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His goal is for Wikitribune to offer "factual and neutral" articles that help combat the problem of "fake news".
The service is intended to be both ad-free and free-to-read, so will rely on supporters making regular donations.
One expert said it had the potential to become a trusted site, but suggested its influence might be limited.
Wikitribune shares many of the features already found in Mr Wales's online encyclopaedia, including the need for writers to detail the source of each fact and a reliance on the public to edit articles to keep them accurate.
However, while anybody can make changes to a page, they will only go live if a staff member or trusted community volunteer approves them.
The other big difference is that the core team of writers will be paid, although there may also be instances in which a volunteer writes the initial draft and then a staff member edits it.
Wikipedia has built a trustworthy reputation. Can it be transferred to journalism?
takyon: A SoylentNews expert asked, "Whatever happened to Wikinews?"
[Ed. Note: updated at 19:20 with more information]
More coverage: (compiled by butthurt)
Fortune
Daily Mail
Nieman Foundation
The Atlantic
The Guardian
Silicon UK
Press Association 2017 via Clydebank Post
AFP via The Peninsula
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:08PM (4 children)
This kinda "All kinds of bias are exactly the same" bullshit is what us got us here in the first place. We all know that academic papers taking an analytical look at a specific fact are still vulnerable to p-hacking, misleading analysis, and a frequent lack of replication. We all know that major newspapers like the Times or Post are very status quo even if they don't mean to be, and the staff, compared to the public at large, a little left-leaning. We all know the cable news is sensationalist, constantly looking for advertiser-friendly eyeballs before the truth, and absolutely love narrative-building at the expense of even a hint of nuance.
But those egregious, absolutely systemic issues of bias do nothing to change the fact that there's a degree of at least making a sincere effort to find out actual facts and present them as they find them.
None of that can actually be said for tabloids, infowars, stormfront, or your uncle's favorite blog reposted to facebook.
It's absolutely the case that people have been taking sources with, let's generously call it "ambiguous credibility", as valid when it happens to attack the right people. People have no standards of evidence, no fact checking, no willingness to prove themselves wrong, and it's killing us. A goal of absolute neutrality, in a strict standard, is as good as no standards at all.
A relevant essay [tufts.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:36PM (1 child)
My post agrees with yours. I was just being much, much more general.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:15PM
You were deleting the important bit, though: that there really is such a thing as genuinely fake news. And my point is that it promulgates itself not through a lack of concern for bias, but a naive, absolutist concern for bias.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:06AM (1 child)
Ah there we go again, let's take the most insane examples and then use them to discredit more reasonable outlets like campusreform.org. Fakenews in a nutshell everyone, don't listen to Sargon of Akkad because Alex Jones is CRAZY.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:02PM
Sincerest lols to anyone who treats a high-school dropout youtuber who spends hours ranting at a camera mostly about another country's politics as anything even remotely resembling a credible source.