working with Reuters content could still be interesting for some people (e.g. pupils contributing to Wikinews as part of a journalism curriculum). --Fasten 13:37, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Public domain material is already used, though copyedited and extra sources added to avoid blatant POV. Buying Reuters material for Wikinews strikes me as akin as buying Encyclopedia Britannica website material for en-Wikipedia. The whole point of Wikinews is to have value-added information, using multiple sources. I seem to recall that en-Wikipedia frowns upon using just primary sources for their material; why should Wikinews aim to do the opposite? Yes, the review process could be optimised, but that should be achieved by having more editors, more collaborators, not by bloating Wikinews with what is already syndicated on a multitude of sites and making Wikinews "yet another pointless news site". --AlexandrDmitri 14:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, not one of the people making suggestions above has made any significant effort to participate on Wikinews.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian McNeil (talk • contribs) --Fasten 12:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above are either suggestions to turn it into "The Twitter feed anyone can post p3n1s on", "Pimp My Wiki", "Stop pretending it's trying to be credible", and "Buy from Reuters and becomre just like every crappy service that does no real work to make news".

Quit sitting in the cheap seats whispering among yourselves about how a project you don't edit on should be run. Take the time to actually get involved and understand how it currently does work. Most of the above, er.... "bright ideas" would drive away all current contributors and it'd turn into another stupid Digg equivalent running on a bastardised MediaWiki install. --Brian McNeil 11:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly, or impracticable ideas like "write a curriculum for investigative journalism for Wikiversity". There isn't even a Curriculum: namespace. --127.0.0.1 12:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious. Why sign this as 127.0.0.1, Fasten? I have spent time speaking with people from Wikiversity, I know there is not a Curriculum: namespace, and — to a greater or lesser extent — this is a ridiculously trivial element of the idea to dismiss it for. Wikiversity is the most appropriate WMF project for educational material on citizen journalism; the current situation is Wikinews contributors privately sharing experiences from trying investigative journalism. Experience is easily lost when people have to change their priorities and devote less time to the project, and they are more interested in contributing material to it. --Brian McNeil 14:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was just pretending to pretend to be somebody else because it quite clearly was not my opinion as expressed a few lines above. If you in fact favor a curriculum for investigative journalism why do you rant about "bright ideas" and ignore the contribution you have identified as potentially useful? Reverse psychology? --Fasten 09:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's sarcasm. Take it as shorthand for whatever you will; I do tend to be dismissive of proposals from an uninformed position. --Brian McNeil 21:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The attitude to be dismissive of proposals is in the wrong place here. strategy.wikimedia.org tries to accept every kind of input. --Fasten 12:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

en.Wikinews is made redundant, and en.Wikipedia is polluted, so long as Wikipedia allows news coverage. Remember the Wendy's Chili Finger incident? There were about 120 en.WP articles at the time; it's nice to see some pruning has happened over the years. But should it have been on en.WP at all? Since en.Wikipedia is unlikely to change its approach to current events, it seems to me the en.Wikinews project will slowly die receiving no support and being overshadowed by crappy coverage on en.WP that wastes time and creates conflicts as it slowly gets weeded out. Better to just kill the project quickly. - Amgine 16:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikinews just doesn't seem to fill any gap. Before Wikipedia, there was no large free source of information (moreover: Wikipedia still is unique in this). Part of the succes of Wikipedia is that it was something new, something that didn't exist before, and there (still) isn't any real alternative to Wikipedia when it comes to finding information on a scala of subjects. There are many free sources of news however. For the Netherlands, there is Nu.nl that has instant news. For national news, nl.Wikinews has nothing to add: why bother posting to Wikinews if the news is already on Nu.nl as well? Nl.Wikinews could be interesting for gathering local news, but Twitter seems fine for that, with contacts posting links to interesting local news around the clock. Fruggo 17:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Is nu.nl NPOV? Oh, nevermind. I never learned to read Dutch; you're judging against one near-failed language variant. And, again, like those above have never tried to contribute or see what is different about the project. Wikipedians should be shamed for their Recentism obsessions, and repeat snubs of Wikinews when it comes to vaguely acknowledging the project does original reporting and is operated by the same parent organisation. --Brian McNeil 19:50, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]