Wikipedia

Wikinews

Wikinews is a discontinued free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that gathered and reported news collaboratively through user-created content. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be written as a news story as opposed to an encyclopedia article."[2]

Wikinews
The current Wikinews logo
Logo
Screenshot
Detail of the Wikinews multilingual portal main page
Screenshot of the home page
Website type
News wiki
Available in 31 languages
List of languages
  • Albanian
  • Arabic
  • Bosnian
  • Catalan
  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Esperanto
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Gun
  • Hebrew
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Limburgish
  • Norwegian
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Shan
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Tamil
  • Ukrainian
Headquarters Miami, Florida
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Creator Wikimedia community
Website wikinews.org
Commercial No
Registration Optional
Users 2,953,817
Launched November 8, 2004; 21 years ago (2004-11-08)
Current status Read-only since May 4, 2026; 5 months ago (2026-05-04)
Content license
CC-BY 2.5[1]

On June 28, 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation's Sister Projects Task Force submitted a proposal for closing Wikinews. In March 2026, the WMF announced that Wikinews would be closed and made read-only on May 4 of that year.

History

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The beta version logo, used until February 13, 2005

The first recorded proposal of a Wikimedia news site was a two-line anonymous post on January 5, 2003, on the Wikimedia community's Meta-Wiki.[3][4] Daniel Alston, who edited Wikipedia as Fonzy,[5] claim to have been the one who posted it.[3][6] The proposal was then further developed by German freelance journalist, software developer, and author Erik Möller.[3] Early opposition from long-time Wikipedia contributors, many of them pointing out the existence of Wikipedia's own news summary, gave way to detailed discussions and proposals about how it could be implemented as a new project of the Wikimedia Foundation.[7]

The domain name wikinews.org was registered on April 2, 2004.[8] In November 2004, a demonstration wiki was established to show how such a collaborative news site might work.[7] A month later, in December 2004, the site was moved out of the "demo" stage and into the beta stage under public domain copyleft.[9][10] A German language edition was launched at the same time. Soon, editions in Italian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Norwegian, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, Hungarian, Greek, Esperanto, Czech, Albanian, and Tamil (in that chronological order) were set up.[9]

In September 2005, the project moved to the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.[10] On September 7, 2007, the English Wikinews published its 10,000th article.[11]

Closure

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On June 28, 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation's Sister Projects Task Force reviewed a proposal for closing Wikinews, followed by a three-month public consultation.[12][13][14]

On March 30, 2026, it was announced by the WMF that Wikinews would be closed and made read-only on May 4 that year.[15]

In an interview on the Fifth Court podcast, Jimmy Wales speculated that the main cause of Wikinews's lack of success was that the wiki community was unable to gain first-hand knowledge of events or communicate with relevant people. According to Wales, these factors limited the wiki's ability to report news independently.[16]

Interviews

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Wikinews reporter David Shankbone with Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2007

Wikinews reporters have conducted interviews with several notable people, including an interview in December 2007 with Israeli President Shimon Peres by Wikinews reporter David Shankbone. Shankbone had been invited to conduct the interview by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli foreign ministry.[17][18]

Other notable interviews have included writers, actors, and politicians, such as Augusten Burroughs,[19] several 2008 U.S. Republican Party presidential primaries candidates like Sam Brownback and Duncan Hunter,[17] and others like British politician Tony Benn,[20] writer Eric Bogosian,[21] New Zealand politician Nick Smith,[22] former New Zealand prime minister John Key,[23] World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau,[24] drag queen RuPaul,[25] and former Wikimedia Foundation executive Sue Gardner.[26]

List

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As of May 2026 , Wikinews content pages have been created in 36 editions, all of which were made read-only on the week of May 4 of that year.[9] The Wikinews sites had a total of 1,742,747 articles.[27]

Notes

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  • The "total pages" column refers to the number of pages in all namespaces, including both content pages and non-content pages (user pages, files, talk pages, "project" pages, categories, redirects, and templates).
  • "Users" refers to the number of user accounts, regardless of current activity – not the number of people or devices using (accessing) Wikinews.
  • "Active users" are registered users who have made at least one edit in the last thirty days [when?].
  • "Files" is the number of locally uploaded files.
  • The statistics are derived from API:Siteinfo on MediaWiki and updated at Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab on Commons every six hours, and are displayed with {{NUMBEROF}} via {{Wikinews stats}}.

