What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.

In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

......

Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

1984, George Orwell

Despite Grass's prolific career and widespread literary influence a full one half of the WP article focuses on his disclosure in the past year on his SS involvement. 3/4 of the articles references are on the involvement.

Yet even while excessively dwelling on this recent event the article fails to shed any light on the only fact that would matter, "was his SS participation voluntary."

In 2007, Grass published an account of his wartime experience in The New Yorker, including an attempt to "string together the circumstances that probably triggered and nourished my decision to enlist."

The article also abruptly ends the with incident without any kind of conclusion paragraph providing perspective into his overall career.

It happened as it did to many of my age. We were in the labour service and all at once, a year later, the call-up notice lay on the table. And only when I got to Dresden did I learn it was the Waffen-SS.

Recentism means crappy articles now for a better one later. The minor dangers in undue weight get evened out once everything shuffles out, and that's a net benefit.

It really would be better to stand back and get a little perspective. Let Wikinews handle the here-and-now, and Wikipedia come in later and try to get the long view.

But people get slandered -- or worse -- in the 'here and now' while you wait for someone to come along and shuffle it out later.

I'm not saying that is what happened here, but it is a problem. The rush to write something leads to junk that gets scraped and stays afloat long after the original article is fixed.

It really would be better to stand back and get a little perspective. Let Wikinews handle the here-and-now, and Wikipedia come in later and try to get the long view.

Most news stories are deliberately written for the lowest common denominator, so it's difficult to screw up.

The Teeming Millions can meaningfully contribute.

And the articles will be as good as the sources.

... subject to the abilities of the contributors.

If someone is getting lots of press for <X>, it WILL get added to the article. It doesn't matter if it's over on Wikinews too because no one reads Wikinews. A newbie will look at the article, notice that <event> is conspicuously absent, and add it while thinking about how they're helping build an encyclopedia. My solution would be to shove most current event information into sub-articles, then merge the relevant info into the core article once the hullabaloo dies down.

I suppose the cynical view would be that the WP types simply want greater content control, and/or see WikiNews as a poor cousin.

If so, why even bother with a Wikinews article when you know you're just going to move it to the Big Brother eventually? It's just pointless sleight of hand.

Because news isn't always encyclopedic.

The thing about "recentism" is that when you record things really well as they're happening, you can get a really great depth of coverage that becomes more difficult to match as time passes. It's like telling some athlete with a lot of potential to wait until he's 30 or 40 to get serious about the sport. You record it now, people can read it and benefit from it now, and long past the point when it's guilty of some make-believe sin for being recent, it will become great, detailed history. The article gets unbalanced due to current events? Blame it on the inadequate coverage of the past and fix that. Bring up the bad to match the good, don't bring down the good to match the bad. Create extensive detail on everything.

I agree. When doing research on old events, what I've seen looking through 50-year old magazines like Time and Television is quite different than what history books have recorded. Paramount's first television network, the old Paramount Television Network (1949-1953), for example, was completely written out of history. You miss those things reading condensed versions from 40 or 50 years later.

An encyclopedia isn't supposed to be exhaustive, and the folks over at ED don't use the acronym "TL;DR" just for a joke... There's an ideal length for every article, and finding that length used to be the domain of experienced professional encyclopedists. On WP, it's the domain of whoever happens to come along.

Increased use of sub-pages or off-wiki article development would be a good thing, IMO, but people don't get the same level of instant gratification that way. So you rarely see that, unfortunately.