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• New contest! Make a large number of edits related to a specific theme (article series perhaps. could be anything). See m:Wikimedia Australia/GLAM challenge
• id names for some of the sidebar sections have been changed (first letter capitalized). If you are using Datrio or other custom css, and the sidebar suddenly looks ugly, do a hard refresh. (if it still looks ugly, ask user:Bawolff, or someone else who knows css)
• Try out vector, a new skin from the Usability Study
• 69 articles to go until the big 15 000!
• Abuse filter has now been enabled on Wikinews. See Special:AbuseFilter
• There is a new alternate stylesheet for people using the Modern Skin (if you have modern skin selected and use firefox, try going view→page style→Dynamic Menus)
• people on foundation-l are talking about us :O
• bugs (affecting Wikinews): useful categories, old request to switch to dpl2, RSS feed extension, DEFAULTSORTKET: causes articles to go to top of DPLs
• things needing doing: Accreditation Requests: 4 Requests for permissions: 1 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.

How to preserve a scoop?

This story was written about a day ago, but it has yet to be published. When it was written, it was (according to google news) only the second English language article on the story, after the Al Jazeera piece cited as a source. Since then, many have been published. Is there anything I can do in the future to expedite an article like this? Thanks, --Shunpiker (talk) 15:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

You could try marking the story with {{breaking review}}, which will bring it to the "high-priority" review list at the Newsroom. That should bring it to the attention of other reviewers. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone think the box on top (The following 3 articles need to be reviewed:) should denote "Breaking" somehow? Calebrw (talk) 03:41, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It does now. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:30, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed new global policy: m:Biographies of living people

There is a proposal for a new global policy regarding biographies of living people. Comments, suggestions, and other input are welcome at m:Talk:Biographies of living people. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. We don't have BLP, and for good reason. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this comment [1] made by Brianmc (talk · contribs), at m:Talk:Biographies of living people. Cirt (talk) 08:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews doesn't do 'biographies' nor do we publish unsourced claims. Our use of the review process and Flagged Revisions insulates us from this. I see no harm if meta wants this policy as long as they agree that a sourced news story doesn't amount to a biography. --SVTCobra 00:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

A few thoughts about the accreditation process

Recently, we've been receiving a few ARs from users who have not edited here, but are active on foreign language editions of Wikinews. I never can decide which way to vote in such requests. To one side, they are frequently good contributors to their projects, and accreditation would help them greatly in original reporting. On the other hand, I usually can't read in their language, so I am unable to judge whether or not they would make good ARs based on their contributions on other projects. Maybe each language edition should set up their own AR system, instead of coming here to request it? I want to hear what others folks have to say on this. Tempodivalse [talk] 17:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it might be best to do this by language/project. Cirt (talk) 22:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Please also read this related discussion: Wikinews_talk:Accredited_Reporter_ID#Accreditation_beyond_Wikinews --SVTCobra 01:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

A wikinews-wide accreditation process would have to go up to meta. I don't have a problem with that, but I suspect we'd quickly run out of @wikinewsie email addresses - there is a limit of 100 mailboxes on the hosting account.

I agree with Tempo that it is difficult to assess non-English applicants, but less so for an accreditation process for Commons photographers - hence proposing that first. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Abysmal treatment of newcomers - Wikinews as an Orwellian state

I recently (4 May 2009) submitted an article called "Thin non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags banned in South Australia". It was blocked from publication with minimal and inadequate explanations, then altered by another contributor who didn't bother to comment on their changes. Now THIS NEWS ITEM HAS CEASED TO EXIST - it doesn't even remain as a disputed, unpublished article. All record of it on my "my contributions" page has vanished. This is straight out of George Orwell's "1984"! Wikinews, it seems, has been annexed by some Owellian Ministry of Truth! --Miropolitan (talk) 15:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

No it hasn't. Things get deleted all the time. Once something is {{stale}} it just happens. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:02, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Once a news article has become stale, that's it. We simply can't publish news items that are more than a few days old, because then they are no longer news. This is frustrating, I understand, and all of us have at one point have had an article deleted due to it being too old. There's a saying around here, and that is: Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news. Please don't let this discourage you, this is just the way we run things around here. Part of the reason why your article was deleted, I think, is because there were some problems with it that made it unsuitable for publishing, and the concerns were not addressed in time for the article to remain recent news. (P.S. If you think you can rescue the article, I can easily undelete it for you and move it to your userspace, which makes it exempt from this sort of deletion.) Tempodivalse [talk] 15:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The actual article was Thin non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags banned in South Australia, admins can review the edit history and contents on this. Firstly, the final placement of {{review}} was done with a {{cleanup}} template still in place and little or no work done to address the concerns expressed in the template.

You royally screwed the start, your initial article creation had the edit summary "Created using information from sources, plus this reporter's observations, interpretation and implied commentary. Accompanied by photo by reporter". Fail. "reporters obervations, interpretation and implied commentary" are all elements of editorial work which is not permitted on Wikinews. This was still a problem at the last attempt to get it reviewed - it ended up tagged WN:NPOV.

There is no Orwellian conspiracy, and if you know your literature about fictional fascist totalitarian states a more appropriate comparison would have been Fahrenheit 451 where they burned the books.

There is one point to add to our rules laid out in the style guide from this... Never use html markup within an article body unless there is absolutely no alternative. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:15, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

For anyone who's interested, here's a copy, Miropolitan/Thin non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags banned in South Australia, of the deleted news article. --Miropolitan (talk) 16:04, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

This would have been a great article, if the issues were addressed in a timely matter. I am not sure, as I have not yet looked, but I believe I was the one who deleted it. I thought the story essentially was a good one, but the format in which the article was, at the time of deletion, was just not up to Wikinews standards, according to WN:SG. I don't like deleting articles that have great potential. It is sad to have to do so. But if they don't meet the requirements, then they are tagged and deleted (deleted according to the tag[s] and what not). If this story can still be fixed, updated, or recent sources found, then I would like to see it published. Maybe contact some people involved with the situation and throw some Original Reporting in there, which would take the staleness away. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Mr McNeil makes a valid point about the use of html, instead of the wikimedia markup language. But the claim that the article lapsed from compliance with WN:NPOV mystifies me.

I think cooler heads will agree that it is very impolite and unhelpful for Mr McNeil to tell Miropolitan: "you royally screwed the start".

I worked on about a dozen articles. Half of them ended up being published. I stopped contributing because I found Mr McNeil shockingly aggressive and incivil. I decided I didn't have to put up with what I regarded as Mr McNeil's serious abuse.

I offer my good wishes to all the remaining wikinews contributors who can be polite to newcomers. I am offering this comment because I got an email alert that someone had left a note on my talk page -- one directing me to this discussion.

With regard to the future of wikinews -- Mr McNeil told me (paraphrasing from memory) that because News became stale so quickly he couldn't afford to waste time being civil. If I am not mistaken Wikinews is not an independent project -- that it uses computer resources provided by the wikimedia foundation. I urge cooler heads here to force those who are not prepared to be civil to step down from their administrative posts, so that their bullying and abuse has less impact. If the wikimedia foundation is committed to collegial cooperation and civil discussion, and the wikinews senior administrators are not committed to civility, I think cooler heads should anticipate that the wikimedia foundation may be compelled to shut down wikinews as a failed experiment.

As I wrote above -- best wishes to anyone here who does their best to play nice to others. Geo Swan (talk) 17:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, diplomacy... The art of saying 'nice doggie' until you find a big enough rock. I will freely admit I am cynical and can be crotchety. I don't suffer fools gladly, or more accurately don't entertain foolish behaviour.

Perhaps we should push people more towards featured articles to see where they're going wrong - despite my efforts to develop a better project introduction with {{Howdy}} people seem to only look at their own work and not work that has passed publication criteria.

Now, to address one specific point in my remark about Miropolitan's work, it may not be nicely worded about his failing to meet WN:NPOV and telling everyone so in an edit summary but it set the whole tone for how this article progressed to the dustbin. That includes the accusation of regular contributors acting in an Orwellian fashion, and a predictable response to this hackneyed burst of drama. I must thank Geo Swan for further contributing to the drama, but then he might not find it amusing that I keep a tub of fridge-spreadable sarcasm.

I do not believe the userspace copy of this article has the full edit history to see who said what in edit summaries, what tags they added, and how things on the talk page progressed. That the article stuck around for around 2 weeks shows there was a fair chance given to improve on it. To the end it contained non-NPOV editorialising. This - perhaps as much as anything - is a fault of many media outlets who make no distinction between editorial and news. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:04, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I think one of the main issues here (based on just a quick read through) is that the originating author didn't know what happened to his article (as in is upset more over not knowing the why it was not published, rather than the fact that it was not published. ). It makes sense people would be mad if an article they put time and effort into just "dissapears" with no explanation. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:50, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a systemic problem at Wikinews, in that failure should be a major learning experience, teaching far more than success, but instead failure here is apt to be a black hole that work disappears into. I had one of these anti-experiences not too long ago, and — with absolutely no ill will on anyone's part — had to fumble through several rounds of questions in order to find out what I ought to do differently in future; somehow, the whole dynamic of the system seemed to be working to discourage learning. There ought to be some way to rechannel the system so that it maximizes learning from failure, rather than minimizing it... Pi zero (talk) 02:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

That seems to be the case sometimes. In other cases people 'click' with the project relatively quickly. I think, for editing simplicity if nothing else, that should be covered in a follow-up subsection. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Where do things go wrong for newcomers? - General discussion

I'd invite people to lay out their own subsection here once they've read through the points below. Mark as a L4 heading with '====' either side. Try to condense into max 3-4 paragraphs. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Long-time contributor: brianmc (talk · contribs)

Pi zero (talk · contribs) has a very valid point, Wikinews regulars have not focussed on recruitment, training, and retention. To the newcomer it has the potential to seem like "THE RULES" are in a locked filing cabinet hidden in a disused toilet in the cellar where the stairs are gone and the lightbulb has blown. I've made an effort to address the availability of information with {{Howdy}}; there's been little feedback on that other than to remark on it being "pretty".

Issues such as copyright violation are, as anyone from another wiki would expect, dealt with using a blunt instrument. I've failed my own share initially because they violate some other policy, usually WN:NPOV. Opinion and preconceptions colour far too much of the news we read or watch, much of commercial news is bought and sold by the rich and powerful. This influences some people to have a biased outlook - why else would people cry for, and vote for, tax cuts that don't help them but help the top 5-10%? The flip side is those like Neutralizer (talk · contribs) who subsist on a diet of conspiracy theories and anti-establishment sentiment. Things get ugly when people at these poles think their point of view represents WN:NPOV; inbetween the poles people may not be so strident about their 'rightness', but they don't see the criticism as actually applying to what they've written.

NPOV is supposed to kill off those biases, but until people take a critical look at how their preferred news sources 'spin' or editorialise content and omit valid widely-held views, they'll not really get to grips with it. As an example, try watching Al Jazeera for a few days. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Yearling: Calebrw (talk · contribs)

I think brianmc (talk · contribs) has hit the nail pretty much on the head. I does seem as if "The Rules" are locked somewhere and in a sense they are insofar as they should not be changed in a major way under normal circumstances. However, there must be a better way to communicate the rules of journalism to new contributors, and if as Pi zero (talk · contribs) says I too believe that there is a failure in the way in which failure in your first article is not made to be learning tool, but rather leads to a "black hole that work disappears into."

The problem could stem from the fact that so many of the contributors to WN are old hands and are set in their ways: that being, write an article here and there, review a few, and I'm done for the day. At the same time, Wikinews doesn't have the userbase of other WMF projects like Wikipedia and therefore doesn't have the same talent pool.

Moving forward, Wikinews must to a better job on areas related to "recruitment, training, and retention." I think Wikinews needs to find a way to market itself a bit better, so that we see some increased readership. Sure 100 pages views (for an article) and hour is great, but I believe we can do better than that. Calebrw (talk) 19:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

People see news every day, but what you read or watch can screw your ability to differentiate between editorialising and plain presentation of facts. I think anyone who relies on Fox for their news coverage is screwed when it comes to contributing to Wikinews. Other channels and newspapers have this same issue of blending editorial with news and expressing an opinion. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Where do things go wrong for newcomers? - As seen from established user viewpoint

Regulars first, a sort-of what are the reasons for tagging, reluctance to review, and so. Add additional points or comment on those here. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

• What are the most common problems with articles? Are there specific guessable reasons for these?
• What puts people off reviewing articles?

  Too many sources, three or four paragraphs with a dozen sources is OTT. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

  I think this issue could perhaps partially be addressed by using a more wikipedia style sourcing system, so that reviewers could tell which source is used for which piece of information (see previous proposal) Bawolff ☺☻ 23:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

• Do people fail to check the newsroom?

  The obvious approach would be to add developing DPL back to the main page (however than google news + articles with numbers would not get along). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Where things go wrong for newcomers? - The newbie perspective

Newer contributors, where have things been difficult, hard to understand, and so? Comment on points or add more. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

• How do guides and policies fail to bring people up to speed?
• Are article tags difficult for people to understand?
• Is unfamiliarity with Wikinews an issue? Do people arrive with incorrect assumptions from Wikipedia?

• How can newcomers get derailed before the rules of journalism even become an issue?

I'm not sure whether this falls under one or another of the above points, nor which one if so (nor even whether I can quite pass as a newbie anymore... though I certainly don't feel "established").

If you come to something with the wrong expectations, you may then systematically misinterpret all your subsequent experiences of it through the distorting lens of those expectations. Here are some things that I really wish had been (successfully) explained to me when I first came here (eight months ago), and that I'm only just figuring out now, in gathering together my thoughts for this discussion.

• Why is Wikinews?

I didn't even notice, until composing these comments, that I wasn't really told this when I first arrived. It should have been stated, early and often, simply and clearly and with infectious enthusiasm, in a way that would make obvious intellectual sense. It should be one of the two most basic questions answered when welcoming newcomers (along with "how to edit a page" or the like). Wikipedia boasts that it is the free encyclopedia than anyone can edit, and proudly presents its Five Pillars. Wikibooks says it's a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit (which is very exciting to anyone who has had to pay the sky-high prices for college textbooks these days). Wikinews... has How to write an article and Neutral point of view. There are a couple of fairly unobtrusive links from the main page to Wikinews:Mission statement, which, well, is what it is; it takes its time about getting to the point of what makes Wikinews unique, and when it gets there it isn't terribly pithy and never really catches fire. There's also "The FREE news source you can write!", with that last being a link to Wikinews:Wikinews needs you!, and that at least has some enthusiasm, but somehow it fails to convey a simple, exciting niche for Wikinews in the big picture, and quickly turns again to NPOV — which also is what it is, although in another context neutrality might be something to enthuse about.

• Writing Wikinews articles is a largely solitary activity, a time-critical activity, and an all-or-nothing activity.

At Wikipedia one can (and I did) start by making very small edits to articles, and then watching the dynamics as those articles evolve, with many people like oneself making small contributions and some making somewhat larger ones, and each of our mistakes being compensated for by other editors. That totally doesn't work here. My mistaken expectation of Wikinews that there would be lots of people working on any given article was probably subliminally encouraged by the ubiquity of the "collaboration" tab here. My revised expectation now is that one person will usually have to write the whole article, and probably also fix any problems that are flagged out during review — and if the article doesn't succeed within a short period of time it drops off the edge of the Earth and ceases to exist, with no evidence that it ever existed, and certainly no opportunity to watch as problems with it are gradually fixed over time thereafter. If any of those things isn't true (so that I'm still deluded), then that too is something that was not successfully conveyed to me. IMHO it would make all the difference in the world if newcomers were told clearly about these things right up front, so that they didn't later slam into them without warning like a bug on a car window.

