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• meta:Global sysops. Proposal to have people who are sysops (Admins) on all small wikis to help out if local admins overburdened. (we are not a small wiki, so doesn't overly affect us). Go vote on meta.
• No google redirect? Don't panic, we now use googlehack instead. Easy Peer review will no longer generate redirects, and thats ok.
• Wikinews is holding a writing contest starting on January 25. Sign up! Newbies welcomed and encouraged.
• Too lazy to replace {{developing}} with {{review}}? Now we have a button to magically do it for you on {{develop}}.
• Google news now indexes us sort of. Please do a hard refresh before reviewing your next article.
• {{topicon}} should now make icons that go by the title bar (like on FA articles), that work with vector/all skins.
• We're now using vector, and the enhanced edit toolbar!
• Users who come directly to Wikinews from Wikipedia, and edit something immediately (That is not old), get {{Editintro from wikipedia}} while editing. Users who edit an old article get {{Editintro notcurrent}}.
• The number of articles on the main rss feed has been shortened. If you don't like this change, please raise a fuss.
• If you are using {{Latest news}} in a main page re-design, you have to switch to using {{latest news/old}} as {{latest news}} has changed significantly.
• [edit lead] links on main page is now invisible to anons.
• Easy Peer review gadget now bumps {{date}} automatically
• Bugs (affecting Wikinews): useful categories, old request to switch to dpl2, RSS feed extension, DEFAULTSORTKET: causes articles to go to top of DPLs, Blanking page causes article to be most recently published
• Things needing doing:

Accreditation requests: 0 Requests for permissions: 0 Flagged revs requests: 0 Bot requests: 1 Articles needing review: 1 Quiz: Ok ^Edit

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Policies and guidelines and the Style guide contain or link to most of the current en.Wikinews policies and guidelines, however policy is based on the accepted practices of the day on Wikinews, often these might not be written down. This section of the Water cooler focuses on discussions regarding policy issues.

You may wish to check the archives to see if a subject has been raised previously.

Strategic Planning

The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a year long phase of strategic planning. During this time of planning, members of the community have the opportunity to propose ideas, ask questions, and help to chart the future of the Foundation. In order to create as centralized an area as possible for these discussions, the Strategy Wiki has been launched. This wiki will provide an overview of the strategic planning process and ways to get involved, including just a few questions that everyone can answer. All ideas are welcome, and everyone is invited to participate.

Please take a few moments to check out the strategy wiki. It is being translated into as many languages as possible now; feel free to leave your messages in your native language and we will have them translated (but, in case of any doubt, let us know what language it is, if not english!).

All proposals for the Wikimedia Foundation may be left in any language as well.

Please, take the time to join in this exciting process. The importance of your participation can not be overstated.

--Philippe

(please cross-post widely and forgive those who do)

News on Wikipedia Homepage

Who decides what news goes on the Wikipedia front page? Is there a policy regarding it? I haven't been able to find such a policy, and the standards for noteworthiness seem to change over time. 128.151.23.55 (talk) 21:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong project, Wikipedia controls that. Wikinews is mostly independent of wikipedia. However, w:Wikipedia:In the news is the page you're looking for i believe. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Are you referring to this project, Wikinews, or our sister site Wikipedia? We're not a part of Wikipedia, and totally independent from them. If it's the former, then no, we have no set policies on what can and can't go on the front page, although there are some "unwritten" rules about it, such as that the story should not be very local, and that the leads should be kept reasonably fresh if possible. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

How to peer-review

I'm not aware of substantive guidance on the site about on how to go about peer-reviewing articles. What I mean is that (unless I've missed something, but if I have then there's a decent chance I'm not alone in that) a newly promoted editor has nothing that tells them how much of what kind of work they ought to be putting into the task. Much of their prior experience of the peer review process is that it looks easy; they only see the tip of the iceberg — maybe some copyedits, and a little edit that replaces {{review}} with {{publish}} and puts a template on the talk page saying it's been certified acceptable on several criteria. One might expect to find the primary description of the process in Wikinews:Reviewing articles, but that page doesn't give a real sense of the part of the iceberg below the surface.

As a first step toward figuring what we should tell prospective peer-reviewers about the process — and authors, too, who might find the process easier to appreciate if they had a clearer picture of it — I'd like to ask how other editors go about peer-reviewing an article. I too have only seen the effects of other people's reviews; and I'm not really satisfied that I know how to do some aspects of reviewing properly.

As a starting point, I'll open myself up to ridicule by describing how I go about peer review.

After reading through the article to get a sense of what is there, I open up a second browser tab, and use it to set up a scratchpad copy of the entire body of the article in Special:ExpandTemplates, which lets me edit the scratchpad without any danger of accidentally saving it. Then I scan through each of the sources from beginning to end, and as I find things in the sources, I use <s>...</s> to strike out those facts in my scratchpad copy of the article body; when I'm all done, everything in the scratchpad copy should have been struck out. This also serves several other purposes:

• Scrutinizing the relationship between article and sources should also detect copyright problems of the "block copy" sort (if such were to occur).
• Scrutinizing the article piece-by-piece should detect a large percentage of style problems (assuming that the reviewer is likely to recognize style problems when their nose is rubbed in them, this will do the nose-rubbing).
• Scrutinizing the sources is likely to detect if they're really from the same newsfeed rather than being independent sources.

