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posted by takyon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the fake-news-anybody-can-edit dept.

Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales is planning a news service that combines the work of professional journalists and volunteers.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:09PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:09PM (#500236) Journal

    Jimbo announces Team Wikipedia: 'Global News Police' [theregister.co.uk]

    Say what you want about The Register, but they've taught me to recognize Lily Cole by name:

    'I got a little bit upset by that Register article...' says millionaire model. Bless! [theregister.co.uk] (more info linked from the article)

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:13PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:13PM (#500242)

    His goal is for Wikitribune to offer "factual and neutral" articles that help combat the problem of "fake news".

    All news is fake if you look at it at a certain angle.
    No journalist is "neutral" in any sense of the word. Neither is any reader, for that matter.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:08PM (4 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:08PM (#500278) Journal

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:36PM (#500299)

        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

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:15PM (#500322) Journal

          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)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:06AM (#500508)

        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

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:02PM (#500711) Journal

          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.

  • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:21PM (12 children)

    by Lagg (105) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:21PM (#500247) Homepage Journal

    One of the biggest problems with vague dictator terms like "fake news" is that you legitimize them by "fighting" them. A while ago, fake news was something said by idiots that don't know how to handle things they don't like reading. Now it's a "problem" that needs dedicated organizations and websites to solve.

    I have no love lost for the mainstream media. But seems like neither they or us or Jimmie wants to learn from history. This election and administration just keep failing at this day after day.

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:33PM (7 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:33PM (#500256) Journal

      The definition of "Fake" is pretty clear:

      fake
      noun
      Definition of fake
      : one that is not what it purports to be: such as
      a : a worthless imitation passed off as genuine The signature was a fake.
      b : impostor, charlatan He told everyone that he was a lawyer, but he was just a fake.
      c : a simulated movement in a sports contest (as a pretended kick, pass, or jump or a quick movement in one direction before going in another) designed to deceive an opponent
      d : a device or apparatus used by a magician to achieve the illusion of magic in a trick

      Just 'cause a certain dumbass is trying to newspeak it into meaninglessness doesn't mean we should let him.

      • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:12PM (5 children)

        by Lagg (105) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:12PM (#500282) Homepage Journal

        I mean this in the sense of treating the concept of "fake news" as defined by Trump and his cultists only as if it were a legitimate issue. Fake news very well may be a problem. But it's quoted because this is something they apply to everything dissenting up to and including wikileaks.

        --
        http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:44PM (4 children)

          by edIII (791) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:44PM (#500303)

          I was, and still am, extremely confused by what fake news actually is.

          To me, it is abundantly clear to be information constructed and imparted by individuals wholly divested of the truth in order to create parody or deliberate misinformation. Jon Stewart is a very famous purveyor of fake news. The difference between Jon and a Facebook post during this election, is that Russia was creating the Facebook posts in order to push information as fact in accordance with an agenda to shift public perception. All Jon ever did was attempt to entertain, and no reasonable person could misconstrue much of what he said as fact. It was satire.

          Fake news sounds exactly like something the CIA would do. Reminds of a M.A.S.H episode where the doctors defuse a bomb that turned out to be a propaganda drop by the CIA.

          For that matter, Fox News is ENTIRELY Fake News by their own admissions. They are an entertainment company, not a news company, and have often compared themselves to the Daily Show and others in that light. Until they want to act like a news organization, and then they act as if they are journalists of the highest integrity.

          Fake News is easy enough to counteract, but would require that people are actually capable of reviewing sources, performing research, and engaging in critical thinking. Unfortunately, for most of America they have very little skills to determine what is real news and what is fake news.

          As long as I was vilifying Hillary, some people would actually believe there is a child pedophilia ring involving the royals around the world headquartered in the basement of a popular pizza shop. That was fake news taken as literal fact by an awful lot of people when it should of failed the sniff test in the first round.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:56PM (#500354)

            What really floored me about #pizzagate is that when I went to review the supposed evidence, I was confronted by something that looked like it was written by somebody with Something Awful, meant purely to be parody of conspiracy theories a la National Treasure. I still find myself shocked that people took it seriously, especially people who should know damned well better and "lurk moar."

            I'm still convinced that it was an elaborate "loli haet pizza" joke that got out of hand, but I can't blame whatever b-tard came up with it for the dipshits who took it seriously.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:26AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:26AM (#500542)

            The meaning of fake news is unclear simply because of how it started.

            'Fake News' was an orchestrated attempt by old or establishment media to discredit everybody else. You can even see just about the exact date they came up with the idea [google.com] - sometime early November of last year where it goes from a non-word to everywhere. Their intent was to attribute genuine absurdity like Alex Jones to everything that was not them. There were a couple of major problems with this. The first is that old media was attacking not only things like Alex Jones, but also outlets like The Intercept [theintercept.com], which is really little more than old media done right.

