Community contributions
It rarely fails. When I’m talking about my project, whether I introduce it or not, the word “wiki” will always pop up in the discussion. Sometimes I try to preempt it — “I called my project ‘Wikipedia-ing the News,’ but that’s a misnomer, since the prototype probably won’t be publicly editable …” — but even then, folks invariably come away convinced that the core idea of my project is that news sites should be open to public editing. I’m definitely not saying they shouldn’t, mind you, but the whole issue is askance of my focus with this research project.
Partly to illustrate that point, and partly to get some dialogue going, let me outline a few possible community contribution models a Newsless.org-certified news site could follow, if a traditional news organization were to start it:
- Closed to non-newsroom contributions: All edits to stories are made by newsroom staff, just the way they are on most big-media news sites today. For better or worse, this is the model we’ll likely use for the prototype, though I do want to make sure we provide a robust forum for community engagement.1
- Completely open to non-newsroom contributions: A straight-up wiki, through and through.
- A mix of closed and open sections: The Wikipedia model. Particularly controversial topics could be placed under edit restrictions, while lower-intensity subjects could be open to public editing.
- Community contributions are moderated: There are many ways that could work. For example, here are two:
- The newsroom controls a “final” version of the site, and a “draft” version is open to the community. Similar to the way most open-source software projects work. In the default view, all content has been vetted by authorized editors, but if you wanted to contribute information, you could add it to the draft version of any page. At regular intervals, editors vet new contributions to the draft site and commit valid changes to the core site.
- Community members’ edits are held in moderation until approved. Similar to the one above, but there’s only one version of the site. Another twist on this approach is that you might allow good contributors to gain automatic edit rights if their edits are consistently approved.
Many potential approaches, each with certain tradeoffs and advantages. Any of them could work with the structural transformation in journalism we’re outlining here.
- Although comments on stories clearly count as “community contributions,” I’m excluding them from all of these models. For the purposes of this post, let’s define “contributions” as edits or addition to the core site content. [↩]
Related posts:
- Why we’re not creating a wiki My research proposal was called “Wikipedia-ing the News.” I’ve spent...
I’ve been envisioning several levels within a news site, each with a different purpose and different community editing attributes.
At the top is the traditional front page presenting the major news items of the moment. Headlines or one-graf teasers here tie to reporter-written stories that summarize whatever the new development is, but don’t go into background the way traditional newspaper stories do. Rather, they link to relevant wikipedia entries, which is layer two. These top layer stories are editable within the newsroom only, although they accept comments that may result in changes.
Layer two is the wikipedia, to which the reporter adds whatever new facts are contained within the top layer story (or starts a new page for a completely new event). Any top layer story might affect multiple wikipedia pages. This section would be completely open to community editing just like Wikipedia proper.
Finally, below this is the wiki-talk page on which anyone could comment on the process, as you’ve discussed previously.
Ideally, front page news would simply be generated (as you’ve suggested) as the change log for wiki entries, but I think initially it’s going to have to be a manual process to tie the top layers together.
Enjoy the cake.
Newsmaven
25 Oct 08 at 8:02 am
My prototype will probably be layered much as you set it out here, although as I mentioned, only that talk-page layer will likely be open for public editing. I also have some questions about what the home page should be that might be fodder for a future post. And I think you’re right that “the news” is ideally a change log, but will probably be something else until our content management systems catch up to these ideas.
So we agree on a lot.
Matt
31 Oct 08 at 4:44 pm
[...] the News.” I’ve spent many posts chronicling the wonders of Wikipedia. Yet, as I’ve mentioned, the news site I’m creating to illustrate the arguments I’ve been advancing here will [...]
Why we’re not creating a wiki at Newsless.org
12 Feb 09 at 7:28 pm