User talk:Bencherlite

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Tempodivalse [talk] 01:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Oxford Uni Category

I'm pretty sure that's a good category to have. If you can find any other articles in the archive that should have this cat stick {{editprotected}} on the talk page and say what category needs added. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• Adding categories to old articles only messes up in a few minor places - such as importer bot pages. Most of the Dynamic Page Lists run off the Publish category, so top-level stuff is fine.

But, yes, if you can find any old articles use the template and they'll get it added. That doesn't qualify as a content change. Normally, I'd caution against creating a category until four or more articles can be identified, but I'm sure we have some older stuff mentioning Oxford. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd overlooked the date within the article, thanks for getting it! It's more important in the source and wikinews templates. Theory is, keep 'em all the same, unambiguous to anyone (no MM/DD/YY vs DD/MM/YY), and then it should be possible to have a program work with them if needed and not break when it hits a doubtful date. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• I'm taking a break, someone will get the cats pretty soon. I need to chase round and see if any other Wikinews languages are in Google News. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

  By the magic of DPL, they're listed on WN:AAA ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

  Do you want to put people in the Oxford category? Obviously you only use the Ox.Uni cat where it's in/relevant to the article. Mentioning a graduate doesn't qualify unless also salient to the article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Btw, for the wikinews importer bot, adding category=December 3, 2009 kind of defeats the point, as then the list will only display things from December 3, 2009. Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

WMUK Press release

Did you decide to try Wikinews because of Mike Peel's press release? It'd be great to know we've got at least one contributor who hit the ground, er, sprinting as you did.

And, I'd suggest putting yourself up for Editor privilege in a day or two. I've seen people on the project for months and less savvy to writing in a news style. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Welcome!

Good to see you around here. :) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:08, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews writing contest reminder

To keyboards!!

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—Message delivered by MikemoralBot on 23:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar ... er ... barnbutterfly

I, Tempo, hereby award Bencherlite the Exceptional Newcomer barnstar for his excellent, in-depth contributions to the project. Keep up the great work! Tempodivalse [talk] 13:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Editor status

Congrats! You have a new shiny... :) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I just saw in rc you got editorship - congrats. Heres the standard template you get when you get editor:

Please take a moment to read:

• Wikinews:Flagged revisions
• Wikinews:Reviewing articles
• {{Peer review}}
• {{Review}}
• Reviewed article version
• Flagged Revisions extension information, on MediaWiki

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask for help on my talk page, and thank you for contributing to Wikinews!

Except you seem to already know what your doing. (and those pages are probably rather outdated too). In any case if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Good luck in competition. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Leads are quite lax. Basically the aim is to update them regurally. Some people feel that every story should have its 15 moments of fame in the lead. In general, the main lead, as you guessed should be of international interest, and generally a good article. If there is any original reporting stories, or interviews, they should be emphasized as well. Sometimes OR/interviews stay lead for longer then a plain synthesis article in order to promote them. Articles with pictures are preferred, especially those with relevant pictures related to the article as opposed to a stock map images. Wikinews:Make lead can help you change the leads (Gives you a list of articles to choose from that were recently published, click one of them, it geusses at what the lead should look like, often the geuss is good, sometimes it can use tweaking, you can modify its guess in the textbox provided, hit save to save it to the template). After reviewing an article, there is a make this article a lead button, which will also go to WN:ML.

As a general rule, if you review an article, unless its very short or barely passed review, replace the oldest lead with it. The lead templates are really no big deal, if you use common sense in updating them (and preview!), you should be fine. Hope that helps. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• My advice on reviewing is to look at any article itself before you go anywhere near the sources. Most will need copyediting, do so before you refer to sources. In the past dozen or so competition entries I've looked at I have seen people trying to use longer synonyms to 'pad' entries; this includes inappropriate synonyms, or sometimes homonyms. Beware use of words like "terrorist"; even Osama Bin Laden won't send Al Jazeera a tape saying "I am a terrorist", my rule-of-thumb is that someone can only be called a terrorist if found guilty of terrorism offences. Of, course, it could also appear in a quote; but, be careful that doesn't influence people to continue using it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The Wikinews Writing Contest 2010 Newsletter

—Message delivered by MikemoralBot on 04:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Writing contest newsletter: week 2

—Message delivered by MikemoralBot on 03:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Contest newsletter: weeks 3-4

—Message delivered by MikemoralBot on 22:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

—Message delivered by MikemoralBot on 00:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Supreme Court

I was thinking more obscure than that... Pakistan? India? Finland? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Since when...

... was playing poker a human right?

I have removed the category. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, I'm surprised BRS put that on; I shall suitably chastise him. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Reviewer

Per your request, I've removed reviewer rights from this account. Hope you'll consider becoming more active again... C628 (talk) 12:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Re: Owen Edwards

Hi Bencherlite. I replied to you on the talk page for the Owen Edwards obit, I think I got my Welsh a bit squiffy. I understood enough to work out that he'd died and what I understood to have killed him, but I guess I wasn't quite "on the ball" :) Cheers for your help anyhow! BarkingFish (talk) 23:12, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Welcome half-back

It's good to see you editing around a bit again over the last little while. I redid your rights; previously, we've only reconfirmed if rights were resigned under a cloud. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

• Nearly got them back unasked after I'd sighted the dozenth grammar correction on a lead. :p --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Your edits

Hello Bencherlite! I saw you talked about the article 'Bomb attack in Londonderry injures two police officers'. I am impressed with your edits! I am a new writer here, and have a few questions...