Pi zero (talk) 19:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Addressing the issues

As points move to a consensus and link up regulars issues versus issues from newbies, points to work on should be added below. What would be a better wording for a tagging template? Do we need new templates - say, for user talk to alert newbies of issues faster? Should tagging templates link to a 'Plain English' page that excerpts from the relevant policy? I'd like to propose this be worked on to produce WN:TODO as a shortcut to Wikinews:Things to do, a list of points to get people up to speed, and keep actions working towards that getting done. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:34, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I think we do need more plain English guides on how to write proper news articles. Journalistic writing is like no other style of writing that most people do on a daily basis or learn in school. {{howdy}} is good, but I think there is still a disconnect between new writers and they style in which Wikinews is written. We saw that even people that write in a journalistic fashion can be a bit disconcerted by writing for Wikinews, i.e.: Mountaineers 'Climb Up' for AIDS funding. (Where did the images go?) Calebrw (talk) 19:25, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Image got deleted as not having source/copyright info (see del log). based on the talk page it appears the image was contributed to PD. Does anyone know if a permission email was sent to otrs? This definitly looks like a case where we could get the image undeleted. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:01, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Images is a distant secondary issue here. If we can, I'd be in favour of putting the fair use upload above the free use upload - that way images are local and not there but for the whim of a Commoner. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:26, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

• Wikinews:Newsworthy and neutral is a start on an essay covering two of the points a lot of newcomers fall foul of in tandem.
• Wikinews:Editorialising is something else I think we should consider starting. People don't seem to know they're doing it because people like Fox blur the lines between 'official channel opinion' and real, report-the-facts news. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:37, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to adopt a different approach with Credit card companies foreclosing without a mortgage note.. Left an extensive cleanup tag, and highlighted it on the initial contributor's talk page. Thoughts? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is a step in the right direction. Much better than the generic cleanup tag which doesn't do much to explain what is wrong and how it can be fixed. It was a good idea to inform the editor of the problems on his talk page as well. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I suspect some might agree with me, but this doesn't seem to be having much effect on this article/contributor. However, someone has brought similar concerns up on one of the other WC sections. I said this discussion was ongoing, plus on on the mailing list. I suspect we need a separate Wikinews: page to work on this. Basically, to outline how to highlight faults that prevent publication or further work on an article. Do we need something on style guide failures? Do we need something on real NPOV neutrality? What? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

We have to bear in mind that no matter what we do, there are going to be times when people simply won't respond positively. However I definitly think thats a step in the right directions. I think using user talk pages in addition to the article talk page is good also, as i bet there are a lot of newbies who simply don't know article talk pages exist. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:12, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

In addition to more detailed explanations in hatnotes — yes, as has been observed, definitely a step in the right direction — the orientation of the notes could be facing more toward the positive, i.e., "here's what needs to be done", rather than "here's what's wrong". For example, the {{cleanup}} tag might, perhaps, read something like "A contributor considers that this article needs improvements, so that it is not yet publishable. The following necessary improvements were cited: ..." (I realize the wording is tricky; this was my third attempt. My first still had the bolded words "editorial cleanup", which were holding back its positivity, and my second erred in the other direction, implying that the problems cited would be the only improvements needed for publication.) --Pi zero (talk) 11:47, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I notice a lot of people talk about working hard on an article, to only have it disappear when stale, and not really learn from their mistake. We can't publish stale news, but have we ever considered late publishing the stale news? Say if a person starts an article in good faith, at a relevent time, but it has issues. If the issues are eventually fixed, would it be so bad if it got published, but with a publish date of say 5 days ago (or whatever). That way people would not get the negative experiance of having an article deleted, and perhaps they would learn more from the experience, and end up having a non-late article next time. thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻

A few thoughts.

• This idea sounds... rather exciting, actually.
• Presumably the device would have to be carefully bounded to keep it from getting out of hand. Each story needs to be fresh when it's started (which may be obvious once said, but needs to have been said). An unpublished story that is abandoned gets deleted. It should be made clear to those involved that late stories get lower priority for review than fresh ones (so they aren't unpleasantly surprised when this inevitably turns out to be the case). And there has to be a tactful way to kill stories that go on and on without getting any closer to actual publishability; perhaps this would involve emphasizing that reviewers are a limited resource.
• There ought, of course, to be something marking such stories once published as having a distinct status ({{publish|late}}?). Looking at the article, it would have some sort of identifying hatnote, and there also ought to be a separate place on the main page where late-news stories appear. The separate status would help reinforce that it's much better to get stories out while they're fresh, the hatnote would flag out when browsing the archives that one is looking at a story that was published late, and the separate place on the main page would help prevent the story from going unnoticed by the wider community after publication.
• One other point that comes to mind (in the obvious-once-stated category): The {{stale}} template would morph into a hatnote identifying the special status of a developing story that is currently not fresh. Perhaps it would point out that there are three options that might be considered: Find newer sources, so the story becomes fresh again; move on to other, fresh stories; or develop it for publication as late news. (Maybe {{develop|late}} and {{review|late}}?)

--Pi zero (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I really like this idea as well. I tend to see a bit of pattern in the fact that some of the stories I do on sports are labeled stale after nobody reviews them. The problem is the stories will never be updated. Any updates will need a new story. Example: NFL: Patriots win the 2010 Super Bowl never gets published. However NFL: Goodell strips Patriots of 2010 Super Bowl, even though it is an update to the first story, is a completely different one and needs a separate article. Notes, just made these up and this would be an extreme case. Goodell is NFL commissioner w:Roger Goodell. For real-wold examples, please see National Hockey League news: April 27, 2009 and NASCAR: Brad Keselowski wins Aaron's 499 on last-second crash, seven fans injured. These are two articles I wrote that were never published. After they got stale there were deleted. The news in those stories will never change; it is what it is. The most that could changed would be the official time might change from (for example), 2:00:14 p.m. to 2:00:13 p.m. Calebrw (talk) 22:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have stalled, so let me try and revive it. While I'm not opposed to the idea of publishing late news, I do not think it is a good idea to devote a separate portion of the main page to old news, as Pi zero suggests. The whole point of news is to report on things that have happened recently, and it won't look very good if we have week-old events on the main page (especially under the title of "Late news". A possible idea would be to let the articles be published under the date when they were put up for review. This way, the article doesn't get deleted and the author doesn't feel upset that his story was deleted. Also, there has to be some proviso that the story has to be current when it's initially written (so we can't report on things that happened several years ago). Just my thoughts. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I really have to side on the {{stale}} rules we apply now. I could not accept something being published with a 2+ old date on it, and that for 90%+ of cases should be enough to bump it to current. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:14, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Case study of an alienated contributor

This talk page User talk:Dennis Melancon#Copyright violation details how one user felt alienated and accused of copyvios and ended up abandoning Wikinews. I am not suggesting that there are many like this nor that he was right; just thought I would add it here as it is recent. --SVTCobra 00:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

@SVTCobra (talk · contribs), the user deleted this talk page of what refer to, This contains what you need to know though. It's interesting case and does deal with the fact that Wikinews has no reliable method of confirming the identity of someone. Now WN:CV allows Accredited Reporters to be checked out and WN:A allows Admins to be checked out, but there really is nothing in place for users to be checked out by admins.

I certainly don't fault you on your approach, but one thing he says at the end is correct, at least as far as I understand it: I, as the sole copyright holder of a work, can license it on my site on one way, but at the same time can also allow it to be licensed on the WN/WP/Commons as whatever I want. It's easier for me to say, publish a news story about Sonia Sotomayer on my website and say, well, I'm submitting it to Wikinews and now the version on Wikinews is licensed under CC-BY-2.5. Same with photography. For instance, this image is owned by me, but I licensed it for use on Wikimedia Commons (WP at the time). However, I could take the original, resize it to the exact same size as above and still charge (say $5) for someone to use it. I would assume the reverse is true, as the sole copyright holder of the work, Dennis Melancon (talk · contribs) could relicense his work to WN under CC-BY-2.5 should he choose to do so.

SVTCobra, I don't know that you saw the last revision the user in question made however. That's why I linked to it above. Calebrw (talk) 22:04, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I did see that last comment. I guess a user like Dennis should put explicitly on the collaboration page that they license it as CC-BY-2.5 despite them publishing elsewhere under a more restrictive license. BTW I wasn't the one who tagged it as copyvio ... I was just responding to the complaint. --SVTCobra 23:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

From what i can gather, the user seemed to be unnecessarily combative. I don't think we were in unreasonable in this case. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:42, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think Wikinews:Water_cooler/assistance#Pervetually_reverted would provide a much better case study of where we could do better in the future. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Football category renamed without consensus

I'm rather concerned at the rename of the football category to association football per aa alleged convention on Wikipedia. The move has no consensus anywhere on WN as far as I can see. The articles contained largely pertain to European football and so I oppose the move to a US naming. It may work on WP, where people want to look it up and find out what it is, but we are a news project and our naming should be aimed at whoever is most likely to read news on the subject - and that's mostly not people from the US. The US public also understands what soccer means, but much of the European public (that's readers, I think the editors here will all know the term) will give you a blank stare if you asked them about 'association football'. I propose that we move it back unless someone convinces me otherwise. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 11:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Links to the changes and discussion about this? Cirt (talk) 12:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no discussion (or none that I've seen). The whole point is that this was done without discussion. The cat wasn't properly moved, it was created here with a summary that suggested a move. Category:Football (soccer) is now depopulated with the categories exchanged on every page it was used on (sample 1, 2, 3). I now see, looking at the user's contribs, that there's a large amount of moves "Per WP naming standard and to remove inadvertant subpage". I can support these per the removal of the subpage, but there is marked determination to force WP ideas onto WN. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

FAQs from Wikipedia article:

Q: I've never heard of this sport being called "Association football".

A: The term "association football" is the original name for the sport. However, its usage has diminished in recent years, with different cultures developing their own word(s) for the sport. Even the word "soccer" derives from the -soc- in "association".

Q: Why not just "Football"?

A: This is because there are several sports that are known as football in different countries. For example, in the United States, American football is primarily referred to as "football", while the same is true of Gaelic football in Ireland and rugby or Australian rules football in Australia. The title "association football" avoids any ambiguity over which code of football is being referred to, and also removes the potential for accusations of bias towards any particular code.

Q: Why not "Soccer" then?

A: In the United Kingdom, the usage of the term "soccer" is sometimes viewed as being derogatory, or an example of American culture being forced onto the rest of the world. Therefore, although the word "soccer" would be an unambiguous title for this article, there would be discontent from a large number of people who object to their word for the sport being ignored.

Q: What about "Football (soccer)"?

A: On Wikipedia, the placing of a word in parentheses in the title of an article is used as a method of disambiguation, with the parenthesised word usually being a set that the article's subject is a part of. Therefore, the title "Football (soccer)" implies that football is a form of soccer, which is not the case.

I don't imply that any one reason above works 100 percent towards why I changed the category and perhaps I did so sloppily, for which I apologize. However, I don't understand why the term "association football" is in any way American. In America, football is known only as soccer (outside of the soccer community), not association football or any other term. Furthermore, calling it just football doesn't work. While Portal:Football already exists to serve the needs of people who are looking to find articles on soccer/football/association football. The category is purely a category for internal use and I honestly didn't think it would be a huge difference. I may have been wrong.

I've done some reading on WP about the issue and there will always be somebody saying that one way or the other is wrong, however with association football you get a the "Do not promote any particular viewpoint" part of WN:PG covered as this title promotes no side, but rather one in which a proper name is used. In addition, WN:NPOV states "The neutral point of view policy states that one should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly. ..." and why this does refer to articles it could apply here as association football is a term that has no no bias toward one view or the other. Football (soccer) does in so far as as that it appeals directly to either English/American points of view, while disregarding those of Australian, Celtic/Gaelic, etc. football.

Furthermore, WN:NPOV#Anglo-American-centric_point_of_view states "The presence of articles written from a United States, Canadian, British or Oceanic perspective is simply a reflection of the fact that there are many U.S. and Commonwealth citizens working on the project. ... This is an ongoing problem that should be corrected by active collaboration from people from other countries. But rather than introducing their own cultural bias, they should seek to improve articles by removing any examples of cultural bias that they encounter." Association football has no bias. If it were up to me as an American, it would be Portal:Soccer and Category:Soccer, but it is not up to me to put my own bias on the category.

I'm glad that we can agree that the sub pages needed to go. Hope this isn't too long winded for you. Calebrw (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment: This whole discussion should have taken place before the category moves / depopulation / populations took place. I would strongly recommend changing it all back, first, and then after discussion, making changes, per whatever consensus we come to, here on this project. Cirt (talk) 04:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Cirt. You have now provided us with some good reasoning to discuss, but we should have reached a consensus here first (I also had no idea association football was never used in the US, my apologies, I was sure it was). To get to that discussion - I'm a Brit and I've never had an issue with "Football (soccer)". On Wikinews, unlike Wikipedia, we do not have such a method of disambiguation, so I thought it was actually quite an inteligent compromise. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 10:29, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

That may be a possibility, but I will not be able to personally for a little while. Maybe Thursday or Friday. Right now, I'm going to be watching the 2009 UEFA Champions League Final. Calebrw (talk) 18:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is that Category:Association football is inappropriate and inferior to Category:Football (soccer) on a news site such as Wikinews. It may be fine for an encyclopedia. The fact is the sport is not commonly called Association Football anywhere. Even BBC Sport, the national broadcaster of the nation from where the sport arises, uses Football as its category. It is called either Football or Soccer (see overview of names) in virtually every nation. This list also shows that it is far from just the United States that calls it Soccer. If it should be changed it should probably be changed to Category:Football/soccer, but slashes have a way of wreaking havoc on the Mediawiki software's way of storing subpages. Therefore, we — in my opinion — should revert this change. Wikipedia can be useful for many things, but they are not always sharing our perspective. Cheers, --SVTCobra 21:57, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

False articles

I think now that we have just reached a consensus with Passengers on Air France Flight 447 sent text messages to family members before plane disappeared that articles shown to be (or likely to be) either false or deliberatly hoaxed we issue a retraction via the correction template we should probably make a policy on this consensus. Much of the problem was that there was no clear policy, with our verification policy directly competing with WN:ARCHIVE and the simple need for journalistic honour. A policy made now, where the arguments have just been had and consensus formed, should be uncontroversial to implement and would prevent a re-run of that long debate. Shall we start work on a page? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 11:34, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• This is certainly something that we need to discuss. There are a large number of conflicting opinions as to what we should and shouldn't do at certain stages in an article's life and we need to come to some consensus on this issue. Yesterday's discussion unfortunately became clouded by there being two significant questions to answer; firstly, whether the article was appropriately verified and secondly, if not, what should we do about it. It seems to be the case that the answer to the latter question is that we shouldn't simply delete an article. Clearly that would be the correct course of action on an unpublished article but I recognise there are issues in doing that with articles that have been published. I would support Brianmc's actions though to go further than simply adding a correction notice and to actually remove the offending text, one of the benefits of doing so is it reduces the risk of the misleading article being indexed by search engines which wouldn't be helpful. Let's keep things simple, for any articles that have been published, if they are later shown to be largely inaccurate we should follow Brian's course of action with the recent article.

Perhaps in hindsight and with the understanding that the community seem to dislike the idea of articles vanishing however ludicrous they are shown to be, a deletion request wasn't the most appropriate method of raising this. I do wonder though whether the concerns would have received an appropriate level of consideration. Perhaps we could consider where such concerns should be raised since it is obvious that simply mentioning this on the article's talk page probably wouldn't be effective. Adambro (talk) 13:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could combine it with the policy page (WN:FALSE?) so that a user could create an entry for a suspect article, comment on the problems and provide evidence that the material within is largely inacurate. Noncontroversial stuff (I suspect mainly small errors that will end up there regardless of how clear we make the instructions) could be quickly handled with the template without page blanking and we could debate the possiblity of completely retracting the article, as with the Air France story. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• This article - under current policy - was an 'edge case'. The author and reviewer should both have known about the problems that exist with cellular phones in planes; even over land this causes reliability issues; the plane was expected to be over water and well away from cell towers; in-flight microcells are currently experimental technology, and all evidence pointed to it not being fitted on flight 447. I can't comment on the reliability of the sources used to publish, were there any attempts to verify their reliability and how prone they are to running sensationalist material?

I think the problem of "What the #@$% do we do with this?" was where things fell apart. From a Wikipedian perspective deletion seems obvious - unless something is so widespread that this became w:Air France flight 447 text message hoax. A lot of people wading in on the debate were taking that, "it's bollocks, delete it" attitude. That's wrong for Wikinews, and I think the fact that we're having this discussion proves it.

I did not have the solution currently in place as a goal when I noted the deletion request and voted Keep; however, I was of the opinion that if found incorrect a correction should be there. My gut feeling on that was based on having seen the article advertised on Facebook. I can assume it was also shared via twitter - and potentially other sites. Basically, a lot of the core audience had already read it. To me, that meant it fell on the {{correction}} side of an article's lifecycle.

Here's a quote from Frank Zappa's "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots...

