User:Dendodge/Project focus

Wikinews is floundering, and things aren't working. Output is at an all time low, and user recruitment and retention are faring just about as badly.

The way I see it, the problems are thus:
 * Articles are not being reviewed fast enough to keep up with the mainstream media
 * Because of the relative ease of reviewing them, shorter, lower-quality, articles relying on fewer sources are more quickly reviewed
 * The slow, low-quality, output leads to less interest in the project

This results in a vicious Ouroboros-like cycle. We review articles slowly, and our output is very low and of equally low quality. This means people are less likely to find the project, and if it does they won't become particularly interested. This means they don't begin editing, don't write articles, and don't end up becoming reviewers, so our output doesn't increase. Meanwhile, established contributors are losing interest in the project, or having their real life get in the way, and leaving.

The various proposed solutions include:
 * Removing the need for independent review, and allowing users to self-publish
 * This would result in a lot of spam, hoaxes, etc., getting published, and would kill the project's credibility
 * Instituting a 2-tier review system
 * Articles could be published to the main page much faster, but spam and obvious hoaxes would be weeded out
 * This could easily result in false or misleading information appearing on the main page.
 * Some articles may never get reviewed, and sit in the archives without undergoing full review, and hence containing style guide violations, factual errors, or even possibly copyvios.
 * Coming up with some method to collaboratively review an article
 * This would significantly reduce individual reviewer workload
 * Such a system would not ensure that a single reviewer had checked the entire article, or all the sources, and may result in reviewer laziness and thus actually reduce the rate of reviews.
 * Maintaining the status quo and engaging in projects to recruit more new editors (UoW, etc.)
 * This requires little to no infrastructure changes
 * With an increased number of new users unfamiliar with the project, the review queue will be flooded with low-quality articles, and take longer to clear, therefore having a negative effect on both speed and quality of output.
 * A system of hide-able inline citations for articles
 * This would make reviewing easier, and therefore faster.
 * It also makes editing more difficult for newer contributors.
 * It may encourage people to paraphrase the sources a little too closely, or discourage the mixing of facts.

However, they all have drawbacks, which would, I feel, make all of the above proposals a net negative to the project. And, while they treat the symptoms, none of them address the root cause.

These proposals all attempt to address one or more of the following:
 * Speed of output
 * Quantity of output
 * Number of contributors

I feel that this is the wrong approach. Rather than trying to compete with the mainstream media on speed&mdash;a battle we can never win&mdash;we need to focus on what makes Wikinews unique.

This project is unique among news websites because...
 * It is a wiki, so anybody can contribute
 * It has a strict neutral point of view policy
 * It is capable of combining information from multiple sources

It is unique among wikis because...
 * It has a strict peer-review process
 * It has a deadline: Articles cannot be slowly improved over time, and must be (nearly) complete from publication
 * Original reporting is allowed

Right now:
 * Articles are generally edited by one or two people, not including the copyediting done by the reviewer
 * This does not play into the wiki model's strengths
 * Information is only taken from two or three sources, and most articles only include the most "important" parts
 * This usually makes our articles less comprehensive than the articles we use as sources
 * Peer review, by its nature, means we get articles pushed out much later than the mainstream media
 * Original reporting is the exception, synthesis being far, far, more common

Why would somebody choose Wikinews over another news source (say, the BBC), or the coverage of current events on Wikipedia? They probably wouldn't.

Therefore, the project needs to change its focus. We should focus on what makes us unique. We need to focus more on:
 * Collaboration, and having articles edited by multiple people
 * Completeness of coverage&mdash;if we're going to synthesise, we should synthesise as much as possible
 * Time-insensitive stories&mdash;interviews, special reports, investigations, etc.
 * Original reporting, because it gives us information the mainstream media (and Wikipedia) don't have

I'll probably expand and edit this further in the future, but I think it adequately summarises my views for the moment.