
brian.mcneil at wikinewsie
Jun 22, 2008, 2:56 PM
Post #7 of 12
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Re: Please REJECT the latin wikinews project.inmediatly
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This is silly. The biggest Wikinews project is English, and we struggle. On a good day, we have 10-20 articles, but the days where we have ten or less outnumber those. Just how many competent Latin authors do we seriously think we can muster? How many articles can they write *per day*? This is seriously different from Wikipedia, you have a very short window of opportunity where something is news; it just comes across as a vanity idea for those would-be dilettantes who might contribute one or two articles a month. You need to generate new content day-in, day-out, continually. I've said it before, and it is effectively a project axiom now, "Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news". Efforts would be better directed at working out how to get those guilty of recentism on Wikipedia to work on Wikinews, and to getting Wikinews' archiving managed such that the project's stories can be used as sources for Wikipedia articles. Simple English is a different kettle of fish, but Wikinews would realistically only be provided as an educational project for improving people's language skills. I'm afraid it seems we're a long way from educators regularly using Wikimedia projects for such purposes. For a simple English Wikinews to work those educators would have to be doing the translation/simplification themselves, I think we're 5-10 years away from wiki in general being sufficiently accepted to see such happen. I hope it happens, and I see a great potential for simple English coverage of current affairs being an educational tool. Yet, there is nothing stopping people from contributing articles on the regular English project that are restricted to the simple vocabulary and labelling them as such. I would have no problem with less common words having links to wiktionary for a definition, and if such were to improve the function of the project in spreading knowledge I don't think anyone else would either. Brian McNeil -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces[at]lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces[at]lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ziko van Dijk Sent: 22 June 2008 21:21 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Please REJECT the latin wikinews project.inmediatly I am not so happy about the rules for allowing new Wikipemia projects... as Latin Wikipedia has proved to do very well (much better than many languages with many native speakers), and as there are Latin news e.g. at Finnish radio, I don't see a problem with allowing Wikinews in Latin. Ziko 2008/6/22 Ray Saintonge <saintonge[at]telus.net>: > Jesse Plamondon-Willard wrote: >> Mark Williamson <node.ue[at]gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I've seen a lot of people in opposition to the current policy, and not >>> too many in support of it. >>> >> I've seen a lot of people who would prefer we make some changes to the >> policy (which is very common in any compromise), but not much >> agreement on how to change it. Are you suggesting that we stop >> processing requests for dead languages until we reach consensus on a >> policy with which to do so? That leads to the same result as applying >> the established policy. >> >> > Am I wrong to just get more confused about this situation? The function > of any (sub-)committee is to recommend rather than to decide. It can > recommend that a project be started or not. It can recommend criteria > to guide such decisions. This goes off the rails when those criteria > are treated as set-in-stone rules. Whether a language is dead is a fine > criterion. Whether a language has an ISO code is a fine criterion. The > presence of an adequate community for a project is a fine criterion. > There are surely other fine criteria. None should be absolutely > determinative by itself. The committee's recommendations should take > all of these into account and not get overly upset when the community or > the Board occasionally comes to a different conclusion. > > Ec > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l[at]lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l[at]lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l[at]lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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