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ArbCom

Wikinews:Arbitration Committee/2013 election/Results. --Pi zero (talk) 15:25, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter - Edition 2, August 5, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News

There is less to report, as the group spent time focusing on behind-the-scenes aspects of obtaining thematic organization recognition.

Aff-Comm application status updates
Education and GLAM
Technical updates
  • Pi zero has moved to a new phase in the development of an improved reviewing tool for English Wikinews.
  • Gryllida is working on the development of a tool to make translating material from one project to another easier. The new beta wmtrans translation tool here, which you can use to translate Wikipedia and Wikinews articles from one language to another. Its difference from the Meta translation tools is include the the ability to translate an article as a whole, per-paragraph, and add new paragraphs if desired; a dictionary box for you to look up geographical names without loading entire Wikipedia pages; and whole-page translation philosophy instead of translating by parts. The tool also features a multilingual interface; you can add new sections to data.ini to add your own. You are encouraged to send them, and bug reports, to Gryllida.
  • Discussions have been going on behind the scenes about the potential for The Wikinewsie Group to support the technical aspects for Wikinews project development following suggestions on Wikimedia-l that this would be a place chapters could demonstrate leadership potential and work with the Foundation. There are currently a number of developers active in the Wikinews community.
Research
  • Given feedback by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board (Samuel Klien) that the English language project should consider content import from other free news sources as a way of increasing community participation, content output and traffic, research was done inside the community using another language project as a baseline to determine the potential impact in terms of achieving those goals. A copy of this research can be found at Research:Wikinews Content Import Analysis. In a nutshell, the findings are: content import did not result in increased community output or increased community size. Content import also resulted in fewer page views per published article. Content import was not successful at achieving a positive community or traffic related impact.
  • A tiny piece of research done examining relative article popularity by year on English Wikinews can found at Article rank and article date. More in-depth research along these lines may produce interesting results.
Across the languages
  • Over on Italian Wikinews on July 25, they hit 30,000 total pages.
  • English Wikinews completed elections for their Arbitration Committee. Brian McNeil, Pi zero, Mikemoral, LauraHale, RockerballAustralia, and William S. Saturn were elected to the one year position.
Content work
Clips:
Other news
  • Two members of the The Wikinewsie Group provisional board attend the IRC meeting on July 26 for the Program Evaluation and Design as the board begins to think about and conducts its own evaluation of efforts to increase content and increase community participation. They observed the August 1 metrics meeting.

Why Wikinews? Editorials on why people support and contribute to Wikinews projects

Wikinews Original Reporting

The following is a list of all original reporting done on Wikinews projects from June 1, 2013 to July 31, 2013.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Portuguese
See also: Reportagens originais, Publicado. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by TWGBot (talkcontribs) 17:03, 5 August 2013‎ (UTC)Reply

Reviews

You'll have noticed this? It also looked as if the student article about the Islamabad red alert might be missing an answer to basic question "when", which worried me especially since we hope to be at the top of our game reviewing the students (not that we don't when reviewing others... er... well, hopefully you know what I mean). --Pi zero (talk) 11:42, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

