User:ShakataGaNai/Import news test project

Wikinews has a problem. A chicken and the egg problem. People don't want to contribute to Wikinews because there is such a small readership. People don't read Wikinews because there are so few articles. Wikipedia got around this problem because it was the first of its kind (in many respects), Wikinews is just another news site. It is impossible for us to compete with "mass media" without either A) a _lot_ more contributors or B) other help. I can't do much about A, but B is something we _can_ do.

Our tag line is "The free news source you can write!". Why are we so stuck on the "you can write" part and not using the "free news" part at all? There are hundreds of other sites who write news that is licensed under a compatible "Free" license. So I say we use them. No, not indiscriminately. Obviously someone who is writing Op/Ed's isn't what we want. Nor is someone who is writing massively biased news. Same for someone who writes purely speculated news. That being said, I think we can have a little leeway in putting in some non-Wikinews written news, into Wikinews. Just disclaimer it.

I figure it is worth a shot, so I've set up 2 pieces for this test:


 * Imported news -- A template to go at the TOP of an article as a disclaimer (like wikimediamention )
 * Category:Imported news -- A category to track all these stories that are added. If nothing else, we'll know where to start nuking. This cat is automatically added by the above template.