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A multilingual data-enabled service for Wikinews.

Wikinews Pulse is a proposed multilingual service, to be hosted at https://wikinews.org, and to serve the various language editions of Wikinews. This concept developed in response to the public consultation about Wikinews.

It will build a more universal, data-driven version of w:Portal:Current events. The portal will have generated headlines displaying a variety of daily events from the rich data on Wikidata. Headlines will then link out to relevant updated Wikipedia articles and pages on the various language editions of Wikinews.

Wikimedia New York City is interested in stewarding development of this project, in the same way that Wikimedia Deutschland has historically for Wikidata, and in working with the global Wikinews and wider communities on its implementation. A few Wikidata editors are developing specific ideas for libraries to implement this on the talk page.

Endorsements

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  • I endorse this. It's pretty similar to an idea I once had of using the Abstract Wikipedia framework but for Wikinews in order to make the project easier to run in multiple languages. DraconicDark (talk) 21:29, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe it's a good idea to help revitalize Wikinews. Wikinews is a special project with a different way of function, but with huge potential. NikosLikomitros (talk) 21:44, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Hope this will increase translations. Gryllida 06:53, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I have been thinking about this for a long time. It will be much easier to translate in the future. I think this has to be done with respect for local communities and volunteers, but some recent meetings and discussions have made me question this. edited on 21/07/2025 ~ Sheminghui.WU (talk) 08:05, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. A useful idea, and helps reconnect the different ways news is distributed across the projects now. –SJ talk  10:25, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • With or without relation to Wikinews or to the current discussion about the possibility of closing Wikinews, this is a good idea. The current way of writing the current events on the main pages and on pages like Portal:Current events and the similar pages in Wikipedia in other languages works in practice in several large languages, but there are several problems with it: 1. In languages with large communities, where there are a lot of people who write articles and maintain these pages, it is completely manual and unstructured, and depends on editing a lot of templates and other difficult markup, so even though it works, it's quite inefficient. 2. In the small languages, it doesn't work well, because they have fewer people, so the technical systems that are merely inefficient in the larger languages are dysfunctional in the smaller ones. 3. There is no structured way to translate or synchronize news across languages. All of these problems are fixable with some investment of design and engineering resources (not necessarily by the WMF), and they can really upgrade the experience for both the readers and the editors, and make the presentation of news on Wikipedia more multilingual, more attractive, and more popular, and bring in new users. Just think about it: these are news presented by Wikipedians, people who probably already have the best reputation for fact-checking, neutrality, and choosing what's important on the whole world-wide web. Making the process for editing them better is a worthwhile investment. And it may also be a step towards improving Wikinews, but even if it isn't, it's still a good thing. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:18, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can see the idea of a multilingual Wikinews working out. I have proposed a similar kind of idea myself. I also think it can focus on creating a more 'news-like' reader experience and could benefit from improved SEO and subscription mechanisms, so we can reach more readers.
Using more visual representations, such as graphs or charts, could be another interesting way to present news or current affairs. -- Asked42 (talk) 21:55, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support the idea of expanding or revitalizing the concept behind Wikinews. I'd also love to see a strong focus on platforms that are intentionally mobile-friendly, easy to use, and built with a true keep it simple (KISS) mindset. --Oscar_. (talk) 04:59, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support this proposal but I don't strong support it. I want this site to be rebuild. We want 2 years time for it. -- Mobashir - 🇧🇩 (talk) 08:59, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikimedia is a place of collaboration, not activism. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:15, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse with the caveat that I don't think it should be any editorial selection of individual news items by editors, it should all be data-driven and based on what is added to Wikidata. The work to do for this community should be to define the queries that makes that selection and layout the functions nicely. ♥Ainali talkcontributions 17:34, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I endorse this idea, as long as it fits the "Wikisource model" described at User:Sbb1413/Multilingual models, where I have described the pros and cons of different multilingual models of WMF wikis in use. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:12, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't "get" how this proposal works, yet, but to have an officially recognized chapter lend its attention, that by itself is enough to endorse. -- Zanimum (talk) 18:19, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • i could endorse if this would not be the typical US american worthless news style, with 90% "attack" "law" "police" "crime" distributing fear ... which already michael moore critizized so much in his "bowling for columbine" movie. the cited Portal:Current events is exactly this style. having stewardship for such a thing in the united states would then be poisonous. having it in canada, germany, austria or such countries, yes, that might work out. