Wikinews

Wikinews is a free content news source and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikinews allows anybody to report news on a wide variety of subjects. Its mission, as stated on the main page, is to "create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events".

History

In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show that a collaborative news site is possible. It is a subproject of Wikimedia Foundation, and has been endorsed by its Board of Trustees. In December 2004, the site was moved out of the demo stage and into the beta stage. A German language edition was launched at the same time. From January to March, editions in Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Ukrainian (in that chronological order) were set up.

On Sunday, March 13, 2005, the English edition of Wikinews reached 1,000 pages in the article namespace of the wiki. On Sunday, April 3, 2005, the 2,000th user registered with the English version of Wikinews.

Additional Projects

While Wikinews focuses on text articles, members are expanding the philosophy into audio and video fields. Audio Wikinews, which delivers Ogg Vorbis audio files, and Wikinews Broadcast, which provides video content, are both subprojects of Wikinews, where most of their content also comes from.

External links

• Wikinews: Multilingual portal
• Wired News: Wikipedia Creators Move Into News
• Headlines blog RSS feed (English only)