Week5

I was very impressed in the internationalization and translation efforts that have made such a language diverse encyclopedia project. Although all are different language versions of Wikipedia, each is a perculiar project on its own.I was also intrigued by the mediation aspects of Wikipedia that are necessary for conflict resolution. It seems to be such a huge undertaking to continuously police the project for vandalism, spam, and other abuse. It is interesting that there remains a strong commitment to keeping Wikipedia open for anyone to edit. I can imagine that article conflict often arises over politically or historically-charged events. I'm sure it is not an easy task to mediate content development.

The article, The Hidden Order of Wikipedia, discusses the feature article process of Wikipedia. The article discusses commons-based peer-production and self-governance. However, much of the content focuses on the making of a Wikipedia feature article and its supporting processes. The authors examined feature articles and their "talk" pages to gain insight on the development process

I like the opinions page that accompanies each news article allowing readers to add their own thoughts. I note that there is no reporter's name on this article and the article's history page doesn't reveal full identies of the authors. I hope that there is enough anonymity assured to Wikinews reporters who could be putting themselves at risk for contributing.

Finally, I visited the WikiMedia Projects page. While familiar with many of the projects, I decided to learn more about Wikinews.I was unaware of Wikinews before visiting this page. However, I think it is an especially important project in a world where many people cannot trust the news agencies in their own regions. Or, where the news in their region may be completely ignored. I decided to look at the news account of the Olympic torch lighting .The content was similar to the coverage on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I didn't read anything I didn't already know. However, it had been reported on CBC that the coverage of the protestor was never carried in the Chinese media. I wonder how many Chinese could access this Wikinews article to learn about the protestor.