Wikinews

Last updated

Wikinews
WikiNews-Logo-en.svg
The current Wikinews logo
Screenshot
Wikinews screenshot.png
Screenshot of the home page of Wikinews
Type of site
News wiki
Available in30 languages
Headquarters Miami, Florida
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Created by Wikimedia community
URL wikinews.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Users 2883062
LaunchedNovember 8, 2004;20 years ago (2004-11-08)
Content license
 CC-BY 2.5 [1]

Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism through user-created content. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article." [2] Wikinews's neutral point of view policy aims to distinguish it from other citizen journalism efforts such as Indymedia and OhmyNews. [3] In contrast to most Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikinews allows original work in the form of original reporting and interviews. In contrast to newspapers, Wikinews does not permit op-ed. [4]

Contents

As of January2025, Wikinews sites are active in 31 languages, [5] with a total of 1,760,399 articles and 742 recently active editors (editors that contributed to the site in the last 30 days). [6]

Early years

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

The first recorded proposal of a Wikimedia news site was a two-line anonymous post on January 5, 2003, on the Wikimedia community's Meta-Wiki. [7] [8] Daniel Alston, who edited Wikipedia as Fonzy, [9] claimed to have been the one who posted it. [7] [10] The proposal was then further developed by German freelance journalist, software developer, and author Erik Möller. [7] Early opposition from long-time Wikipedia contributors, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summaries, gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the Wikimedia Foundation. [11]

The domain name wikinews.org was registered on April 2, 2004. [12] In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show how such a collaborative news site might work. [11] A month later, in December 2004, the site was moved out of the "demo" stage and into the beta stage under public domain copyleft. [5] [13] A German language edition was launched at the same time. Soon, editions in Italian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Norwegian, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Hungarian, Greek, Esperanto, Czech, Albanian, and Tamil (in that chronological order) were set up. [5]

In September 2005, the project moved to the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. [13] On September 7, 2007, the English Wikinews published its 10,000th article. [14]

Interviews

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone with Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2007 David Shankbone and Shimon Peres.jpg
Wikinews reporter David Shankbone with Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2007

Wikinews reporters have conducted interviews with several notable people, including an interview in December 2007 with Israeli President Shimon Peres by Wikinews reporter David Shankbone. Shankbone had been invited to conduct the interview by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli foreign ministry. [15] [16]

Other notable interviews have included writers, actors, and politicians, such as Augusten Burroughs, [17] several 2008 U.S. Republican Party presidential primaries candidates like Sam Brownback and Duncan Hunter, [15] and others like British politician Tony Benn, [18] writer Eric Bogosian, [19] New Zealand politician Nick Smith, [20] former New Zealand prime minister John Key, [21] World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau, [22] drag queen RuPaul, [23] and former Wikimedia Foundation executive Sue Gardner. [24]

Criticism

Wikinews has been criticized for its alleged inability to remain neutral in perspective and provide verifiable, reliable sources. In 2005, Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica , criticized the credibility of the project:

Above all, the central question about the Wikinews effort is its credibility. Making a newspaper is hard...Someone who wants to do it but doesn't really know how hasn't solved the problem by gathering a lot of other people who don't know, either. [3]

McHenry was skeptical about Wikinews' ability to provide a neutral point of view and its claim to be evenhanded, saying that "[t]he naïveté is stunning." [3]

In a 2007 interview given to Wikinews, Sue Gardner, at that time a special adviser to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and former head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Internet division, CBC.ca, dismissed McHenry's comment, stating:

Journalism is not a profession ... at its heart, it's just a craft. And that means that it can be practiced by anyone who is sensible and intelligent and thoughtful and curious ... I go back to the morning of Virginia Tech  – the morning I decided I wanted to work [at the Wikimedia Foundation]. The conversation on the talk page that day was extremely thoughtful. I remember thinking to myself that if my own newsroom had been having a conversation that intelligent (I was offsite that day) I would have been delighted. So yes, [in my opinion] you absolutely have proved Robert McHenry wrong. And you will continue to. [25]