It would seem that I need to do a better job of "interpreting" sources. Something didn't click for some reason.
This? --RockerballAustralia c 12:21, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Laura and I have a theory about the Doctor Who thing. It's in the premise of Doctor Who that the Doctor "dies" from time to time, and regenerates, which is how they transition from one actor to another. So whenever there's a new Doctor, the old Doctor "dies". That is, the character "dies", not the actor. A source article might well be a bit sloppy about describing this since the reporter is likely a DW fan who implicitly supposes everyone knows this.
We treated the Bullshit Editorial as not something with any legitimacy, and refused to be drawn into treating as a legitimate topic for debate a blatantly hate-driven fiction-based attack on Wikinews. It did give them enough momentum to combine with some rational (debatable, but rational) arguments and push through an RFC to get the Wikinews link removed from ITN on the Wikipedia main page. But then they tried to dick with project closure policy to get an exception written in for the express purpose of making it easier to close Wikinewses, and at that point we called them on their bullshit. --Pi zero (talk) 14:03, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I missed that too. I do not follow the show. I have basically written three articles in the past two days with a single intention: Try to write generally the bare minimum to get passed to show UoW students how to write articles. I screencast the writing process.
Randomly, I am also trying to screencast some of my reviews. See right. I am using Screencast-o-matic and then converting to ogv using Miro Video Converter. It would be nice to have some examples for students from reviewers other than me to show the thinking behind a review and what we look for. --LauraHale (talk) 14:17, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
A possible danger of these screencasts is that the 15-minute limit causes the reporter/reviewer to hurry, and maybe miss things. This may give a false impression about the processes being illustrated, and it's even possible the time constraints contributed to the Doctor Who goof. --Pi zero (talk) 15:04, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Source: "Capaldi's turn as the Doctor is set to begin after the death of Matt Smith's 12th Doctor late this year during the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special". How could two sensible people turn this into "The role became vacant after Smith's death earlier this year", confusing not only the actor with the character but also the past with the future? Cutting corners for speed isn't good enough if it means that nonsense ends up on the main page. If "bare minimum" is the target, it wasn't reached on this occasion.
I won't even try to fix the part of the story which says that the announcement was on BBC America, without mentioning that BBC America was carrying the live broadcast of the announcement from BBC1 in the United Kingdom. As it is, the story implies that this is an American broadcasting story, which it isn't.
Apart from that, carry on the good work. Bencherlite (talk) 15:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
The article said "yesterday", which was true when it was written but not when it was published. I hesitated over this but decided (with awareness the call might be controversial) to treat it as a "typo" and self-sight. Also noticed a spurious word in the lede and removed, which I was confortable self-sighting. I adjusted the bit about BBC America Bencherlite notes above, but didn't self-sight that one. --Pi zero (talk) 17:04, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
The date thing is one of the first thing I check given the importance we place on relative dating. The sources were USA based and the implication I got from the sources was that it aired over BBC America as they did not mention it also being aired on BBC1. :( Also, there was no attempt to cut corners for speed on my part. These sort of problems occasionally pop up, and should be caught because the reviewer should be fact checking. This was two layers of problems, not one. (We're getting to the point where Rockerball is making a number of mistakes consistently. There was a truly awful situation with a student which resulted in an article needing to be unpublished.) --LauraHale (talk) 17:27, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

┌───────────────────────┘
Yeah, ... I'm not proposing anyone have reviewer taken off them; need everyone we can doing that work. But, I just made additional edits to the articke (which require sighted!) and should not have been missed.

Mind you, I could play the role too! --Brian McNeil / talk 18:05, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I probably goofed in that I talked to pizero about the article at the time I wrote it, that I was not sure they would pass and that they were not a reviewing priority. I half expected them and was okay with both going stale. They were not my best work. I'm not sure how the heck to even note a situation like that on the talk page. Most of the active reviewers tend to be on IRC so we can get clarity with problems in the review process quickly... Having seen all the post publication edits, I feel rather mortified about the damned thing. :( --LauraHale (talk) 18:23, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Assistance with understanding how much original reporting costs

Hello and I apologize for writing in English. As all language Wikinews improves, The Wikinewsie Group wants to be able better support original reporting done by contributors like you. One of our newsletters at The Wikinewsie Group/Newsletter said you have recently published an original report. This is why I am contacting you.

Members of the The Wikinewsie Group are trying to assess the costs associated with original reporting across all Wikinews projects. This way, we can determine how much original reporting currently costs, who is paying for it, what Wikinews and other projects get for these costs (especially when paid for by unpaid, volunteer contributor reporters). This information can then be used in applying for grants, measuring the success of Wikinews original reporting and seeing how reporters can be better supported. If you could complete this survey on that topic, we would very much appreciate it. We will try to anonymize the responses as best possible when writing up any report. Thank you very much for taking the time to fill it out (especially in English). Please do not hesitate to ask me or pi zero about any questions you may have about this research. We hope the results will enable us to better assist you in conducting more original reporting on Wikinews. --LauraHale (talk) 08:23, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Done. I didn't realize how much I'd spent over the course of the year until I added it up. --RockerballAustralia c 11:03, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Review standards, please

Looks like you messed up on this Korean families article. Badly, tbh. The headline makes no sense for the contents of the article, the article isn't neutral and the lede doesn't explain at all what event took place.