When I've done all that, which concentrates on the details, I try to step back and look at the whole, a bit (I admit I'm still struggling with this). Like, are all the really important aspects of the story included in the article, is appropriate weight being given to the different aspects, what about categories, picture(s), infobox.

I'd also be very interested in comments on which aspects of an article are most important to get right before publication, versus which aspects aren't such a big deal to make minor fixes to later. --Pi zero (talk) 14:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This is something I haven't really thought about, but now that it's been brought to my attention, yes, I do notice that we haven't much in the way of help in how to publish articles for new editors. Perhaps we could create Wikinews:Tips on reviewing articles or something like that? You're quite right in that most reviewers are left to their own devices when publishing. I don't think we should have a firm policy on *how* exactly to review, but rather just suggestions what to look for.

Anyway, I really like your strategy for verifying articles, i think it's quite efficient but, at the same time, covers all important steps. My method for reviewing is less methodical: I go through the sources, make sure they're not from the same agency, then try to judge their accuracy and reliability (i.e., I'd take info from the Daily Mail or tabloid with a grain of salt, and perhaps try to find a more reputable source to back up the information taken from them). Then I proceed to the article itself: I read the first paragraph, find where in the sources it's verified, make sure it conforms to policy (style, NPOV), then repeat the process with next paragraphs, making incremental copyedits as I see needed. When I'm all done with that, I do a quick read-through to make sure appropriate balance is given to all viewpoints, see if categories and formatting is correct, and then publish. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we want to specify how to do a review. For instance, I read the article, then read each of the sources and can tell if it's been copyviod or some things aren't mentioned. I just copyedit as I go. So no methodical method, but I'm able to do it like that and everyone is different. We could maybe add a bit more in tips, but we want to avoid specific methods.    Tris   15:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

My approach seems to differ significantly from those given above. And, I'm the one that spent a couple of years or more fighting to get the process in place.

First and foremost, I copyedit. Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Does the article tell a story? Does it do so in a way that flows? Is there actually any point to someone reading what, mostly, are our synthesis versions of main news events reported anywhere else?

Once that's done, and often as a part of that process, I'll correct Wikilinks to be local - eg, United States instead of w:United States. To a lesser extent I'll look for wikilinks that go to redirect pages on enwp; however, I would generally consider this sufficiently low-priority that the only ones to really worry about are where someone's linking to a disambig page on enwp.

You will note, I have zero mention of reading any of the sources yet!

Once I'm reasonably happy the article reads well, I will look at the visual appearance. Are pull-quotes really pull-quotes? Or, omitted from the article? Is there no infobox, and an appropriate one that could be used? Are image captions holding part of the story rather than admitting to use of a file photo? Are images credited appropriately? (On this point, many images on Commons need no attribution but I feel that the people who give these away with no expectation of recognition deserve such. I think it is setting a good example for others utilising Commons and there's less worry about if it is required to attribute reuse. Just do it anyway and be done with it.)

Then, and only then, will I move onto the sources, related news, and external links. Are related news items really related? (Eg, don't just slap the last 3 articles on a country on the article, are they really a continuation of the same story, or a source used in the article you're currently reviewing? If not, cut 'em; this can be a POV-by-association issue if you pick the wrong related news items.

Then, into the sources; sort newest->oldest, fix the perennial failure to cite the BBC as "BBC News Online" (my pet hate), check authors are credited, and agencies where appropriate, try (based on five years on-project) to have publisher names likely to wikilink to the correct enWP article, and curse people who do not use the standardised Monthname Dayno, Year dating standard.

Ensure that there's nothing wishy-washy, generic, undated in the sources; if needed move to external links and cite appropriately for there.

Then, it's time to move on to reading the sources. And, believe you me, I've had some entertaining experiences there. If it's a "publication" from Bumfuck Blogistan I'm not amused. I really dislike dealing with such sources unless I can quickly establish they have some credibility and aren't just cut-and-pasted from a more obscure or behind-paywall source. Other risks you have are stories that originate with one of the wire services and go global in the media echo-chamber. It is really, really easy for someone who isn't appropriately suspicious to pick three sources with vast geographical separation, and even poles-apart politically, to all be regurgitating the self-same Associated Press or Reuters report. I've seen it, and probably most who follow the news a lot have too, a global story, in the first 15 minutes of every bulletin on TV news in a dozen countries, and the thing is actually single-source to AP having a syndication deal with a tiny obscure newspaper in Nowheresville. What can be worse is where all the used sources are different tentacles of the same news conglomerate like News International. There's a right-of-centre to right-of-Attila-The-Hun bias to all their outlets; that can badly bias a story.

You'll note I've not yet mentioned copyvio. I do, sometimes, find this amusing. I've done my copyedit first, sources later, on articles only to find that I've changed the Wikinews story to a closer copyvio than the original author. This, to me, is a little ironic; the author's efforts to avoid accusations of copyright violation are superficial, and they're paraphrasing sentence-for-sentence from a source without realising a critical copyedit will turn it back into what the source they plagiarised wrote. While Wikinews remains a small community you quickly pick up on suspected copyvio authors; others, you learn, can be trusted to put in the effort to render checks for this unneeded.

