This is still up in the air but it has been mentioned on UK television news in various contexts recently: because the business model of free online newspapers funded by advertising doesn't seem to be brining in the bucks, there is much discussion in the media as to whether online newspapers will start charging their customers.
It's just this second struck me that this could have dire consequences for Wikipedia. Presumably we have millions of citations that point to online newspaper content. If they decide to put their archives behind a pay wall, what's going to happen to those citations? Are we going to say that we accept that people will have to pay if they now wish to verify a statement? Or are we going to have to a) laboriously re-reference everything and b) lose a great deal of content that we've been unable to find alternative citations for? Arguably I'm jumping the gun here. But it may be worth discussing in advance as I reckon this issue isn't going to go away. Does anyone think I should post this to the 'Foundation' mailing list too? _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l