User:VanishedUser sdu9asdsopa/accreditation

Response to content at this link

I agree with almost all of what Brian says above, save for his belief about the best time to apologise to Matthew, but that's up to the people involved and not something I wish to get into.

This seems like a perfect opportunity to reform our accreditation policy towards a more formal process, complete with ID and professional press cards. I know this has been discussed before, but here is my proposal. With regards to management, I would be happy to take on responsibility for managing the cards etc. as detailed below.

• Accreditation becomes more serious; there are no temporary accreditations and users must have properly proved that they are capable of representing Wikinews sufficiently and reliably. With that increased formality will come an increased understanding of the importance of it.

• If a user passes accreditation, they can then receive a Wikinews press card. There would be a set cost for this which would cover the card itself and the shipping of the card. There would also be a percentage of that fee which would go to BrianMC to pay for the Wikinewsie.org domain and email addresses. All accredited reporters would get this; the cost would not be prohibitive but would serve to enhance the responsibilities associated with accreditation. I would estimate the cost at between 5 and 10 pounds sterling.

• The cards will contain the reporter's real name and details, as well as a photo.

• The cards will need to be reissued once a year, with the reporters going through a short re accreditation process. This is necessary in order to seem like a reliable and proper news organisation.

I am happy to manage this and take responsibility for the card issuing and printing (obviously with someone else having details in case I drop dead tomorrow!). That would involve some method of formal identification-either to me or the foundation. I doubt the foundation will want to get too involved, so perhaps a select committee can handle the formal verification.

People being presented with the cards need some way of verifying the validity of the card and so we will obviously keep the current accredited users list, but also probably need a method of verifying by phone. As Brian says, that would need a few willing users to have their phone number available and I will be willing to be one of those to aid in the verification of accredited reporters.

This will result in a reduction in the number of accredited reporters, of course, but that's no bad thing and will drive home the responsibilities associated with this.

The benefits of this are-

• Keep wikinewsie.org email addresses, with Brian still managing but not having to foot such a steep bill
• A more serious accreditation process, enforced through no temporary accreditation, a serious voting stage and a fee for the services and press card, together with a yearly renewal.
• Press cards, for which the benefits are hopefully self evident.

So, what would need to be done if people thought this was a half decent idea(which it is!)-

• I would set up the press cards and the method of obtaining them, with consultation
• Discussion about the actual fee and discussion with Brian re costs of the domain etc
• A method set up for formal identification of accredited reporters
• A method for people at events etc. to verify a reporters accreditation

So, what do we think?    Tris   10:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)