Wikinews has also had issues with maintaining a separate identity from Wikipedia, which also covers major news events in real-time. Columnist Jonathan Dee of The New York Times said in 2007 that "So indistinct has the line between past and present become that Wikipedia has inadvertently all but strangled one of its sister projects, the three-year-old Wikinews... [Wikinews] has sunk into a kind of torpor; lately it generates just 8 to 10 articles a day... On bigger stories there's just no point in competing with the ruthless purview of the encyclopedia." [26] Andrew Lih and Zachary M. Seward commented on the continuing issue in a 2010 piece in the Nieman Journalism Lab called "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project." Lih wrote "it's not clear that the wiki process really gears itself towards deadlines and group narrative writing" and that "if you're trying to write something approaching a feature piece, it's much harder to get more than two or three people to stay consistent with the style." [27] Lih considers Wikipedia's stricter "formula" for article composition an advantage in a large wiki with many editors. [27] Brian Keegan wrote in 2019 that the Wikinews model of requiring approval before publication ultimately limited its ability to grow, especially compared to the more open nature of Wikipedia. [28]

Thomas Roessing wrote in The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies in 2019 about journalism on Wikipedia and Wikinews: "Many people turn to Wikipedia for more information after they received news from the mass media ... There is a substantial danger of havoc resulting from hasty handling of information about an unfolding situation." [29] Roessing presents the issue of a "citation cycle", where professional journalists turn to Wikipedia for research, but the Wikipedia community goes to mass media sources for breaking news articles. Roessing writes about the problem of differentiating Wikipedia and Wikinews: "The quality and the speed in which Wikipedia responds to news is one of the challenges to Wikinews." [29] Additionally, Roessing refers to an analogy made by author Matthew Yeomans: "Usually, Wikinews retells stories that were first published by Internet outlets of the traditional mass media (which also serve as sources for Wikinews' articles). This tends to result in "dull regurgitation of facts" as Yeomans (2005) put it." [29] [30]

Language editions

As of January2025, there are Wikinews sites for 36 languages of which 31 are active and 5 are closed. [5] The active sites have 1,760,399 articles and the closed sites have 2,151 articles. [6] There are 3,354,083 registered users of which 742 are recently active. [6]

The top ten Wikinews language projects by mainspace article count: [31]

No.LanguageWikiArticlesTotal pagesEditsAdminsUsersActive usersFiles
1Russian ru 1,496,52913,983,56016,738,543958,59810017
2Serbian sr 53,09381,0783,165,95466,762100
3Portuguese pt 33,46275,147574,771629,4074062
4French fr 23,96081,129887,863854,981421
5English en 22,0152,904,3754,829,236182,883,0621453,505
6Polish pl 20,92762,681347,969620,971471,254
7Chinese zh 17,97245,730262,191737,014231
8German de 13,98162,312851,647634,9953566
9Spanish es 12,23050,363715,8201046,752290
10Italian it 12,10743,227987,286428,68319115

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Wikipedia</span>

Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English Wikipedia</span> English-language edition of Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.

Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article, the headline encapsulated a collaboration between users of the internet technology blog Slashdot and a writer for Jane's Intelligence Review. The writer, Johan J. Ingles-le Nobel, had solicited feedback on a story about cyberterrorism from Slashdot readers, and then re-wrote his story based on that feedback and compensated the Slashdot writers whose information and words he used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Wikipedia</span> German-language edition of Wikipedia

The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese Wikipedia</span> Portuguese-language edition of Wikipedia

The Portuguese Wikipedia is the Portuguese-language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 11 May 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimedia movement</span> Group of global contributors to Wikimedia projects

The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This community directly builds and administers these projects with the commitment of achieving this using open standards and software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Essjay controversy</span> Controversy over a Wikipedia user and Wikia employees identity

