User:Tom Morris/Don't transwiki to Wikinews, thanks

In deletion debates about articles covering topics in the news, Wikipedians often mutter the phrase "transwiki to Wikinews". This essay describes exactly why the Wikinews community probably aren't interested.

Wikinews articles need to be newsworthy. That is to say, the article has to be about something new. With a Wikipedia deletion debate, they last a week. If at the end of the week-long discussion, the consensus is to transfer a story to Wikinews, it's already a stale story. To publish it, we'd have to update it with a new angle. (Encyclopedic) facts don't stop being facts, but news stops being new and newsworthy.

Wikinews has different sourcing requirements. There are sourcing practices on Wikipedia that wouldn't fly on Wikinews, and there are ways of sourcing a story on Wikinews that aren't suitable on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Wikinews uses the Attribution license without the ShareAlike requirement. The original creator and all editors of the article would have to consent to this change in license.

Wikinews has a different writing style: a Wikinews editor would have to reformat and rewrite large chunks of the article for it to be an acceptable Wikinews article. That's probably as much work as writing it from scratch.

Transwiki transfer of Wikipedia articles may be useful for other sister projects, but (even with the legal considerations worked out), in most situations it isn't useful for Wikinews.

So, thanks but no thanks.