Naturally, alongside the copyvio item above, you're fact-checking the article. You may find you need to go back and slightly revise the Wikinews article because some point has been over-simplified, or somewhat misrepresented.

Categories, to me, are less important than a lot of things. I believe you should never rely on a category being added via an infobox. An article could be expanded, additional images or pull-quotes added, within the 12-18 hours post-publish and render the infobox inappropriate. As far as I'm concerned the critical category items are at least one geographical category, and one major topic category such as Category:Politics and conflicts. When we do have the sitemap extension sorted, tested, and installed, then the category information will feed straight into Google News. If you don't fix the categorisation on an article before publication it may be unlocatable via GNews.

Virtually all that's needed is in the Wikinews policies - which seem assumed more aimed at authors than reviewers; the critical points I would emphasise are, active voice and near-memorisation of Strunk's. The latter will tell you to rip out every single nonessential word. Almost all copyedits I do need words like "that" dropped because they're just noise. Certain points get slashed back to brutally simple subject-object-verb sentences. Run-on sentences get condemned as "crimes against the English language"; and – both as a writer, or reviewer – the aim is to have a finished piece that someone with college-level English will, if interested by the lede, read from start to finish without feeling taxed, and, from which they walk away feeling more informed.

As you might suspect, I set standards so high even I have trouble reaching them in my writing. To-date Mike Halterman is, seemingly, the only Wikinewsie who appears to have gone from contributor here to paid journalist. I subscribe to the view, "Take the job seriously, but never yourself". And, for aspiring writers, I would commend Stephen King's advice in his book "On Writing" – spend at least one hour each every day reading and writing. Even if you do not intend to pursue a career in journalism or writing books, this is a skill that will serve you incredibly well in any career. Use Wikinews as a place to hone your writing skills and critical analysis of the writings of others; along the way you can help make this a high-quality news source that builds its reputation and proves that writing is a craft, not a "taught" skill. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Time it takes to review articles

I've noticed that articles that need review get marked "Overdue" if it's been waiting in line for a long time - nice idea, but I don't think it works too well. I've seen quite a few articles sit in line for over 30 hours before being published; this article is approaching 48! Therefore, I am proposing that we set a time limit (let's say 24 hours) for an article to be reviewed. If the article sits in line for more than 24 hours, then anyone, including the writer himself, may automatically publish the artcle without a review. This policy would dramatically cut the averge wait time for our articles. Benny the mascot (talk) 00:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't think that's a good idea at all. Supposing that someone posts a copyright violation or article that is biased/clearly not up to our standards, not noticed for 24 hours (entirely possible given our lack of users, especially on weekdays), and published. That wouldn't make us look very good, would it? No; I think everything should be independently reviewed by a trusted user. The peer review policy is there for a reason. IMO, it's better to have a good article that's a little old, rather than a more recent article that's badly written. Another difficulty is that the author of an article won't be able to fully publish it by themselves if he doesn't have Editor privileges, given that we have flagged revisions and other anti self-publish measures installed. I don't think this is going to work. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Short response: Nope, Not gonna happen. Longer response: We require independent review of our articles for a number of reasons. Some of which include fun things like spam to more sedate reasons like accuracy. Additionally, We only got listed on Google News because of independent review, pull that and we're gone. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 01:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

My article has been waiting to be reviewed for two days! Are we going to let similar articles get stale simply because people are unwilling to review them? That is completely unfair to the writers! Furthermore, would it help to increase the time limit to 36 hours in order to give people more time to check everything? Benny the mascot (talk) 01:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Peer review is not a rubber-stamp. Publish yourself and expect a caution. Repeat? Expect a block and de-editored. Certain contributors work gets passed over because of the extensive work known to be required to bring it into compliance with the style guide and various other policies. I suggest you review the discussion elsewhere on what various people do in reviewing. Then, look at articles that do get published and, in some cases, the considerable work required to bring them up to that publishable standard. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 01:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any issues over my articles??? If so, then fail them, don't keep me wondering for two days what's going on! The same applies for other articles: we should not prevent them from going stale just because we're too lazy to review! Benny the mascot (talk) 01:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You don't seem to understand, Benny. It sure can be unfair to the writers when a story isn't reviewed in a timely manner (it's happened to me personally, I can sympathise), but there are other considerations as well, which I think far outweigh that. For instance: it contravenes many of our policies, would get us kicked off Google News (a big no-no since we're already struggling to increase/maintain our reader base), and results in the possibility that a copyvio or biased/badly written/inaccurate article would appear in the main page and feeds. That would make us look bad, which is even worse in our situation, since we don't have a great reputation as it is for being the most accurate news source in town. 36 hours - or even more than that - wouldn't guarantee enough time for someone to be certain to go over an article. The negatives far outweigh the positives for self-publishing, I think. Perhaps we should look at ways to encourage reviewers to review more (like having a bot ping IRC when an article has been waiting for review for too long? i dunno). Tempodivalse [talk] 01:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

1. I do not know the sport of Basketball at all. I do not consider myself qualified to review that.
2. I loathe reality television with a passion. Particularly where it is related to shallow, insipid, mental-midget faux celebrities.

