Matt, thanks for the info, I will read it with interest.

And thanks for your comments, everyone.

Wiki’s, sadly, don’t help much with that, since you need someone who:

a) Knows the missing facts.

b) Is prepared to take the trouble/risk of pointing them out.

That said, these days I get very frustrated when I read a news story and can’t add to it. Also frustrating when there are a thousand comments – to Alan’s S/N comment.

Truth is a tricky thing to get too, and I feel bereft of answers as to better ways pursue it. Trust comes in to it, but trust is a tricky thing, even in this hyperconnected age.

Re news commons – ever since the United Airlines debacle I’ve started to get very interested in how to get “trust” registered on a source – eg if it was clear that the dateline was Googlestamped, not original.

One is the facility to write. If a publishing tool (and here I consider MSM to be a publishing tool) has low or nonexistent barriers to entry, then the capacity for alarm and hyperbole is enhanced. That’s what happens in some bulletin boards and, to a lesser extent, in Twitter.

The second is the facility to edit. Bulletin boards don’t have edit facilities, they’re based on a YOYOW principle, and therefore there is neither mechanism nor incentive to correct and repair. Wiki-style publishing mechanisms have the many-can-edit facility.

These two things then tie up with a third, the sheer number of “reporters”. MSM is restricted in this respect, in comparison with the number of people who may edit a wiki.

All wiki-like communal efforts need their 1000lb gorillas, their core, their moderators, the super-editors as it were.

But the wikinews model is just more likely to scale: more reporters, faster collection, faster correction, quicker dissemination.

If you limit the function to the dissemination of facts, then a wiki might be marginally quicker than MSM as we have seen via Twitter and blogs in relation to major incidents – (though that has speeded up with the advent of 24 hour news and online outlets) . But ultimately are they more accurate? Initial reports in whatever medium always tend to be inaccurate and away from the “disciplines” of MSM I think they do tend to be more alarmist/hyperbole. How would your wiki idea avoid that?

MSM is about a specific collection of processes, technologies and values that militate against the speed and the anyone-can-edit capacity.

The space that I see a lot of problems coming in are where nationalist, religious or political – where peoples emotions make something news. Take for instance the Irish problem – what to England is true maynot be so for the Irish and vice-versa. A wiki would only allow people to keep deleting and distorting with no end in sight.

Interesting thoughts though. Might be interesting to observe if someone does build upon this.