If you're going to review articles by students who haven't learned what they're doing yet, you really need to be a lot more careful. --Pi zero (talk) 02:49, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

May I ask how the article is not neutral?--RockerballAustralia c 02:58, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I feel miserable about this.
Purple prose in the lede was what I had in mind when I said that.
I'm afraid I got pretty upset, though, when I tried to fix the headline and discovered it was completely wrong. Plural families instead of singular possessive was a trivial (though appalling) error; but also they weren't reunited yet, and separated for three years is completely unhinged from what the article says. If reviewing an article with that many serious problems, I'd look really carefully for plagiarism.
I found myself depublishing. And thought as I did it, I need to figure out what I should have done instead when something goes badly wrong; I know this isn't the way to handle it. The trouble is, it's not clear to me that {{correction}} applies; it's for a different kind of situation, really.
<I don't know any emoticon adequate to the situation>
--Pi zero (talk) 03:12, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think the term "I need a beer" applies here. Headline I'll agree with you on, the lede I thought explained what went on, plagiarism was checked thoroughly (even used the plagiarism checker Laura links to on her user page), everything in the article I could verify.
This does really appear to be something that should've atleast renamed ahead of publishing --RockerballAustralia c 03:20, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm painfully aware of not having handled the situation well myself either, although I'm not really sure... I left a query at brianmc's user talk, in case he has any thoughts on appropriate procedure in this type of situation.
Alas, I never touch alcohol. But if I did, this would be the time. --Pi zero (talk) 03:35, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Seems we should be able to get this article back on track; I might be surer if it weren't 1:30am here. We need a fix for the headline, perhaps a double-check and a few minor fixes on the article itself, and then (since you've done the source-checking, both verification and copyright) we ought to be able to republish, carefully removing the clunky {{correction}} just before publishing. --Pi zero (talk) 05:33, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Screencasting

