User:Kevin Baas

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[edit] Text for briefs explanation

[edit] How does one write a brief?

To write a brief for an article, click on the "brief" link in the "This article is under development." box in the article, and write.

[edit] What does a brief include?

No images, no headers, just text. A one paragraph summary of the article.

[edit] What is a brief used for?

• Main Page lead
• Audio Wikinews Briefs
• RSS feed summary (not yet implemented)

[edit] How are briefs used?

• They are including in put in a main page lead, accessible via the Workspace -> "Update lead", by writting {{lead|<article name>|<image file>|<alternative text for browsers that don't support images>}} or {{main lead|...}} in the respective lead page.
• They are including in the News briefs by writting {{brief|<article name>}} in the respective brief page.
• They are included in the RSS feeds automagically.

But you need not worry about any of this, just write the brief, and an experienced user will update the leads and handle the radio news briefs.

[edit] We, The People

I've read all the stuff about how WikiNews is basically regurgitating other news sources, and therefore can't really publish "news" insofar as it's not "new", but there is an advantage we can provide that other mediums (with a few exceptions, such as PBS and NPR) cannot: unbiased reporting. How? Because We, The People, decide what is "significant" and what is not, via the integrity of our own minds. All the media critics in the blogosphere and coffeeshops, of all political orientations, can get the unreported/underreported news reported, and the misleading/slanted news corrected, from the comfort of their own homes. We, The People, are the media, and so long as we deliberately function as such, noone can justly accuse WikiNews of being biased. (Biased in relation to whom? The People? We ARE the People!) That is an advantage that no other medium can provide; that is our unique and defining virtue. So there. :P

[edit] Articles I wrote or played a primary role in writing

[edit] 2005

• June 5: AP Probe suggests Bolton manipulated Iraq inspections to favor War
• June 5: Blog alliance forms over leaked Downing Street memo
• All three leads at once!
  • June 2: Department of Defense denies federal funding to schools that ban military recruiting first lead on June 2/3
  • June 2: John Kerry criticizes news media, joins call for inquiry on Downing Street Memo second lead on June 2/3
  • June 3: UN dismisses first official over oil-for-food scandal third lead on June 2/3
• June 1: $1,000 reward offered for answer from US President
• May 30: UK and U.S. bombing raids against Iraq increased in 2002
• May 30: Amnesty International urges investigations of top U.S. officials
• May 29: Citizen groups ask Congress to file formal "Resolution of Inquiry" against Bush
• May 14: Secret Downing Street Memo leaked

[edit] WikiNews Research Report

• /WikiNews Research Report, May 2005

[edit] User Categories page

• User Categories
• Category:User categories

[edit] My WikiNews Dream list

m:Talk:DynamicPageList

[edit] Current Priorities

[edit] Date Functionality

The following is primarily for DPL functionality

• full date tag returns full date in month day, year format: such as {{TODAY}}
• relative dates: absolute or relative dates can be specified: such as {{TODAY-1}} = yesterday, etc.
• Date RANGES can be specified for DPLs
  • These ranges can be relative or absolute unbounded (5 days ago to present, or specific date to present)

[edit] Advanced Search tools

Like other news sites, people can search using a combination of filters:

• via date range
• via category
• via keywords
• include related articles

A search page?

[edit] Secondary

[edit] RSS feeds

• generated summary: generated summaries (instead of the ugly raw code) in RSS feeds, done via:

  1. Max character count
  2. Max sentence count
  3. Max para count
  4. up to last para that is under all three maxes

  Or, one can manually specify a summary by putting a summary in the article in remark tags (<!--RSS Summary: ... -->)

• RSS feed page - an organized page for all of the RSS feeds
• RSS feeds on categories - on certain category pages (such as "politics and conflicts"), RSS feeds would be listed at the bottom (w/the RSS icon)
  • sub feeds: separate category feeds for stage(published, developing, prepared...), region (us, uk,...)
• calender

[edit] Tiertiary

[edit] DPL (DynamicPageList)

crossed-off items have been implemented

• notcategory: logical AND NOT with list items (example: notcategory: disputed)
• sort by: (date, last change, categoryadd, *rating (see misc.)...)
  • primary and secondary criteria
• order: (asc or desc)
• style: (bulleted, numbered, none)
• prefix: (none, date, *category (specified via a supercategory, "category:" is trimmed when displayed))
• trimtemplates: don't list templates
• trimcategories: don't list categories
• suppresserrors: don't display errors
• process date functionality (as above)
• UserCat filters: Show or don't show categories in DPLs, according to categories that the viewing user is in. - this would be logic implemented in the DPL attributes

[edit] Conditional Processing

• conditionally don't process (or show) a block if certain conditions are met:
  • DPL conditions: if a DPL query returns less than or more than a certain number of results
  • User categories: if the viewing reader is in or is not in a certain category

[edit] Miscellaneous

• Editor Categories: Users would join categories for editing such as "politics and conflicts", "interviews", etc.
• People can rate articles, like yahoo news
• LivePageFeeds: updates w/out refreshing the browser
• Live conditional processing