This story was too much "no one blabs it faster". Those with that attitude know who they are, and some retained belief in the story far beyond a reasonable position. There should have been a lot more " Keep but..." votes, a lot more effort to debunk or confirm, and a lot less credulity.

Anyway, I think the criteria for {{correction}} needs to go to a visibility parameter as opposed to a published duration parameter. As this is more judgement-based I'd suggest a Wikinews:Correction notices page (DPL of recent corrections, criteria used, examples of defining cases). Also a note on the WN:DR page for submission of published articles; something about how non-transparent or misleading a deletion could be, feeds into the discussion, and if a deletion is proposed leads to more " Keep but...." votes and debunk efforts. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Trying to create a WN:FALSE policy seems to be a dangerous place to go. News reports are going to get some stuff wrong, almost as a matter of course. How much needs to be proven false before a retraction, a correction, or a deletion? I really think we need to treat these things on a-case-by-case basis. A policy might leave a loop-hole for someone to remove news they don't like, based on a technicality. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Promotion of Meekel (talk · contribs) to editor status per IRC?

Recently, Brianmc (talk · contribs) promoted Meekel (talk · contribs) to editor status, without any on-wiki discussion or an explanation in the promotion summary. When I asked him about it, he said that "we were joking in IRC, he said 'I'm not a reviewer', quickly consulted a couple of admins and we told him to get reviewing". My question is: is a promotion based on that valid? I'm not so sure, as IRC is completely separate from the actual wiki, and nothing there is logged, so there is no record of the discussion. Plus, lots of people don't use irc or are not there all the time, so one does not get much chance to draw up any concerns about granting the user the flag. I was just wondering what other folks thought about this. (BTW I have no objections to Meekel being given editor status - I would have supported him in an RfE - it was just the way he was promoted that gives me some concern.) Tempodivalse [talk] 14:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Meh, editor status is still an easy-come-easy-go type of thing. A request at WN:FRRFP doesn't require a vote and can be approved by a single sysop. Likewise, any sysop can demote a user immediately if they are sighting undesirable edits. That the request was made off-wiki is of minor consequence. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose you're right, it doesn't really make all that much difference. As you say, editorship is supposed to be an "easy come, easy go" sort of thing. I guess I'm too much of a formalist. Still, I like to be able to comment in these sort of things, and I'm not given an opportunity to do so if it's done in the irc, since I never use it. It doesn't matter though, Meekel turned out to be a very competent reviewer. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Sources versus External links

As this discussion page shows, there is dispute over when various items are appropriate as sources or as external links. My opinion is this is thus an area of policy that needs clarified.

• External links is not a forbidden section. My intention when wording policy around this was to make it easy to zap people linking to their own blogs on stories and such, not ruthless suppression.
• Certain items should not be listed using the {{source}} template as they do not have a real date of publication (eg. YouTube videos).
• "Retrieved" should never be used in citing a |date= parameter. The whole push to a standard Month dayno, Year date format is to allow future automated manipulation of data by having a parseable field.
• Sites such as YouTube make no claim to be a source of news.

This needs clarified so people will use external links sections where appropriate. I still contend that in the above linked article there can be zero justification for listing an online petition set up by Mr Random Internet User and claiming it is a credible source; it's existence may be newsworthy but I think this puts it in external links. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment by Cirt

• External links sections in articles should be avoided.
• Sources used to support text in the article itself should be listed in the Sources section. Sources not used to support material in the article, but recommended as a resource for further reading, could be listed in an External links section.
• Sources that are static websites that do not have a listed date, could have the date specified as that when the website was last updated. However, I have found that it is accepted practice to use retrieved before the date of a website source, as it shows the reader when the writer used a source for material in the article, and when that link was retrieved. This is especially helpful to note a record of the date retrieved, when a website may later go dead.
• It is helpful to format these sources using the {{Source}} template, as it helps to standardize sources and provide additional information.

Cirt (talk) 08:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment by Tempodivalse

I tend to agree with Cirt here, mainly per reasons I outlined at the discussion page of the Oklahoma trooper article. It's my opinion that "External links" should only be used as "further reading" that does not back up anything in the article text, while "Sources" are to be used to back up material covered in the prose itself. In this case, the link serves to corroborate some part of the story, so it should be placed in "Sources".

However, it's an entirely different question as to whether mention to the petition in the article should be made at all. I think that it's inappropriate to comment on the number of petitions in the article unless there is some evidence that the signatures are credible and not just forged by a single person. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't even think of the petition aspect of this, but this may be better for a different discussion. Calebrw (talk) 18:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Side note unrelated to current discussion: Petition removed from that article. Cirt (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Abbreviations and acronyms

This discussion sprang up at Talk:U.K. broadcaster Setanta enters administration. It regards an issue that is not well covered in our style guide. Here's a copy:

Wikinews has not been consistent at all in its use of US, EU, UN, UK versus U.S., E.U., U.N., U.K., etc. It probably behooves us to come up with a consistent usage that we can: a) all agree to, b) easily point to in WN:SG for new contributors, so that they quickly adhere. Since we are a wiki, I think it is worthwhile to consider what Wikipedia has to say, so see also Acronyms_and_abbreviations at their MoS. I look forward to input in how we can become consistent without being confusing. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• I don't have a logical reason, but I feel no periods is prettier. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:04, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
  • As I mentioned above, I too prefer no periods. Also, I don't think any of us would consider putting periods in FIFA, UNICEF, FA, FBI, CIA, or a host of others. I think think the simplest and most consistent policy would be to drop the periods in U.K. and U.S. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
• Ahem! ☺ Uncle G (talk) 04:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revision

Hello. I've seem the page Wikinews:Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions but i didn't see the local policy to give the Editor/Reviewer status. Who can be an Editor or Reviewer here? Maybe I'll use your answer to make a proposal in pt@wikinews. Vitorbraziledit ^talk 20:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It is automatic for accredited users and admins. Beyond that it's trusted community members who've demonstrated a wish to positively contribute.

We consider this an easy-come-easy-go policy. That is, we're fairly relaxed giving it and a handful of votes (with no opposes) is enough. It would be the same for removal too, but it hasn't come to that. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 02:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Technical

Refresh

Archive, post

AbuseFilter

• Special:AbuseFilter is being rolled out on en.wikipedia, see Announcing the Abuse Filter. Additional info at mw:Extension:AbuseFilter. I think this would be very beneficial on this project as a preventative measure against vandalism, and should be implemented. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 03:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support - I see no reason not to start this right now - it's a great tool that will immediately help out against vandalism. Cirt (talk) 03:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose (but treat my vote as an abstain/neutral in any vote counting). I think it would be a good idea to wait and see any issues that wikipedia might have before rolling it out ourselves. I'm always suspicious of these types of things, as they are never perfect, and can be really harmful when they don't work as intended. Its not like we're having major issues with vandalism anyways. (however, I'll support if wikipedia has success with it). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
  • It has already been rolled out and live on several other of the larger wikis, including ruwiki, nowiki, dewiki, metawiki. Cirt (talk) 05:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Lots more useful info at w:Wikipedia:Abuse filter. Cirt (talk) 06:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Voting is evil. I'm with Bawolff, let's see how en.WP does with it. The issue with the other wikis you mention is we can't dip in and see their discussion/teething troubles. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

It is also now live on the English Wikisource [2]. Cirt (talk) 06:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: Looks like it is working pretty well already at en.wikipedia. Cirt (talk) 11:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Do we really need this? This seems overkill for a small wiki like ours, where we rarely get more than a few vandals a day. Any vandalism/bad edits can easily be reverted manually, it's not like we have so much that we can't get to it all in time. I can see how the filter would be useful at some place like the English or Russian Wikipedia, where there are too many edits per hour to monitor them all on recent changes, but here, that's not an issue. Consider my comment a neutral vote in any !voting/poll. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 22:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I think there is much more to be gained than any potential problems (which I have not seen yet at other wikis using it). It basically prevents an edit from being made. It's been in use now for a bit at en.wikipedia and seems to be doing well there. Cirt (talk) 07:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm still a bit hesitant on this -- most high traffic pages are either protected from editing altogether or have separate draft/stable pages, meaning that 99% of vandalism will not be visible to the reader anyway. Then again, I guess it wouldn't really hurt to have the filter installed, just as an extra precaution, if it has been found to be reliable on other wikis. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 15:14, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

• Note that filters can be set to just warn the user about the edit and let them save anyway. This actually seems to deter quite a lot of edits, presumably vandalism. Voice of All (talk) 01:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Update

AbuseFilter has now been live for a while over at en.wikipedia, as well as multiple other wikis. I think we should consider it for this project. Cirt (talk) 19:46, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• Support - Per my comments, above. Cirt (talk) 19:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support good enough for me [but no auto-blocking option, only if it warns/logs things]. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:15, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support with the conditions bawolff (talk · contribs) says above. Calebrw (talk) 03:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support as long as the autoblock function is disabled. The machine should only warn and log things. Tempodivalse [talk] 13:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Enabled. See Special:AbuseFilter. I added some from q:Special:AbuseFilter that have already been tested and work pretty well. Cirt (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration on user page?

Why is there a 'collaboration' on user pages, as opposed to a talk one? Is this a bug? Has it already been noted? Computerjoe (talk) 19:39, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The "collaboration" tabs appear in all namespaces. I don't know why they called it that, most WMF wikis have it as either "talk" (simple.wiki) or "discussion" (en.wiki). tempodivalse 19:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a bug that has to be addressed then. It'd be great if it could be different in different name spaces. Computerjoe (talk) 21:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm, not sure it's a bug, I think this was intentional. Apparently one can change the name of the tab from MediaWiki:Talk. (A whiles ago the tab was named as "talk"; a few years ago it got renamed to "collaboration", it seems.) tempodivalse 21:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Can it be changed though for different namespaces? Can one namespace have a different tab than another? We'll see. [3]. Computerjoe (talk) 22:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Umm, whats the issue, they're synonyms. we collaberate with people on their talk pages Bawolff ☺☻ 00:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

That's rather forward of you, Joe. Submitting a bug without consensus that it is even a bug. --SVTCobra 01:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I presumed it was a bug. Whilst you perhaps do collaborate on a user talk page, it is in my opinion not the most appropiate description. At any rate, it would be interesting if Mediawiki supports it and if it doesn't, that should be addressed for other wikis, even? Computerjoe (talk) 20:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah it is possible, excuse my ignorance. Anyone think it should be implemented here? Computerjoe (talk) 18:57, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

{{flamebait}}

I've created a new template for cautioning people about posting inflammatory remarks - {{flamebait}}.

I am wondering if it should have some magic in it to be as-is for on Comments: pages and also function as a warning on a user talk page if in that namespace. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Could there be some kind of box around it? --SVTCobra 22:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The way it is used at Comments:Iran_executes_woman_despite_stay_of_execution doesn't seem appropriate and seeing it there - in context - makes it look like we censor opinions (or on the verge of doing so) ... That's just my view of it. --SVTCobra 02:01, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration/talk consistency

At the moment, pages have a 'collaboration' tab for accessing the talk page. Yet, at the top right the list of links refers to 'my talk'. I'd like a straw poll on reverting 'collaborate' back to 'talk'. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment -- To me the collaboration tab makes sense with Wikinews' principal of having editors collaborate on works. To change it doesn't make sense to me. Changing it too talk seems might confuse users who what to talk about the story, not it's technical aspects, like OR notes. Calebrw (talk) 03:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment -- I suggest have collaboration for all talk pages except user talk, which should be talk. This is possible. See [4]. Computerjoe (talk) 09:18, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with Calebrw, "collaboration" in this sense might be more appropriate. It would, perhaps, be a good idea to change the user talk namespace to "talk", which is more appropriate for user pages. Tempodivalse [talk] 13:41, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I don't really see that much of a difference one way or another - however I'm concerned that using talk or discuss will get people confused in relation to the comment namespace. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:09, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Query on accreditation

I have a question about Reporting news and photos. How would I go about getting a Wikinews credits press pass or an AP pass? I have searched and noticed that there is not a accredited reporter in the pacific northwest (Washington state). Any help would great be appreciated. Thanks, Lytle

In most cases accreditation is only granted when you have shown understanding of the policies of the wiki. The page to request accreditation is here, but it would be best to write some articles first. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Article export

I've seen mention here and there about options to print from Wikipedia, does anyone know about this. As I understand it you can get a PDF of an individual article, or a collection of articles as a book.

Something that does that has potential for use by Wikinews. I see no reason why you couldn't request a PDF of the leads and all the stories for the last 3-4 days - if we can make a column-formatted PDF then we have resurrected the print edition.

A second option with something like that would be exporting Wikinews content as HTML. Say you want the whole article to stick on a blog - if there is an easy way to do that and it adds appropriate credits/links to Wikinews it'd be good. If the book/print an article stuff can't (or won't) be changed to do the HTML export is there some way we can feed an article title into something on the toolserver that spits out all the components to quickly post an article on a blog? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:42, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Links: w:Special:Books, w:Help:Books, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Disabling_.22create_a_book.22 and m:Extension:Collection. Calebrw (talk) 23:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

HTML export to blogs is an interesting idea, I think its definitly worth looking into. Could you give an example of what you mean? Bawolff ☺☻ 00:06, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Even if we can't use the on wiki pdf features for creating print edition (It seems as if columns aren't generally supported) - we might be able to use the software behind it ( http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/wiki ) to help with the print edition. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

since pedia press prints wiki-books, I wonder if there is some possibility of making a say monthly print edition, and having it mailed to people. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that is an interesting idea. Calebrw (talk) 21:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Edit summary

I just noticed that in the edit summary of an article, the word 'poop' is showing up, automatically: *(diff) (hist) . . Talk:Passengers on Air France Flight 447 sent text messages to family members before plane disappeared‎; 10:23 . . (+883) . . Adambro (Talk | contribs | block) (→Speedy delete: new section) (poop)

I have never seen this before and have no idea ho it got there. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

It's something to do with the abuse filter. Must be an error in the filter. Alternatively, I suppose it could be an assessment of my comments. Adambro (talk) 15:35, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

LOL well then it thinks the same of mine :-P I also note that sometimes I get a big red warning when I click save that says I am making non-constructive edits. Happened at least 3 times between you and I, that I can see. Weird. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

It is an Abuse Filter rule added by cirt (talk · contribs) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:41, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, just trying to figure out why it doesn't work. None of the edits that triggered it recently involved any lines being removed. Adambro (talk) 15:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

And we certainly didn't type the word into any of our edits, let alone anything else that would be considered abuse. And as I write this, I get the warning again...well this time because I mentioned the word. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've disabled the filter for now, as it's clearly wonky. Looking over the hit log for that filter, it's been logging edits from Adambro and DragonFire. I'm not good with wiki-markup, but someone should check the filter parameters to see if anything is wrong. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Reasonably confident that I've fixed this now. It was previously using "removed_lines > 10" but the removed_lines variable doesn't return a count of the number of removed lines, it returns the text of the lines removed. I've changed it to (edit_delta <= -500) which means if the edit results in more than 500 characters being removed then it will be triggered. On our recent edits, the word "poor" would be triggering it since it obviously contains "poo". This part of the filter perhaps needs further refinement but it should be better now than it was. Adambro (talk) 15:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I think this filter was designed by Mike.lifeguard, I emailed him about this thread. Cirt (talk) 19:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment: Actually, according to the Abuse Filter history [5], I did not create this filter, it was created by Bawolff (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem was in the part Tag the edit for further review, where it said tag as "poop". I have switched this filter to log only for now. Cirt (talk) 19:35, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why that would be a problem. Doesn't all that do is to tag the edit in RC? In which case that isn't a problem providing the filter conditions are set correctly. Adambro (talk) 19:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd recommend using a better tag if you wish to use tagging. Plastering "poop" all over is probably worse than plastering "possible-vandalism" all over, or something equally innocuous. Equally, looking for "poo" is probably way too specific to be useful. I'd recommend folding this check into a more general vandalism filter - filter 6 would be a good candidate. Mike.lifeguard | ^@meta 20:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that was me - when i hit the test with the last 100 edits button, it said it didn't match anything - so i thought it was good - I should be more careful. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:47, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Bawolff (talk · contribs), for the clarification. For the time being, it is set to log only, to double check. Cirt (talk) 01:05, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Thats probably what i should of done in the first place, especially considering I'm not very familiar with the extension. Basically what happened is i reverted this edit, and thought, that should be something that new-fangled abuse filter should catch, and tried to make a new filter to catch such edits. It obviously did not work as intended. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Generally it's best to only put filters live instead of log only at first, if they have had zero issues on other larger active wikis. So you could try to find one at en.wikipedia that does something similar. Otherwise, log-only is best to start when trying out brand new untested stuff. Cirt (talk) 02:05, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