The Essjay controversy was an incident in which Ryan Jordan, a Wikipedia editor who went by the username "Essjay", falsely presented himself as a university professor of religion from 2005 to 2007, during which time he was elected to top positions of trust by the community, including administrator and arbitrator. In July 2006, The New Yorker published an article about "Essjay", and mentioned that he was a university professor of religion. The New Yorker later acknowledged that they did not know his real name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Möller</span> German journalist and software developer (born 1979)

Erik Möller is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and former deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), based in San Francisco. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed his own web hosting service, myoo.de. As of 2022, he was VP of Engineering at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Devouard</span> French agronomist and former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation

Florence Jacqueline Sylvie Devouard, is a French agricultural engineer who served as the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees between October 2006 and July 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimedia Foundation</span> American charitable organization

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software which underpins them all. The Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a non-profit way to fund Wikipedia and other wiki projects which had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales' for-profit company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese Wikipedia</span> Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia

The Japanese Wikipedia is the Japanese edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-source online encyclopedia. Started on 11 May 2001, the edition attained the 200,000 article mark in April 2006 and the 500,000 article mark in June 2008. As of January 2025, it has almost 1,445,000 articles with 12,859 active contributors, ranking fourth in the latter metric behind the English, French and German editions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikimania</span> Annual conference of the Wikimedia movement

Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.

Wikipedia Review was an independent Internet forum and blog for the discussion of Wikimedia Foundation projects, in particular the content and conflicts of Wikipedia. Wikipedia Review sought to act as a watchdog website, scrutinizing Wikipedia and reporting on its flaws. It provided an independent forum to discuss Wikipedia editors and their influence on Wikipedia content. At its peak, participants included current Wikipedia editors, former Wikipedia editors, users banned from Wikipedia, and people who had never edited. The last post was on 31 May 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Sanger</span> American Internet project developer and Wikipedia co-founder

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined Wikipedia's name, and provided initial drafts for many of its early guidelines, including the "Neutral point of view" and "Ignore all rules" policies. Prior to Wikipedia, he was the editor-in-chief of Nupedia, another online encyclopedia and the predecessor of Wikipedia. He later worked on other encyclopedic projects, including Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium, and Everipedia, and advised the nonprofit American political encyclopedia Ballotpedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sue Gardner</span> Canadian journalist and past executive director of Wikimedia Foundation (born 1967)

Sue Gardner is a Canadian journalist, not-for-profit executive and business executive. She was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation from December 2007 until May 2014, and before that was the director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia community</span> Volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia

The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry. Wikipedians may or may not consider themselves part of the Wikimedia movement, a global network of volunteer contributors to Wikipedia and other related projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of Wikipedia</span> Overview and topical guide to the free online crowdsourced encyclopedia

The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Shankbone</span> American photographer and citizen journalist

David Miller, better known by his pseudonym David Shankbone, is an American photographer, blogger, and former paralegal. In 2011, PBS described him as "arguably the most influential new media photojournalist in the world" for his numerous copyleft photographs, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and seen in Wikipedia, documenting celebrities, political officials, and events, notably the Occupy Wall Street protests. As a Wikinews citizen journalist, he was the first to interview a sitting head of state, Israeli President Shimon Peres. His photography has been featured in magazines and news websites such as The New York Times, the Miami Herald, and Business Insider, and featured in an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. In a profile of his Wikinews interviews, the Columbia Journalism Review wrote, "Miller's work feels like a bit of a throwback to a time when Oriana Fallaci published long transcripts of her interviews in book form and David Frost broadcast a six-hour sit-down with Richard Nixon."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WikiConference North America</span> Conference of Wikimedia community from North America

WikiConference North America, formerly WikiConference USA, is an annual conference organized by the Wikipedia community in North America. The first two events were held at New York Law School and Washington, D.C.'s National Archives Building in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The third conference, rebranded WikiConference North America, was held at San Diego's Central Library in 2016, with a pre-conference day at Balboa Park.

