j's scratchpad

The discussion often turned to how Wikinews and blogs can get along. It’s almost as if bloggers have some kind of power. They would like bloggers to point to Wikinews articles as well as contribute to the site. sj proposed getting bloggers to share their articles via Wikinews, as long as they were comfortable with many strangers editing, verifying, and rehasing their news reports.

Several people nudged the Wikinewsies about using feeds to distribute content. A brief conversation followed about the importance of doing that, when to release stories that might still get edited, and who would have the ability to release stories to a feed. At least the conversation was beyond “Why use a feed?” I think employing feeds will be good for their marketing efforts and a good way to get bloggers and others involved in Wikinews.

Several people kept mentioning editing articles “by committee”–meaning many people edit and add to news articles–and how awkward and cumbersome that could be. It made me think of the editorial process many of the articles my office produces goes through. I don’t think having many people vet an article is such a new thing, but the process can be problematic.

Joi Ito was there and blogged a brief summary. sj, of course, was present.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 5th, 2005 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Wikis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.