User:Plenty

Greetings, intrepid reporters!

On May 19, 2005, I posted an article which some thought was a joke or a hoax but which I (while admittedly also feeling mischievious) intended as a serious criticism/observation about the current state of Wikinews.

It was quickly marked as:

• not NPOV (which--in its original state--I agree it wasn't, though I was hoping that an open, wiki-like process would transform it into something publishable),
• misleading (which I don't believe it is), and
• poorly sourced (though I would claim its source is at least as valid as the sources of 95% of Wikinews stories).

I would also concede that it might not meet a standard of newsworthiness, though there are many mainstream/Wikinews stories which I don't see as meeting that standard either.

The article was renamed, first to User claims Wikinews parrots mainstream media, offers little original reporting and then to Study shows Wikinews active, but needs more original reporting. Unfortunately, I tuned out before seeing what happened to it after that. (If anyone saved later versions, please post them here!) A few hours later, it was deleted. I'm not surprised by any of this, except that I really did hope it might be transofrmed into something genuinely NPOV that could be published.

If anyone is interested, back in the mists of time, in November 2004, when Wikinews had barely sprouted, I was one of several people who tried to steer it in another direction. Plenty 19:34, 20 May 2005 (UTC)