Wikipedia co-founder discusses WikiNews and attacks Indymedia

international | arts and media | other press Saturday January 08, 2005 02:51 by R. Isible

New "WikiNews" service supposedly "netural"

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales talks up his new creation "WikiNews" and takes a couple of shots at Indymedia on the way.

Jimmy Wales characterises Indymedia as a "far left" project and asserts that the Wiki process results in a story with no bias because

"There's no magic bullet to eliminate bias, and be objective and neutral. But what's interesting about the way the wiki process works, and the openness of it, is that if you write something and you want it to survive the process, you have to write it in such a way that is broadly satisfactory to people of many points of view. That is a natural impetus to push you away from loaded terminology--or having an ax to grind in a story."

Which seems to ignore the obvious problem that ending up with a version of a story that no one can object to doesn't mean that it isn't biased, just that there's no easily identifiable bias. It would also seem likely that such a story would lack clear recounting of facts which are emotively contentious.

Even more interesting is that Wales ignores the previous criticism of the static, non-topical entries in Wikipedia made recently by co-founder Larry Sanger who asserts that Wikipedia is failing because of the priveleging of masses of energetic trolls over small numbers of experts.