Wow, you pat yourself on the back more times in that e-mail than I ever thought possible in a single message. So you think Wikinews is the greatest thing, and that us outsiders know not what we are talking about and don't have a right to an opinion since we're not full-time Wikinewsies? Great, that doesn't solve any problems or get anybody anywhere, though.
2011/9/7 pi zero <[email protected]> > Having only a few hours ago been alerted to the existence of this thread, > I'm afraid I'm rather overwhelmed by it. Way too long to read. I've > glimpsed a number of false/misleading statements about en.wn in passing, > but > would probably spent all night properly locating them all, let alone > attempting to answer them. (Hm, there was something about Wikinews being a > bureaucracy, and of course the post that started this thread...) I'm also > rather puzzled by the nature of this thread, which seems to be largely > non-Wikinewsies discussing what they think about how the inner workings > ought to be changed of a sister project whose *current* inner workings are > probably more unfamiliar to ---for a non-random example--- Wikipedians than > those of any other sister. (I've spent three years studying it and am > hopefully just about up to speed now.) > > However, in a general collegial spirit toward Wikimedians having a > discussion (whyever they're doing that), I'll offer a few general remarks > about en.wn. > > en.wn is a wiki at, roughly, the extreme opposite end of several spectra > from en.wp. To oversimplify (the only way I'll get anywhere in this), > en.wn > is just about as different a wiki from en.wp as it is possible for a wiki > to > be. Note, there is nothing un-wiki about en.wn. It's very wiki. What it > *isn't* is Wikipedian. Some Wikipedians, I think, are actually kind of > afraid of en.wn, because all wmf wikis are drive by idealism, and part of > the idealism of Wikipedia is a belief in various rules of wiki dynamics > that > aren't the way en.wn works. Volunteers driven by idealism naturally have a > massive emotional investment in those ideals ---that's what makes idealism > great for sister projects!--- and in this case it means these Wikipedians > have a massive emotional investment in disbelieving in the way en.wn works. > > The thing is, Wikinews confronts boldly, every day for several years now, > challenges of quality control that Wikipedia is glacially slowly being > forced to sidle up to if it is to thrive on into the future. These are > *really difficult challenges*, and I'm kind of amazed by how well we're > dealing with this stuff that Wikipedia isn't ready for yet. Obviously > Wikipedia will never be Wikinews, but... Wikinews is the vanguard, and > Wikipedia will eventually benefit from things we're figuring out (very, > very > slowly, but that's hardly surprising). > > A note on a slightly different tack. A comment I made in a private > discussion a few days ago (among experienced Wikinewsies, about the inner > workings of the project) ran something like this: > > I'm proud of Wikinews. We're so damn good at teaching how to write, a > university journalism professor is assigning us to his students as > homework. > Besides the somewhat incidental fact I'm proud of the project, there are > two > points of interest here. > > First, we do have a class of, I think, about thirty university journalism > students currently submitting articles for review. Yes, that can produce a > glut on the review queue, which we're learning how to keep up with and not > allow it to keep us from reviewing the best articles in reasonable time. > Of > course we *also* want to spend a significant amount of time reviewing the > *worse* articles, because how can those authors improve without feedback? > Tricky. This also means an especially high number of failing article > reviews. Some of these students honestly don't get at first the concept of > neutrality, or perhaps how to not plagiarize, or some other basic > principle. Last semester we were surprised by how many final-year > journalism students had trouble with this stuff, and we didn't let up our > standards for them, and from what we hear, the professor was *delighted*. > That's apparently just what he wanted, and he's sent another class this > semester to get some hard knocks from us. > > The second thing about this, I only figured out myself when I realized > reviewing these student's work reminded me forcefully of my time as a > teaching assistant. That, plus the recent nomination of the Old English > Wikipedia for closure. Wmf is about education, and an argument in that > nomination was that the purpose of a Wikipedia is to educate readers by > providing them with information in their native language. Well, I saw two > fails in that: first, reading it is surely educational *about Old English*, > and second, *contributing* to it is surely massively educational about Old > English. The idea that contributing is educational applies in spades to > en.wn, obviously, or why would a professor be telling his students to go do > it? > > Anyway, there are a few thoughts. > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
