User talk:DouglasGreen

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Welcome[edit]

DouglasGreen, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! → CGorman (Talk) 15:07, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Welcome[edit]

G'day, Regarding your edit to New Zealand praised by NATO Secretary General (adding a dot after Mr), in Britain and Australia (amongst other places) it is common practise not to use the dot after "Mr". We have a semi-formal rule here saying that we use the spelling conventions of whomever starts the article, so that articles started by Americans will use "Mr." and "color", where as in articles started by aussies like myself we use "Mr" and "colour" throughout. This is really not a big issue, and i've left your edit as it is, however some people (but not me) do get quite uptight about such things. Anyway, welcome to wikinews, hope you make lots more edits. ~The bellman | Smile 21:33, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

MGM v Grokster[edit]

Excellent work on a very important subject (that we'd lacked coverage of so far). Thanks! Dan100 (Talk) 08:04, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure you want to do that?[edit]

The U.S.A. was the aggressor in Iraq. Citing them may smack of propaganda to others. Can you find non-US sources which say the same things? - Amgine 04:38, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please be more specific. I have cited US sources in several articles. Which one in particular do you find to be "propaganda"? If you mean Uneven voter turnout elects women who push sharia law while anti-woman violence rages, where I recently added a quote from the US State Department, I do not consider the Fact Sheets of the US State Department on behalf of women's rights in Iraq to be a source of propaganda. To me it seems uncontroversial to point out that some forms of political repression occurred under Saddam Hussein. I could find a "non-US" source but why should I? The US has been the most consistent critic of Iraqi repression under Saddam Hussein.

In addition, all of the sources quoted in the article are political figures, or opining on political subjects, therefore all of their claims should be viewed critically, not just the US. For example, al-Bayiati has a political agenda, al-Ubaeday is an elected official, Mahmoud is a spokeperson for the same political organization as al-Bayiati, and Jaafari is an elected politician who may not have any intential of actually fulfilling his promises on the subject. All these people should be taken with a "grain of salt". But I don't think US government opinion on Iraq should be uniquely shunned, particularly the fact-finding reports of US government bodies. DouglasGreen 04:59, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Scotland[edit]

Thanks for writing sometyhing related to Scotland! → CGorman (Talk) 16:13, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. I myself am of partly Scottish ancestry and enjoyed writing the article. DouglasGreen 16:19, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was just so stunned last week to realise that Wikinews had zero articles relating to Scotland. Afterall Wales, Northern Ireland, and England all had articles. → CGorman (Talk) 16:44, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

EPA story[edit]

I really liked the way you got involved in that story to make it what it is now. Remarkable job, not only by you, but by all involved. -edw 15:58, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. As you can see from the discussion page, a lot of "diversity of thought" went into the making of that article... that's a strength of the Wikinews process. :-) DouglasGreen 17:13, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nepal story[edit]

You wrote that the Nepal story had already been released...where do you mean? Is there a reason we can't leave it in the Active News area? Thanks ~ Dpr 02:36, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, it didn't appear on my browser at first--I see it now. Thanks! ~ Dpr 04:58, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That's what I meant... it was being moving from developing news to active news... it was a good story. DouglasGreen 11:44, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories[edit]

This message is being given to several people, so please forgive the formality.

I've created a list of categories that must be included in ALL articles to ensure the DPL system works correctly. Adding the revlevent categories from this list will ensure complete site-wide relevent article listing. It is located at User:CGorman/Categories and you can easily cut & paste out of it. I urge frequent writers to bookmark this page to help save themselves time with categorization. Thanks for your attention. Dan100 (Talk) 20:51, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

India/China[edit]

