When anyone shouldn't mean *anyone*

August 24, 2005 8:25 PM

Is there a general news site with open submissions like Wikinews, but with an editorial board that clears material before it's made public?

I've been submitting stuff to Wikinews recently, and the Wiki concept is pretty good, but it's very easy to abuse. Apparently something particularly distasteful was posted this morning, which I fortunately missed. I was wondering if any general news service with a desire for neutral point-of-view articles is available that has a 24/7 staff that checks material for abuse before it goes public? Quite frankly, a system where users have to spend time rushing around cleaning up after idiot children is not very attractive.

posted by krisjohn to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

OhMyNews. I'm sure I discovered this on Metafilter. The sum total of my experience with this site consists of one visit after the original FPP and one visit just now so I can't vouch for its quality. However, I can say that at least nominally it meets your criteria. There are citizen journalists and there is real editorial control from paid professionals.
posted by stuart_s at 11:46 PM on August 24, 2005

Well, not technically in the same way that Wikinews exists as one entity, but a lot of political sites such as DailyKos operate in this way. Kos readers can create their own blog posts which can be nominated up to the front page (a little like Kuro5hin, on whose software it's based), and sites such as CommonDreams and Google News actually aggregate a lot of blog and community sites. I don't think what you're talking about exists, though -- it's kinda like the failed Nupedia experiment that morphed into Wikipedia. They found that vetting everything through experts just took too long, and they didn't have daily deadlines.
posted by dhartung at 11:24 PM on September 2, 2005