I'm not the only reviewer. The above two are clear reasons why I'm not devoting my time to these particular article topics, my earlier comment was more general and intended to try and point out why numerous articles languish unreviewed. I'd rather do a good review on something I have some basis to feel qualified to review and not be actively, and aware of, a bias against. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 02:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

This is a terrible terrible idea. Under no circumstances should we re-introduce self-publication; it would destroy what credibility we have. If your articles are taking too long to get reviewed, then write articles in such a way that other editors will want to publish them. --Killing Vector (talk) 02:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I write articles that actually interest me, but never only to satisfy the tastes of other editors. That is something I will never do, and I will not let anyone tell me what I can and can't write. As for your comment on self-publishing, I can live with not having it. But I would still like to see a time limit that triggers an automatic publication by another reviewer. For example, let's say that the ITV article stays in line for the next 36 hours. Since I'm not involved in the writing of that article, then I can publish it even without having to formally pass it. Would that work for everyone? Benny the mascot (talk) 02:13, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

How does that make sense? If time runs out, an article gets automatically published. That is exactly what you said previously and the answer is still no. I'm sorry you feel slighted. I'm not sure if you've ever done it, but reviewing is a fair amount of work and we don't have enough reviewers. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 02:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Um, I don't think that would work out well either. The problems laid out with self-publishing above still persist if a reviewer publishes an article without even looking at it - accuracy, neutrality, copyvio, etc will all go through and that's unacceptable. Sorry if you've feel slighted. One suggestion - you're an editor, if you want to help remedy this problem, perhaps you'd like to just review others' articles yourself whenever you have the time? My motto is, you want something to be done right, do it yourself. :-) Tempodivalse [talk] 02:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I was actually about to review the ITV article, thank you very much. :) I've noticed, however, that reviewing every other article written tonight won't change the fact that the gadget is counting days instead of hours for my article! I was shocked once I saw the words "2 days" instead of "48 hours" next to my article. Oh well...I suppose it's nice that we've prepared the gadget for these things! Benny the mascot (talk) 02:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Wikinews has a limited user base, still. I see the subject of your article is a local HS basketball game. I am not really surprised that it was hard to find reviewers. We don't have coverage of NBA or college basketball that is worth mentioning. That said, it is really regrettable that your article didn't get reviewed — at a glance — it appears to be written well within WN:SG. I guess it boils down to time and people resources. People naturally decide to review articles that seem interesting to them first. We can't force anybody to do anything, since we are all volunteers. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• I will say this one more time, Peer review is not a rubber stamp. I worked too long, and too hard to get Wikinews reportage seen as respectable enough to be listed in Google News, and even used as a source for Wikipedia, to throw it away on an ill-judged suggestion to slap a rubber stamp on things. Might I suggest you look at the discussion around RockerballAustralia (talk · contribs) losing editor status? Virtually everyone with a reasonable number of articles to their name has lost some – for a variety of reasons. Nobody is dictating what you should, or should not, write about. I frankly expressed areas where I have no interest, or experience/qualification, suited to reviewing the examples you cite. I will reiterate the point; this is a volunteer project, as such you volunteer to write what is interesting to you; those reviewing also volunteer. Browbeating people at 3am is generally a bad idea. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 02:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I've read the archived discussions regarding RockerballAustralia, and I think that since then we still haven't found a good way to clear the backlog. I think the 36-hour time limit I'm proposing would motivate editors to review articles well before 36 hours have passed. I don't think we'll even have any articles approaching 36 hours, since everything would have been reviewed so quickly. Benny the mascot (talk) 03:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I understand your reasoning behind the suggestion, that the threat of auto-reviewing would encourage people to review more quickly. But still, I think it's highly risky. Supposing there are no people around willing or capable to review (we do have days when there's practically no activity at all) and a spammy/factually incorrect article does get auto-published? No, I'd rather not have that. I also don't think that system will keep us in Google News, whichis probably one of the biggest factors weighing in this. Tempodivalse [talk] 03:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess I didn't say it in my comment because I think it to be inconceivable ... but for the record NO on some sort of system that let's article's get autopublished if they are not disputed within 36 hours (or any time-frame). --SVTCobra 03:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Although on an absolute scale, an article dying of staleness unreviewed is a big problem, on a relative scale it is dwarfed to insignificance next to the problem you're proposing to create. You can't force volunteer editors to review articles more promptly by threatening to destroy the project if they don't; there are a couple of flaws in that plan.

Here's another way to look at it: The standards imposed by peer review are a huge step forward that we managed to take in the past, overcoming a challenge that we had to overcome, and removing those standards would be reversing that victory and giving up. We've got another challenge we're facing now, and we haven't figured out yet how to defeat it — so far we're harassing the enemy while we look for weaknesses in its defenses — but we do know that retroactively losing the previous battle we fought isn't going to help. --Pi zero (talk) 04:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, the above proposal. Essentially per Tempodivalse (talk · contribs), ShakataGaNai (talk · contribs), and Brian McNeil (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 05:35, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Technical

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Resurrecting LiquidThreads issue

As some may remember, Wikinews has already voted to get LiquidThreads.