Your writing is on it. I am puzzled though by the use of headings. To me it breaks up the thought into an encyclopedic type of article rather than a news story. -Edbrown05 04:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. In a way, the article did get to be a bit "encyclopedic" at the end. It had an unusually large amount of background material, particularly the headings in the middle. The reason I did this was because otherwise the stuff in the story was just names; if I simply said, "White Horse Temple" and did not research and explain its historical significance, or "Luoyang" without describing it somehow, most people (including myself) would not grasp it very well. Also, in the third paragraph each bullet point presents what is new and puts some background information behind it to put it into context. I guess what I'm working toward is to help people "make sense" of what is happening there, which makes news more effective I think. They could read all the encyclopedia articles that are linked to, of course, but I just "hit the highlights" for busy people. DouglasGreen 12:13, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Infrared technology enables recovery of lost classical writings[edit]

G'day,

Great article; really interesting. You sure do do your research. ~The bellman | Smile 05:41, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I could hardly believe the silly errors I discovered in the other articles while researching them. That's why I like to go to as close to the original souce as possible. DouglasGreen 11:39, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That was a good article. I do have to admit however, a preference against those table of content boxes. Best Regards! -Edbrown05 01:28, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Iraqi PM[edit]

Are completed with the story? This ought to be 1st lead, moving Iraqi Pres. to 3rd lead. Things are happening fast in Iraq. -Edbrown05 01:26, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm finished writing it. I'll probably come back and check it again later, but you can go ahead and move it up now if you like. Thanks. DouglasGreen 01:38, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

TOC --> table of contents suppression[edit]

I recently rediscovered this wikimagic and thought of you because I commented to you about it in the past. It is possble to hide the TOC with this code __NOTOC__ on the edit page.

I am not saying use it, I simply make you aware of it. The Related news story in the Bankruptcy story you were/are working on employs this code.

Best Regards! -Edbrown05 17:13, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good Job[edit]

Great article on the NYSE, NASDAQ 209.148.146.219 03:25, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I worked on it all day, it was much harder to write than I anticipated. Deciphering business jargon is like trying to learn a second language. And thanks to the Wikipedia people who contributed those pictures, they look great.  :-) DouglasGreen 03:28, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

NYSE to merge[edit]

This news story should be 1st lead Douglas!! I will put Iraq at 3rd lead. Please move yours to 1st. Do you agree? -Edbrown05 03:44, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sure, thanks for the oversight, I appreciate that. DouglasGreen 04:22, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks![edit]

You've been doing such a great job, and I haven't gotten around to giving you appropriate thanks for all your hard work.

I did want to point out something which I just saw, though... that article about the female sponge from SAS? apparently it included some malicious vandalism... I haven't tracked back the perpetrator yet, but I'm working on it. You can see how an anon fixed it.

- Amgine/talk 16:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm really enjoying working on this site and hunting down the "big stories". It's a lot more fun than just being a passive "consumer" of the news. Also thanks for fixing the article. It seems that some articles, such as political topics or sensitive subjects, are more prone to vandalism than others. DouglasGreen 17:57, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bandung summit[edit]

I really liked the way the graphic and text layout worked in the 'Sampling of remarks' section. Of course it was well written too! Good story for a big occasion. Funny, unless I'm missing something, that the world press isn't hyping this much. I think you should put it at 1st lead. -Edbrown05 03:45, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate that. Actually its the Western press that seems to be largely ignoring the story; most of my sources were from India, China, and other Eastern/African countries. DouglasGreen 12:13, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Classical writings[edit]

Re: Infrared technology enables recovery of lost classical writings:

The amount of new material, estimated to be around 5 million words, could expand the entire storehouse of classical writings by as much as 20%.