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 21:38, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Collaboration with Wikimedia New York City could benefit English Wikinews, even if Pulse is not ultimately adopted by our readers. The project would likely benefit from fresh perspectives and external support. Michael.C.Wright (talk) 17:26, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support The public seem to really want fact-focused news and are badly let down even by reputable news outlets. WikiNews isn't fulfilling its potential, and the strengths of the enwikipedia current events portal match the failings of a lot of other news sources. So this proposal seems to respond to multiple problems. The strength of a wiki-based news service is probably not in original reporting, but in "explainers" (for background on news stories), fact-checking, and data visualisation. MartinPoulter (talk) 21:04, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Slowking4 (talk) 16:22, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I propose that Wikinews be converted from human-written journalism to our AI experiment. Wikinews could be AI summaries of Wikipedia articles on current events, and it could be the space where we begin training people to interact with AI-generation of content based on Wikipedia and Wikidata. I proposed this at Talk:Public_consultation_about_Wikinews#Wikinews_can_be_the_WMF's_test_case_for_AI_editing. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:28, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support YES, I have been wanting to put together a project exactly like this for years, I have even run some workshops developing how it could work, see WikiFeed, I would be very keen to do organising in the UK around this project with Wikimedia UK and my college LCPT. --EdSaperia (talk) 14:29, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - As long as you do not try to actually amalgamate separate Wikinews websites into one, I am all for setting up a multilingual Wikinews+ feed that attempts to link together Wikidata entries and Wikinews articles from different language Wikinews.Wikiwide (talk) 18:23, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • IT WAS ALL ALREADY DONE in Russian Wikipedia SINCE 2009. But due to occupation of Russian Wikipedia by group of extremists this was spoiled. With ignorance from flawed WMF. --Ssr (talk) 07:19, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I Support Support this concept and its purpose, which seems like a good initiative to help restructure Wikinews. Juan90264 (talk) 08:33, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for this concept. It might help both of internationalization as well as over all coverage, aside from further effects. --Matthiasb (talk) 19:59, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Preliminary limited support - I think this is a good concept but probably not as a separate project and not related to wikinews which is currently under evaluation anyway and has very low use: instead I'd suggest to build out and improve existing and potential Current events portals and make them better known and used more. w:en:Portal:Current events that has already been named here is a primary current place for it. There also are articles like year in xyz which could maybe be used in some other UI for example. Here are two concrete proposals: 1. A tile for the Current events portal in the Wikipedia app 2. A Current events portal in Wikimedia Commons (see also c:Category:Current events) where media of current events are shown and this could then also be integrated into the Wikipedia events portal to some degree as well as into the Commons app. To briefly come back to Wikinews: I think one could simply use the lead section of articles about current events and sections about the current event. It's of course an option to put all this on wikinews but I think that would be best only in addition if that project remains at all since other projects are used and found far more. --Prototyperspective (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am against closing Wikinews. Currently, the number of participants is growing along with the number of original articles. Machine uploads are a thing of the past and are gradually being removed. --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 07:49, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The more interproject collaboration the better. Well very well (talk) 10:18, 4 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support Strong support With the rise of new technologies, we need an impartial source of information that is language-independent and unbiased. In this context, having a single Wikibase-driven Wikinews is a better idea than having a bench of inactive Wikinews editions. Many techniques like GraphRAG can allow the enrichment of a such a knowledge graph. This resource will be very useful in driving artificial intelligence applications for event and burst detection and classification. This allows to predict what are the Wikipedia pages that are vulnerable to mass editing on time, allowing an enhanced admin work. --Csisc (talk) 08:18, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support -- I like the idea of integrating multilingual news sources together, with human- and AI-curation and translation. I think it's constructive for WMNY to take the lead. I would like to contribute to Wikinews. Is there training? How can I get trained to be a reviewer or translator? If I know of breaking news, how do I get it out there in a useful way quickly? Maybe it would be good to have office hours as the Govdirectory project does. -- econterms (talk) 03:09, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi, as far as I know there are some tutorial features being developed for the English Wikinews. However, actually getting started with writing isn’t too hard — once you read the simple guidelines you can boldly give it a try. Welcome!@Econterms ~ Sheminghui.WU (talk) 10:57, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure how this will work. It is news that a Jim Lovell died today. How would the Pulse know? Does it just scan all Wikidata for the addition of a date? I guess my ambivalence boils down to this: How will daily events be selected? And how would you generate a headline from a Q-item? Abstract Wikipedia doesn't have to worry about the latter problem as article titles seem like they'll be the names of Q-items, but Q-items at Wikidata currently do not have headlines and it would be an undertaking to add them.

