Wiki wiki
I lurked in a chatroom today that was devoted to discussing wikinews and blogging. It sounds as if bloggers would like to get feeds for wikinews stories.
[A wiki seems to be a great way to run a class. Take a look at this wiki from the Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction. Mundane: have students sign up for office hours on a wiki.]
Back to the news — I like the idea of wikinews, but the entries I flipped through so far (very limited sample) seemed to suffer from the disease that afflicts sitcoms: anything written by committee is worse than it needs to be. The flat, affectless tone of the wikinews stories isn't appealing, and several seemed to be based on reporting done by mainstream sources. On the other hand, wikinews is just starting, and may provide a good place for independent reporting to be found.
I'd love it if wikis could be visual as well as textual. Why can't we see furious editing of a page as a pulse?