Can you give me a source for this, i.e. the known number of classical writings you are comparing against?--Eloquence 12:09, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I was merely citing statistics that were given, in the article by the Independent. Unfortunately, I didn't notice at the time their articles don't last very long -- they've locked down their article and now you have to pay a pound to read it. However, portions of it were cited at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050420-4827.html which confirms the figure of 5 million words. If you're interested in learning more, I suggest you read that article because it adopts a critical stance toward the article in the Independent, and suggests that they were overhyping the original article; but it doesn't have any hard sources just suspicions. The figure of 20% is also available in an article available at http://www.chn.ir/english/eshownews.asp?no=5163 which more recent. DouglasGreen 12:30, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Historic summit, commemoration by Asian-African leaders in Bandung[edit]

Wow. Yet another great in-depth article. If we get enough users like you, we'll leave the BBC and CNN for dust just as wikipedia has trumped britanica, and hopefully one day wiktionary will trump the OED. ~The bellman | Smile 14:36, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Heh, long live the Wiki revolution :-] DouglasGreen 16:54, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

U.S. EPA submits 2003 greenhouse gas inventory to U.N.[edit]

This is an extremely well-written article, and I was very impressed with its use of graphs, but I was bothered by a lack of critical examination until I reached the sources section, which only lists a single press release from the EPA. Would it be possible for you to revisit this article and expand the sources, examine other information? For example, you mentioned a 46% economic growth, but no mention was made of the 25% reduction in base manufacturing over this period which would likely impact greenhouse gas emissions. - Amgine/talk 05:25, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. In actuality the single EPA press release (and my quick overview of the report itself on their website) was the only information I had relative to this particular report. A search of Googlenews did not show any of its news sources picking up this report as a story that I could find, although they have picked up other EPA reports about mercury and such. I usually try to find plenty of independent sources, but in this case I was kind of "winging it". Where did you find the statistic about reduction of manufacturing base? DouglasGreen 11:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As an update, I did some further searching in Google itself, not just the news section, and found two news sources and a blog (among others) that reference the new EPA report. They news items are from March, when the draft report was released for comment. I didn't find anything noteworthy enough in the articles to add, but here are the sources:

renditioning[edit]

What is an example of renditioning then. I think that would be relevant to the story. -Edbrown05 14:25, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Uzbekistan appears to be the primary example nowadays. In fact, I think they mentioned that as a follow-up question to rendition in the news conference. DouglasGreen 17:57, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A Trophy for your Tireless Efforts![edit]

I, Amgine, hereby award DouglasGreen the Wikinews Trophy for spell checking, copyediting, and fact checking above and beyond the call of duty.

For your hundreds of edits per day, your patience with poor prose, for you putting up with people who only go to visit their grammar, and that rarely... I award you this trophy of distinction. - Amgine/talk 05:08, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, a trophy! This is unexpected and I really appreciate it. I think you gave it for all the right reasons, too... I really am a nitpicker for grammar and spelling, and can't resist making just one more change. :-)

However, I also appreciate that many of our Wikinewsers come from an international audience, and people who speak English only as a second language still have stories to tell. So to them I say, welcome, I'll be glad to help "polish their prose". DouglasGreen 11:46, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

InfoBox[edit]

Your recent introduction of the InfoBox is quite sleek. Although at first glance I do not yet fully understand the box's coding, it does not appear too difficult and may be something more contributors ought to adopt.

I like it so much that I think it might be something suitable for a house style. It could, however, be a problem in short stories where text to table balance would be skewed. If a whole lot of links are put in the InfoBox, the size becomes even larger.

There have been comments that Wikinews is a sort of news aggregator, meaning it gathers links to existing stories and then provides a news synopsis based on them. I don't find that untrue, nor do I find it negatively critical.

There is certainly an interest here in original reporting, but it seems premature to report local news when the current forum here addresses world events. It seems that until Wikinews drills down local regions and has a much larger user base, local reporting will probably wait. -Edbrown05 13:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The infobox does look nice. However, I can't really take credit for it. The first I heard about it was from User:IlyaHaykinson on the Water Cooler page under the topic Proposing infoboxes. IlyaHaykinson had taken one of my articles and infoboxed it, and several people liked the work. I borrowed the code that I use from elsewhere on this site and I've modified it only a bit. Mainly I have been cutting down on the excess sections and trying to figure a way to shorten it somehow, so that it doesn't dominate short articles. Perhaps I could move the sources back to the bottom of an article, and keep the other parts in the box, since the Sources are the part of the box that is most closely associated with the article itself, and they tend to be one of the longest parts too, when you have lots of sources.