    news presented by Wikipedians, people who probably already have the best reputation for fact-checking
    — User:Amire80 12:18, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

    There is still a great conservative force field at enwiki opposing Wikidata integration on verifiability grounds. While I'm personally of the non-conservative force, I agree with the other side that we shouldn't use wiki-data that does not have an attached reference (which is most of them), and there are many who will disagree with the notion that even cited wiki-data is as reliable as Wikipedia. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:52, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The intention is not to just automatically create headlines from a big scan of whatever happens to be on Wikidata at the moment. It's for the machine-assisted aggregation of events from Wikipedia, Wikidata, and outside journalistic sources, but with the actual selection and curation of daily events being done by human editors, the wiki way. Pharos (talk) 14:12, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, weak support per above then. Could put enwiki's In the news out of a job but that column needs to be reformed anyways. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:36, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support. --Wyslijp16 (talk) 18:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppositions

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In fact, this would eventually make the project feel like Wikipedia. News media’s coverage is not well-suited for data-driven, archival management. It’s hard to categorize each piece one by one. Our news reports should be categorized like "Asia > China > Chinese Society"—if we were to adopt Wikipedia-style categorization and data management, it would be completely unsuitable for news media. This would ultimately render the project worthless, as it would only end up copying content from other media outlets and relying on third-party sources—making it almost identical to Wikipedia.
I personally think that if we follow the example of Russian Wikinews and establish a multilingual portal—like how bbb.com has bbb.com/chinese—this should help reduce the financial burden on the WMF, related sponsors, and organizations. I only support this concept on that.
Additionally, someone has pointed out on the Wikinews public consultation talk page that our links with other projects are not as few as stated in the review report. In fact, by inserting Wikipedia’s {{wikinews}} template into the text, many news reports actually receive a significant number of views.
I particularly think we need to draw a comparison with Wikivoyage. From my personal experience—having contributed to Wikivoyage in the past—only entries about cities or regions on Wikipedia include links to Wikivoyage pages. What’s more, Wikivoyage maintains credibility even when its content isn’t written with strict neutrality. The same applies to Wikinews. I’ve provided a more detailed explanation of this in the public consultation talk page mentioned earlier.Kitabc12345 (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that original reports should be included. Gryllida 20:09, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think Wikidata categorization could work. Each item has a date and a place, if this is possible. Wikipedia does not have much to do with it. Gryllida 20:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Russian Wikinews already use Wikidata linkage. E. g. en-article "w:Wikipedia" is wikidated d:Q52 and is Russian-Wikinews linked n:ru:Категория:Википедия (17 subcats, 914 root items). Almost everything in this area is already invented and implemented. We just need to get rid of enemies of Wikimedia movement such as Victoria Doronina and her supporters, who want to destroy Wikinews, and continue to invent and implement in normal way, as it was supposed initially. -- Ssr (talk) 11:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please pay attention: 17 subcats contain HUNDREDS more items, together with 914 root items articles measure in THOUSANDS. And THEY ARE NOT IMPORTED from other websites, as other websites don't write about Wikipedia. It's all ORIGINAL content made, and being made, by dozens, or hundreds, of worldwide Wikimedians over 20 years (some examples). Why close? I see only one answer: this freedom of speech and content makes someone in WMF feel bad because they write truth about them. Therefore, this is definitely an attack. Even someone says this is not attack. This is attack! By saying this is not attack one doesn't make it non-attack. --Ssr (talk) 06:00, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I, since 2008, Support Support the idea of developing Wikinews (as well as other projects) in the way of integration with Wikipedia (how it should be from the start, if we trust WMF), as well as I support AI help in this, I agree with Kitabc12345 and Gryllida that original reports should be included, and again have to I emphasize that to "build a more universal, data-driven version" of something, one should first have an experience in simpler things of the same kind. -- Ssr (talk) 03:59, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As the author of many articles (reports of cultural events) in different language versions, I believe that Wikinews is an important and necessary project and it should not be closed or transformed into something. My reports have high traffic. Perhaps I am the only one (not counting bots) who writes news articles in different languages, and therefore I know the trend well: in Russian, English and Chinese - high traffic, in Portuguese, Italian, French and Esperanto — low. Wikinews should exist. In particular - Russian, English and Chinese