"Writers", "editors", "copy-editors", "journalists"

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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CrowsNest
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"Writers", "editors", "copy-editors", "journalists"

Post by CrowsNest » Tue Oct 23, 2018 11:55 am

I generally don't waste my time on WikiTribune, I leave that to the Jimmy Wales obsessives of Wikipediocracy (668 posts and counting). There is however, something worthwhile to note in the latest news about that enterprise though.......

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/10/22 ... ial-exodus

In exactly the same way Wikipedia has co-opted the word "editor" to mean what the word "writer" once meant, in order to pretend that the role of editor is no longer important, indeed to hide the fact that on Wikipedia, it doesn't exist at all, the same sort of chicanery is now evident in how they intend to relaunch WikiTribune. They had already watered down the meaning of journalist and confused the meaning of editor, and somewhat mixed the two, but now they're going further....

Any random contributor can "publish", they may or may not be prevented from doing so by an "editor" who will most likely simply be another unpaid contributor, but not someone who considers themselves an editor in the original sense of the term, but more in the Wikipedia sense of being a writer. In this new arrangement, the role of the "professional journalist" is to merely assist the contributors in what looks suspiciously like a combined role of being a copyeditor (polish the copy without changing its meaning) and an advisor on how to be a journalist. Wikipedia still uses the term copyeditor, but it is not a paid role, anyone can volunteer to do it, it is considered low value grunt work.

Crucially, the role of "journalist" (paid) alongside a "contributor" now looks awfully like that of a tutor, or supervisor, or even dare I say it, editor, but crucially, not a "writer". They choose none of those terms for it because all of them imply there is a heirarchy to this relationship, where there will seemingly be none, they are to be equals (but not co-writers, in the original sense of that term). As far as I can tell, if an unpaid contributor tells a paid journalist to mind his own business, their suggestions/advice will only be incorporated if the 'community' deems them appropriate. Which is of course how Wikipedia "editors" create their copy.

So, just as with Wikipedia, with WikiTribune we are now seeing the same distortions and appropriations of the meaning of widely understood job titles, presumably to hide what is really going on (a bunch of unqualified fuckwits writing what you read, the only quality control being the collective wisdom of said fuckwits).

The question appears to be, is this a product of the open source/community driven movement, a necessary ingredient of the elimination of professionalism, or is it something specific to Jimmy Wales? Wikipediocracy will have their own opinion on who is to blame, of course. That is, if they ever get around to noticing this commonality at all.

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Re: "Writers", "editors", "copy-editors", "journalists"

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:35 am

I have not even bothered to follow WikiTribune in the past several months; what's going on? I don't see any more activity there than back in late 2017. Panyd is still pretending to be an "editor" along with Phil James, but they, Jimbo and Orel seem to be grinding the "Community" pages. So it's looking like a four-person wiki. That's really not good.

Hmm, they must be getting desperate:
https://www.wikitribune.com/project/wha ... ed-so-far/

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