The current thematic organizations page on Meta lists Wikinewsies as a "planned thematic organization". Current status is that "Affcomm recommended to the board organization be approved". The Affiliations Committee's advice to that effect can be found here (resolution passed with 8 votes in favor, 0 votes against, 0 abstentions, 1 votes not cast on 11 November 2013).
According to wikinewsie.org, Wikinewsie was set up in 2007 by Brian McNeil:
Wikinews:Credential verification indicates that "Accredited Wikinews reporters should receive an email address of the form firstname.lastname@wikinewsie.org."Why wikinewsie.org?
Even in its earliest days, Wikinews operated a community accreditation programme; but, to avoid any liability risks the WMF declined use of @wikinews.org email addresses by contributors. So, with many attempts to obtain comment or interviews failing because of Hotmail or Gmail addresses being ignored, Brian McNeil set up wikinewsie.org in 2007.
Alongside a closed wiki for use in managing longer-term investigative work, adopting @wikinewsie.org email addresses continues to result in more responses to our inquiries as freelance journalists.
Among the 23 active Wikinews reporters thus accredited to date (another 20 were accredited at some point in the past, but are no longer active) is Raystorm (T-C-L), otherwise known as WMF board member María Sefidari.
María is presently a non-voting adviser of the Affiliations Committee (she was a voting member and Aff-Comm's treasurer until her resignation in August 2013, after her election to the WMF board), indicating that this thematic organization appears to enjoy some WMF board support.
Wikinewsie's provisional board comprises:
The Wikinewsie Group has an IRC channel and a Google Group (see The Wikinewsie Group page header).Chairperson: LauraHale
Board: Pi zero, Brian McNeil, Bjarki S, ProtoplasmaKid
