User:Brian McNeil
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Brian McNeil
— Wikinewsie
As I amusingly like to put it, I'm so old I was born before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon; my birth was during the preceding February. That was in central Scotland, which I've now moved back to after around fifteen years based in Brussels, Belgium. Leases run out on properties, and relationships become strained. So, some sadness there, but I'm back in touch with old friends I've not seen in years in far-from-sunny Scotland.
As far as Wikinews goes, I first edited in January 2005. I didn't do much more until September that year when I wrote my first full article, Wal-Mart accused of workers rights violations. Since then, I've been main author on over 100 articles, done in-depth coverage of Thailand's insurgency problems in the Muslim-Malay southern provinces, documented the downfall of Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's then-Prime Minister, dabbled with reporting on newsworthy Wikimedia items such as the US government's vandalism, the "vetted" version "Wikipedia for Schools", and the making of the 2,000th Featured Article on English Wikipedia. The four or five Wikinews Featured Articles shown below may not seem a lot, but in total the project has only a little more than 100 out of 16,000 in that category.
In the intervening time since first becoming involved I've moved up to be one of the project's bureaucrats, administrators, and checkusers. In 2008 I was invited, expenses paid, to attend the annual Wikimedia Conference, Wikimania 2008. The event was held in Alexandria, Egypt; Craig Spurrier and I spoke, and answered questions, on Wikinews, attempting to encourage attendees to try and contribute to the project; I also managed to write about the US State Department's Diplopedia, which uses the same software as Wikipedia. Subsequent to that I was given privileged contact information with Google News which eventually saw the English-language Wikinews listed in Google News.
I instituted the current archiving policy, applying it and refining it as I put around 4,000 articles into an archived state. I have extensively worked on the Style Guide, various other guidelines and policies, plus the current welcome template {{howdy}} and the {{press release}} template for those non-clueful enough to try and get those on a neutral news site.
Lastly, I set up the wikinews.org domain, predominantly used to give accredited reporters more professional email addresses but also hosting a couple of, currently inactive, blogs and a closed MediaWiki install for confidential story development.
| – My Featured articles – |
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Accreditation Details
Disclaimer: "Accredited Wikinews reporters do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation, but are trusted contributors whom the Wikinews community has certified for the purposes of gathering information related to Wikinews articles." |
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My first edit was January 15, 2005; it just does not seem so long ago. In addition to the above accreditation I have been granted Administrator,Bureaucrat (I get a floor polisher and a mop & bucket), and CheckUser status by the community. I serve on the current project Arbitration Committee which is — thankfully — inactive. I'm on the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications Committee; an OTRS volunteer helping manage the press queue, and have over 100 articles to my name.
I have accounts on Meta, Commons, Wikisource, and Wikipedia, as well as a few on other languages for interwiki.
If you want to know some of the more odd things I get up to, give The Credit Crunch Blues a listen, the lyrics are mine.
Useful pages
Non-Wikinews stuff
Trophy cabinet
- See here for awards and accolades.
Miscellaneous stuff
- An attempt at a compact main page design
- User:Brianmc/Israel-Muslim relations coverage
- User:Brianmc/Definitive article template
Media mentions
- mis-attributed at a WMF "media officer", but quoted
- Cited from article on "Anonymous will be stopped"
- Interviewed by The Canadian Press
- Brian McNeil on Citizen Journalism interview for OurBlook done by Sandy Ordonez, former Press Officer with the Wikimedia Foundation (User:WikiBlue).
Work in progress-projects
- Request for Foundation assistance
- Wikinews workflow
- Random musings
- Writing contest 2010 – Starts Jan 25., 2010
- Wikimedia Radio – Attempting resurrection, Dec 17., 2009
Works elsewhere
- The Credit Crunch Blues, Creative Commons licensed
- I'd Like...
- Headaches on copyright/licensing with this one, and still just a very rough mix
- A Day in a Hero's Life - Windmill, Norway. Due for commercial release before mid-2010.
- (Part 2 features the somewhat mis-quoted lyrics I composed.)
