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July 09, 2005

Wikipedia vs. Wikinews

In an email to a mailing list, Wikipedian SJ Klein suggests comparing the coverage of the London bombings at Wikipedia and Wikinews. And he provides some stats:

The cluster of news article(s) had around 300 edits yesterday, trailing off to 30 today before noon, and effectively none since then; it remains the lead story on the main page.

The Wikipedia article has had 500 edits today, compared to around 3000 yesterday, and is still getting 10-20 an hour. It remains the second of three active current events bullets on the main page.

[Technorati tags: wikipedia wikinews media]

Posted by D. Weinberger at July 9, 2005 06:14 PM


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» Profile - Wikipedia from TechCrunch
Service: Wikipedia Created: January 15, 2001 Summary: Wikipedia has been around for over 5 years, is the largest wiki (by far) and serves over 400 million page views per month (to compare, USA Today has about 300 million). Wikipedia is a free, o... [Read More]

Tracked on July 12, 2005 04:27 PM

» London Bridges from SJ's Longest Now
I don't know how human society would function without tragedy . [Read More]

Tracked on July 23, 2005 08:14 PM

Comments

I fail to undersatand the purpose of the comparison. The two projects do not compete. Wikipedia has one inclusive article that as time passes will become a comprehensive encyclopedic work of reference. Wikinews on the otherhand has multiple stories on the event. Just like other news sites, old stories on Wikinews are not updated after a day or so since new articles are written as news updates emerge or the event fails to be "news" as it passes into "history," which is Wikipedia's purpose. IN addition, Wikinews also allows first-hand, original reportage, which is specifically banned at Wikipedia.

Posted by: Davodd | July 11, 2005 12:36 AM


I didn't mean to imply that they compete. You put well the differences in what they're up to. I find those differences interesting.

Posted by: David Weinberger | July 11, 2005 09:20 AM


Any soulsearching done as to why you find the differences interesting? Because that in turn might be interesting to us. :-)

A SJ Klein is running for membership of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, BTW. The latter is the publisher of Wikipedia and Wikinews.

Posted by: Branko Collin | July 11, 2005 11:21 AM


SJ Klein is the same guy running for the BoT.

My main interest is in the different rhetorical forms, each of which serves a purpose. The News article is frozen at what was known at a particular time. That record seems to be more important than providing the best, latest and most comprehensive info all in one place (Pedia). Once again, temporality determines being. Heidegger lives! :)

(Not much soul-searching in there. Sorry.)

Posted by: David Weinberger | July 11, 2005 03:54 PM


What's more interesting is what SJ doesn't say - Wikipedia has one monolithic article, Wikinews has so far produced around 25 much more up-to-date articles covering all aspects of the events over the following days.

Oh and the "lead story" at that point was *not* the bombings themselves, but the latest developments in connection with it.

SJ failed in his election bid, btw.

Posted by: Dan100 | July 14, 2005 12:37 PM


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