SineBot (talk · contribs)

I guess the treads about SineBot have been archived (or I couldn't fine them) so I will just announce that SineBot seems to be back and running after a two month absence. --SVTCobra 01:37, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yay! Cirt (talk) 01:54, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

That's good to hear. It's still somewhat haphazard, though, as it seems to miss lots of unsigned posts from the Comments: namespace. Still, it's better than nothing. (By the way, Bawolff recently archived all the old wc threads as the page was starting to get verrry long. Check the archive for the old sinebot thread.) Tempodivalse [talk] 01:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it terminated soon again, but since late June 27, SineBot seems to be up again. Lets hope it lasts. --SVTCobra 01:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is it so dodgy? Dotty••|☎ 07:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Malformed {{archive}} template defacing hundreds of pages

Way back in June 2007, user:Brian went through and changed something in the {{archive}} template on several hundred articles using AWB. Unfortunately, in doing so he placed a space before the template, causing a big, unsightly brown box to appear on all pages he edited. I've gone through a few of those pages removing the space, but it will take a very long time to manually correct all of them. What I'm wondering is: would it be possible to have a bot detect pages that have the malformed template and fix them? Tempodivalse [talk] 02:33, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the problem was with cspurrier's bot, rather than BNZ's fixes if you look at the article's history. The following regex may help potential botmakers fix it article.replace(/^\ (\{\{[aA]rchived?\}\})$/m, "$1") (or if your editing with some semi-automated tools). Sorry, I don't have enough time on my hands to turn that into a bot of some sort. Perhaps one of the pywikipedia bots allows running regexs on articles or something. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Highlighting need for review in RC

Is there some way to highlight by colouring the 'review' links that appear in recent changes when someone edits a sighted article? If not on-wiki, then how would this be implemented in MediaWiki - part of flagged revs? Part of what builds RC, some combination, or...?--Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:06, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Got one easier for you. Goto your Preferences. Click "Gadgets". Check "Become notified when an article is tagged with {{review}}...". Click Save. Now you'll know _all_ the time. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:46, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

While i do like Shak's idea better (I'm biased though...) To answer the original question: its possible using css. However I can not find any edits with this review link you speak of, however everything else has class attributes, so i assume it does to. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Pick a published article that appears in RC, go to its history, and mark the top revision as unapproved. Then go back to RC and look for the (review) text. I do not mean {{review}}. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, i must be blind. first time i tried that it didn't work. The review link is in a span with class mw-fr-reviewlink. Thus, the following css will highlight it yellow:

span.mw-fr-reviewlink {background-color: yellow;}

I'm not really sure exactly how you want it highlighted, but we can style it in almost any way imaginable (bolded might also be a good choice). The above css could be put into your personal css, a gadget, or into the site css if there is enough support. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:55, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

<unindent>Post-it yellow highlight sounds about right - these pages don't usually end up dotted all over RC as people keep on top of re-reviewing. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:43, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Done Bawolff ☺☻ 07:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Google News Problem

As this shows, Google News currently syndicates our User pages, User_talk pages, Collaboration pages, even our policy pages turn up if you search the right phrase. I think it's a shame that a search to see if your favourite Norwegian popstar named "Mickaelson" is in the news, instead suggests I visit the Wikinews page where User:Mickaelson discusses his favourite music. I know it's Google's problems, not our own - but can we somehow alert them and suggest they find a way to ignore URLs with "User" or something in them? Sherurcij 00:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

And, as this shows, these pages were added to their archive a long, long time ago. This is not currently a problem unless we want to start mucking about getting things de-indexed. I don't mind passing on a simple set of criteria of pages that should not be indexed, but is it that important? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd think that, left untended - it gives an unprofessional look for Wikinews and risks us being de-listed. So yes, I'd think it's of at least medium importance. And the fact my name hasn't been added to any new Wikinews pages in the past week doesn't prove anything. If somebody Google Searches "Latvia", we don't want them finding our "Talk:Latvian monarchy declares martial law" page, nor our User:LatvianHobbit1138. Sherurcij 01:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Its not really being left untended. From what I understand its a past issue, and no new pages will be indexed incorrectly. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:59, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I have just noticed this, and I am pretty sure that this is a new problem. I have often done searches which would have brought up Wikinews talk pages; today is the first time I have seen it. This doesn't look good at all.

Is there a page which describes the current integration method between Wikinews and Google News; I see Wikinews:Syndication and Wikinews:Community Mirror, and lots of previous discussions[6]. I am surprised there is not a page which describes the technical details of how Wikinews interfaces with Google News. John Vandenberg (talk) 04:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Just for you: Wikinews:Google news Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, i misunderstood the original comment. Your searching google news archive - where there appears to be an issue. I thought you were talking about normal google news, where there is no issue. The google news archive seems to be crawling through all our content, and adding some content that is not news. and appears to be doing it on a continuing basis (better linkyy] look at the dates) perhaps some sort of email would be warranted. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Gosh I feel special. Thank you very much. So that explains how there is no problem the normal syndication. Now we need Google News Archive to remove everything except for namespace 0, and maybe the Portal namespace? John Vandenberg (talk) 07:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• I have emailed someone at Google news with the link Bawolff provided. BCC'd to scoop. Reminds me need to get other languages in the index, I have a strong suspicion that interlanguage links could help our ranking in the results quite significantly. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I noticed that DRAFT copies of articles are also finding their way into google.com results (before they've been properly vetted) and hence mirror sites may use defective copy if they scour this content (eg may be a copypaste). I can't see a way of adding this comment to the water cooler, so I'll post it here. Please feel free to copy this text elsewhere as appropriate or point others here:

I run an Apache web server and (fwiw) I have a few lines of defence against this sort of thing:

• edit robots.txt in the web document root to exclude all user agents (crawlers and bots) from indexing certain pages and specific problematic user agents from indexing any pages. You can use a pattern match with some user agents like google, but not others. This works for those user agents that don't simply choose to disregard robots.txt.
• if that fails, I can set up pattern-based rules in my Apache security module to do things like redirect the browser or crawler to another page (301), issue a page not found (404) or a forbidden (403) response; etc.
• I can also use rewrite rules in the web server configuration to change the web address so that only my preferred addresses are reached eg changing "myweb.net?cat=love&x=36&etc" (which can lead to penalties for duplicated content) to myweb.net/love", and so forth. Google also recognizes "rel=canonical" to suggest the address they should use when indexing content.
• if all else fails, I can block specific ip addresses altogether or from accessing specific pattern-matched content. I always let them see robots.txt.
• and occasionally emails work, though they tend to be simply ignored, for example when an algorithm in msnbot had it requesting a fresh copy of my newsfeed every 20 seconds and ignoring my server's response of "not modified" (304).

Hope this is of use. Esowteric | Talk 09:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Need a search to back up the assertion that draft articles are actually being indexed and not served up to you just because you're logged into Wikinews when you click on a link from Google news. And... To edit this discussion use the [edit] link next to the subsection header. You may have to navigate to the technical section of the water cooler prior to doing this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• User raised this on talk and used the main Google engine as an example. So this is not a problem, Google news is what is important and the main index should continue to have all pages in it. Talk, Draft, Comments, etc. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the issue is in eminently safe and capable hands (sorry, I hadn't seen this thread), so ignore the above. On my own tiny server I have the luxury of being able to sort such issues out as close to source as possible ("front end first"), and it's easy for me to simply add a robots noindex tag and Cache-Control header to any pages I need based on a simple pattern match (by hacking into the php configuration code of the application). Making sure that caching proxies don't cache content served up to logged-in users, for example, is something that needs fixing at source at the application level, not way down the line at, say, google. Esowteric | Talk 10:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Bawolff's generalised description of Google news indexing is probably worth a read, however the issue has a long history here. We want virtually everything in the main google.com index; the exceptions are things like Mediawiki: and Special: pages, diff pages, histories, and probably a few other things I've not thought of.

Google's news index, news.google.com is an entirely different animal. previous attempts to get listed there were dropped or declined due to lack of editorial control. Flagged Revisions was the obvious solution, but a few tweaks were needed to meet Google's indexing rules.

For technical details, the Wikimedia Foundation is effectively a hosting provider. There are limits on what changes we can get in place to suit us. MediaWiki extensions will not be included until they pass a security audit by WMF people (Brion VIBBER the CTO manages this). What you might call infrastructure - the wiki farm and associated Squid caches have to remain a standardised configuration. This is not apparent if you're only managing one or two domains on a server, but scale to hundreds and you must simplify configuration to minimise risk of error. Thus you're looking at configuration tweaking being done by means of extensions to Mediawiki and hacks being out of the question. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for the explanation and clarification, Brian. Esowteric | Talk 15:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

having pages in category default sorted by {{PAGENAME}} not {{FULLPAGENAME}}

currently if you put a category on a template, the template will be by default sorted under t (for template). Similarly portal pages are put under p for portal, and so on for other namespaces. We generally override this with using [[category:whatever|{{PAGENAME}}]] on non-main namespaced pages. enwiki has recently switched so that categories are sorted by the name of the page, not the name of the namespace. I think this is a Good Idea. I think we should do that here. (See mw:manual:$wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey and discussion at en 'pedia village pump for more details). Thoughts, and by thoughts i mean {{support}}/{{oppose}} so we can show community concencuss (or lack thereof if thats the case). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Commments

• Comment/ Question I may be confused, but does this apply to unintentional namespaces, such for example, NFL:News for June 16, 2009 or English Football: Manchester United argrees to £80 million deal with Real Madrid for Christiano Ronaldo (Just made those up obviously), or would this ignore all non-official namespaces, such as talk, etc.? Thanks, Calebrw (talk) 18:24, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

These are not namespaces. These example pages would be in the main namespace because the prefix does not match a configured or reserved namespace. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Brian. Just checking. Calebrw (talk) 21:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:19404. Bawolff ☺☻ 08:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Votes

• I Support gay marriage, as long as both chicks are hot. Er... wait. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support, wut brianmc said. :P - Cirt (talk) 07:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support. This seems like a good idea to me. People should be able to marry who\ever they want. Wait, not that's not what were talking about...well, whatever. Calebrw (talk) 21:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support who am i to get in the way of someone's happiness. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Would those who voted on this please go to the entry on bugzilla and vote for this there too. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sidebar

Can someone make it so there is a space between Central and America in the sidebar regions section. The same for MiddleEast, NorthAmerica and SouthAmerica. Thanks! Dotty••|☎ 12:03, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Done--Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Dotty••|☎ 12:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages

While having a look at the weather on the Serbian Wiki, I came across this design they have on talk pages for replying to messages-[7]. Would people be interested in having this? I think it helps to sort messages much better, and might help newbies.

Also, something like this on comments page, because at the moment I find it nigh on impossible to differentiate between comments so I can't imagine what it must be like for new users! Dotty••|☎ 12:31, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

This only works because you fiddle about putting code in the page to make the skin show different comments. It won't solve problems of people not signing comments or not indenting them. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Can we try and make a better way for comments pages then, because ips won't sign their comments, not realising they are meant to.    Dotty••   15:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If you try and idiot-proof everything, the world just makes a better idiot. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep, but, a wiki is not the most intuitive thing for someone with no experience of them, very different to leaving a comment at BBC or CNN. I don't think it's neccesarily idiots(although some of the comments are dire!)    Dotty••   18:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That was actually from the french wikinews originally if i recall. Its currently available in special:preferences as a gadget. Well it will not make people sign comments, it will perhaps allow people to better see which comment belongs to who. If a lot of people agree, we can enable it by default. (personally i want liquidthreads) Bawolff ☺☻ 20:33, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

What are liquid threads sorry?    Dotty••   21:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

See mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. There's a demo wiki here. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:07, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Or even failing liquidThreads, i think we could do a lot using templates to make the system better. (To plug my own idea from a while ago: User:Bawolff/idea. However, from what I've found most people don't like that idea) Bawolff ☺☻ 03:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well the comment thing from the French site is fine as long as people still understand all the Wiki syntax and indent etc, which is highly unlikely. Having looked at the liquid threads, I like the idea. If we could get it implemented, while looking good, I would definitely support. Maybe some way of registered users turning it off if they prefer the standard stuff? Don't know if that would be possible?    Dotty••   07:24, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Searching category namespace by default

Currently when you do a search on wikinews, assuming you haven't changed anything in special:preferences, you search in the main namespace (ns 0) and the portal namespace (ns 100). Since most times when searching wikinews, you are looking for a list of stories on a topic rather than a specific article, perhaps we should add the category namespace (ns 14) to the default search namespaces. Well most categories have a portal, not all do, and its not hard to imagine people will want to find a category page from the search box. Thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻ 03:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposals

Refresh

Archive

Notice - Discussion at Meta on Global policy

Please see Wikinews:Water_cooler/policy#Proposed_new_global_policy:_m:Biographies_of_living_people. Cirt (talk) 21:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

For all the fretting that is going on ... I just don't think it will affect Wikinews. We don't release articles with unsourced claims and we don't do biographies. --SVTCobra 00:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Enable flood flag?

(I know this has been brought up before, but that was a long time ago and that discussion seems to have stalled.) Recently, I've become somewhat annoyed when I, or another administrator, makes many edits in a very short period of time (i.e. using AWB, archiving articles, fulfilling masses of {{editprotected}} requests, etc.) and as a result flood rc so that other edits can't be seen without difficulty. If we had a flood flag enabled, this would help things when monitoring the rc. (Plus, the irc still shows all edits regardless of flood flag, so non-admins can easily check up on them). Thoughts? Tempodivalse [talk] 00:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I know I was nonplussed when the RC was filled with your recent fulfillment of {{editprotected}} requests. However, I am unfamiliar with the flood flag. Can you describe it and how it is applied? Is it a check box like the "minor edit" option or is it more like a bot flag? --SVTCobra 00:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I should have provided a link, as not every one is familiar with how this works. See m:Flood flag. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I like it. However, I think that abuse of the flag should be punished severely, so to make sure it is only used appropriately. --SVTCobra 00:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It's just another administrator function, like blocking, deleting, etc., so I think we should reprimand misuse of the flood flag the same way as we would punish misuse of other admin tools. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I've seen this used on other projects like Meta, it generally works pretty well. Cirt (talk) 03:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

<unindent>I expect it mostly works well, but I think there should be some proviso that you alert when you enable it and disable it on WN:AAA. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, the logs for granting/removing the bot flag appears in the user rights log and on the rc, so that should probably be enough. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that there's been some discussion and the idea seems to be feasible, I'd like to request a straw poll to help us determine whether we have consensus to install the flood flag. (remember folks - voting is evil but !voting is not.)

• Support per my above comments. This can be very useful. Tempodivalse [talk] 03:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support Cirt (talk) 03:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support Wow. Would have loved to have this in the past. (→Zachary) 03:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support I think if users are likely to deliberatly misuse the flag they shouldn't be admins in the first place. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support with the proviso that, based on this bit "Such actions must never be controversial, as using the flood flag decreases the amount of oversight they may receive. Abuse of the flood flag is treated as abuse of any other administrator tool would be." from the meta page controversial misuse could lead to a de-sysop vote, and a second incident of controversial misuse would definitely involve a vote of confidence. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support per Brianmc's proviso Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 20:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment This poll has been open for over two weeks now, and nobody has opposed or objected, I think we have consensus. Could someone make a request for the flag to be installed at Bugzilla? I'd do it but I don't know my way around 'zilla very well. Tempodivalse [talk] 22:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support Seems like a good idea. Calebrw (talk) 14:27, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• Filed as bug 19521. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:07, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Licencing update on the 'Pedia! Worth us taking a step ?

Hey everyone, for those that haven't followed the link in the banner An overwhelming number of users have voted for migrating the Pedia to CC-By-Sa. More importantly I was well pleased to see the board has decided to implement the change starting in June! I'd been hoping for something along those lines for a while, because I do see a great opportunity for us as well. Yes I know we currently have the CC-By licence - thus the situation that we can only feed into the Pedia, and not vice versa hasn't changed. See here for a short semi exchange between me and Bawolff on that.

