Wikinews is a news site in a wiki format, much like the Wikipedia. Anyone can create a story, and anyone can expand or edit one.
Wikinews is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, who run sites like the Wikipedia and Wiktionary. The site is powered by the same open-source engine of all Wikimedia sites: MediaWiki.
Like all Wikimedia projects, it must be written in a neutral point-of-view. This is a lot better than other news sources, which can be in any point-of-view (most UK newspapers have a political affiliation – same with US TV).
The site isn’t as frequently updated as many other news sites; but this is due to the fact it is ran by volunteers and it doesn’t receive wires from companies like AP.
Wikinews offers many RSS feeds, and I imagine this would have required some code as the RSS/ATOM functionality in MediaWiki is fairly low. Also, most (if not all) Wikinews stories are categorised by date and subject. This is useful if you want to know what happened on a certain day. The category view is much more news-like, and is in a reverse-chronological order.
Wikinews seems more liberal with fair use than the Wikipedia is. However, unlike the Wikipedia text content isn’t GFDL but under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.
Wikinews was a community-driven news site long before Newsvine existed. The sites are similar, though greatly differ (Newsvine is more like Digg and there is no point-of-view policy). It is more formal than blogs, also.
I have written two articles (with help from others) at Wikinews: H5N1 confirmed in France and Hackers hit Swedish police’s website.
As with the Wikipedia, the site is very Web 2.0 . I dare say the principle of Wikinews is actually more Web 2.0 than the Wikipedia.
Hah! I met you on there (somehow). I get it fed to my MOO, so I noticed the title, and read it, and decided to edit, and noticed you…
I have redone my website
Oxymora.
A great tool for sure like Wikipedia, but has its exploitation potential with fake news stories.Google News anyone?
Thanks for blogging about Wikinews! In respone to Azhar, editors are constantly checking for adequate source materials for articles. We have been “hoaxed” only twice, apparently. Proper sourcing is terribly important.
Great news. Now the news can be open sourced.
I think, the idea of a wikinews site is a very experimental one. Will be great to see how it evolves.