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Comment by sparkzilla | Hacker News Reader

It's not only feasible, we are already doing it! [1] I have also written extensively on why Wikipedia is not a newspaper [2] and the many flaws of Wikipedia for news-based content [2]

Larry's attempt to break down the news into bits is an interesting experiment (and I wish him the best of luck as he goes forward). I'm not sure he will be able to attract the user base he needs to make it work though. We pay our writers, and are moving to implementing a revenue-share model to reward our writers. I'm not sure if the "work-for-free-while-the-owners-get-rich model works any more.

[1]http://newslines.org [2]http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedia-is-not-a-newspaper/ [3]http://newslines.org/blog/wikipedias-13-deadly-sins/

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I appreciate the feedback and the connection! Clearly, the content creation models are quite different; our focus is pretty exclusively on hard news (for now); we summarize (and can rearrange) individual facts from many sources instead of making one narrative per story written by one person; and you don't rank the news in any meaningful way, as far as I can tell (do correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how).

We've got quite a few very motivated writers who find writing bitts to be fun, and they know they're working on a site that will be open content (complete with API) and thus a potentially forkable public resource. We're considering doing a profit-sharing system, but I'm worried about the effect that will have on the community. We haven't even hard-launched (the content is still behind a login), we have had minimal publicity, and yet we've got enough regular participants to have a decent evening edition. Relying exclusively on paid writers will prove a drain on resources and might pose a significant roadblock to allowing the site to scale. It's a good thing we didn't do that with Wikipedia...

Thanks Larry. I think breaking down the info into bits is interesting, it's something we have been looking into for other parts of our site (not news). BTW, weren't you paid to create the first 1000 or so Wikipedia articles?

I was Wikipedia's co-founder and first and so far only community manager/chief instigator. I did contribute a bunch of articles, don't know how many, while in that position. I wasn't paid per article.

If you don't pay people, you have to compensate them in other ways--especially in terms of community recognition and other evidence of the value of their work to the community/readership as a whole.

Are you at 1000 articles? How's your burn rate?

Our writers have added almost 25,000 posts on thousands of topics (a sample here http://newslines.org). So far, at $1 a post, that has cost $25,000. Some of our writers have made thousands of dollars. We just closed more investment are are building a revenue-share model that will give our writers even more money. People who get in early, and do consistent work will be able to make a lot of money.

Cool stuff. Best of luck to you.

Yes, may the best model win!

There's plenty of room for everyone. Best of luck.

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