OK to get to the point: What do people think: Does this raise the question for us whether we should change our licence so as to make content sharing possible both ways between us and the Pedia? . I realise that for one, that's not for us alone to decide - however I do think the english Wikinews has a strong leadership role, and if we we're to favor this, chances are we might get others to share our views. Also, of course, our current licence was chosen for a reason - however, I do think that if the Pedia had been using CC-BY-SA at the time of our founding, the decision may have been made in a different direction. So! I'd be very interested in your opinions! Regards Sean Heron (talk) 23:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC) P.S. Woot woot! Licence change - party time!

Actually, that poll covers "wikis operated by the WMF" which is not merely WP, but presumably includes WN. Therefore the licencing update is already set to affect English WN. To be fair, all WMF wikis were invited to vote on this. Next steps as described on the results page are imminent final revisions to proposed terms of use. DL+1613 (talk) 23:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as Wikinews goes, it only covers local material already under GFDL. We would need a separate vote to migrate to CC-BY-SA, and it would not suit how we want to share our material. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Well that's where I'm saying there might be different opinions - I don't see the problem with giving attribution through a link for example (though yes I realise, following the discussions on the licence change that may be in legally murky waters/depend on interpretation of the CC-by-sa licence). Regards Sean Heron (talk) 17:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Newcomer

I think that maybe if you would like to help newcomers you can give them a special comment on there talk page, explaining things like the tags you would put on an article. I was a newcomer and this was the biggest problem because Tempodivalse kept telling me that i was incorrectly tagging articles. 09akoguc (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

We've a similar discussion going on over on the Policy section of the Water Cooler, and another on the wikinews mailing list. This should be centralised. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

New notice

Hello people! I'm here to ask you about a creation of a notice: The soccer team "Barcelona FC" won the "Champions League 2009". Any body can create an article related? We have it in es.wikinews pt.wikinews and fr.wikinews.

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 19:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's right here awaiting review: Barcelona defeat Manchester United in 2009 Champions League Final. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:51, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 21:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Social bookmarking of Wikinews articles

From a discussion on the Wikinews mailing list, I would like to bring up a proposal to try and spread Wikinews.

In the archives there is a previous discussion of using a "Digg this" button (Also see: Wikinews:Spread Wikinews), Digg links were shot down because viewing the Wikinews page would force you to also load something from Digg.com to get the Digg count. This means Digg gets details of who reads what articles - a technical violation of the WMF privacy policy.

In the mailing list discussion, Bawolff (talk · contribs) has proposed using an extension for this, Extension:ShareThis. I am in the process of installing this on the Wikinewsie wiki to see what it looks like. I know this is a closed wiki, I will whitelist a couple of pages to test it on. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Can someone else have a look at the supposed graphics bit for this extension? I got a zip file with .exe and .bat files mixed in with it - wrong download or something else screwy? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks ugly, doesn't include Facebook. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I would propose tweaking this as follows (similar to BBC use of social bookmarks):

1. tweak to open bookmarking link in a new window or tab
2. trim list of bookmarking sites to 5 or 6 max
3. include facebook - most popular social site
4. use bigger bookmarking icons
5. suppress external link icons (the little 2-ended arrow)

Also, I'd propose if we're using this it is incorporated into the {{publish}} template and this is placed at the bottom immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

the external link icon is an issue with bookjive. Looks somewhat better on monobook. I think all these issues are most likely fixable. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

• The five listed by the BBC are Delicious, Digg, reddit, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. As an example, see the foot of this article.

The URLs for these are, respectively:

• http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
• http://digg.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
• http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
• http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm
• http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister

I think that's do-able without an extension, and thus without having to get any WMF approval for such. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Twitter isn't listed here. Would http://twitthis.com/tools cover it? Does that load JavaScript from their site? If so, can we host it locally? Do we need permission from them to do so? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Not sure on that one. But just a comment anyway. Twitter, next to Facebook is the most popular for us. I thought they had their own icons too if I am not mistaken. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:21, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

It does load javascript from their site. All the javascript does is make the link go into a popup window. We could perhaps host it here, however there is an issue with the (c) all rights reserved notice on the js. Since that is not an official twitter thing, I'm sure somewhere in the twitter help there is instructions on how to add a post to twitter button to your site that doesn't have these issues. I also feel this is definitly do-able without an extension (especially the links at bottom, the links as part of the sidebar is much harder to do without an extension). Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Theres an extended list of urls for the sharethis extension at [8]. As for twitter-the twit this js basically wraps around the url http://twitthis.com/twit?url=[url]&title=[tittle stripped of spaces] (I have no idea if we're allowed to directly use this without using there js). All of this is definitly doable without an extension —[[image:socialnetworkicon.png|30px|link=http://socialnetworksite.example.com|Share this on [some site]]] Bawolff ☺☻ 23:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Twitthis is also in a prime position to steal passwords. I'd recomend not using it unless we are very sure we trust them. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually twitter seems easy (stealing from a different website - http://twitter.com/home/?status=<blah> Bawolff ☺☻ 03:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Not so easy if longer than 140 characters. Computerjoe (talk) 08:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Similar to what's coded up in {{Commentary}} (eg {{fullurl:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}) do we need a {{sightedurl:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}? Would this go in the FlaggedRevisions extension, or the ParserFunctions extension, or both? Can we draft and vote for a bugzilla entry on this? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I would expect this to feed URLs like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 into the social bookmark site. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Considering that anons get the stable version anyways, i don't think we need to send a permalink. We still want them to see ny reviewed changes that might happen.Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

The link is the same and always shows most recently reviewed version - anon or not. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:08, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

?curid doesn't really do much. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 and http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras always go to the exact same page, and does not have anything to do with flagged revs. the difference comes when we do something like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/An_article_not_about_an_earthquake?curid=126950 . Bawolff ☺☻ 23:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Fair use logos

So, Can i upload apropriate icons for these sites to use for share links? Does anyone actually object to using fair use logos for this purpose? Bawolff ☺☻ 03:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I see this as a perfectly valid FU case. (or is that, "FU Adambro"? :P) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm amused to see my legacy lives on. The propose use of these logos would seem to be consist with the fair use defence since they would be being used to identify thee websites and actually promote them so any objections from the copyright holders would seem incredibly unlikely. Additionally, without bothering to actually look up the details, I expect the copyright holders actually allow use of their logos in ways like this. Adambro (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Example

User:Brianmc/Sandbox is an example of using this for Facebook. Logo needs to go to the bookmarking link, and I'd say the whole thing should open in a new window just big enough for the entry form. Also the external link icon should go. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Removing the external link image should be easy enough: add <div class="plainlinks">[link]</div> to get rid of that. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I made changes to your sandbox so that the logo links, and the external link arrow goes away. Open in a new window is somewhat harder , and requires js changes (although shouldn't be very complicated javascript). Bawolff ☺☻ 21:29, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Poll for social bookmarking implementation

Nobody has objected, assuming we can code up {{social bookmarks}} do people support this being embedded in the {{publish}} template and made a permanent feature? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• Comment This sounds like a good idea to increase readership, and I generally support. However, I'm a bit confused on one point: how exactly are the bookmarking buttons going to look like? Sort of like {{social bookmarks}}? Tempodivalse [talk] 14:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's just to show some of the coding for it. The look can be changed, someone more graphically inclined might be better than me at that. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the biggest thing here is getting smaller versions of the graphics. Can someone manage that? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Smaller than they already are? I assume that will be hard. They're not that big now. Calebrw (talk) 15:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You looked after I'd slogged through some photoshopping to get smaller ones. :) I'd hoped someone else might take the bait and save me the bother, then I got impatient. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment there's no need to include words. Computerjoe (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you know all the icons without a text label? Is it reasonable to even assume that 50% of people who read our content will? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I do, and I assume users who will use these links will know the logos of sites they frequent. Could the name of the site be put in an alt=? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Computerjoe (talk • contribs) 17:56, 2 June 2009

I agree with Joe, even before reading this I already removed the text. #1 I know all the logo's. #2 as anon said - if you use the service, you know the logo. Sorry if you don't recognize the redit logo off the bat - but you're not going to share news on a service you don't use. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, to avoid any possible confusion, we should make use of tooltips for the logos, sort of like w:Template:Tooltip? Would that be possible? Tempodivalse [talk] 18:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Try it now - works on Firefox, not sure with other browsers. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Works well for me. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Works for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. Calebrw (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Just wanted to let you guys know that the rounded box is not round in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. It's just a box. Don't know if there is a workaround for this or not.Calebrw (talk) 19:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

  Yup. Kewl isn't it? It's a CSS feature IE doens't support so in IE it's just going to be a box, nothing we can do about that. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

  Can you point me to the specific CSS? Calebrw (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

  "-moz-border-radius: 9px;" It's the "-moz" part that gives it away. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I added support for rounded corners in safari - rounded corners in IE essentially works by having specially positioned images of rounded corners, and its really not worth the effort/is very hard to make work. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment As social networks proliferate how do we decide which ones to include? We seem to have the majors covered, but someone (sometime) is gonna come along and ask "why isn't our social network included?" Just a thought, --SVTCobra 01:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Its a tough question. As it stands there are hundreds we don't have. We could make some arbitrary rule, only the five or so most popular (with popularity determined by alexa ranking) or something. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:14, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

If we choose most popular, I think what we have now is pretty good. As to the order of popularity, from left to right, i think Twitter is most popular with us at the moment, if we list it that order that is. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 01:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but you don't offer a solution for what constitutes "most popular" and how do we administrate that? Do we use top 5 or top 10? What if some sites move in and out of the top 5 (or 10 or whatever)? --SVTCobra 01:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as the number of links go, I would think that the more we can fit in, the better, because we'd get more coverage on more sites, right? I think anything from six up to ten would be a suitable number (any more and it starts looking cluttered, any less and we don't get good coverage). I don't know what to do as far as what sites specifically should be used. I guess we could use some arbitrary number (look at the alexa.com rankings or something) for that. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I would be wary of adding any more links to the template. Those there were chosen based on what the BBC offers plus Twitter. If they're ordered in any non-arbitrary way I'd suggest by the site's Alexa rank. As to adding any more I'd suggest putting to a vote if the situation arises - but only if the requested site is in the top-20 social bookmarking sites on Alexa (do they have categories like that?) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:13, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I found the docs on facebook in case its useful later: http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php . Bawolff ☺☻ 04:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment With Twitter, I think people will be less likely to follow the link unless the title of the article is shown in the tweet. People may pass the tweet off as spam if it just has a shortened URL. --Meekel (TalkToMe) 23:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Open in a new window

Do we want it to open in a pop up? if so what type of popup? If we just want it to open in a blank window, the following js should work:

addOnloadHook(function () {
var links = document.getElementById('social_bookmarks').getElementsByTagName('a')
for (i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
links[i].target = "_blank";
}});

should work fine. Or do we want something fancier (like a window with a specific width and height. If so what width and height would be good) or are we happy with them being just normal links? Bawolff ☺☻ 01:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

A pop-up might not be a bad idea, if it's possible to do. I'd support something like that. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm on the subject of js, we could also use it to shorten the urls for twitter (since space is a consideration as it has max of 140 characters). for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_MP_condemns_deportation_of_man_to_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo (106 character) vs http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 (48 chars) or even http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 (41 chars). In addition the Look what I found on Wikinews: line adds 30 characters, making a short url more important. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

And longer page titles are simply to long - UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters is 8 characters longer than allowed in a twitter post. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Testing earlier today determined that Twitter will autoshorten the URLs. Calebrw (talk) 02:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

oh cool, i didn't know that. Will it still let you post it if the url is longer than 140 characters before shortening, (as in does it include shortening in its character count thing?) - for example this 150 character long monstrosity? Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I added the {{social bookmarks}} to UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters. Twitter would not let me submit. "Look what I found on Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/UK_government's_Information_Commissioner_takes_enforcement_action_against_Liberal_Democrat_party_for_cold_calling_voters" is 39 characters too long. So your idea of using for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 may work the best. Calebrw (talk) 02:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Example: See http://twitter.com/calebrw/status/2012059190 for http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 being converted to at Twitter post. Calebrw (talk) 03:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Uh, I deliberately coded BASEPAGENAME into the social bookmarks template so it will only post main namespace articles even if added on a Comments or Talk page. The only case where I can see this failing is titles like "2008/09 foo" which should not be created and someone has recently cleaned up (changed to "2008-09 foo"). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:05, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Please note that I did not correct all the articles on WN, but rather was able to find most of them in the Football category. If someone better at AWB than I can figure out how to search through WN's 14,000+ articles and only get ones with a "/" in the title, we may be in business. Otherwise, we could have problems. Calebrw (talk) 13:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

<unindent>Those will be fine with what Bawolff currently has in the code, but the template won't be placeable on talk or comments pages; if you do so, it will post a link to them. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, i didn't realize that was intentional. Personally I'm opposed to using basepagename as then it silently fails. Someone could use it and have no idea why it doesn't work outside main namespace, and get rather confused [or not even notice it gives the wrong url]. I think a better solution would be to wrap it in a {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:0}}|template|Only use this template on the main namespace}} if we want to make sure the template is only used in main namespace. Or we could use {{PAGENAMEE}} which does not have the namespace, but still includes /'s. (Actually come to think about it, main namespace does not have subpages enabled, so it could be a moot point for being concerned about /'s in basepagename in main ns). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Initial test of popup. I've been bold and enabled the js on template:Social bookmarks. Do a hard refresh of template:Social bookmarks and click on when of the share links. See if it opens in a pop up. please report if you think thats a good thing/bad thing and how well its implemented (for example if it gets blocked by a pop up blocker, mention that, etc). Bawolff ☺☻ 02:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

It works well for me, I like it. Just curious though, is there any way to get it to open in a window that is not maximised? Not that it would really make much difference, but it might look better in a smaller window. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

There is, but then the question becomes how big a window to make it. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Just saw this...and my 2 cents if it matter at this point: I generally make it a point to open tabs as opposed to 'windows', using FireFox. I avoid new windows whenever possible. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 02:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Note tabs will still be supported if you middle click. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Attempt #2. this should make a window 640x480 pixels.The main difference being that before it used the default open a blank new window setting (which in firefox can be set to open new tab), where this when will almost always open a new window on a single click (new tab on middle click still). I can't really test if this works or not, since my window manager doesn't really play well with non-maximized windows. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• I got a popup after hard refreshing the template, but when I viewed an article containing the template it didn't open a popup when I clicked a link. Re: DragonFire1024: I think a popup is best. For Facebook it auto-closes the popup window after you've posted the link. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the code, I would use 'target="WN SocBook"' to ensure a new window is opened and shared if it doesn't get closed and a second site is later bookmarked. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh thats because the popup code is only enabled on the template so far (as not to disrupt the site js while we test this and decide what we specificly want. When its time to move this sitewide, we have to transfer the code from mediawiki:Common.js/Template:Social_bookmarks to mediawiki:Common.js). The window name _blank is a special name that explicitly means new window. If we give it a name like WNSocBook or something, and someone clicks say twitter, and then changes their mind and clicks facebook, the facebook window will load in the window that used to be used for twitter (and won't automatically gain focus if the person had the twitter window minimized) - I don't know if thats what we want. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Note: facebook closing the window should not be the deciding factor, since a webpage can only close a window explicitly opened for it by javascript, thus facebook can only close a popup, it can't close the main window. (for example, in firefox try middle clicking the facebook icon. It will open in a new tab, but it will not auto-close). Bawolff ☺☻ 05:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Javascript is now enabled site wide. Hopefully it all should work now. One last point. Currently the popup it creates has the following options: width=640,height=480,location,menubar,resizable,scrollbars,status,toolbar We could change how the pop-up looks by changing these options. For example, if we remove location than the url bar will not appear on the popup. Any thoughts on which options would be appropriate? personally I think we should definitly keep toolbar,resizable,scrollbars,status,menubar as i find it annoying when windows popup without those things, but that's just my opinion. thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻ 07:11, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

If toolbar will suppress things like the google toolbar, then I think that'd be good to - but definitely hide the URL/location. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

<Unindent>Does anyone else think this is ready to deploy in the {{publish}} template? Ready to scan old articles for stupidly placed templates? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Ready to deploy

This is almost ready to deploy. I'd recommend tweaking the javascript so the popup works reliably (perhaps with no URL box) and then my proposal is to put this into the {{publish}} template and thus immediately onto all articles. That relies on the publish template being correctly positioned - after the last section sources/external, and on the line immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this positioning will work best (i.e. immediately before the categories) and that it will fit well if {{archive}} is then inserted immediately after the {{publish}} template on the article at archive time. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• With one of the points raised being that we could add additional links for bookmarking, I'd like to suggest a possible solution on this. For me, the only link I can see that might be particularly useful is Slashdot, and that would only be on techie stories (Category:Science and technology or Category:Internet). So, what I would suggest is that we only add new sites permanently if we absolutely have to, but the template is modified to allow additional bookmarking sites to be manually specified if the site is appropriate to the categories or topic of the article. Eg, {{social bookmarks|slashdot}}. Obviously, if this is integrated into the publish template, the parameters would have to go there. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Most things don't get as many votes as below - and it's all support. I think WalterBE is putting this in Wikizine, so we want it in place when the Wikipedians have a look. I don't know the technical details, but putting this in {{publish}} will do something like invalidate most of the main namespace cache and cause the pages to be refreshed. I think mis-placement of the {{publish}} template should be a minor issue, I know the large batch I archived all had the template moved to the right place, that's in the WN:ARCHIVE rules, and in the {{Howdy}} essay on writing an article. People will get a rude awakening if they misplace {{publish}}, so correct placement should be self-enforcing. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Deployed and nothing blew up. Some articles don't automatically show it, edit and if {{publish}} is correctly placed before the categories add a space after it to force a page rebuild. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Looks fine to me, this should help boost our readership a lot. I went ahead and full-protected the template, since it appears in every published article. Tempodivalse [talk] 13:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
        • We have some articles where the {{publish}} template was placed at the top of the article, not the bottom, which causes the bookmarks to appear in a bad location. Is there any way someone could use AWB or something to correct the publish template's placement? Tempodivalse [talk] 16:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

There's no easy way to detect articles where {{publish}} is at the top. I'm not sure you could set up an AWB job to fix problematic articles; it would have to go through every article, remove the publish template, and append it again. This would force it into the correct place - although after the {{archive}} template I suspect. This is really a job for a bot to parse the first paragraph or so of articles looking for {{publish}}. Any brave botmeisters? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

For a bot, it could just look through the article for the first indexOf('{{publish}}') (or {{Publish}}) then compare the length of the article with the index. If {{publish}} is not in the first 20% of article than flag the article. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Which bookmark sites to use?