References

  1. ↑ Siedlecki, Dariusz (September 20, 2005). "[Wikinews-l] The Wikinews Licensure Poll is closed". Wikinews-l (Mailing list). Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  2. ↑ Glasner, Joanna (November 29, 2004). "Wikipedia Creators Move Into News". Wired. Archived from the original on June 7, 2007. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 Weiss, Aaron (February 10, 2005). "The Unassociated Press". The New York Times . Archived from the original on April 15, 2009. Retrieved July 26, 2021.
  4. ↑ "Wikinews:Original reporting". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab". Wikimedia Commons . Wikimedia Foundation . Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 "Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab – Wikimedia Commons". Wikimedia Commons . Wikimedia Foundation . Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 Eloquence. "User:Eloquence/History - The history of Wikinews and my role in it". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  8. ↑ "Talk:Wikinews/Archive". Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 15, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  9. ↑ "User:Fonzy - Revision as of 08:16, August 1, 2003". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. August 1, 2003. Archived from the original on August 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Wikinews: Difference between revisions - Revision as of 18:39, November 9, 2005". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. November 9, 2005. Archived from the original on September 15, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023. Yes, I did make that anonymous post, I am not glory seeking, just getting the facts straight. Wikews was a terrible name I admit :p
  11. 1 2 "Wikinews/Vote". Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  12. ↑ "wikinews.org whois lookup". who.is. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  13. 1 2 "Wikinews switches to Creative Commons license". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. September 25, 2005. Archived from the original on May 12, 2013.
  14. ↑ "English Wikinews publishes 10000th article". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. September 7, 2007. Archived from the original on August 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  15. 1 2 Jones, K.C. (January 14, 2008). "Wikinews Gets Big Interview: Israeli President Shimon Peres". Information Week . Archived from the original on October 22, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  16. ↑ Rose, Adam (January–February 2009). "The Wikinews Ace: Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone". Columbia Journalism Review . Archived from the original on May 9, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  17. ↑ Asper, Colleen (April 2008). "David Shankbone with Colleen Asper". The Brooklyn Rail . Archived from the original on April 23, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  18. ↑ "Wikinews interviews: Tony Benn on U.K. politics". Wikinews. August 12, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  19. ↑ "Eric Bogosian on writing and the creative urge". Wikinews. April 17, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  20. ↑ "Nick Smith responds to claims he is New Zealand's worst behaved politician". Wikinews. January 8, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  21. ↑ "Exclusive video interview with New Zealand Opposition leader, John Key". Wikinews. May 23, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  22. ↑ "Wikinews interviews World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau". Wikinews. August 16, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  23. ↑ "RuPaul speaks about society and the state of drag as performance art". Wikinews. October 6, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  24. ↑ "Interview with Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation". Wikinews. October 24, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  25. ↑ "Interview with Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation", Wikinews; October 24, 2007.
  26. ↑ Dee, Jonathan (July 1, 2007). "All the News That's Fit to Print Out". The New York Times . Archived from the original on March 22, 2011. Retrieved December 31, 2007.
  27. 1 2 Seward, Zachary M. (February 8, 2010). "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project". Nieman Journalism Lab . Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Archived from the original on January 7, 2015. Retrieved January 22, 2015.
  28. ↑ Keegan, Brian (2019). "An Encyclopedia with Breaking News". Wikipedia @ 20 : stories of an incomplete revolution (PDF). Joseph M., Jr. Reagle, Jackie L. Koerner. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN   978-0-262-36059-3. OCLC   1187209148.
  29. 1 2 3 Roessing, Thomas (May 14, 2019). Vos, Tim P.; Hanusch, Folker; Dimitrakopoulou, Dimitra; Geertsema-Sligh, Margaretha; Sehl, Annika (eds.). The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (1 ed.). Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0183. ISBN   978-1-118-84167-9. S2CID   186898987.
  30. ↑ Yeomans, Matthew (April 28, 2005). "The Birth of Wikinews". Citizens Kane. Blogspot . Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  31. ↑ Wikimedia's MediaWiki API:Siteinfo. Retrieved January2025 from Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.