I spoke to Werdna about this last night in IRC; cleared up a couple of misconceptions about how Wikinews would use it, and was offered a testing option.

The testing option is to use {{#userliquidthreads:1}} on comments pages where it would be preferred. This takes account of a history of Comments pages without Liquid Threads, and allows selective testing of the feature.

Does anyone object to me updating the bug that was filed to get LQT on Comments: to accept this offer, and start playing with it? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd press to do this too. The Comments namespace is one of the major things that sets us detrimentally apart from other news sites, and this might close the gap slightly. — μ 13:05, February 5 2010 (UTC)

That sounds good. We really need liquidthreads installed. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Okay, most of the North American contributors aren't up yet. I'll append a note to the bug that there's tentative support for this change and see where things go. [Aside, who the hell changed the editing interface while I was asleep? I was so used to finishing typing in the edit box, pressing TAB to go to the summary, and hitting enter to submit my edit. Now the damn thing has a font I've only seen on non-Latin wikis, and you end up losing the edit and opening the CC license page.] --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed. Go for it, we want it ASAP.    Tris   16:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. We voted and approved it once, I don't see an issue with a "test" implementation as a half step to get there. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 17:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I missed the original vote, but implementing this on here, would be most likely beneficial. (Out of curiosity, why is the TAB not going to the summary box?) --Mikemoral♪♫ 04:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

With the nya and the original vote Wikinews:Water_cooler/technical/archives/2009/December#LQT_for_Comments:_Namespace --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

• I agree that doing a testing phase is a Good Idea™. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:44, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to Werdna, liquid threads are now enabled. Yipee! A few things to note:

• Comment pages will now be auto-created by easyPeerReview on publish.
• Some of the site-specific js stuff that makes the opinion namespace look like a second talk namespace has been updated to deal with liquid threads better. You might need to hard refresh for it.
• I removed the how to add sources box that appears under the edit box for all pages not in main namespace.
• Try it out at Comments:Liquid Thread Testing.
• If you see any bugs, don't forget to report them.

Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:06, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

OMG LQT RUSH! --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 03:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Weird linebreaks

Hey, all. I'd just like to say that, if you are experiencing problems with line breaks not registering in edits, that it is being worked on and a patch will be pushed out "soon". In the mean time, a work-around of pressing "Shift+Enter" should work. As a result of the new edit window, the template box at the bottom of the screen does not work. You can still use the special characters box if required for, er, special characters, but you'll have to type templates in by hand, or find some javascriptage to do it for you. — μ 23:51, February 5 2010 (UTC)

As per the other bugs, the tab problem has been reported. — μ 23:55, February 5 2010 (UTC)

• Disable the advanced editor/toolbar in user prefs and the problem goes away - plus you get back sane line spacing and can cut and paste without some horrible half-assed WYSIWTF. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Ugh MediaWiki WYSIWYG is the most annoying thing. Think Wikia--Mikemoral♪♫ 03:38, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

DPL output as template parameter

I am wondering if there is a way to get DPL to produce such an output which is usable as template parameter, I mean, plain text (not links), separated by |. - Xbspiro (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• I do not believe so; the whole point of DPL is to provide a list of links. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit conflict] No. (at least not with DynamicPageList/intersection/the thing we use). DPL2 has lots of cool weird features and might be able to do it. (also of interest is bugzilla:13692) Bawolff ☺☻ 17:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• IIRC, DPL2 is such a brutal resource hog it'll never be installed on any Wikimedia wiki. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep. but i wasn't sure if the user was perhaps coming from some external/personal wiki that might not care as much. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast response. (I have planned to use that function, if available, on a Wikimedia site.) - Xbspiro (talk) 07:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what were you planning to do? Bawolff ☺☻ 15:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

With that function, the rotation of lead articles could have been automatized. Thinking of vandalism, it may sound as a bad idea in general, but, for a low-traffic page, I think the automation is a viable alternative. A few days ago I ran into one-month-old articles on the main page of Hungarian Wikinews, and seeing that the idea just sprang to my mind. - Xbspiro (talk) 16:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

You still can't include only the first paragraph doing that (unless you do noinclude's). We use WN:ML to semi-automate the leads here on en. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I would have created 2 templates in order to make things go smoothly. In theory, one of them takes place on the main page invoking lead articles as templates. (Something like: {{:{{1}}}} {{:{{2}}}} etc.) The other one, placed in an article one wants to quote, categorizes the page as lead article; its only parameter is for selecting the text to be quoted. This template makes no visible changes to the article itself, just inserts a category name and, at the end of the text to be quoted, a noinclude tag. With DPL, one could feed the main page template with titles of the latest articles that have been added to the lead article category. The problem is that there is virtually no way to produce a DPL-output which is suitable for templates. I have found out that #replace, which could have been used to reformat the output, is also disabled on Wikimedia wikis.

