Jimmy Wales is the president of Wikia and a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. As one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia and the source of information on the web, he wants to tackle fake news problems by launching a venture called Wikitribune.
His goal for Wikitribune, is to offer "factual and neutral" articles that help combat the problem of "fake news".
Wikitribune is a global news site that aims to feature stories by professional journalists. With their articles vetted and fact-checked by volunteers, Wikitribune wants to make sure that maximum transparency about the sources of each information is available.
As a start, Wales is intending Wikitribune to cover general issues, such as U.S. and UK politics, through to specialist science and technology.
Wales' project is crowdfunded by contributions from supporters. The initial plan, is to hire 10 reporters after Wikitribune is able to reach its first funding goal. This community contributors play the key part in Wikitribune, ensuring that its contents are always supported by as much extra information shared with the readers as possible.
Describing Wikitribune as the "news by the people and for the people," Wales said: "This will be the first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen, editing them live as they develop, and at all times backed by a community checking and rechecking all facts."
Wikitribune is different from Wikinews, a separate venture from Wikimedia Foundation. Wikinews crowdsources stories from around the world and allows anyone on the web to publish their own contents there. While Wikinews can be the source of information, it often features outdated stories, something that people won't expect from a news website.
This is where Wikitribune steps in.