sections, as the most read. I see representatives of these language versions here :-) — Виктор Пинчук (talk) 17:35, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nice to see you here Виктор Пинчук, and yes he just published an article on zhwn. I am another person who writes for Wikinews in multiple languages, althrough mainly Chinese, but I also publish article on enwn, kown and jawn. I believe there are others like this, and yeah, kown and jawn (especially kown) are quite cold ~ Sheminghui.WU (talk) 23:36, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing in the Wikinews Pulse proposal about excluding original reports, you appear to be misreading a comment about a semi-related proposal that GZWDer has made on the talk page. Pharos (talk) 19:01, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose There are better news aggregates, like ground.news. There is also the news fact checker snopes.com. I think half of wikinews languages need to go.--Snævar (talk) 22:36, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You may also consider opposing Wikipedia as there are better encyclopedias that are written by clever educated scientists while Wikipedia is written by random strangers and can't be trusted. So no need to have such a doubtful thing while there are better things. -- Ssr (talk) 03:58, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually my main thing is that doing an aggregate news site is very much possible automatically and does not need human users. "You may also consider opposing Wikipedia" is out of line, as in inappropriate. I do not agree with your statement, actually I say that Wikipedia is better than Britannica. If you would google the subject you would actually find that there are news articles and research supporting both sides. Wikipulse is more clear cut than that. Snævar (talk) 09:57, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    One of several inherent advantages of a project in our ecosystem is that a Wikidata-enabled news aggregator could be just as multilingual as Wikidata, available more or less instantly in every language from Chinese to Icelandic to Dagbani to Yiddish without use of LLMs. See more context and ideas at Talk:Wikinews Pulse. Pharos (talk) 14:55, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    See en:Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process. "instantly in every language" you say, and then remove LLM's from the equation. There is two main ways I can see you thinking this. One is picemealing word by word into another language and the other is getting translations. You can not piecemeal a sentence into another language. As a multilingual user, let me tell you, that does not work, both because of declensions and different word order. As for translations, Machine Translations (a part of LLM's) are used to help in a tool called Content Translation, but even that is not good enough on it's own. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php$8320 where it is configured not to have an Machine Translation (MT) assisted tool active on 5 languages, and at line 8240 we have limitations of how much unchanged MT there can be in an edit. An aggregate news site like this one should ideally aggregate local news, bypassing that Wikidata system and LLM issues. Even in an small country, with less than a million habitats, like Iceland there is a local aggregate news source. I would not even consider reading Wikinews Pulse in Icelandic. Wikinews in Icelandic was tried when the Wikinews user group (while it lasted) considered being based from Iceland. Icelandic Wikinews failed, and translated news headings on Wikinews pulse into Icelandic will also fail. Snævar (talk) 09:49, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I should have been clearer, the proposed method of natural language generation is Wikifunctions, which is a major Wikimedia Foundation project with ambitious goals along these lines that it is still in the early stages of achieving. Pharos (talk) 20:40, 6 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose I ardently oppose this. I have been involved at English WN for over 15 years (as Bddpaux). Yes, there are TOO MANY WN language-editions....but WN isn't really broken. We just need more reporters and more reviewers. Nearly EVERYONE who quacks negative stuff about WN doesn't even know what the hell it is or what it even does. Less quacking -- more doing is what is needed. WN does and continues to generate meaningful original news. Essentially, most WMF goons make up their minds and then launch a 'discussion' about it. To quote Renee Zellwegger from the film, "Cold Mountain": They put the clouds in the sky, and then stand out in it, yelling,It's raining!!--Bddpaux (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You appear to be misunderstanding this proposal. The idea is not to close down English Wikinews, but rather to add an additional multilingual service, to be hosted at https://www.wikinews.org, and to serve all the various language editions of Wikinews. Pharos (talk) 18:27, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment CommentI am open to that as a possibility -- depending on the larger framework.--Bddpaux (talk) 20:21, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose www.wikinews.org or a portal to other sites on the wikinews.org subdomain. It shouldn't be something completely different. * Pppery * it has begun 20:42, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have doubts whether this (which sounds a lot like your common news aggregators with the word “Wiki” slapped on it) would actually add something of significant educational value to the web. SecretName101 (talk) 23:07, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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