The good fellows behind Wikipedia have now launched three new news and gossip sites (open-source magazines) that are based on the same user-driven publishing model. Rather than the original styled reporting, the articles are written in a blog like fashion. And the responsibility of truthful entries lies on the shoulders of the users themselves.
The just launched wikis are Politics, Entertainment and a US specific Local site that allows the users to submit news related to their cities. The working model is same as that of Wikipedia. Anyone can submit the news and edit them too. The ranking is done on the basis of number of votes done on a specific story.
The most interesting part of these new wikis is that they feature advertising too that is unquestionably not based on Wikipedia model. However, the contributors are not paid for their work. Dan Lewis, co-founder of ArmchairGM and vice-president of business development at Wikia commented:
Adding Entertainment, Local and Politics to the mix is just the first in a series of steps we will take to better enable people to come together online around common interests.
No doubt, Wikia has done the right thing by using Wikipedia’s model but will they be able to profit from the efforts of millions of people for free? It looks like they are somehow inspired by what Jason Calcanics said earlier.
Comments
politics.wikia.com is great lots of good info can be found there.