Wikipedia Co-founder Launching Community News Site
The co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is reportedly looking to launch a new community-powered news site that is going to pair professional journalists with community volunteers. It's supposedly going to help to combat the issue of fake news and "alternative facts".
The site is called Wikitribune
Wales plans to serve as the CEO for the new site as well as taking over responsibilities related to editing and more. There is already a crowdfunding campaign underway to try and raise funds to hire journalists for the site. When the campaign is over, they plan to launch the site. And they are expecting to start out by hiring at least 10 journalists and then hopefully expand from there.
In order to make money to fund the project, Wikitribune is going to ask its readers to voluntarily pay for a subscription or make a donation, similarly to how Wikipedia has been funded over the years. The Wikitribune site is going to focus on news, with a special interest in citizen-augmented journalism that can help to sift through all of the tedious information out there that's available, in order to find and share what is truly important.
After a member of the community makes a change to any of the articles posted on the site, it's alleged that the changes won't be approved until a staff member or trusted member of the community approves those changes.
Wikitribune will expect all of its writers to detail their sources for their reported facts and also provide full transcripts including recordings of any interviews. Although staff members are typically going to choose what gets written about, those who fund the project voluntarily will also get to decide which content should be promoted.
Wales said if a number of people who are signing up to make voluntary monthly subscription payments indicate that they are interested in Bitcoin for example, then Wales says that he would hire a “Bitcoin person” to cover that topic full time because paying customers are indicating that this is the content they want. Those monthly supporters are going to have a big impact over what gets written about.
Only time is going to tell if the site is going to become a well-known and trusted source for news information.
Pics:
Pixabay
Wikitribune
21st Century Citizenship
Sources:
www.wikitribune.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-cofounder-jimmy-wales-wikitribune-community-powered-news-2017-4
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39695767
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-to-fight-fake-news-with-new-wikitribune-site
Hmmmm. I smell a rat here.
Whenever someone says they are combating fake news, i see it as they are going to promote fake news.
Wikipedia, next to Google, is the king of fake news and i have seen situations where the physical source of information on a Wikipedia article has been rejected for 'someone' elses perspective.
You can't edit the articles with truth and facts, they just edit it back to the mainstream, fake news, agenda driven narrative.
And there's the end of “professional journalism”. Soon at your Internet sites there will be a title: “Wikitribune – died by the causes of blockchain!”
I want to volunteer for this!
May the sky be clear above you,
Let life be kind in light,
Live surrounded by friends,
And all of you good health and warmth!
Objectivists continue to innovate. Although there are clearly issues with Wikipedia, that might continue with Wikitribune, I think Jimmy is doing great work.
Ultimately, this is just a different set of people filtering the news according to their own biases.
Nothing new under the sun.
Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh........ fake news
Upvoted
@shayne
Excellent post! I like your work My friend