Proposals for closing projects/Closure of English Wikinews

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

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The proposal is currently open for discussion by the community.

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• Type: 2 (non-routine proposal)
• Proposed outcome: closure
• Proposed action regarding the content: should be transferred to Wikimedia Incubator
• Notice on the project: [1]
• Informed Group(s): (Which chapters, wiki projects, and other community groups have been informed, if any.)

NOTE: This proposal will not cause any of Wikinews' current content to be deleted, it simply closes the project to further editing.

Let's look at Wikinews' stats, as they provide some strong evidence for why the project should close:

I've used http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ActiveUsers&offset=&limit=500 for most of the following stats. Numbers are correct as of time of writing.

• A mere 133 editors edited Wikinews in the last month
• Only 12 editors made 10 edits or more

The total number of edits listed on that page is 8641. This is the list for the top 5 users:

2,840 come from BOT-Superzerocool 2,126 come from Pi zero 1,510 come from NewsieBot 714 come from Bawolff bot 222 come from Cirt

You'll note that three of those are bots. Over 58% of the Wikinews's edits in the last month are bot edits, and 25% come from Pi zero. Cirt, the next most active user, has just 2.6%.

If we exclude the three main bots, Pi Zero has 59% of all user edits.

Secondary analysis

However, these figures don't tell the full story, of course. Let's look at who actually started articles. Pi Zero does about 99% of the work preparing articles for publication, but they don't seem to actually write articles.

Pi Zero represents the majority of "collaboration" for Wikinews; most articles are primarily written by the person who starts them. For the months of October and November, here's who started every article actually published.

• Tom Morris 12
• CalF: 8
• Rayboy8 5
• Gryllida 5
• DragonFire1024: 3
• William S. Saturn (WSS) 3
• 96.247.79.136 2
• 77.97.204.100 2
• House1630: 1
• Nascar1996 1
• Van Caps: 1
• LauraHale: 1
• Tyrol5 1
• Ragettho 1
• Shankarnikhil88 1
• Cirt: 1

That's 16 people, total. There were 48 articles by my count, and 25% of those were made by 1 person. The top 6 people wrote 75% of all articles.

Further, as it's November 18th, and October has 31 days, that averages out to just under an article a day; and a lot of these are very short.

My problem

These stats don't represent an active Wikipedia project, they are the stats of what's essentially a vanity project, and the quality generally reflects this. Of the five main articles on the main page at present, the longest is 4,716 bytes, the shortest 1,896 bytes; none of them has any real depth.

There's other problems: Wikinews simply doesn't have the resources to cover even major news stories. The only article on Hurricane Sandy was written before it devastated America's East Coast; there was no followup. Further, some articles promote fringe theories: en:n:Tomatoes,_watermelons,_peppers_reduce_stroke_risk,_Finnish_study_suggests. And other articles are just plain wrong: en:n:Metropolitan Police to sell New Scotland Yard has a headline that suggests that what is, in fact, one of many possibilities put forwards (and one of the most unlikely ones), is definitely going to happen.

Quite frankly, this was an experiment that failed. The Wiki model has shown itself unable to produce news reporting. It's time to close the project.

Worse, it is well known for having an extremely hostile editing environment, where any criticism, no matter how mild, is met with massive attacks on the user in question.

Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:13, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

• Hi, the notice on the project in question, which is required by policy, can be put on the usual community discussion page there (this would probably be a page listed on n:Wikinews:Water cooler). However, I see that you're basing your proposal on a lack of activity. Please note that according to the policy, "Inactivity in itself is no valid reason; additional problems are". Only a nearly complete absence of content and activity can be a reason for a project closure. If you take a look at successful proposals listed on PCP, you will see that projects which were closed had no activity at all at least a year before being closed. Actually 12 editors with 10 edits or more in a month is a quite high number for the average wiki. So maybe I can convince you to retract the proposal? --MF-W 01:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I did put up the notice, I just neglected to link it. However, I don't think you're right. English Wikinews is failed. It's had years to try and find its feet, and it cannot do the basic necessary functions of a news project. This is supposedly a news project, but fails at the basic level of any news project: It can't handle reporting news. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:26, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

• If you are unhappy with the quantity of content being written for English Wikinews, you can remedy this situation by writing content for English Wikinews. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:29, 19 November 2012 (UTC)