Hey. When you review again can you use Screen-o-matic and talk your way through how you review so others can see how you do it? This would be helpful on multiple levels. The output would need to be convert to ogg and uploaded to Commons but it would be a good instructional aid. --LauraHale (talk) 07:02, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sure sure. --RockerballAustralia c 10:18, 19 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Could you please check what's going on with the Maroochydore score? I did decide to publish, but only after some serious untangling. There were clearly two errors somewhere and I had to judge where the errors were. I decided Maroochydore had two conversions in the first half. --Pi zero (talk) 18:00, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I checked through my notes and it appears i took the wrong shot at goal out of my notes. The SCRU lists the result as 24-7. (There's probably something else I need to say, I'm not sure what it is)--RockerballAustralia c 21:23, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Can we make the OR documentation a bit tighter, to further reduce the likelihood of such a thing happening? (Btw, you hadn't included the usual secondary sources for corroboration; please do include all of those you can dig up.)
I knew almost at once when I published, I'd made a bad call: I should have not-ready'd and asked for clarification. Live and learn; I s'pose I'm more likely to make a better call on a similar situation in future. (You self-sighting the correction isn't really according to Hoyle either, though under the circumstances it's all pretty grey.) --Pi zero (talk) 22:20, 24 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter - Edition 3, September 1, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 3, September 1, 2013
Education and Research
  • On English Wikinews, there is work to make some educational videos to assist users in understanding how the review process works, and how to write an article using screencast. Videos created so far include: A review of an English Wikinews article to let people see how that looks. , A walk through of an article being written for English Wikinews to let people see how one person writes an article., A walk through of creating an article on English Wikinews with a Doctor Who related news story as an example.
  • A few of the provisional board members had intense discussions about the preferred research practices to inform key decision making in regards to developing the most effective programming with the goals of 1) working with educators to instill core journalistic values, 2) engage in quality original reporting that can be shared across projects, and 3) improve the diversity and quantity of the current contributor base to Wikinews projects. The ideal research often depends on context, but that in doing on project related work, action research is probably the ideal as it is an outcome improvement driven approach.
  • In further regards to research methodologies, three of the provisional board members read The art, science and mystery of nonprofit news assessment by the Investigative Reporting Workshop. This document discusses some of the challenges non-profit related journalism sites have in assessment as it pertains to their own reporting. A discussion was also held regarding the issue of information anonymization when it comes to any research being conducted by The Wikinewsie Group using on Wikinews publicly accessible information, content and data. Sources looked at and discussed included Researching the public web and Forum Guide to Data Ethics. There is a feeling by some of the provisional board members that the WMF, through the Grants programs and the Program Evaluation and Design group need to provide greater guidance regarding what sort of information collection and analysis is expected, what privacy guidelines will be expected, what will be publicly expected, what will be privately expected, if these match and how to handle any discrepancy between these guidelines. At the same time, documentation for the WMF as it pertains to outcomes needs to be clear as to the audience and objectives in conducting the research. These issues become vitally important as increasing contributor output research differs from research focused on providing an environment to encourage best practices for journalists, with a goal of bringing more educators to the project to assist in accomplishing this goal.
  • Brian Keegan talked about newswork on Wikipedia from a Wikipedia perspective (that ignores definitions of news) and failed to acknowledge the importance of original reporting and citizen driven journalism in his negative critique of Wikinews. At the same time, he failed to acknowledge the lack of investment by the Wikimedia Foundation in supporting Wikinews and other sister projects in strategically growing and supporting the Foundation's mission.
Technology
  • Given the issues with spying on government listening to communications, Scoop will be 'deprecated', and the recipients list trimmed back progressively have the membership list culled to make sure only reviewers and accredited reports have access to reporter notes for story verification. A new mailbox will be set up for incoming material that needs the attention of reviewers. [1]
  • On English Wikinews, a draft has been started at Wikinews:Visual Editor to let the Visual Editor team know some of the issues involved in working on bringing VE live to the project. This is vitally important to be done right and that VE works with the only main entrance point to writing new articles, because if done without considering the gateway, it would create massive technical problems that would like make it impossible for article review for publication to be completed.
  • On English Wikinews, efforts are underway to see about using DPL to sort images by date and to better highlight featured articles that appear in a category by calling them out seperately. This is likely to be a long term, wikignome type activity. [2]
  • A bug was fixed in wmtran, the translation helper tool, to correct URLs of preview wiki-links. Relevant contact information is now also available at the tool page header.
Reporting
  • On English Wikinews, there has been a substantial amount of original reporting done in the past 18 months that involved the uploading both local multimedia and multimedia to Commons. An effort is underway to categorize these images locally better highlight the original reporting of the multimedia including type. It will also provide easier access for reporter to file photos for re-use in other articles. The major category work was done on 2012 Summer Paralympics.
  • Following Jimmy Wales's speech at Wikimania, The Wikinewsie Group reached out to him via e-mail to see how we could work with to accomplish his stated aims in the context of our proposed organization. There are a number of shared goals, including making it possible for Wikinews contributors to do original reporting full time on the project. Susequently, he has been engaging in dialog with several English Wikinews reporter on his Wikinews talk page.
  • A survey has been created to better understand the existing original reporting costs associated with current Wikinews production. Reporters across all languages who have contributed to original reporting on any language Wikinews project reported on in our newsletter have been pinged on their talk pages asking them to complete the survey. Three different language projects have been notified of the survey on Facebook. The survey has also been linked to on Twitter. The goal of the survey is to be able to understand the value of original reporting, where money is currently being spent and by whom, and to have data that will better enable The Wikinewsie Group and project volunteer reporters to apply for grants related to conducting more original reporting. Survey results are currently being processed with a plan of having some research published for reference in the next newsletter.

Opinion pieces

For our next newsletter, we are encouraging Wikinewsies to define news and how Wikinews provides it.


Original reporting

The following is a list of all original reporting done on Wikinews projects from August 1, 2013 to August 31, 2013. Includes a new language edition, Serbian Wikinews.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Catalan
See also: Reportatges originals, Notícies publicades. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.
German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.