This gives a list of what they consider the top bookmark sites - I note Facebook and Twitter are not listed. It would be good to get Alexa ranks for those we do use - basically I think we need to build our own list of candidates and rank them. I'd recommend ComScore data as more accurate, but it is delayed by a month and lumps all websites from a company/org together (hence WP/WN/etc are all lumped under Wikimedia for ranking purposes).

The only one I spot in that BestRank list that I'd add is Yahoo! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• Facebook: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 17.9%
• Twitter: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 1.8%
• Digg: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.4%
• Del.icio.us: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
• reddit: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
• StumbleUpon: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.2%

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:49, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Votes

• Support as nom.--Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support per Brianmc. Calebrw (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support if more sites added and template made more attractive. Computerjoe (talk) 19:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support as long as we use can make it less obtrusive than what's currently displayed at {{social bookmarks}}. Something like this would be more suitable. Tempodivalse [talk] 22:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:46, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support It's a thumbs up from me. Anything which encourages readers to share content with others is a good idea. The current version of the template looks good but no doubt some more minor improvements will continue to be made. The only thing I would ask is that some appropriate template is added to the image logos such that they are categorised in some way and so don't turn up on Special:UncategorizedFiles which is a good tool for spotting problems if not allowed to become too cluttered. Adambro (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support "Anything which encourages readers to share content with others is a good idea." I would agree with that. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support Good idea. Cirt (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support A-OK and seems to be working. Though, see my cm above. --SVTCobra 01:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support Great idea. Good opportunity to expand our user base. -Meekel (talk) 14:28, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support Go for it!121.245.58.36 (talk) 06:38, 5 June 2009 (UTC)Oops!That was me. Signing my support after logging in now. Prashanthns (talk) 07:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Remember me from only adding the big one, which is not neutral. --84.44.154.239 (talk) 21:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

This is now live! Cause havoc and mayhem on your favourite news sites by highlighting disasters and accidents from 2005/06. ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Use elsewhere

Seems other languages are quite happy to 'steal' this idea. See the bottom of this Arabic Wikinews article. Also think Portuguese has it too. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You do come up with good ideas. ;) Calebrw (talk) 05:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

This one was 'stolen' by me from the BBC, check the bottom of their articles. ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

WebCite

Should Wikinews ask to become a level 1 or level 2 member of WebCite. Wikipedia is a member.

WebCite will permenantly archive a webpage; a useful measure to fight linkrot or dynamic sources.

Your thoughts? Computerjoe's talk 23:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Would be a great idea for already-reviewed-and-published-articles, but not really for anything else, IMO. Cirt (talk) 23:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

As some articles are reviewed, this could be used. I reviewed one which linked to a constantly changing NASA page as a source - no permalink was available. Membership of WebCite would allow this to be avoided, as we could link to that form especially. Computerjoe's talk 23:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I think Cirt didn't realise you meant for sources we cite as opposed to ourselves as a source. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah. Computerjoe's talk 00:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

With Brianmc (talk · contribs)'s clarification of the matter, I agree that this idea is a good one. A few weeks ago, there was a Merlissimo (talk · contribs) who was kind enough to create MerlLinkBot (talk · contribs) to help rectify some of these issues with George W. Bush's WhiteHouse.gov vs. Barack Obama's WhiteHouse.gov. Going forward, a stable URL for references would be great. Calebrw (talk) 03:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Webcite certainly wouldn't hurt. However i believe the original link should always be the primary link. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Apologies for my misunderstanding - for this purpose, it's a great idea. :) Cirt (talk) 04:40, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

If we get consensus, could someone ask WebCite for an account (perhaps there's a more reliable point of access than the current one?). Also, should this be done automatically or manually? Perhaps an archived link and the original could be included on news stories? Computerjoe's talk 09:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps something looking like:

*{{source|url=http://example.com/original|title=Some article|author=Somebody|pub=News R Us|date=April 14, 1942|archive=http://webcite.invalid/123h95FG4}}

Which would make

• Somebody "Some article". News R Us, April 14, 1942 [permalink]

Bawolff ☺☻ 21:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• Precisely. Do we have consensus to edit the source template to allow this? Computerjoe's talk 22:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I would say not yet. See Template_talk:Source#Edit_request. I do think it would be a good idea for a sandbox to be created to test the new script before it is run. I don't think it would be the best idea to change such an important script with no testing done. Template:Source/Sandbox would be my choice, but something in a user space would be fine too. Calebrw (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I will email WebCite and see if we can get their support. Computerjoe's talk 23:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Move Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo

Please, move (may be a bot) the content of Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo, both are same, and the correct category should be Category:Republic of the Congo. Shooke (talk) 21:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

However Congo is more commenly known name - we often use the common name — Category:United States vs category:United States of America. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The presence of the Congo category is confusing, as I expect many DRC articles end up there. It would therefore have to be done manually, due to misplaced DRC articles. Computerjoe's talk 22:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, One of them should definitly be deleted. I'm just not sure which one. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

But is not same that United States case. There are two countries with Congo name, Category:Democratic Republic of Congo, and Category:Republic of the Congo, so Congo is a disambiguation, please see w:Congo in Wikipedia, so Category:Congo should be deleted. Shooke (talk) 04:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

thats interesting - I didn't know that. I'll get on moving them. Bawolff ☺☻

Done Bawolff ☺☻ 19:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks Shooke (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

News Briefs

I'm starting up the Audio News Briefs again and be releasing them on a regular basis. At the moment the only exposure I have is a small link in the newsroom to Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews. I am in the process of re-organizing the Audio_Wikinews section since it's a mess but what I do have that can be of use is:

Latest Audio Wikinews	Edit
Audio Wikinews News Brief for June 25, 2009 Recorded by: James_Pain Problems listening to the file? See media help. RSS Spoken Wikinews recording of Tensions rise between North Korea and United States Recorded by: James_Pain Problems listening to the file? See media help. RSS

Since it's looking like it's going to be a one man show, there is going to be the odd day where I can't do it (next one being the 27th). Also I do intent to do alot more revamping regarding how audio wikinews is organized. One thing I would like to point out is that I have gotten the RSS feeds working well (despite past entrys still lingering) and since there have been a handful of requests saying they would like a daily (podcast) newscast so I think this could work well.

Anyway, what I'm asking is for some kind of exposure on the front page but not just a link to Audio Wikinews since I'm still working on that set of pages. --James Pain (talk) 12:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Also what wouldn't be too bad would be something I can put in articles I use in the news brief that states 'This article was used in the June 20 2009 news brief' and either the audio of the brief or a link to the news brief. --James Pain (talk) 12:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

We have {{Awn brief}} {{ShortListen}} and {{AW}}. If those don't work we could make something more specific. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Abbreviatons: U.K. vs. UK and their ilk

Unlike the U.S. which has periods, the UK does not in AP style. I believe the same applies to the EU, but I am not sure and will try to check. Can't fix the article now though. Calebrw (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• I have seen you cite AP style as authoritative before, but why? Imho, I'd prefer if we dropped the periods for all three; indeed we could drop them for almost any abbreviation. Lots of newspapers have done so. Our style guide doesn't have a lot on this but you can see acronyms instead of full names for what we do have.--SVTCobra 18:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Hart's agrees with your preference. Personally, I do not favour a rule that differentiates between "U.S." and "EU". It's arbitrary and difficult to remember. The idea that "us" is a word whereas "eu" is not, upon which this arbitrariness is supposedly based, doesn't really wash all that well with an international readership. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
• To my knowledge AP style is used throughout the world when writing in a journalistic style. That being said, writing in the AP style is more heavily favored in the U.S. than it is in other parts of the world (and frequently, many publications have their own MoS that they use). However, AP style provides a great resource that breeds continuity, which at least in journalism is essential to proper understanding. Differentiating between "Bombay" and "New Dehli" (for example). I'm not purposing that Wikinews adapt AP style formally, but I do think it should be used to fall back on. I would also welcome further discussion of this as I may be to just America-centered in my views on this. We could move this to the Water Cooler. Calebrw (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
  • The Associated Press' style book should not be a fallback without good reason. What suits Wikinews and takes account of project limitations should be. I would choose U.S., U.K., and E.U. - not to conform to any country or region's mores or preferences, not to follow some other organisation's style guide, but because when these abbreviations are used as the starting 'word' in an article title they should be grouped together in the relevant category.

    I would be happy to see this discussion copied to the water cooler with a brief intro, others may have better reasons for choosing a particular scheme. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

    • I favour those as well, as can be seen by the fact that my use of them triggered this discussion. ☺ And the argument that MediaWiki's categorization mechanism works better when they are used is a good one. (The category sort order can be overridden, of course.) But SVTCobra above and Hart's (which I have open beside me as I type this) both favour no full stops at all when the abbreviation is an initialism, composed of all-uppercase initial letters, or a recognized acronym.

      Not all abbreviations are all-uppercase initialisms or (recognized) acronyms, of course, and Hart's recommends full stops for some other forms of abbreviations, including mixed-case initialisms (such as "I.o.W." for "Isle of Wight") and abbreviations that are not initialisms (such as "Jan." for "January").

      In practice, I don't see abbreviations of the "Jan." sort being a problem. We won't run out of not-paper if we use "Isle of Wight" rather than "I.o.W.", and there is certainly no other benefit, apart from saving column inches, to the latter. The same is true of some of the other abbreviation examples that Hart's gives (e.g. "Cambs." for "Cambridgeshire" and "Sun." for "Sunday"). The space constraints that would motivate their use don't exist here.

      Hart's covers a lot more than just the above, by the way. Furthermore, there are other guides. I also have one of the several — different — English usage guides that The Times has published over the years. Uncle G (talk) 12:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the I.o.W. one is a real edge case, something that should never be used over the expanded form in the article - a headline might be different, but I'm struggling to think of any other examples. As said, months should never be abbreviated (the not paper rule), so that leaves country abbreviations and other acronyms. Whichever way we go I'd like to make one a definite rule - never use US for the United States, if the two full words cannot be used use USA. This seems to be tending towards no periods, which is what I'd expect for NSA, NASA, FBI, CIA, MoD, UN, UNICEF, etc. In putting this in the style guide I'd split it into two parts. First, headlines; in these the abbreviations will be important as this is where we have space constraints. Within the article I think we should specify that a use within the first paragraph should have expanded form with acronym for elimination of any ambiguity (eg United Kingdom (UK)). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Obituaries

The Mediawiki install over on Wikinewsie is pretty much in a usable state. It has always been talked about moving obituaries completely out of public view, so this would seem the logical place to keep them. When needed on Wikinews a full export/import of the article can be done and we're good to go with simple addition of cause of death and so.

At some point I feel we should vote on such a proposal, but we actually need a more well-defined proposal too. First to define why obits are not on the main site, second to keep a record of which ones we do have.

When David Shankbone interviewed Shimon Perez there was an issue with us having a prepared obituary. I don't know where they searched, or what terms they used, but they (Perez's press watchdogs) came up with the prepped obit. This was before we were in Google news, so I assume that was in their main index. So, I'd say prepared obituaries should be out of sight to avoid subjects finding their own, as well as to avoid some moron finding it, ignoring the huge 'prepared' template at the top, and doing something like tweeting it to the whole world.

As I say, I think we need a record of what obituaries we have prepared. On Wikinewsie I would suggest a page in the public namespace with links into the closed area where the obits are. Here on Wikinews I propose a template added into the prepared stories page giving names, links to their Wikipedia page, and to the public page on Wikinewsie.

A last point would be to have an introduction and/or invitation to draft obits here to be moved to Wikinewsie fairly quickly. A process to request a wiki markup version from wikinewsie should be in place too.

Thoughts? Other suggestions? Remember, discuss prior to voting. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:48, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it does need to be somewhere slightly hidden. I've been thinking about a few that I want to do, but didn't really want to pop in story prep. for however many months it might be. How would access to the closed area be regulated? Dotty••|☎ 07:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The regulation of that is already in place, access to Wikinewsie is restricted to admins and accredited reporters. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:55, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried about that, being the free news source that you can write. Somebody like me would then be unable to access the obituaries and so wouldn't be able to participate in that area. Dotty••|☎ 07:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Could the magic word __NOINDEX__ help here? It adds "noindex" to the page's meta tags to discourage search engines from indexing the page. Adambro (talk) 12:38, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I just added __NOINDEX__ to Wikinews:Story preparation and to Wikinews:Story preparation/Obituaries. We should figure out a more automated way of adding __NOINDEX__ to all the related subpages. Cirt (talk) 12:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You added it to the {{prepare}} template last year and so any pages which use that template shouldn't be indexed. Adambro (talk) 13:12, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, quite right. Cirt (talk) 13:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia in the UK

What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?

We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.

We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see [9]

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .

Thanks, Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/

Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom

Vector skin redesign

There was some discussion about redesigning the main page to fit in more with the new Vector skin, which, if we can get it working fully with Wikinews, may become the new default skin. You can see a preview here.

Everybody seems to have their own main page design in a sandbox somewhere, so I thought it would be better if we could all give our views on what needs to be changed and what it should look like and then maybe we could get some sort of consensus and an awesome main page could be designed more collaboratively than at the moment.

So, please post any comments you have on how it should like, what should be where etc.

Thanks!    Tris   21:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

• If you want to turn it on for your account. My Preferences > Appearance > Vector > Save --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments

First is getting Vector debugged and polished up a bit. I really dislike how the (c)/TM is left-justified. I put in the CSS to hide the page title on the main page, newsroom, water cooler, and quiz. There may well be other pages where this needs done. People need to switch to the Vector skin and poke around links from the main page. There may be a need for some new page heading templates similar to those on the newsroom and so. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Other issue (not sure if its an issue), floating tocs seem to not word wrap (for example, the ToC on WN:WC). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Make Vector Default Skin

This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.