1. how to find an appropriate category for a news article?
2. how to write my best? (Please suggest your tips, please don't provide a link to go and search in.)

Thanks, --Sainsf :) (talk) 09:39, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

'Thankbacks'! Currently I'm working on a very short article '[killed in Burma ferry disaster]. Please review it. Thanks, --Sainsf :) (talk) 10:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Empty article

Hello and thanks for your tips. I'll expand the article, but somewhere it's written 30 are killed, while somewhere it's 19! what should i do? Also, i found an undisputed article, totally empty- 'Ashok'. What shall be done with it? --Sainsf :) (talk) 15:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

HMS Astute?

Don't we have any story about HMS Astute, such as its grounding on Skye? I can't find it with search. --InfantGorilla (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

It got deleted as stale, I think... Bencherlite (talk) 21:47, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

 :( There is no search engine for deleted articles. I think we have a serious problem finding enough people to keep up with the reviews. --InfantGorilla (talk) 21:51, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Royal Navy launches urgent inquiry after nuclear submarine runs aground in Inner Hebrides, incidentally. Bencherlite (talk) 13:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

May your family have
a joyous holiday season
and a new year blessed
with hope and happiness.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Ceremonies for Christmas Day (Robert Herrick) Kindle the Christmas brand, and then    Till sunset let it burn; Which quench'd, then lay it up again    Till Christmas next return. Part must be kept wherewith to teend    The Christmas log next year, And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend    Can do no mischief there.

If you don't celebrate Christmas ... Happy (belated) Hanukkah! Happy Eid al-Adha! Happy Kwanzaa! And of course, Happy Festivus! May this holiday season bring you the music of laughter, the warmth of friendship, and the steadying hand of love. ☃

—fetch·comms 22:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Recent 'drama'

I hope my recent contributions in an effort to defuse an unacceptable situation meet with your approval.

You may note the "post-mortem" item on a sub-page of Geoff's talk; your comments on that, subsectioned, would be most welcome.

Geoff starting on, what I felt was an attempt to lay groundwork for defence of later outbusts, isn't. A followup in the same form based on the actual version reviewed may reinforce that more-than-serious quality concerns existed; plus any remarks on xe's response to what I characterised as a "terse rejection"(see xyr talk).

Obviously I'd want my advice on WN:AAA considered, possibly given clear indication it meets with community consensus, and a strict interpretation and application of action suggested therein.

Would you concur? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

At Prophets predict the end of the world to 2011 may 21

This news was created in right May 21. If the review took to generate a notification at date, can not be my fault. -- Andrevruas (talk) 17:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

time-sensitive phrasing for leads

Hello. I saw your comments regarding my use of time-sensitive phrasing on the home page. I offer my sincerest apologies for this, as I understand that I have made an embarrassing error that has already been shown to a large group of readers.

I was already aware of the policy in question when I visited the Wikinews:Make lead page, but since this was the first time I've ever attempted to use the widget, I could not figure out how to replace the time-sensitive phrasing correctly. I did not attempt to fix the problem, since a warning message had informed me that permission to edit the page was denied. At first I thought the message was saying that my edit was not processed at all (i.e. does not show up in the revision history), but a subsequent comment by User:Pi zero led me to believe that my edit had indeed been processed, but still had not undergone the extra "sighting" process. I then checked the Main Page and saw that the new text had gone live already, so I thought everything was ultimately in order. It did not occur to me at that point to check for time-sensitive text.

Thus, it seems that I went through a series of missteps that individually might not have led us to the predicament I put us in earlier today (Saturday). I know this might not be a great excuse, but it's the best explanation I can give for what happened. I hope that the integrity of Wikinews is not severely hurt by this incident. Ragettho (talk) 01:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Women's British Open coverage

Hi,

I've just read your comments on our news article on the first round of the 2011 Women's British Open. You've suggested for it to be merged with the one dealing with the second round events. If I had more time (I'm back from the course about 8pm, then start looking into computer about an hour later, yesterday I finished work at 1 am, got up at 6am :) ) I could endavour in that, but I was about to start working on the third round text, so probably the second round news is going to expire by that time without being reviewed first. I'm kind of confused - I don't want to spend effort of mine and of Crunch, who's kindly volunteered to help correcting my initial versions, to do things which end up for a large rebuild. What should I do ? Should I start the text on the third round and merge 1st and 2nd ones ? Or maybe wait until the championship finishes on Sunday and then prepare single text on all week's events ? In general my primary assignment is photography reporting from that event. I write texts so just the photos have a place to end up somewhere - maybe someone could take over the written part or at least prepare some agenda/coordination how to proceed with the whole thing ? Preparation to and writing consumes most part of my evening, so it would be an enormous relief for me if I could just focus on taking photos, their selection and postprocessing. Thank you in advance, Wmigda (talk) 20:25, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I've seen you already having a look at the new "all-four-rounds-merged" article on Yani Tseng's victory. Is it going into right direction? I have a notion that more quotes from players' post-round interviews would make a nice expansion. Is it balanced - not too many info on other players, title would suggest that Yani should be a main focus ? I will be changing it into "review" stage today, so as soon I know what's wrong at this early staged than the better - expiration deadline is just round the corner :) Thanks, Wmigda (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)