Archiving at times of slow output

Although the world won't end because an extra article got archived (though atm there are various reasons it might, that isn't one of them), I point out that for the past couple of years and change we've been making a point to suspend archiving when there are only ten articles on the main page. It's discussed on the archive-policy page, and in fact there's even now a handy device for keeping track of it on the table at WN:ARCHIVE#To archive: the most recent ten non-archived pages are shown above a horizontal line, and the first few non-archived archives beyond that are shown below the horizontal line, so if there aren't any below the line, just don't archive. --Pi zero (talk) 11:04, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

(That didn't come across snappish, did it?  :-S Really hoping 'thanks for pitching in' is understood.) --Pi zero (talk) 11:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
This seems to be one of those things where I probably was a bit to enthusiastic to chip in and, as such, neglected to read the relevant policy properly. --RockerballAustralia c 11:57, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's a tricky point. What we'd really like to have, of course, is a mechanism that would actually directly list just those articles due to archive — which the wiki software has never allowed us to do. We can and do list the non-archived articles in increasing chronological order of publish category date, but what we'd really like is to list them in increasing chronological order of date category, listing only articles whose date category is at least seven days ago and suppressing any from the list that are among the most recent ten. The DPL extension isn't nearly sophisticated enough to do that... and it'd be challenging to extend it to do so without turning it into a complicated mess. --Pi zero (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Build two DPLs: One of latest ten articles, one of all those that 'technically' qualify for archiving.
Div (or even table) them up side-by-side on the relevant page. At some point we can have a bot check the difference and maintain a list of "to be archived" articles. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:50, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Though I know they're sometimes necessary, I really don't like bots. I always favor finding ways to have less done by bots. Bots are off-wiki, making the wiki less self-contained; and for any task that isn't completely mindless, user participation is more... participatory. Recalling how the Serbian Wikinews bot demotivated human contributors. Granted, creating date categories by hand is about as mindless as it gets. --Pi zero (talk) 22:33, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Not talking about the bot doing the archiving! Just creating the list of articles needing archived (although, changing protection to 'no move' and 'registered users only' might be worthwhile).
There is an "offset" option in DPL, but I don't think it's help here. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)Reply


The Wikinewsie Group News : Edition 4, October 1, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 4, October 1, 2013
Aff-Comm
  • The Bylaws review by aff-comm started in early September.[3][4]
Wikimedia Foundation
Research
  • Wikinews original reporting value as a measure of news events was published. This is the first in a series of research pieces looking at the cost of original reporting done by Wikinews journalists.
  • The second piece of research about Wikinews reporting was published, Itemizing the cost of Wikinews reporting. It was not published on the research namespace on meta because it has little application for chapters and thematic organizations as a whole, except possibly in trying to determine how to evaluate budgets submitted by Wikinews reporters for the purposes of grant making.
Education
  • On English Wikinews, supporters of The Wikinewsie Group requested the installation of the Education Program extension. This will facilitate having university courses participate on the project and make it easier for TWG to work with other groups like the Wiki Education Foundation.[6][7] The extension was installed and as an example and way to engage new contributors,a course for new reporters was created. Feedback on the course or anyone interested in running a high school or university course on Wikinews is encouraged to get in touch with The Wikinewsie Group.
Original reporting
  • Media accreditation has been attained for the 2014 Winter Paralympics. Planning is underway to insure the success of the original reporting event[8] and build on the success of the 2012 Summer Paralympics.[9] Success at the 2014 Winter Paralympics will go a long way towards helping The Wikinewsie Group secure accreditation for the 2016 Summer Olympics. If any individuals, chapters or thematic organizations are interested in assisting us with this and integrating it into existing outreach efforts to people with disabilities, please get in touch Laura Hale.
Outreach
  • A discussion took place on IRC about how Wikinews's definitions of journalism are very much tied into the workflow for Wikinews. [10] Thus, for many Wikinewsies, it is difficult to discuss the concept of what journalism is in a project context without it being seen as a fundamental discussion on project workflow. When people come in from the outside and offer advice, they are often seen as fundamentally criticizing the project's workflow without having any conceptualization they are doing that while fundamentally acting in good faith. In working with outsiders who are offering assistance, there needs to be a better method of articulating that the two, definition or journalism and Wikinews workflow, are one and the same. This could theoretically assist in less hostility, and enabling greater shared understanding that will allow participants to talk with each other instead of past each other.
  • Wikimetrics may be useful for assisting people in measuring education program impact, GLAM related programming and other outreach endeavors. For projects with flagged revisions or where articles are deleted/userified if they do not get published, the only really useable current available metric is pages created. Any analysis using this tool should wait until all content has been delete/userified because of too many false positives that suggest content was published when it was not. Additional information can be found at Programs:Resources.
  • Several language Wikinews projects which tweet out links other than to their news archives have started tagging their articles with the local language word for Wikinews. This makes it easier to find their reporting content, and for others to retweet their content. The Wikinewsie Group Twitter account made this request to better promote the work being done by local projects.


