WikiTribune – Evidence-based journalism
Reinventing the wheel, or in this case, reinventing the square wheel.<p>Wikitribune solves a problem, just not the problem they have defined as the target.<p>They&#x27;ve used a naive view of the problem; the model under this ignores the existence of antagonists and too much faith in crowd sourcing difficult problems.<p>Antagonists will prey on services like this, and off the top of my head, here&#x27;s 2 ways in which such a service can be made biased.<p>1) baseless accusations, oft repeated. Find the facts inimical to your (the antagonists) position. Ignore them.<p>Find facts which are borderline, and have dog whistle properties - highlight these facts ad nauseum. Say that &quot;Wikitribune is biased&quot;. Repeat till it sticks.<p>Then target the facts inimical to you.<p>2) flood the service with facts that serve your cause- humans have only so much working memory.<p>----<p>The particular structure wikitribune has chosen, will result in issues. There&#x27;s a reason print news papers had an editor and a whole staff dedicated to working together.<p>With volunteers there&#x27;s no structure, and that causes failures, just consider the Boston bomber case. Of course with a journalist in the mix the assumption is that they will push back.<p>But the structure is supposedly egalitarian, which just means that this is going to end up causing the same politicking, and admin arguing that plagues Wikipedia.<p>Recruit everyone, don&#x27;t get volunteers. Get the whole team.<p>&gt; Articles are authored, fact-checked, and verified by professional journalists and community members working side by side as equals, and supported not primarily by advertisers, but by readers who care about good journalism enough to become monthly supporters<p>The wisdom of the crowd fails all too often. As another article recently discussed, it&#x27;s 5% of the people that take up most of your time.<p>How will this structure deal with truly divisive news articles? Or people who have conflicts (and conflicts of interest) within the group?<p>How will you deal with the fact that one day someone can say &quot;volunteer X was a pedophile from &lt;country&gt;!&quot;<p>Kudos for trying it.<p>This looks like a propaganda machine which will use the wiki brand about to be born.