I did not know about WN:ML, so thanks for the link. I will try to understand how it works and how could that be adapted to huwikinews, but, unfortunately, I do not have experience in Javascript. (I haven't even find the JS code which makes it work.) - Xbspiro (talk) 13:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

New messages tab at the top

What is the "New messages" hyperlink at the top, alongside "My watchlist" and "My contributions"?    Tris   08:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

It's part of the liquidthreads installation. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Yuh huh, and what does it do? What messages will I get from it?    Tris   16:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, any LQT thread that you edit will automatically get added to your thread-watchlist, and if anyone else adds comments, it will ping you with "New messages (number of new posts)". Tempodivalse [talk] 17:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

It is in a very annoying place. I know there's meant to be a way to suppress it, but I'd rather some way of switching it with my watchlist. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Query: How do you suppress it? Cirt (talk) 19:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Bitch bitch bitch. It isn't going to be integrated to your watch list so live with it. To remove the message:

#pt-newmessages {
display: none;
}

Put it in your vector.css or monobook.css file. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Shak! Works great for me. Tempodivalse [talk] 19:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Bitchin' back at ya. I never asked for it to be integrated with anything. I asked for new messages to go one space to the left, and swap with my watchlist. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposals

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File photos

When using file photos, maybe there should be a template similar to template:image credit which says that the file is a file photo (and has a link to WN:SG#Adding images or other pictures), something like this (file photo) Cocoaguy^talk_contribs‽ 22:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a link would be very useful. The linked page is really just for contributors, I'm not sure it's something to distract readers with. the wub "?!" 00:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Assistance

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Welcome Bot

When did this become operational? Who is operating this?    Tris   09:19, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

• Nobody is operating it. This is a MediaWiki extension we voted to have enabled. Register an account? You're immediately given a {{Howdy}}. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Aha, must have missed the vote! Very useful, about time to. Cheers.    Tris   11:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

That's great news. We've been waiting for this for months, glad the devs finally got around to it. Only problem is, now i'm out of one of my main sources for edit count boost calories. :-b Tempodivalse [talk] 13:50, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

What's the extension's name? --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 14:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe it is mw:Extension:NewUserMessage. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

thanks! --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That's the one we use on StrategyWiki as well - just one issue with it; if the user is created through SUL, the extension doesn't pick them up and they still require a manual welcome. If they create an account locally, it picks them up. Oh well, it cut my welcoming seriously. Philippe (talk) 00:34, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it seems as though the bot welcomes all new users even if they're autocreated through SUL, per the new user log. Interesting though. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:51, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I've never figured out the pattern of unwelcomed accounts on StrategyWiki. There *must* be a pattern. It can't just randomly not welcome certain accounts. I mean, do they all have some weird character in them? Are they all 14 characters long? Were they all created on the 52nd second of any given minute? Does it not like accounts that weren't originally created either locally or on Wikipedia? Or non-languageofcurrentwiki accounts (English in the case of enwikinews, obviously)? Who knows. Whatever the cause, the extension isn't perfect. Gopher65_talk 02:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The cause would be they are configured differently. Wikinews has $wmgNewUserMessageOnAutoCreate = true, [1] strategy does not. If strategy wants everyone welcomed, they should probably file a bug request to change the option. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

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Image

The first view, one of the aircraft just before the bomb exploded. There is no extra light in this one since I wanted to contrast the bright cabin lights with the next image in the series

I have made a request to have a detailed computer-generated image drawn up to go with my ongoing Lockerbie investigation, when it finally arrives. The guy I have asked is very talented; I've seen people here comment they only realised it wasn't a real plane when they read the caption that went with the image. It's a difficult and complicated job, so don't hold your breath, but I hope to be able to really demonstrate the violence with which these lives were taken. Everyone knows about the burning wreckage hitting buildings but few folk realise that the 259 on board were mostly not killed instantly, and that the breakup sequence itself was rather horrific. See here. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 00:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

• ooooh! Want! Want! Want! Does he do video too? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunatly, I don't think so. Not that I have seen, anyway. I will, of course, call upon the crash report to call public attention to exactly how the aircraft broke apart and I hope that the image will help people to be able to picture it in their heads. I have some idea how to make people not just look at it but see things they never thought about there. Also, I should point out that this is something other news media seem not to have. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 00:18, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

• To see some examples of what kind of results you can expect, see Cyprus to charge five over 2005 plane crash that killed 121 and Final report blames instrument failure for Adam Air Flight 574 disaster. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 01:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The second view. The impulse disrupts the cabin and pressurised air is lost. Debris is ingested into the engine, resulting in flames. Things get ugly in the next frame.

• He has agreed to do it. File:Chinaair006.png shows what he has achieved with a complex sequence before, it transpires; he went through it bit by bit and chose the best picture. Of course, Lockerbie is different as it broke apart/shredded real quick, but he seems confident enough. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks great, i want more. :-b Tempodivalse [talk] 03:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Image three. The aircraft lurches violently and noses down hard. The nose begins to peel round; three seconds after the explosion it strikes and removes an engine and then breaks away itself. It will land largely intact to form the most well-known photograph through the years. Here it has reached the tail as debris fills the sky. Yes, that is a person you can see flying past.