            The problem is the next one and what I think resulted in one of the biggest backfires of organized PR in some time. They decided to call everything fake news near the same time they started running stories like 'PissGate.' PissGate was almost immediately labeled fakenews by many people simply because of how absurd it seemed and the fact it was based on 0 evidence - just a lengthy unsubstantiated dossier by what was initially an anonymous source. It got tremendous coverage. Many believed the president was set to be imminently impeached or even arrested. Nonetheless, it indeed turned out to be completely unsupported. Now all the 'FakeNews' labels attached to companies like CNN just gained a huge boost of immediately visible credibility. I think their (old media) perhaps even bigger mistake was then doubling down. Okay, PissGate might not be the clipper but they hung onto the Trump-Russia connections hard and parroted every single angle and bit they could find, as if they were breaking the next Watergate - only bigger. And as it becomes increasingly clear that no such meaningful connection exists, it's also becoming increasingly clear that old media is increasingly becoming the 'fake news.'

            That doesn't mean Alex Jones is suddenly any less insane. People aren't elevating genuinely fake news, but all news that CNN reports is now being subject to the same scrutiny as him. And that is really a good thing. News, from any source, should never be taken at face value. So what is fake news? More than a thing, I think it's an era. It's people coming to formally accept that you can't expect any company to tell you the truth when there's so much more to be gained by telling you something other than the truth.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:59AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:59AM (#500549)

              And as it becomes increasingly clear that no such meaningful connection exists

              http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/26/lawmakers-suggest-former-trump-aide-flynn-broke-us-law.html [foxnews.com]

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:28AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:28AM (#500574)

                Right. And we've gone from PissGate and 'Trump is a Russian plant' to imminent impeachment (or even arrest) of the president to 'aid might have broken some law by not reporting a $33k payment on form for services rendered from a Russian media company.'

                This whole thing is dying faster than the Obama citizenship conspiracy and has just about as much substance. News sites will continue reporting on it because they need clicks and drama gets clicks. And perhaps that also cuts to the root of the problem. These articles are invariably hyperbolic, poorly (if at all) sourced, and poorly written. But that's okay, so long as they confirm the biases of enough people they'll get those clicks.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:20AM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:20AM (#500514) Homepage Journal

        The definition of "Fake" is pretty clear:

        The best definition I've heard for "Fake News" was by Tom Nichols [wikipedia.org]. In a presentation at The Heritage Foundation to discuss his book [c-span.org], The Death of Expertise [wikipedia.org].

        He says (starting around 01:27:00) [c-span.org]:

        Fake news is a lie deliberately concocted from whole cloth, seeded out into the media-sphere through the Internet or the other willing minions out there, to pollute the public debate. Intentionally, knowingly a lie. it is not a bias story, It is not an erroneous story, It is not an error that can be retracted. It is not a story that was spun in a way you happen to not like. None of that is fake news. Fake news is an intentional lie, created to mislead people and then placed out into the information sphere so that you will find it.

        The entire presentation is actually quite good. I haven't yet gotten his book, but I think it will be among the next few I read.

        tl;dr (Nichols has some choice things to say about "tl;dr" too!): Fake news is an intentional lie. Full Stop.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:45PM (3 children)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:45PM (#500304) Homepage

      Liberals created that monster of a phrase, as a desperate move to discredit the Podesta and other DNC leaks. Only problem is, it backfired against them when others were able to prove their own media collusion.

      What we'll have here is the same old shit - "unbiased fact-checking experts" from Salon, NPR, the Atlantic, Politico, and the Globalist Leftist Jew Faggot Communist International Tribune providing fair and balanced observation.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:57PM (2 children)

        by edIII (791) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:57PM (#500312)

        Nope.

        First I heard of the term it was being used to describe Facebook posts that had egregiously incorrect information being presented as fact. It was meant to look as if it came from a reputable news organization, but didn't.

        Had nothing to do with the DNC leaks, and you're trying your hand at revisionist history.

        It's not a liberal term, but just the term created to define that activity. Of which, it was indeed news that was faked. Or, Fake News.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:05AM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:05AM (#500427) Homepage

          Even if the first paragraph in my post is factually correct, the second will not be. You wait and see.

        • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:15AM

          by Lagg (105) on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:15AM (#500498) Homepage Journal

          Man this thread is exactly why doing stuff like that concerns me so much. That's the trouble with simplistic terms. They're easily mangled if someone is purposefully trying to create a communication barrier. I've never used facebook or plan to. Yet I had seen it used previously years ago to describe general crap and spinning of stories into whatever terrifies the audience most, or advertisements disguised as articles. Because it's within the literal definition of fake.

          Notice how even in these posts when all participants are fully aware of what context is being used, we've still had two instances of etymology talk. For a dumb simple two word phrase. It's gonna be so easy for a full scale propaganda assault :(

          --
          http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:56PM (6 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:56PM (#500268)

    Wikipedia has built a trustworthy reputation. Can it be transferred to journalism?

    wikipedia has built a reputation of superiority defined as who can delete the most articles that people want to read, so WRT transferring reputations, there's already a lot of prior art in Soviet censorship.

    Here's a link to the wikitribune article and North Korea :

    Oh ha ha ha I deleted it you suck for wanting to see it ha ha ha and I destroyed someone's hours of work ha ha ha now back to kicking over little kids sandcastles on the beach ha ha ha I am such a big and powerful man because I can trash useful stuff and make people feel bad ha ha ha.