Edition details

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Notes cannot be added directly into table header - please see "Notes" section just above
Details of Wikinews editions
Language Language (local) Wiki Content pages Total pages Edits Admins Users Active users Files
Russian русский ru 1,473,500 1,986,513 17,980,883 1 64,031 123 1
Serbian српски / srpski sr 53,138 81,187 3,180,177 1 7,056 14 0
Portuguese português pt 36,989 78,262 600,769 1 30,802 45 62
Polish polski pl 24,393 69,984 413,873 1 22,134 71 1,393
French français fr 24,204 81,732 915,298 1 56,723 133 1
English English en 22,237 265,904 5,027,354 0 2,953,817 1,263 3,345
Chinese 中文 zh 18,686 47,849 286,970 1 38,754 40 1
German Deutsch de 14,240 62,504 871,463 1 36,010 28 65
Italian italiano it 12,704 44,842 1,008,386 1 29,890 165 114
Spanish español es 12,331 50,794 745,938 1 48,408 48 0
Czech čeština cs 9,267 18,894 88,731 1 7,162 30 1
Dutch Nederlands nl 4,872 15,746 169,287 1 12,196 12 0
Catalan català ca 4,801 14,611 179,044 1 10,692 8 0
Japanese 日本語 ja 4,104 36,536 212,642 1 29,866 24 1
Arabic العربية ar 3,392 58,926 257,346 1 22,381 53 2
Greek Ελληνικά el 3,086 12,845 66,492 1 3,930 11 0
Tamil தமிழ் ta 3,053 17,636 60,761 1 7,767 14 0
Limburgish Limburgs li 2,630 4,166 26,867 1 1,051 6 0
Swedish svenska sv 2,169 8,646 50,080 1 7,267 12 1
Ukrainian українська uk 1,986 7,574 51,355 1 7,362 35 0
Persian فارسی fa 1,624 19,957 260,144 1 7,917 41 23
Romanian română ro 1,480 7,605 40,544 1 12,715 7 0
Turkish Türkçe tr 1,184 10,690 275,711 1 5,846 47 10
Esperanto Esperanto eo 1,162 12,231 177,611 1 4,487 12 0
Gun gungbe guw 1,045 1,763 20,679 1 567 17 0
Korean 한국어 ko 827 4,121 30,966 1 5,450 13 1
Albanian shqip sq 740 2,352 9,249 1 2,615 4 0
Norwegian (Bokmål) norsk no 624 4,104 22,404 1 4,196 9 2
Shan တႆး shn 538 3,928 13,525 0 472 -1 1
Hungarian magyar hu 494 5,225 29,626 1 1,477 9 0
Finnish suomi fi 464 5,755 59,640 1 4,965 11 1
Bosnian bosanski bs 365 4,995 24,302 1 3,090 8 0
Hebrew עברית he 281 5,993 51,269 1 5,549 56 54
Bulgarian български bg 99 4,044 25,351 1 2,971 15 1
Thai ไทย th 25 1,560 4,420 1 1,076 19 0
Sindhi سنڌي sd 13 2,093 5,734 1 813 -1 0

Statistics totals

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Selected totals of assets and involved people for all Wikinews editions
Content pages Total pages Edits Admins Users Active users Files
Total 1,742,747 3,061,567 33,244,891 34 3,461,505 177 5,080

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Siedlecki, Dariusz (September 20, 2005). "[Wikinews-l] The Wikinews Licensure Poll is closed". Wikinews-l (Mailing list). Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  2. ↑ Glasner, Joanna (November 29, 2004). "Wikipedia Creators Move Into News". Wired. Retrieved July 6, 2026.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. 1 2 3 Eloquence. "User:Eloquence/History - The history of Wikinews and my role in it". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  4. ↑ "Talk:Wikinews/Archive". Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 15, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  5. ↑ "User:Fonzy - Revision as of 08:16, August 1, 2003". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. August 1, 2003. Archived from the original on August 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  6. ↑ "Wikinews: Difference between revisions - Revision as of 18:39, November 9, 2005". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. November 9, 2005. Archived from the original on September 15, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023. Yes, I did make that anonymous post, I am not glory seeking, just getting the facts straight. Wikews was a terrible name I admit :p
  7. 1 2 "Wikinews/Vote". Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  8. ↑ "wikinews.org whois lookup". who.is. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 "Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab". Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on September 10, 2023. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  10. 1 2 "Wikinews switches to Creative Commons license". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. September 25, 2005. Archived from the original on May 12, 2013.
  11. ↑ "English Wikinews publishes 10000th article". Wikinews. Wikimedia Foundation. September 7, 2007. Archived from the original on August 5, 2022. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  12. ↑ "Public consultation about Wikinews", Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, Wikimedia Foundation.
  13. ↑ "Wikinews, a sister project to Wikipedia, faces imminent closure amid low web traffic". TheDesk.net. July 11, 2025. Retrieved January 13, 2026.
  14. ↑ "Proposal for Closing Wikinews - Meta-Wiki". meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved April 3, 2026.
  15. ↑ "Board of Trustees Approves Closure of Wikinews". meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved March 30, 2026.
  16. ↑ Tottenham, Mark (July 1, 2026). "Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, on trust, AI and why the internet still needs rules". The Fifth Court (Podcast). No. 152. Event occurs at 39:03.
  17. 1 2 Jones, K.C. (January 14, 2008). "Wikinews Gets Big Interview: Israeli President Shimon Peres". Information Week. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  18. ↑ Rose, Adam (January–February 2009). "The Wikinews Ace: Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on May 9, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  19. ↑ Asper, Colleen (April 2008). "David Shankbone with Colleen Asper". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on April 23, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  20. ↑ "Wikinews interviews: Tony Benn on U.K. politics". Wikinews. August 12, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  21. ↑ "Eric Bogosian on writing and the creative urge". Wikinews. April 17, 2008. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  22. ↑ "Nick Smith responds to claims he is New Zealand's worst behaved politician". Wikinews. January 8, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  23. ↑ "Exclusive video interview with New Zealand Opposition leader, John Key". Wikinews. May 23, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  24. ↑ "Wikinews interviews World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau". Wikinews. August 16, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  25. ↑ "RuPaul speaks about society and the state of drag as performance art". Wikinews. October 6, 2007. Archived from the original on January 5, 2024. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  26. ↑ "Interview with Sue Gardner of the Wikimedia Foundation". Wikinews. October 24, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
  27. ↑ "Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab – Wikimedia Commons". Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on March 30, 2023. Retrieved February 5, 2023.
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