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Despite the critics, Wikipedia has largely managed to dodge the many hurdles that such an ambitious undertaking involves -- mainly the reliance on the goodwill and commonsense of its contributors and editors.

Obviously, with every man and his dog being able to update the pages of such a site, there was always a very real risk that idiots would try to fill it with disinformation, advertising and other worthless flotsam. Fortunately however, incidents of such behaviour have been few and far between.

Well now the Wiki concept is being applied to news content with the imminent launch of WikiNews, a site that will allow anyone to become a news reporter and writer.

Unfortunately I have to voice concerns that the operators of this site are biting off quite a bit more than they can chew.

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This time the risks aren't just those of embarrassment, should someone post some bogus information, but the far more dangerous areas of defamation/libel, political/commercial bias, and a raft of other difficult to police areas.

If some fool adds a page to Wikipedia in which they claim that Tessla invented the telephone, no real harm is done.

However, if some fool writes a "news" story in which false and defamatory statements are made in respect to someone of substance, well then things can get very nasty very quickly. Likewise if someone simply swaps a few words around from a Reuters or AP newswire story -- the copyright suits will fly in double-quick time.

I sure hope the operators of the site are prepared for the responsibility they're taking onboard with this venture.

This leaves the editors with only a few options, none of which are particularly attractive:

• remove any stories that might possibly contain "risky" content
• employ an army of lawyers to vet the legality of each story
• try to pass responsibility back to the contributor

Ultimately, such a news service will be pretty much limited to non-mainstream subjects where the risk of contributions becoming highly subjective and biased according to the contributor's politics, religion or other beliefs.

The problem is that journalism is not just a case of writing about something in the news that interests the contributor. It requires research, adherence to some very important principles and ethics, and better than average language skills.

One only has to look at the calibre of contribution to so many newsgroup discussions to realise just how quickly WikiNews could dissolve into a factional fiasco where various activists simply seek to out-shout their opponents.

Sorry guys, user-generated news is a great idea but I believe the Wiki version will need a lot of (very hard) work on the part of editors and the site's operators if it's to become anything other than an amusing alternative to just another blog site.

Or have I got this all wrong?

From Unwitting to Willing Accomplice?
Yesterday I pointed out that the NZ Herald was perhaps an unwitting accomplice to a scam which operates under the banner of PaidSurveysOnline.com.

Well I know that those at the NZ Herald did read yesterday's column, and I also know that blocking ads from any particular advertiser on the Google Adsense service is a *very* simple operation that can be done in less than a minute.

That leaves me asking why, when I visited the technology section this morning, I was greeted with this.

How many more naive NZ Herald website visitors will have been sucked in and have their pockets lightened today, while the paper happily collects a few cents per "victim"?

Now what was I saying earlier today about "ethics" in the news industry?

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