Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site

[geni]

2009/6/22 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@...>:
> Remember, we have people in Iran.
>
> Fred

But not reporters and I don't think wikinews is getting much stuff.

The view is understandable. So called citizen journalism doesn't do
much in the way of original research or reporting and the cases that
it does do per year can generally be counted on the fingers of one
hand. In the overwhelming majority of cases Blogs and the like consist
of nothing more than commenting on stories in the traditional media.
Stories they worked hard to get.

Heh even when there was that plane crash on the Hudson river, an ideal
case for citizen journalism, we only got a handful of photos.

Any event that requires talking to people or moveing outside major
western population centers? In all likelihood will only be covered by
traditional news.

If you were really prepared to scrape around a bit I suppose you could
argue that indymedia is something of a counter example but even that
is somewhat limited.

Wikipedia can be argued to be slightly different since it pulls
background info from non news sources (books, journals specialist
publications) but for info on current events it still very much rides
on the back of the traditional news media.

--
geni

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[Charles Matthews]

Nathan wrote

>
> And it isn't so terribly unreasonable, the idea that news aggregators (who
> collate content, rather than create it) should be asked to pay some portion
> of their revenue to the folks who actually do the work. Our role is a bit
> different, since we combine a broad range of references into representative,
> but cohesive and unique, coverage of a topic. Google and other sites just
> pull links - the most they might do is write an introductory blurb of about
> a sentence. I don't personally see that as much different than a normal
> search engine function, but I can see where the news people are coming from
> on this one.
>  

It's certainly not reasonable to ask anyone to pay to link to your
webpage. If you don't think people should be able to link freely to your
content, don't put it on the Web.

Of course it's economics telling here, and the fact that newspapers
weren't smart enough to set up a cartel a decade or more ago, so that
online news would be subscriber-only.

Charles


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[Sage Ross]

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton@...> wrote:

> Do we have any stats on how often people click the links in
> references? I suspect not. It would be good if we could get some,
> though.
>

Slightly tangential, a few days ago I was trying to figure out how
this Google News listing algorithm works and how much traffic it's
driving to us.  The most interesting thing I found was this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo

It was linked from the World News section of Google News; I noticed it
in the last few hours of 16 June UTC (and at the time it was listed,
it had only a single author and had been created that day).  According
to http://stats.grok.se/en/200906/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Omar_Bongo
, it only got 35 hits for 16 June.  The next day it got over 300 hits,
but I suspect most of these were internal hits, from the editors
discussing whether to include it on the main page for "In the news",
from the current events portal, and from [[Omar Bongo]].  I'm not sure
if the Google News link persisted into 17 June or not.

Based on what I've seen of articles with multiple links to recent news
stories, regardless of when they were created or how many people have
contributed, I suspect that inclusion in Google News is based on
traffic and/or links *from* Wikipedia to the stories Google News has
identified as a group.  I haven't seen any cases where an article was
listed with only a single link to a current news story.

It might be worthwhile to do some tests by creating articles in a
controlled manner with different numbers of links to news stories, to
get a better sense of what it takes for Google News to pick up a new
article.

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)

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[Steve Summit]

>> "So, in essence, many Wikipedia articles are another way that the work
>> of news publications is quickly condensed and reused without
>> compensation."
>>
>> What the fuck. Is there a journalist in the last four years who hasn't
>> used Wikipedia as their handy universal backgrounder?
>
> Journalists use each other's work all the time without, as far as I
> know, paying each other anything. It's a completely ridiculous
> complaint.

I didn't read it as a complaint; more of a rueful acknowledgement.
(As Charles Matthews has already pointed out, it's factually
quite accurate.)

Rightly or wrongly, journalism is widely viewed as being a dying
industry if not a downright dinosaur.  And if the journalists
(and the journals) all disappear, we're going to be hurting for
reliable sources, so if it's a problem, it's our problem, too.

I'm not saying we're doing anything wrong, any more than Google
News is doing anything wrong.  But as Zachary Seward has
described [1], we're viewed (by Google itself) as one of the
web-2.0-ey things that will displace conventional journalism.