Being a news aggregator is a good thing. In a way it makes us a news magazine as much as a news paper, but that's fine. Brevity is a virtue, and having short concise articles that are not padded and say just what needs to be said is a good thing. I like that style myself.

I think local news and world news can exist side by side without any problem, particularly if the local news is something that somebody cared about enough to work on in person. Conversations with real people, even of minor importance, can add liveliness to the site. We're limited of course in our access to news-making figures and events, compared to more professional news organizations. But they have their limitations, too. I myself keep an eye on the local paper, and might be going to the zoo this weekend if I can arrange it, maybe get some photos of the new Florida panther cubs that have been brought in to the Jacksonville Zoo, if possible.

I think in the long run we should focus on what makes Wikinews "different": neutral point of view, in-depth international reporting, room for thousands of collaborators with diverse interests, etc. None of this can easily be matched by a top-down, corporate model of reporting the news. DouglasGreen 23:43, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Noted. Best Regards! -Edbrown05 23:49, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good job[edit]

Hi! I just write to say that I like your work for Wikinews. Keep it up! MikeCapone 07:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask...[edit]

Would you mind if I nominated you for adminship? I know you've been doing a lot of great work, edits, and if you are interested I would very much like to see your name up on the list. - Amgine/talk 00:13, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all, I would be quite happy to be nominated. Please let me know if there are any additional responsibilities and requirements that I can take on. DouglasGreen 00:23, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Heh... you should never say that to me, because I know of way too many things which could use attention on Wikinews. Let me see what I can come up with after adding you to the list of nominees. - Amgine/talk 00:27, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Douglas[edit]

Another one of those 'can you take a look at' posts... this time it's the goings-on which happened over night and are detailed in the misc section on the Water cooler. Specifically, could I ask you to vote on the deletion request on the Bush article? Dan100 (Talk) 12:18, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator functions... accepting nomination?[edit]

Hi. You're listed on Wikipedia:Administrators Wikinews:Administrators as nominated by Amgine. So far you have unanimous support, but I don't see you accepting the nomination. Please either accept or decline it on that page. Thanks! -- IlyaHaykinson 22:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out to me. I located the page and wrote "I accept" underneath. If there is anything else I need to do, please let me know. DouglasGreen 23:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Er, yeah, that should have been Wikinews, not Wikipedia... must have had an encyclopedia on my mind when typing, earlier. :-) Congratulations, the community has supported your nomination and you're now a Wikinews sysop! May you have a stress-less time fighting vandals and deleting stale pages. ;) -- IlyaHaykinson 05:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Lol, thanks very much. DouglasGreen 11:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Great work tonight![edit]

I truly want to commend you for contributing so many wonderful, in-depth articles this evening. On behalf of WikiNews (I can do that now that I'm accredited), I wish to thank you very much for your contributions. Sincerely, NGerda 05:35, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

May I also nominate you for accreditation? NGerda 05:42, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I really enjoy working with the other Wikinewsers. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I'm learning quite a bit about world events. I don't think I'm quite ready for accreditation though, but thanks for offering. Right now I'm just focusing on learning the ropes and trying to improve everything as much as I can. Congratulations on your accreditation, by the way. DouglasGreen 04:09, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed New Workspace[edit]

Please check out Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#RSS_feeds_for_development_process and Wikinews:Proposed_Workspace#Work_on_current_stories. Thanks. Kevin Baastalk 18:45, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Spellcheck[edit]

Every day I read the recent changes for the past 24hr's. Everyday I see your name and the term 'spellchecked'. I really want to say thanks; your work is minor on an individual basis - but when looked at from the recent changes page it is a phenomenal. You deserve to be recognised as a valuable wikinewsie because you are just that. Not to mention that most of the spelling mistakes you correct are my own! Thanks. → CGorman (Talk) 20:05, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's no big deal, I'm glad to help out. You already did all the hard work: writing the article. :-) DouglasGreen 23:14, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

dang, someone beat me to thanking you, lol, well tahnks again, that really helps the overall qaulity of wikinews. Their should be an award for that.--Ryan524 16:51, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tables[edit]

