Entirety of Wikinews to be shut down(en.wikipedia.org)

28 pointsby CamelCaseCondo4 hours ago5 comments

Kim_Bruning3 hours ago
Oh that's too bad, it was an interesting concept while it was running. I did notie that it takes a lot more effort to do real world journalism than it is to write an encyclopedia. And accreditation is a tricky thing in a pseudonymous community.
- Hendrikto3 hours ago
  The idea was cool, but WMF is doing too much, just like Mozilla. They should focus on their core offering.
  I don’t think this is a bad move, they might even want to divest from their other side projects too. They are mostly distractions and money sinks.
  - Kim_Bruning2 hours ago
    Ah, it is/was a volunteer community, so not really a thing the WMF needs to put much effort in besides running the server. I bet even I could take over the job if I really wanted to, and not because I'm amazing or anything. Well at least, if this were 2010 or so. By now scraper mitigation might be a challenge. <scratches head>
LunaSea2 hours ago
In other unrelated news, the C-suite is expecting a raise this year.
poweraan hour ago
Wikinews never worked; the principle of "verifiability" that Wikipedia was based on simply doesn't work for news-collection, which requires trusted first-party accounts.
The project was also already dead; the English Wikinews has had 10 "articles" posted in the last 3 weeks, two of which were trivial sports stories (a second-division Queensland football match, and the retirement of a pitcher whose last substantial year in MLB was 2019). The most recent story is that an amateur jazz group recently played at a library.
It will no longer be an attractive nuisance to the few who stumble across it. Rest in peace.
snvzz3 hours ago
Good call.
Hopefully they can now focus on making Wikipedia itself neutral.
- 3 hours ago
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MORPHOICES2 hours ago
[dead]