• Heads-up: I was asked about having people in the image, or if that was too offensive. Per all my arguments in the recent censorship debate, I've opted for people. No gore, but still not pleasant. Be ready for some upset when this comes out. Also, we don't have a bright explosion; Anyeverybody and I have been researching and have come to the conclusion Semtex is pretty much instantaneous and then gone - no fire bursting out the side. Instead, however, we will bring image two forward a bit to show the nearest engine flaming as debris enters instead of the moment of detonation. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Detail of the nose section that went on to become so iconic after it had landed. That thing tumbling out is the baggage container that held the bomb, complete with serial number.

• If I'm going to animate these as a GIF then I'll need as accurate an interval between images as possible. I've done GIFs before a long time ago and only recall fixed intervals between all frames; this means I might need to repeat an image as a "filler" frame if frame1-frame2 is 1 second and fraim2-frame3 is 2 seconds, and so on. Does anyone know what a Free, Commons and widely-browser supported file format would be to use in preference to GIF? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 03:55, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Theora is really the only other option. apng is not widely enough supported as of yet. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

A compound view. Upper half is the wing, now devoid of the rear fuselage, making its final approach. Lower half depicts the landing that followed. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• There really isn't much hope of animating these together in that fashion. The first three frames are quite close together, but then there are long gaps between frames 3 & 4 and 4 & 5. From explosion to impact was around forty seconds; we end seventeen seconds before the wing section impacts. However, I know Anyeverybody made it by roughly animating the whole sequence then finishing a selection of frames to a higher standard, so you could always seek more frames. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Category:Bureau of Labor Statistics

Someone has requested a hell of a lot of articles be added to this category.

What should the criteria for inclusion be? Articles about the bureau? Or every single mention of them as an official source of Govt. stats? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Articles about the bureau would make more sense, imo. Just because they're mentioned as a source for statistics probably isn't enough to be categorised as such. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I could go either way, but as they are the major source of economic statistics for the U.S. I think that the category is a useful way to aggregate stories. Evrik (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh balls, I only found this after doing most of the {{editprotected}} requests! Anyways, as should be obvious from my actions, I agree with adding the category broadly where BLS is used as a source. It brings together a lot of related stories and extra categories aren't generally harmful, but can be useful to readers. The articles should remain in higher-level categories such as Economy and business also. the wub "?!" 10:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Avaition infobox icon

On the Template:Aviation the image used is alittle restrictive, maybe we should use a more stylized logo, ex. File:AVIA BUTTON big.png, File:Aiga departingflights.gif or File:Aiga departingflights inv.gif. Cocoaguy^talk_contribs‽ 20:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

• Personally I prefer an actual photo to a stylised graphic but there's nothing stopping you doing {{Aviation||Image=AVIA BUTTON big.png}}. Well, not, I think, since I fixed the template to actually implement the parameter it claimed to support. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

  Like Brian, i think an actual pic is better - plus the A380 is suitable because it's so famous - but i suppose we could replace it with something more topic-neutral, File:AVIA BUTTON big.png seems good. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

• I actually think we could get away with changing the image from time to time; I'd like to play around with variations being fed into it, and that new parameter means we don't have to edit the template. Perhaps if we msut chage from this we can have a photograph and be generic; how about a clearly recognisable closeup fo some bit or other from an aircraft, such as this full-frontal jet engine? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• I have a hacking idea.... Pick up to five 'classic'/'iconic' aviation images and I'll make the default a random selection from one whenever someone looks at an article containing the template. With that overrideable by the optional parameter. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• That sounds fun.    Tris   19:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Brian McNeil's choice.

BRS pitches in Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:54, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I was very close to picking something with lots of pretty coloured smoke from Commons:Category:Aerobatics or one of its subcats. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:54, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Tempo's choice. Is this "classic" enough? Tempodivalse [talk] 22:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

A few from me.

A few from Tris as possibles. Am I allowed more than one?!

My second

My third

My last; a non military one!]]

   Tris   18:17, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

• I like the old airplane myself, it's humourous. Evrik (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Changes at wikinewsie

I'm trying to tidy Wikinewsie.org a little bit at a time. For the moment, can I ask all accredited reporters to fill in a section on the wiki? I've dropped the painful-to-maintain list from the site front page. Yes, I know several things such as the blog are on outdated versions; the online updater breaks so I've got backups of the databases and will do a reinstall/rebuild at some point. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikimania 2010 - Gdansk

It is, to put it bluntly, time to get our shit together on this.

Who is within reasonable travelling distance, and has a credible record of contributions?

What would be a good topic for a speech/presentation on Wikinews, at Wikimania?

How can we cooperate with other language editions - such as Polish Wikinews (which will have attendees)?

Who could, realistically, make full use of press credentials for Wikimania?

I did it in 2008, and got a scholarship to do so. I am less-sure of being able to wangle a scholarship again, or of actually being able to get the time off work. If I can get there, I will do so, but I want a substantial Wikinews presence; not just Craig Spurrier who's probably less than a dozen edits in the last year.

