> This is still up in the air but it has been mentioned on UK television > news in various contexts recently: because the business model of free > online newspapers funded by advertising doesn't seem to be brining in > the bucks, there is much discussion in the media as to whether online > newspapers will start charging their customers. > > It's just this second struck me that this could have dire consequences > for Wikipedia. Presumably we have millions of citations that point to > online newspaper content. If they decide to put their archives behind > a pay wall, what's going to happen to those citations? Are we going to > say that we accept that people will have to pay if they now wish to > verify a statement? Or are we going to have to a) laboriously > re-reference everything and b) lose a great deal of content that we've > been unable to find alternative citations for? > > Arguably I'm jumping the gun here. But it may be worth discussing in > advance as I reckon this issue isn't going to go away. > > Does anyone think I should post this to the 'Foundation' mailing list > too? >
All that is required is a reliable source, properly cited; not a free source. Whatever happens to the newspaper business, there will be mass distribution of the information they generate; otherwise, the new, viable business plan would not work. Fred _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l