I realize that there are a few issues with Vector, we haven't made every single change to customize Vector in the same way we've customized Monobook - but that will be taken care of soon as more people poke around with it and fix things. Bawolff has even been kind enough to make sure important things have gotten updated to work with it (Such as the Opinions/Comments tab, "{{review}} gadget" and my beloved UTC clock). So I propose that we request the default skin on Wikinews be switched from Monobook to Vector. (Remember, just because it is the default, doesn't mean you die hard monobook fans can't still use Monobook - it'll still be there for your use. This mainly just effects the anonymous users). --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• Support as omnomnom. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support The skin has a look that I think gives scope for a really nice main page redesign. It'll take people a day or two to get used to the little differences like the search box location, but it just looks better. I would favour some effort being put into getting a background image to use with it prior to going live with it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:11, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Look better than default one. --Saqib Qayyum (talk) 18:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support, but I'm still going to use Monobook. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Note currently the following gadgets do not work on vector (or just geenrally have issues): WikiEd, quizScorePost . Bawolff ☺☻ 20:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Definitely the way forward. Support main page redesign per Brianmc as well.    Tris   20:53, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support and I think it's awesome that you named the entire theme after me ;) --Killing Vector (talk) 00:03, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - not until vector is released «stable» AzaToth (talk) 00:16, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • AzaToth has a point. All the gadgets and stuff i forced into working, are going to break again on next mediawiki update. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
• Neutral -Closer to Support. It really doesn't matter to me. I forget what skin I use, but it's not the default one. I don't know the least bit about MonoBook or Vector, and didn't even hear about vector until just a few days ago. I don't have any plans to change the skin I use now. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per AzaToth and Bawolff's latest comment.--SVTCobra 21:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Changing the flag level on specific revisions

I made a new tool that allows Controlling if specific revisions are flagged. For example, if someone accidentally flagged an article before it was published, we could use it to de-flag the article. See User:Bawolff/sandbox/powerFlag. Cheers, hopefully its useful to someone. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That looks really useful, I'd recommend sticking it on the newsroom. Is there any way to have a list of sighted but unpublished pages - perhaps with quick links to your widget for this page? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Alrighty it should all work now. Both newsroom and User:Bawolff/sandbox/powerFlag may need to be hard refreshed for new js to kick in. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Assistance

Refresh

Archive

U.S. pork plant in Mexico near confirmed case of swine flu

hello everyone. i hope im posting this in the right place. i uploaded an article last week (U.S. pork plant in Mexico near confirmed case of swine flu), and a number of users contributed to it by criticizing and improving it. i have been addressing their suggestions where possible (some were contradictory or pretty vague) so i decided to put it up for review. no one has commented on it since then (probably due to my attitude :P ) so, despite knowing this a small project with busy ppl, it is becoming really tempting to interpret this lack of attention as a green light to go and write that {{publish}} tag by myself. my main concern here is, of course, that dreaded {{stale}} tag that already ate up the article once.

okay, so i know the answer to that is "no", but how to proceed? i have read that the main problem Wikinews faces is the lack of editors, but when someone new like me comes and reads all those uplifting and friendly guides and tutorials and such, and gets a welcome message with a warm cup of coffee in their talk page, and writes their first article filled with excitement, they get really disappointed to see that the system works the way it does. i am planning on staying, but i think less ppl would be put off if at least they had a warning beforehand. i would like to add some comments to the "writing an article" page from a newcomer's pov, but this article is my current priority :0

ps. are there any statistics on the number of articles users write (what percentage of the users who have registered so far published one article - or had it deleted - and left)? Revoluc (talk) 13:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Valid questions your asking - I'm afraid I don't have any easy answers (and indeed I'd be interested in the statistics you mention as well). Perhaps nudging new users more towards contributing to existing articles rather than flat-out writing a new one...? Regards Sean Heron (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Page Rating

Hello people! I'm Vitorbraziledit, from pt-wikinews and i need a big help!

Times ago, i saw the messege that you can see in all notices: "What do you think of this page?" (the Page Rating). In Portuguese Wikinews, we don't have it. Any body can help me to apply it in our Wiki? Is it a MediaWiki? What should i do?

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 18:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

It is part of the flagged revisions extension. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:25, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Its not very useful - It more presents long term trends than anything else. Since wikinews articles are only up for a little bit of time, it is rare meaningful data is recorded. (for example, look how many pages are listed at Special:LikedPages) The main page is really the only thing that generates useful data.[10] Bawolff ☺☻ 20:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

• Everything that you said i know, but, i want to apply it in Portuguese Wikinews. What should i do? Is it a Bugzilla request? Any body can help me? Vitorbraziledit ^talk 17:25, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Please! Any body to help me? Vitorbraziledit ^talk 03:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. Yes, you have to post a request at Bugzilla if you want flaggedrevs. However, I would advise that you first ask at your wiki if there is consensus to install flaggedrevs first, before making a request. See m:Flagged Revisions for more info. Hope this helped, Tempodivalse [talk] 03:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Tempo is correct - you'll only get FlaggedRevs if there is consensus on the wiki. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

People, you are not understanding me! We have Flaggedrevs in pt-wikinews. I only want to know what should i do to put the Page's rating ("What do you think of this page?", that you can the in the bottom of any notice) in the Portuguese Wikinews? If anybody tell me about it, i will ask to our wiki to install it! Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 21:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Anybody to help me? Vitorbraziledit ^talk 03:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I see I was invited to this discussion on my talk. Unfortunately, I can't help, as I know very little about how mediawiki works, but some of the other editors you contacted will probably know more and be able to help. Cheers, Tempodivalse [talk] 03:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Its an optional part of the flagged revs extension (see the docs). Basically, file a bug requesting the reader feedback part of flagged revs be enabled for your wiki. (I think the specific option needing to be set is $wgFeedbackNamespaces = array( NS_MAIN );, but don't quote me on that) Bawolff ☺☻ 06:07, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

As Bawolff says, file a bugzilla to get it enabled and ask fellow pt. users to vote for the bug. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the answer, guys! Now you've help me! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 13:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Replacing dead links?

Hi, i found no informations what should be done with dead links on this wiki. E.g. the archived page U.S. House votes to renew expiring Patriot Act contains a link to http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20050720.html but the content is now available at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ask/20050720.html . Should this simple be ignored, reported on the talk page with {{editprotected}} or whatelse. I have a botscript which is replacing or reporting those links on many wikis. Can i help at this wiki, too? Merlissimo (talk) 22:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know that there is an official policy, but I would say that it's important to keep links to references available. Calebrw (talk) 03:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

In this case, the links should be updated, the document is obviously the same it is just that the GWB stuff has been stuffed on another server. Other cases, perhaps, or more likely not. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok. I have requested botflag at Wikinews:Bots#User:MerlLinkBot Merlissimo (talk) 10:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

GFDL-CC.by.sa vote

Hi, Everywhere I read about the recent announcement of the vote to move to a cc.by.sa license on Wikimedia project it always says "all wikimedia projects" (including the Foundation's own blog here. I had always assumed that Wikinews was unaffected by this license issue as it has a cc.by license (and the 'share alike' element has been specifically left off. So, just writing to check - is Wikinews swapping to cc.by.sa? or is it just that people are unintentionally lumping wikinews in with the rest of the projects license-wise? Cheers, Witty lama (talk) 04:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

There are bits and pieces of Wikinews that are GFDL - eg, templates imported from Wikipedia. The rest remains CC-BY. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:WNI response

Hello guys! I'm here this time to ask you about the template WNI response. What do it do? What is the funcionality?

I'm asking to create it for the pt.wikinews.

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 20:58, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

If I remember correctly it's used in interview articles, to distinguish the interviewer's questions from the interviewee's answers. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:00, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the answer! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 21:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

For instance, see how the template is used in this article, for instance. Basically it's used next to the interviewer's comments. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Can you answer me why do it have WNI in the name? Vitorbraziledit ^talk 21:39, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I think WNI stands for WikiNews Interviewer. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 03:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 21:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually it's meant to be Wikinews Interviewee response. There is a {{WNIQ}} I intended to be used for questions posed by Wikinews, the given example is Mike doing a little self-promo. Whether or not people should do that is a question and discussion for elsewhere. {{WNI response}} is parameterised so that you can put in the interview subject's full name or initials. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Some considerations

Hi to all,

First i wuold appreciate this community that is showing much vitality, and is trying to make a better place to live and inform about what's the meaning of wikinews.

What is missing, however, is not the amount of discussions, but enough articles. The meaning of wikinews, after all.

I am from wikinews.it. There ,and maybe not only there, there is a basic crisis. I was kicked off by the 'serious' admins there, last december. I tried to raise interest in the wikinews's crisis. And it was. Only 126 articles in the whole december, compared with 140 of the previous months. But worse of all, 3/4 wrote by a single author. So you'll understand this: how it comes, in one community there is only one contributor that writes more than all the rest x3 times? It would be not good, what if this contribur was bored and quit wiki.it? And it was so. I had claimed this problem, but nobody moves one inch. On the contrary, i ended in 24/12 in problematic users, and after Xmas i was indefinitevly blocked by one 'serious' admin.

Well, do you know that? I was blocked in december, when there were 126 articles. Seen i was 'the problem', in January the amount dropped at just 58, so in Febrary (around 60), and even worse in March (38..), little raised in April (because the heartquacke) to 45 (around). Now, without cataclyms, guess that? In the last 10 days are reported less than 6 articles. So the average, when i already saw a crisis (and there was), dropped from 4 articles/day in December, to 2 in the next months, to one, to ..even less than one a day now.

Why this happened? Evidently i was 'not' the problem. I tried to raise attention on this question, the fall of wikinews.it, but invain. Admins i talk with, simply DON'T BOTHERED to raise the work on this site. And it was now pratically dismantled. Not that articles were 'qualitatively' good: mere 2 kb average, just few lines wealthy linked to wikipedia. Go figure, if this was 'journalism'.

So, the problems are multiples: admin totaly unrensponsable led to this catastrophe. bitting and whipping everybody that tries to make something, to write something, accusing of POV (aaaarrghh...), and so on, have led wikinews on the dead end. In wiki.en it's a bit better, i see, but not much better.

I take for wikinews, because it's a great occasion, but with this pace it's a lost occasion to build up a wiki suorce of info. What's the point to have 2, 3 or 4 news a day, while wikipedia, as example, got 1.000 articles in the meanwhile, and it's even better informed about 'news'?

So, or the criteria will be renewed and make more flexible, or instead, wikinews has not future.

And what disturbing me more, it's the laziness and unrensponability of many admins, that are aiming only to have lessa and less things to do, not surely to help the site to grow up. Go figure, one wiki.ti admin has even remised by his wikipedia.it adminship 'because he wanted to work better as wikinews admin'. This was happened last months and go figure, he did nothing. So what, wikinews is becaming to be a holliday home for who want to be an admin without do nothing?

Wappi76, a wiki.it admin, is inactive since last year. He should had been decommissoned 'automatically' because the stop of activity for too many months. Instead he is still an admin, because nobody bothered to decommision him. When i asked to do so to another admin, he replied 'I should do this? Go in wikimedia and call for his demise'.

With those guys, not only wikinews is falling down freely, but even they do not bother to discuss this in any form, they simply don't give a damn to this 'little problem'. They were happy enough to ban me, that after that they simply go in holiday until now and more. And other admins (wikipedia) simply admitted i war right, but 'nobody cares'.

Well, if the managing of this project is so bad done, if the admins are so unrensponsable, and if the things are similar in other wikinews sites other wiki.it, and the articles are falling down, the information is not minimally enough (let's take all the wikinews daily production, we'll have half or less of a middle newspaper), the site will be or unseful tool or closed at all. Until the basic vices will be these, there is no hope.--Stefanomencarelli (talk) 22:20, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Stefanomencarelli, I am sorry to hear of you difficulties at it.wikinews and of the decreasing content at the site. I am afraid, however, that we at en.wikinews are not able to intervene on your behalf. We have no more importance than any other user. We too struggle to keep enough daily stories at en.wikinews to make it worthwhile for readers to come and see. If what you say happened to you is true, I feel sorry for you. Cheers, --SVTCobra 22:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

But i did not written this, asking to solve my difficulties. I've written this for you. Don't help me, help yourselves, this was my message, and this was the meaning to write this report in the policies section (and not here). What happened in wikinews.it is likely to happen anywhere in this project, wikinews.it is (was?) one of the biggest wikinews, and still is totally failed now. Just check it: last 500 edit: starting from 3 may, wikinews.it had just 26 articles. Never happened before. But at the local bar, [11] do you find any discussion on that issue in 2009? Not. Nobody cares. It's this my message: what kind of future, if there will be a future, is for wikinews? You say that you struggle about enough articles, the problem is precisely this: why so few? My guess: wikipedia will eat wikinews befor or later, except you'll in english wikinews will be able to change things. And one of these is surely the difficults made by 'burocracy'. Maybe it's unavoidable, but the number of newcomers that quit wikinews is very important to check why the project is decaying. Few months ago wiki.en ran at 10 articles/day, now it's already less, while a success site should raise, not decrease. Wikinews.it had last year, around 170 articles in January alone, 95 february, 120 march; August 2008: 240 articles, 199 at september, 140 october and november, 126 december, 58 Janyary 2009, 65 feb., 38 march, 45 april and now less than 30 maybe. So if burocracy is unavoidable, atleast it should be an 'efficient' burocracy and not a whipping out system for newcomers. Wiki.italian burocrats don't bother in that sense, for them is enough to ban users and censor things. Site is closing? Who cares! Evidently.--Stefanomencarelli (talk) 21:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Ongoing status updates on the Influenza A(H1N1) story

This doesn't fit cleanly in wikipedia or in wikinews. There is a current discussion at w:Talk:2009 swine flu outbreak#Removed "Current situation" section regarding removing it from the WP article. Would editors here be willing to pick up the topic and run with it doing regular updates? 131.137.245.199 (talk) 22:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: Yes. The truth is, however, that we do not have enough regular editors for me to say that it will be done. We try to cover as much news as we can with the volunteer editors that we have. Category:Swine flu shows what coverage we have had so far. I cannot make any promises. --SVTCobra 23:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

We have an update. See Swine flu: recent developments worldwide. Perhaps you were hoping for more regular updates, but we do what we can. --SVTCobra 01:46, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Pervetually reverted

My edits to this article keep getting reverted, yet none of the other editors seem to want to explain exactly what is wrong with my changes. Why is this? --128.243.253.103 (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Is no-one going to help me? I'm just going to stop editing here at all, because I have no way of knowing why one potential improvement to an article will be accepted and another in a similar vein rejected. --128.243.253.114 (talk) 17:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, this page is not very well patrolled so it takes some time for folks to respond. Taking a quick glance over your edits, nothing seems to be wrong or out of line with them, so I'm not completely sure why they were reverted. Maybe you should contact the users who undid your edits, they could probably give you a faster answer if you pinged them on their talk pages. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The person to ask is Calebrw (talk · contribs). This is not the first problem we've had with him recently... Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

In this case, an article from May 23 should no longer be edited for content. Only typos and minor changes should be made. The football category is a different story altogether. --SVTCobra 02:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but 128.243.253.114 (talk · contribs) first tried to edit the article less than a day after it was published, well within WN:ARCHIVE time limits (and the changes to the article didn't alter the content, just moved it around slightly). Tempodivalse [talk] 02:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

What Tempo said. Just because the article was repeatedly forced back to the old version until past that 24-hour limit and then protected early to force his side of the dispute to be the one used - under the guise of 'archiving' - does not mean that the actual change was made too late to be valid. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 10:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I did ask Dragonman or whatever about his revert because he left a message on my talk page calling my edit a 'test' and I wanted to know exactly what it was about my edit that indicated this, but I never got a response. The reason there was such a long gap between my penultimate and last edits is because I was waiting for one before going back to the article (as one should when there is a dispute), but I guess if you're not an administrator you don't get listened to! --128.243.253.112 (talk) 21:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Original Revert, Dragon's Revert and the Third Revision. I can't speak to why DragonFire reverted, but I can speak to why I did so. While I have no objection to post-publish copyediting (I've done it myself), I felt that 128.243.253.114 (talk · contribs)'s edits (the two that I reverted) while improving the article in some respects, also detracted from the lead sentence too much. The lead is in many ways the most important part of any newswriting piece. I archived early per Wikinews:Archive_conventions#Age_for_Protection. I may misintreped the content of that page. However, other edits this IP address has made seem to be in the same veign and have been good in my opion, especially this edit. If I were to suggest anything it would be that the IP in question create a user account. Generally, I am less likely to see a potential problem with someone that has taken the time to create a user anme name and it's one that I recognize that just some random IP address. Calebrw (talk) 23:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, sorry I did not see this sooner. I missed it, but saw the post below this. I am also sorry DragonFire did not get back to you. Sometimes users are not online every day and might not get messages. Calebrw (talk) 23:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Aha! So your bias against IP addresses is revealed!!