Technical
  • Wikinewsie.org e-mail is being cleaned up. All e-mail boxes which are 100% full have been deleted. Users who have set their accounts to forward to "untrustworthy" sites have been cautioned against doing so or those rules have been modified and reset with random values by the server administrator for them. People are reminded they should not be forwarding their e-mails to Google or Yahoo accounts. A strong possibility exists that this implementation may have been overly zealous so if a user is experiencing difficulties, please get in touch.[11]
  • Three potential technical projects for Wikinews were listed on the possible projects for mentorship programs on Mediawiki. They include a request for a mobile reporting tool, a mobile Wikinews application, and a machine assisted translation tool. [12]
  • Server upgrades and fixes continue for the Wikinewsie server. Details available here.
  • The wmtran tool has a new interface translation, to German, thanks to Huon.
For reporters
  • Reporters are encouraged to get an orcid, which can be displayed on their userpage. (Example) This could be useful in improving chances of getting grants, getting recognition for your reporting and promoting your work.
  • The Wikinewsie Group is looking for New York City based Wikimedia contributors who would be interested in getting published on Wikinews with the goal of getting media accreditation to the United Nations.[13] Please get in touch with Laura Hale or pi zero if you would like more information.


Original report

All original reporting done across Wikinews between September 1 and October 1, 2013. If this list is incomplete, please report that to Gryllida. Thank you to all Wikinews reporters and translators who have done original reporting. Please continue your good work.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group News - Edition 5, November 8, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 5, November 8, 2013
Project news
  • The Wikinewsie Group/Local Wikinews policies is the start of a guide that explains local Wikinews project policies with the goal of making it easier to recognise credentials across project, build on accumulated reputation from one project to another and facilitate translation work.
  • Historical Czech Wikinews experiment is a blog entry by Okino that looks at the community impact of allowing writers to write Wikinews articles from a past perspective, IE writing a story about a historical battle as if you were a journalist writing that article the day after it happened. The purpose was to attempt to make Wikinews more collaborative in nature and avoid the time constraints of the immediacy of news reporting. Okino shows that while the reaction to the idea was positive, the true interest in writing the articles of this type was small as the vast majority of them were written by him.
  • A conversation is taking place on Wikinoticias about allowing CC-BY-NC images to be locally uploaded.[14]
  • A conversation is taking place on English Wikinews with a WMF staff member about the future of search and potential special search features for Wikinews projects.[15]
Training materials
A video for new reporters who lost their first article on English Wikinews
  • A one page guide and a screencast were created that explain how to avoid plagiarism on Wikinews. Available data suggests this is somewhat of an issue for new and student reporters on English Wikinews, with roughly 10 to 20% of all submitted articles having some sort of copyright issue.
  • Training materials were created to better support new reporters wanting to produce photo essays. They can be found at Photo Essays for Wikinews, Photojournalist worksheet, and Wikinews Photo Essay Formatting. Assistance is requested in translating these to other languages and localizing them to local project requirements. This would be very helpful ahead of the Sochi Paralympic Games, where there are expected to be a number of photo essays produced.
  • Given the difficulty of new reporters being unable to get their first article published on Wikinews, a video was created to encourage these writers to stick with it. It can be found at The first time writing for Wikinews good.ogv. It is somewhat tongue in cheek, and tries to address the emotional implications of a not ready review. The problem of getting new reporters who are unsuccessful at getting their article published has been identified as a major area for work. It has a large impact on reporter retention.
Of interest for journalists
Education
EduWiki 2013 presentation
  • Provisional Chairperson LauraHale is made a presentation at the EduWiki Conference 2013 in Cardiff, Wales about educational efforts on English Wikinews. Findings she included that changes in reviewing practices between semester 1 and semester 2 for one university course saw similar improvements for new reporters. What is good for students is good for the whole community.
  • With the Education Extension[16] installed successfully on English Wikinews, a portal was started at WN:EDU[17] to encourage and provide training for educators to use Wikinews in their coursework. This is something The Wikinewsie Group is hoping to expand upon in the future, and plans to try to get translated into other languages. Plans are also underway to create a student portal to provide training for students. Many things to Sage Ross for his assistance in setting up the educator portal.
GLAM
  • The major GLAM work being done by a Wikinewsie at the moment is a Wikimedian in Residency with the Comité Paralímpico Español. A report was created this month for CPE based on interviews done in August. It can be found here.
  • Paralympic work being done with the US Olympic Committee is progressing.
Original reporting - summary