So, what are we going to do about "invading Poland"? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, south-west England is a bit far from Poland to justify; if only Oxford had won! Would be more than happy to help sort out presentations etc., will think of some topics now. Agree with Brian that we want to get at least one proper person there.    Tris   20:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Check flights from a reasonably convenient airport. If you qualify for a scholarship you can expect about £300 in funding; the accommodation will be cheap as hell (and commensurately basic). That's *without* mentioning that the beer in Poland will be much, much better than I got in Alexandria. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• If I can get ahold of a scholarship this may be a possibility; assuming my long-running Lockerbie investigation was completed that might be something a presentation could be hung off: Wikinews at the centre of real, hard journalism. The key word is may. I'm quite capable of getting information in for WN coverage, but should point out much of what's going on will be technical and much would likely sail over my head. I also have the advantage of having visited Gdansk previously, and spent several weeks in Poland. I know how to order a beer in the local language.

The key issue for me is transport. I'd be going from Scotland; Edinburgh is close. That's a long way for Wikimania. Previously we flew from Glasgow with Wizz (think Easyjet with pink planes) - I don't much fancy trying to get there for the cheap Polish airline, so it'd have to be Edinburgh.

Collaboration might be hard. I speak some very poor conversational German (plus some less polite expressions); this will get me by with Poles, but is no use for meaningful discussion with people who aren't good with English. While I suspect 'most anyone seriously interested in Wikimania will be English fluent, it may still be a stumbling block generally trying to get the various editions to communicate with each other.

Topic-wise, one interesting thing might be to look at how well FlaggedRevs has served WN, to the point that, along with setting some high standards of ourselves, we have turned into a reliable, reputable source. Try and get other wikis thinking on that with the semi-subliminal message of 'look what WN has achieved'. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit after Brian caused a conflict: I can confirm that the accomodation costs nothing in Poland - I already know where I'd stay if I went - and the beer is equally cheap and very good. Pick local beers; that also gains you street-cred with the locals, and they're pretty damn nice. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

From attending Alexandria, the Wikimedians in attendance will all have a mid-to-high school level of English as minimum. That's not something to worry about.Outwith the conference you may have a few difficulties, just make sure you're clued on any local legal risks (this can be trivial things like risking arrest for jaywalking).

For presentations I've three possible topics that could be done, I believe, quite well.

1. Original Reporting

   Earliest OR

   Interviews

   Investigative journalism

   Ultra-local reporting

2. The 2010 writing contest

   Likely over-ambitious setup

   More widely promoted than prior competitions

   Hit record number of articles on first day

3. Flagged Revisions, for Google News and credibility

   Google's editorial requirements

   Listed as a news source, not a blog

   The technical wizardry to simplify reviewing

   Integrated RSS, Facebook, and twitter publication

   The future - Google News Site Map

   General points on English Wikinews being a technical testing ground

Has anyone else any good suggestions, or feedback on the above? At the moment the contest one is up-in-the air. Original Reporting would tie in brilliantly with BloodRedSandman's efforts on Lockerbie. Flagged Revisions has, on the whole, improved quality of output at some expense to quantity. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• I will probably be at Gdansk. I have no plans to present on anything this year, though I will be glad to assist with a presentation or general coverage of Wikimania. As Brian notes, I am largely inactive (though I made quite a few more then a dozen edits last year :)) I graduate from my MA program in May, so I expect to become active again after that. --Cspurrier (talk) 22:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

CSpurrier: congrats on your MA. Brianmc: where is this integrated RSS you speak of? Some of the google news stuff might be interesting, especially if French gets into google news before wikimania + considering all the stuff at wikipedia with flagged protection (is that what they're calling it now?), flagged revisions might be a general topic of interest. Bawolff ☺☻ 15:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia, again

See another attempt at getting appropriate template changes through. I've left a note for Jimmy Wales on his Facebook page; he's indicated off-wiki he's generally in favour of these changes but would not impose them on Wikipedia.

Hopefully, he'll give an affirmative comment and help move this closer to actually happening. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 03:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Ehh, I doubt anything will happen (but I'm a pessimist :-b). Last time, IIRC, the proposal (and all similar proposals to highlight the w:WP:NOTNEWS policy and direct people to Wikinews) went down in flames. Jimbo's opinion doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight anymore at WP, I've noticed. Still worth a shot though ... *crosses fingers* Tempodivalse [talk] 03:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

You may be thinking of when I first tried, and got Wikinewsies who're admins "in the other place" to implement the changes. They went a bit nuts when it got slapped on Ted Kennedy's article. I took the Wikinews logo out all the template proposals and really tried to make it discreet; if that's not enough, I don't know. Tactical nukes maybe? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 04:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I've commented on the WP water cooler, for what it's worth, with a few suggestions; otherwise, I think this should be implemented and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten shot down ... yet. Does Jimbo have anything to say on this? Tempodivalse [talk] 14:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Well jimbo's opinion is influential, in the end it is the Wikipedia community's project. If their community wants it (or at least doesn't disagree with it) it'll happen, if they don't like the idea, it won't happen. There's nothing we can really do beyond making the suggestion. Its not our decision. Bawolff ☺☻ 15:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikinews v. Wikipedia

See Seward, Zachary "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project" – Nieman Journalism Lab, 9 Feb. 20010. Actually a bit interesting. --Mikemoral♪♫ 04:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting, food for thought.    Tris   08:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)