May I ask why you used tables on the article American Samoa asks again to be removed from U.N. colonies list? As a web designer, I know the temptation to use them for layout purposes, but see this revision I did on the aticle and see what you think. -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 13:00, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

I used tables out of habit. On other articles I did in the past, the text was longer and it wrapped around and below the infobox on the right. I decided that I liked it better if the infobox was in a separate column with blank space beneath it. But it's not critically important. I do like the way you laid out the image, I couldn't get it to do that, so I will give that a try in the future. Thanks for the suggestions. DouglasGreen 00:18, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pic[edit]

Hi! You probably wonder how I found you. Well it's simple. I googled myself and found a picture of mine among others in the wikinews. When I looked the diff pages in the history of the article, I found out that you were the one to put my picture in the article. God bless you. I'm interested in how you found the picture. Since I don't have an account here, answer on my sr user talk page where I'm active the most. Thanks in advance. Filip Maljkovic

An invitation[edit]

I'm attempting to start up a new edition of Wikinews, one with a simpler user contributions system at m:Wikinews/Start a new edition#Open English. The goals of this project would be to simplify the process of submitting articles such that anyone with no knowledge of the Mediawiki software or the Wikimedia projects culture can easily understand and submit an article, and immediately see it on the main page developing articles section.

If you would be interested in supporting this project I would be pleased if you would sign up at the Meta page. User:Amgine

Hello[edit]

Where've you gone? Dan100 (Talk) 6 July 2005 17:54 (UTC)

Nowhere special. I've been away for a while, working on other projects and on my homepage. DouglasGreen 01:38, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DouglasGreen[edit]

Shuttle launch tomorrow, will you attend? Best Regards. -Edbrown05 21:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Future talk 2[edit]

Hello, I would like to invite you to attend our second future talk, it will be held on Monday, August 1 at 21:00 UTC. It will be held on the Wikinews IRC channel #wikinews For more information please see the page on meta The main topics will be audio Wikinews, WNN and portals/neighborhoods It would be great if you will be able to attend. --Cspurrier 15:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo Wales at UF -- next week[edit]

Hi DouglasGreen! I noticed on your userpage that you live in Gainesville. I wanted to let you know about an event going on at UF next week: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation, is coming to speak!

The speech is on Wednesday, April 12 at 7 pm at Emerson Alumni Hall (1938 W. University Ave.). The speech is free and open to the public.

Jimbo's keynote will be on the role of free culture in universities. The keynote will be followed by a discussion panel of UF students and faculty. It's sponsored by Florida Free Culture, ACCENT, and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

For more information, visit this page or email me. Hope to see you here!

(P.S. Because not everyone checks their userpage regularly, I'll also email you this note if your account is set up to allow e-mails from other users.) --Tetraminoe 05:31, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rfda[edit]

This is a message to inform you that I have added every administrator to the Rfda section on WN:A. This is not personal and I feel as if the community, who did not have the option of voting for or against most of the administrators, should be able to choose who they want to be in charge. I also want to say that I value everyones work on this site and I know that everyone does their best. I hope that none of you will take this personally and I hope that all of us will continue to work together. Jason Safoutin 12:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New Policy has users up in smoke[edit]

Hello. I am not sure if you check this page anymore, but I thought you might be interested as to what is going on here at Wikinews: Wikinews:Image use policy/New wikimedia policy action plan. I am outraged as well as others...do you have an opinion? DragonFire1024 09:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request for de-adminship[edit]

We are currently in the process of voting to de-admin some admins who have not been active recently, including you. If you wish you could say something at WN:A. Thanks. Bawolff ☺☻ 09:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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