Ok, I've blogged about wikis before. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, offers an alternate way to share and receive information. It is a new, yet ingenious, idea really.
Now users have a new way to contribute information. According to the article Wikipedia Creators Move Into News by Joanna Glasner, Wikipedia will now include news. Actual, hopefully factual, news. By, for, and edited for users.
The news stories that WikiNews "will present original material rather than just compiling and summarizing information found elsewhere, according to the news site's organizers" as per Glasner.
WikiNews also hopes that it can remain a neutral tone, although this feat might be somewhat difficult. It is extremely hard to write anything without putting some slant on it, even a subtle one (guess what mine is?). Writing a news story, where people are bound to have multiple opinions, can be hard to do without a bias.
Also, the editing of the articles could also become a problem. If someone writes something that another user disagrees with, he or she can change it to their opinion. An opinion war could ensue, making the news site more trouble than its worth.
Can these users even write? Writing and editing encyclopedia entries is definitely different than journalism. How well will the users research the topic? Can their information be trusted? Maybe, if they worked on it. But if another user posts something completely not researched, the information is worthless. Yet how would we know?
Wikipedia, you are great just the way you are, without the news. If I want to learn about what's happening, I'll go to CNN, ok?
Posted by VanessaKolberg at November 29, 2004 09:09 PM