Between May 1 and October 31, when The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter first began tracking original reporting taking place across all projects, 227 stories have been published by 78 reporters 14 different language Wikinews projects. The projects with the greatest number of reporters engaged in original reporting were English with 15, Russian with 14, Polish with 13 and French with 10. Beyond these, original there were one or more journalists engaging in original reporting on Catalan, Chinese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish and Ukrainian. The peak month for reporting across all projects was May with 52 articles. It was followed by June with 49, August with 44, September with 43 and July with 39.

In the past four months, Spanish, Polish, French, Ukrainian, Russian and English have all produced over 20 total pieces of original reporting, with Russian Wikinews publishing 41 stories and English Wikinews publishing 60 stories.

LauraHale, RockerballAustralia, Antanana, Agamitsudo, Dmitry Rozhkov, Plogi, Krassotkin, Schekinov Alexey Victorovich, and MadriCR have each produced 5 or more pieces of original reporting in the past four months. Another group of users, Joan301009, Bddpaux, Computron, Laslovarga, Fed4ev and Yakudza, have produced four articles each.

For September, only three pieces of 43 original reports produced were translated from one language to another. They were Wikinews interviews specialists on China, Iran, Russia support for al-Assad, Wikinews interviews Dr Thomas Scotto and Dr Steve Hewitt about potential US military intervention in Syria, Atlético de Madrid defeats Real Madrid 1-0 in 2013 derby and Tokio gana la sede de los Juegos Olímpicos 2020. Original reporting is a major strength of Wikinews. It is one we should be playing to. The Wikinewsie Group would like to encourage everyone to assist translating Wikinews work into another language, or finding a local reporter to assist with translating a work from where it was originally published into that language. This will benefit all languages, promote more cooperation between projects, and expand news reach for our reporting which we can leverage to provide more opportunities for reporters.

Original reporting output
Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Chinese
See also: 原创报导, 已发布. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.
German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.

The Wikinewsie Group News : Edition 6, December 2, 2013

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

Sharing news about the group's activities
and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

Key resources

The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 6, December 2, 2013

If you know anyone interested in Wikinews, journalism on Wikimedia projects or The Wikinewsie Group, please encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter by adding their name to the list.

The Group
  • Aff-comm recommended to the Wikimedia Foundation Board that The Wikinewsie Group be recognised as a thematic organization in early November.[18]
Education
  • Wikinews Education Program blog post was published on Wikimedia's official blog.
  • Discussions were had on IRC and Skype about the possibility of installing the education extension on Ukrainian, Czech and Korean Wikinews. While these could be used to potentially re-invigorate the local communities and provide a cohort of new contributors, the limited contributor base at the moment makes it difficult to implement. Greater partnerships would need to be done with chapters to provide people to assist local projects in running any education initiative.
  • What is news? handout was created to supplement existing training materials as this is an area where new contributors sometimes have issues on English Wikinews.
  • Documenting your original sport reporting was created to supplement Wikinews Original Sport Reporting. Assistance is requested in translating these documents into Spanish and Ukrainian.
Outreach
  • LauraHale attended Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2013 in Slovakia representing The Wikinewsie Group. She had conversations with people from several chapters about the potential to do things with TWG including the Polish, Estonian, Serbian, Czech and Ukrainian chapters.
Original reporting projects
  • The paperwork was submitted at the end of the month to send five Wikinews reporters to the Sochi Paralympic Games.
  • Attempts were made to secure media accreditation for the Commonwealth Games. The application was unsuccessful.

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Recent original reporting
Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.

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German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.