This isn't the place to debate how conventional journalism
can rescue itself (or where the new niche for investigative
journalists will be), but it's a pretty interesting question.

[1] http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/google-news-experimenting-with-links-to-wikipedia-on-its-homepage/

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/6/22 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:

> Of course it's economics telling here, and the fact that newspapers
> weren't smart enough to set up a cartel a decade or more ago, so that
> online news would be subscriber-only.


And that they're blaming Google, because Google is making money
therefore (for some reason) they should get some. When the real
culprit is Craigslist destroying classifieds.


- d.

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[Charles Matthews]

Steve Summit wrote:

> I'm not saying we're doing anything wrong, any more than Google
> News is doing anything wrong.  But as Zachary Seward has
> described [1], we're viewed (by Google itself) as one of the
> web-2.0-ey things that will displace conventional journalism.
>
> This isn't the place to debate how conventional journalism
> can rescue itself (or where the new niche for investigative
> journalists will be), but it's a pretty interesting question.
>
>  

There's room for some amusement here ([[Raymond Smullyan]]-type
self-reference or the worm [[Ouroboros]], depending on your preferred
reading). The media is increasingly self-swallowing and at the same time
journalists are writing more and more about the media. But what WP does
cannot possibly displace totally "conventional journalism" in the sense
of originating reporting.  I'd certainly be interested in what someone
from the wire services had to say, rather than those who are in it for a
Pulitzer.  And there are other angles, of course. Proper information is
what moves markets, so those who have that information in a timely way
will always have something to sell.

Charles


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[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

David Gerard wrote:

> 2009/6/22 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:
>
>  
>> DG, lighten up on Noam Cohen a bit - he seems more disposed to be fair
>> to us than when I met him in Taipei in 2007, and seemed surprised that
>> any Wikipedians were actually, like, serious.  His point was factual
>> even if you may think it is misdirection.
>>    
>
>
> I took it as a direct message of his employer's stance. It's 100%
> indicative of the industry stance. Have you seen this *batshit insane*
> bullshit? (forwarded to me by Mike Peel):
>
> http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43823&c=1
>
> "The Newspaper Licensing Agency has announced it is to begin
> regulating its customers' use of hyperlinks to newspaper articles on
> the web."
>
> These people were trying to email me bills for WMUK to pay for the use
> of newspaper links at all on Wikipedia. I told them to try the
> Foundation.
>
>  

I think that falls squarely into the category of "You couldn't
make this stuff up!" Incredible, simply incredible.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Charles Matthews wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>  
>> 2009/6/22 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:
>>
>>  
>>    
>>> DG, lighten up on Noam Cohen a bit - he seems more disposed to be fair
>>> to us than when I met him in Taipei in 2007, and seemed surprised that
>>> any Wikipedians were actually, like, serious.  His point was factual
>>> even if you may think it is misdirection.
>>>    
>>>      
>> I took it as a direct message of his employer's stance.
>>    
> So we should be understanding ...
>  
>>  It's 100%
>> indicative of the industry stance. Have you seen this *batshit insane*
>> bullshit? (forwarded to me by Mike Peel):
>>
>> http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43823&c=1
>>  
>>    
> Interesting. They're attempting to raise money by circulating people
> saying "you should send us money". We should try that. Oh ...
>
>  

Category error. We aren't billing anyone. Donations are
a completely different animal.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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[geni]

2009/6/22 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@...>:
>> Interesting. They're attempting to raise money by circulating people
>> saying "you should send us money". We should try that. Oh ...
>>
>>
> Category error. We aren't billing anyone. Donations are
> a completely different animal.
>
>

It has been suggested that in some cases at least news organisations
should adopt a non profit model.

--
geni

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/6/22 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@...>:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:

>>> http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43823&c=1

>> Interesting. They're attempting to raise money by circulating people
>> saying "you should send us money". We should try that. Oh ...

> Category error. We aren't billing anyone. Donations are
> a completely different animal.


I would characterise their original email as "salescall-with-menaces."


- d.

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[WJhonson]

Hi welcome to Wikipedia.
Are you a journalist or other type of paid researcher?
If so, please click here so we can begin billing you 49 cents per
minute while you browse our site.
Thank you and have a nice day.








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