Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Alternative News

I like the idea of this project but it does seem to conflate two different things: "It would include events such as events affecting for national minorities, subcultures or intellectual communities (including academia, literature, art and music which are not currently given any prioroity at ITN), cultural events outside of the "global mainstream", and certain kinds of "curiousity" items . "

One focus would be on events affecting for national minorities, subcultures

The other would be on intellectual communities (including academia, literature, art and music which are not currently given any priority at ITN) - which sort of suggests a "In the Academic News" kind of project.

Both of these are worthwhile but they may be two very different things and I don't think putting it all in one project makes sense. I'm willing to contribute but I would like to see a bit more focus and clarification here.

It seems like the idea for the project originated as a response to how badly ITN is run right now - and it is badly run. The problem is that ITN has multiple problems - but that doesn't mean that the proper answer is to come up with a "multiple in one" kind of solution.VolunteerMarek 05:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is right that the idea may be so broad as to be incoherent, and that it is mostly thought of as an alternative to ITN. I like the idea of Academic news personally - but I think it could eventually work to have different rubrics of news such as "The rest of the World", "Minorities", "Academia" and "Arts". If I had to choose I would probably choose Academia or World of Arts, because those are both very broad and very under represented and the focus on the non-anglophone could be made compatible with that. Also I am am completely open to ideas about how best to do it, since it mostly originated with the frustration at ITN. (people voting no to putting up the death of one of the worlds leading comics artist because he was old for example)·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, but at this point I think the idea needs more specifics. One semi-relevant "template" here might be The Bund Task Force I was part of. The project is dead now but in its short existence it actually achieved quite a good bit (especially by Wikipedia standards) and it's one that I was quite proud to be a part of. There, a person showed up, outlined very specific goals (in terms of articles that need to be created or improved), most (though not all - but that's ok) of these goals were met and once the task was accomplished the project died a natural, peaceful, and well deserved death (of course there's still improvements to be made at the margin, but that's always true).

Here this seems to be conceptualized as more of an ongoing thing so not everything from that example generalizes. But, very importantly, the reason that project was successful was because the person in charge of it was able to articulate a very specific and well defined purpose.

If it's "World of Arts", I don't think I can be of much help. If it's "Academic News" I could cover the economics side of it. If it's "underrepresented groups" I could try to do that too although that would be more uneven. Saying that there's different possible "rubrics" is a round about way of saying that it's still not clear of what this project would be about.

I'm game though just... how exactly do we get it going?VolunteerMarek 05:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually by rubrics I meant actual rubrics like in a newspaper. So we could have a project page with several windows each containing a different kind of news items. Sort of like a thematized news feed. Basically all we need is a project page with a talkpage attached. Perhaps: WP:Other News? I'd like to do minority news. I think truthkeeper88 might want to do literature. You could certainly do economics. The only thing we would have to do is actually create the articles for the news feed. So that it would have to do with finding different topics of interest every day, write a small article and then add it to the news feed under the proper rubric. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:26, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another idea, we could start with a broad scope and then narrow it if it turns out that we mostly get contents from a narrower area. We could just start by saying that we want small news - i.e. recent events that are surprising or somehow noteworthy but that are not BIG NEWS. The process would be to update or create an article on the event and then list it here in a news feed with a small blurb. Since its not the mainpage we don't need anyone to actually review the articles or blurbs, but anyone who disagrees with an addition can remove it and well discuss it. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Small news.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Check my Sandbox: User:Maunus/sandbox.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:39, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]