    Personally I think wiki deletionists are compensating for a lack of you know, uh, male length (this is a G rated website, right?), so if they can't have a big one then they'll delete everything they can until everyone feels as sad as they feel sad about their tiny, tiny microscopic little ...

    Every time I see a deleted wiki article I sigh and think to myself, I can't read about WTF because some wikipedia editor pulled down his pants and a girl laughed in his face, so somehow that gave him the right to delete this cool WTF article in his anguish. What a jerk. On the other hand, can't girls just stop laughing at, you know, more shall we say petite guys, like many wikipedia editors? I just want to read a freaking WTF article not know way more than I want to know about some editors masculinity crisis.

    I'm quite comfortable with my lady-slayer, but even if I were not, I like to think I would be civilized enough not go out trashing the world to somehow "get even".

    And thats how its gonna be a wiki-trib. Teeny tiny little guys, deleting all the good news articles.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:52PM (3 children)

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:52PM (#500309)

      I...... that was one impressive rant bordering on old man rambling of the highest caliber. I'm glad that we have you to defend us from the tiny pee pees, VLM. God bless you. Although, you do seem to have some sort of weird fascination with it.....

      Reminds me of old gay men explaining to me the vast homospiracy in Hollywood and how John Wayne entertained young men in Catalina. You just to try to sit there and not break out laughing.

      Thank you for informing of me of the vast Wiki-delete conspiracy involving thousands of sad men with tiny penises.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:07PM (2 children)

        by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:07PM (#500317) Journal

        Wiki deletism is a problem however. It seems to usually come from people that think their perspective is the only one. Especially since they know gene splicing and theoretical physics by heart. No one needs to write any article about it because it's self evident....
        Oh and of course if an article isn't perfect within 30 minutes it must be deleted instantly. Because wikipedia is a one man job!

        But the penis conspiracy seems however self evident as unsubstantiated :P

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:28AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:28AM (#500530)

          Yeah, gotta love those theoretical physics nazis. Let's write an encyclopedia article so that we can explain all this physics stuff we know, but ya know, hey, let's not actually explain anything in the process, and just assume the reader already gets it. Wonder how well that would have gone over with my middle school teachers...

          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 28 2017, @02:00AM

            by kaszz (4211) on Friday April 28 2017, @02:00AM (#501003) Journal

            It's also possible to have articles that bridge the gap all the way with different prerequisites in knowledge. Sometimes you have to get to the dirty details.
            It's like being a surgeon that's afraid for knifes. It won't work.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:17PM (#500324)

      Every time I see a deleted wiki article I sigh and think to myself, I can't read about WTF because some wikipedia editor pulled down his pants and a girl laughed in his face, so somehow that gave him the right to delete this cool WTF article in his anguish.

      Only deleting articles does not make them feel manly enough anymore so they replace them with articles that deliberately malign the subject. They go out searching the partisan blogs for the most slanted language they can find that paints the subject in the most unflattering light, put that in the lede, and then they ban anyone who calls for neutral coverage. Then they ban anyone who asks why they are banning people for asking for Wikipedia to follow its own rules. WikiInAction [reddit.com] and Gamergate [8ch.net] have several examples.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:08AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:08AM (#500428) Homepage

      The first and last article I wrote for Wikipedia was the experience you described.

      The worst part about it was that I looked at the person who deleted it and it was some Berkeley cunt with Islamic garbage in her profile -- and something makes me believe she's never even been to an Islamic country in the Middle-East.

      * Note: the article I wrote was not offensive and had nothing to do with Islam or the Middle-East.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:55PM (2 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:55PM (#500311) Journal

    So they want to be better than an article like "2017 shooting of Paris police officers [wikipedia.org]". It's usually faster in place, with more information, better accuracy than most news sites. Albeit it may lack the absolute latest information from say the last hour.

    Wikitribune seems like a project that looks after something to contribute to that will have poor incentives for contributors to do just that nor will the problem it supposedly trying to solve really need any fixing. Involving "journalists" seems more like an invitation for problems than solving anything. They ARE the problem in many cases. The babbling about fake news started to come when agenda journalism got a meeting with reality and other information sources. Media have a decades long history of spewing out shit and nonsense. They are dinosaurs whether they understand it or not.

    "need for writers to detail the source of each fact" - ie original research will be allowed. My prediction is that many "oops" will happen as a consequence of this.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:08PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:08PM (#500318) Journal

      Wikimedia Foundation can finally find a semi-worthwhile place to waste the millions they have crowdbegged. A "real news" site that nobody reads and replaces a pre-existing Wikimedia project, instead of private jet trips and executive salaries. Woohoo!

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:12PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:12PM (#500321) Journal

        Yeah someone should really put an accountant to check the books and balances of the Wikipedia project.

  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:08PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:08PM (#500617) Journal

    Is this the same group that allows calling the execution of serial killers "state-sanctioned murder" rather than simply listing the killers' fate as "executed" due to politics?

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