In all seriousness that really is my bête noire. I do not appreciate being coerced into registering simply so you can overlook your prejudice. I am a legitimate editor like everyone else - the problem is not the fact you see numbers when you look at my username, it is the fact you do not check edits properly when deciding to revert them!

You say you had a problem with my opening sentence but not the rest of my changes - then why revert the whole thing? And why didn't you contact me to discuss it, or at least make your reasons clear in the edit summary? --128.243.253.104 (talk) 23:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally DragonFire has clocked up about sixty edits during almost every day since I left my message, so it's not to do with availability; I'm forced to conclude he is ignoring me. --128.243.253.103 (talk) 00:01, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as Dragon ignoring your questions, it's entirely possible that he somehow managed to miss them (i remember a few times where someone edited my talk page and i somehow didn't see the orange "you have new messages" bar), so it's not completely certain that he intentionally ignored your question. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I reverted because it was an edit to an old article. If I was wrong I apologize. I was not ignoring anyone and I really don't like me or anyone else being accused of just being against someone. If you were welcomed, you could have read a few policies too. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 01:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't say that I did 100% the right thing there. I will not claim that my logic is always infallible. Perhaps I made a mistake and if a consensus could be made, I would not oppose a change to the article. Calebrw (talk) 01:24, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

It is now far too late to change the article, especially after it has been locked and archived, per the archival policy. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I welcomed at least one IP address related to this. I can't tell you when though. Calebrw (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I have no real problem with users editing with no username, but I do think having a username can help all parties: 1) there is no confusion about who you're talking to, for instance your IP address might change, but your username is there forever, 2) there is a continuous edit history admins can look at say, well Calebrw (talk · contribs) (I'll use myself as an example) was way off base and he could be wrong. That may not be the case in all circumstances. See w:Wikipedia:Login for benefits to creating a username. I don't appreciate that you think I'm coercing you into creating username. If you never create one, I won't feel bad about it one bit, nor will I intentionally treat you differently because you don't have a username, other than perhaps more scrutinization to your (or any IP edits). I hope we can to some kind of resolution in this matter. Calebrw (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Administrative rollback should only be used when the edit that was made is blatantly unconstructive. Otherwise, your rollback edit might be misinterpreted as something along the lines of "I think your edit was no better than vandalism and reverting it doesn't need an explanation" (see m:Help:Reverting#Rollback). In this case, I think it might have been more appropriate to simply undo the edit, using an edit summary with explanation. Tempodivalse [talk] 00:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not here to take part in the 'community' of creating and revising new stories. The only articles I am ever going to see are ones that appear on the front page, because I read and consume Wikinews. But since it is also a wiki, I assume that I can change what I read to make it better. I have a Wikipedia attitude to editing, which is that if I see something that looks like it needs changing, I will change it. If that is not the way things are done here (i.e. a published article should never be edited) then I apologise and I will not do it again. --128.243.253.113 (talk) 13:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

That is not the case. Minor improvements to articles are always welcome, even after an articles has been published or even archived. See {{editprotected}} for information on how edit articles after they have been locked from editing. After 36 hours from publishing, WN policy does not allow for major changes to articles. I would suggest reading the following: WN:NPOV, WN:CS, WN:INTRO, Wikinews:Writing an article, WN:CG, WN:SG. Those should help you out with exactly what the WN policies are. See Wikinews:Contents for an interesting collection of pages. Other interesting pages include: Wikinews:Newsroom#Articles_in_development and Template:Latest_news. In short, please continue to help out by doing copyediting and as long as it is within policy, there will not be a problem, or shouldn't be. THanks, Calebrw (talk) 14:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

As Calebrw has said above, it's not that published articles should never be edited, they can be edited, and that's very much encouraged. However, there are some limitations to what can be altered after a certain time period: articles should not be changed for content more than a day after they were published, only for spelling mistakes and minor grammatical corrections (see WN:ARCHIVE and the other links Caleb provided for more info). Wikinews is different from Wikipedia in this sense, because news articles are not works in progress, and should only reflect what was known/written at the time. In any case, your edit to Suicidal man pushed off Chinese bridge was entirely legitimate in this case, and it should not have been reverted back without any explanation. Please don't let this incident dissuade you from contributing in the future, and don't get us wrong, your contributions are much appreciated. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Understood; even if I wasn't aware of the policy on content changes before, it correlates with what I would have assumed in my mind. But with such a limited time period in which to make changes, you can see how frustrating it may be when an ordinary user like me is trying to convince an administrator to accept a change. I note that Calebrw hasn't explicitly admitted he made a mistake. It makes me feel like I'm fighting, oh I don't know, some kind of cabal! :D --128.243.253.114 (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

It is kind of a grey area, and it could go either way. Honestly, I don't feel that I made a mistake, but I am of course bias toward my own actions. I am sorry for the inconvenience it has caused you. Calebrw (talk) 20:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I feel that it was a mistake to rollback instead of providing an explanation why the edit was undone. Rollbacking like that should only be done where it is obvious that the edits should not remain without an explanation why - i.e. vandalism. I'm not saying I've never rollbacked something that I perhaps shouldn't have, as everyone slips up from time to time, but I can say I've never undone major copyediting such as this. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 23:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's very reassuring to know that this entire debacle has achieved nothing and could very well happen again. --128.243.253.111 (talk) 23:09, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks (though I'm not entirely sure what policies like Wikinews:Neutral point of view have to do with editing past the publish deadline). --128.243.253.114 (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Those are just a list of policies, I didn't mean to imply that you have not read/need to read those policies. Calebrw (talk) 20:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Reading through all this, it sounds like all the confusion could of been avoided if someone left a message on the users talk page explaining why their edit was reverted. (particularly since it was reverted multiple times). New contributors should not have to go to this much trouble to get an answer. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:42, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

And as I stated, I apologize for not doing so. I was in a hurry at the time and I would have done it if I had not been (not that I am making excuses). I hope you will continue to read Wikinews and continue to make general improvements when it's allowed. I apologize again. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:03, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Who does what ?

I'm new to Wikinews and there is something I didn't clearly understood and for which I didn't found any help : what is the difference between {{develop}} and {{review}} and who has the ability (not technically, but spiritually speaking) to change an article from one state to the other? I created a new article Ban_Ki-moon_hides_facts_about_war_in_Sri_Lanka and it was flagged not neutral and badly written. So it got into {{develop}}. I did many changes and then got stuck. Do I have the right to put it back to {{review}}? I tried, let's see! --Fib2004 (talk) 14:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you did the right thing. If you think you have addressed the concerns listed on the tag, then you can remove it and replace with {{review}} again. {{review}} says the article is ready to be placed on the main page and requires a review by someone who is an editor.{{develop}} means that the article isn't yet ready and is still being written. I hope this clears matters a bit. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it does, thanks a lot! --Fib2004 (talk) 14:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Page move suggestion

I suggest moving page from Three men who bombed Iranian mosque publicly hanged to Iran hangs three suspects and blames US and Israel for mosque bombing --ReneJohnsen (talk) 14:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• Done--Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Payor (talk · contribs)

Can someone else look at Credit card companies foreclosing without a mortgage note and clue in this user somewhat. I'm at the end of my tether trying to get something coherent out of this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:34, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that there's much anyone can do. You tried to explain to him of the NPOV problems in the article, many times, but he just doesn't seem to want to communicate. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

This user doesn't seem to stop editing this so it will never get tagged {{abandoned}} and deleted under WN:PROD. The next step may be a WN:DR for this. --SVTCobra 23:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Done --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 02:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Interviews on the quiet

As I have time, and as we now have the Wikinewsie wiki, I'd like to start looking into quietly working through some interviews and getting the full preparation done privately - including transcription of audio.

I have Skylook, a Skype plugin that reliably records calls. Their transcription service is expensive, but the less-reliable Call Graph service (as in less reliable for recording calls) offers a cheaper transcription service; calls can be uploaded from local audio for this.

Being back in the UK (and having SkypeOut credit) puts me in a good position to try for some notable UK figures. I felt I was close with Alex Salmond before - might be time to dig that up again.

These would be exclusives to Wikinews, and if we can get government or assembly-level politicians we'd merit mention in mainstream media. I've mentioned this on the Community Portal over on Wikinewsie, if there's any accredited reporters or admins without access who're interested, then let me know. Probably looking at a week or more of background work, the interview, the prep for publication, then the move over to Wikinews proper. That's per-interview. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Something is wrong with GB plc

A piece of news we missed three days ago...

• Jon Menon and Guy Collins "BP and Barclays Propose Pension Restrictions to Cut Expenses". Bloomberg, June 3, 2009

There's a story in this that could do with some digging. A great many of these final salary pension schemes have shut down in the UK, and I believe these are one of the "millstones" that US automakers are complaining about too. What isn't told in the articles I've looked at on the subject is that many of these companies took payment holidays; this is where they (the company) make no contributions for a year or two because the stock market investments of the pension fund are above estimates. As you should guess I'm leading up to, the financial crisis has slashed the worth of those investments, the pensions are now hugely in deficit, and companies are scrabbling for ways out of final salary schemes that leave an unpredictable amount per person to pay out (tough luck if they live to 100+ sort of thing).

What got me with poking about with pension calculators was something from the US-centric nature of them, virtually all US schemes are effectively an investment where you retire with a lump to be paid out over the next x years and you're screwed if you live beyond that.

Between BP and Barclays there are stark differences in what's going on here, some that would actually be illegal in other parts of Europe. BP are closing their scheme to new members - no new employees will get into the scheme, so over time those entitled to payment from it will die off and a lower cost (to the company) scheme will take over. Barclays are trying to get their workforce out of the scheme altogether. Yes, a fiddle of terms and conditions to lower the amount everyone will get as a pension. They're not the first, there's a trend to this in the UK, and NATS (UK Air Traffic Control) did the same fancy footwork with their employees.

Here's BP's B.S. on their pension, note the interesting answers are hidden away on their intranet (random gripe, Firefox's spell checker is wrong - it highlights "intranet" and expects "Intranet", the word is not a proper noun - there are many intranets, and only one Internet).

Others to contact are union representatives, I'm prepared to do most of the legwork on this, can we work something up on this? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Points to work on

• Will the UK Work and Pensions people have any data to obtain via freedom of information requests about payment holidays and closure of final salary schemes?
• Companies that took payment holidays: How much profit did they make those years? Different from contributing years?
• Surplus to deficit, how much has been wiped from pension scheme worth as a result of the financial crisis? Can we get non-UK figures? US FOIA request?
• Where are specific types of pension prevalent? Where are final salary schemes getting shut down?
• Does anywhere else in Europe permit payment holidays?
• Someone notable commenting on the personality of a corporation being 'psychopathic' would be nice ;-)

Others? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:28, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Done

• Fishing email sent to T&G union (becoming or now part of Unite). Asking for a contact for a phone interview. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Still no response. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Additional coverage

This is still bubbling:

• "'Threat' to final-salary pensions". BBC News, June 23, 2009

Uncle G (talk) 22:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

This isn't additional coverage - it's the article I wanted to write. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Why there is descrepancy between wikinews and CDC number and the 2009 flu outbreak article

For last few days the number of death in the US have been 10 more on the 2009flu outbreak article than CDC number and the one on the wiki news. Is this a typo?

Wikinews should be taking figures from the World Health Organisation, not CDC. CDC does not cover outside the US. Can you point to the article you are referring to and the stats that are odds with it? The Wikinews article may have been correct at time of going to press and we don't update with new details after 24-36 hours. News is a record of what was known at the time. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:04, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia recruitment

A subject that comes up frequently is trying to recruit from Wikipedia.

How about this as one type of approach? Are there other topics with a centrally identifying page that this could be done on? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

As a way to target people interested in NASA over on WP I suggest we use the wikinews template on WP on the talk page each time there's an article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki

Hello. I'm Vitorbraziledit from pt@wikinews and i have a doubt about a MediaWiki tools. My doubt is about the MediaWiki that shows the box "Share this" in the noticies. Any body can help me?

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 23:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

If you are looking to put this on pt.wikinews you need the template, the graphics, and some javascript. Bawolff (talk · contribs) is the one to ask about the techy bits. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The template is {{social bookmarks}} and to get it on all en.wikinews articles it is included in the {{publish}} template. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:07, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer! Vitorbraziledit ^talk 17:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

For the techy bits, they are not all that important - all it does is make the wikinews url shorter for twitter, and make it open in new window. Just copy the following to the bottom of pt:mediawiki:Common.js:

 //Twitter/facebook etc. See [[template:Social bookmarks]]
 //makes stuff in id="social_bookmarks" open in new window
 //and dynamically re-writes links to twitter to shorten urls.
 //This was originally made by [[:en:user:Bawolff]] if it 
 //stops working, needs to be modified, etc, please feel free to ask him
var newSmallPopup = function(url) {
return (function () {
window.open(url, "_blank", "width=640,height=480,menubar,resizable,scrollbars,status,toolbar");
return false;
});
}
 
addOnloadHook(function () {
var soc = document.getElementById('social_bookmarks');
if (soc) {
var links = soc.getElementsByTagName('a')
for (i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
if ( links[i].href.indexOf("http://twitter.com/home/?status") === 0) { /*isTwitter*/
links[i].href = "http://twitter.com/home/?status=" + encodeURIComponent("Look what I found on Wikinews: " + wgServer + "/wiki/article?curid=" + wgArticleId);
}
links[i].onclick = newSmallPopup(links[i].href);
}}});

Bawolff ☺☻ 03:07, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Note i noticed in the js file over at pt there is some stuff that is en only (like the code to insert the english RSS feed). I made some comments on pt:mediawiki talk:Common.js. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

 »Feasible ‘‘demission’’ of Gunnar Birgisson« 

My first page in this so renowned Wikinews was deleted, so I would like to know what a plausible argument for such despicable act.

Wishing well, North Pole Daily News with Bardoð Barkings (talk) 21:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The Deletion log indicates it was deleted after someone added {{delete|No meaningful content}}, and to be honest what was there certainly didn't mean anything at all to me. Is English your first language? If not, there are projects in other languages that y u may be more comfortable with. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Help with context for article with original reporting

• User:Irunongames/Sandbox

Irunongames (talk · contribs) needs help drafting an introduction, providing context for the original reporting that follows. Secondary sources for this part would help. Cirt (talk) 13:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

how do I erase stories I have made

It has been done already. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

need the news of last week

Wikinews:2009/June & Wikinews:2009/July. Look for the specific days you are interested in. Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

DIN unit convert to SI unit list

Miscellaneous

Refresh

Archive

"Eurovision special" almost over! Call for translations

The Eurovision special, which we started in February, is almost over. We have published five interviews so far, two more are currently in the pipeline, and the final interview will consist of a series of vignettes, in which I ask many well-known performers from around Europe what they're doing this year, what their experiences were while at Eurovision, and who they think will win the Contest. The in-depth interviews, we are still taking on a language-by-language basis; if you want to translate, that's fine; if not, that's fine too. Two of the interviews have been translated into German, and one each has been translated into French, Russian, and Ukrainian, making the cross-collaboration a bit of a success.

The final vignettes interview set, I do want to have translated into as many European languages as possible. Would anyone like to volunteer to translate into a language that has a Wikinews? Mike Halterman (talk) 08:39, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I've sent out many requests and so far Charlotte Perrelli and Ani Lorak's representatives have confirmed their participation, so Swedish and Ukrainian would be needed at the very least. Mike Halterman (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're making this request on the other language Wikinews sites too. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing it as we speak. Mike Halterman (talk) 09:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hanna Pakarinen's label has confirmed her participation. Tajči's husband said she would like to participate too. Mike Halterman (talk) 11:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I will try to translate into Russian, if somebody will make RSS service for Russian Wikinews (service «toolserver.org/~cspurrier/rss/rss.php» does not support Cyrillic) =)) -- TarzanASG ⁺¹  12:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Jessica Garlick, Kalomoira and Marie N are in as well. Mike Halterman (talk) 21:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there a place for people to go to if they are interested? Like a link, perchance. --SVTCobra 21:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

What, if they're interested in translating? Commenting here. Mike Halterman (talk) 00:37, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Mike, I had a hard time finding a link to the articles to be translated too. I suppose the articles are listed at User:Mike Halterman/Eurovision 2009 interviews, right?. HenkvD (talk) 18:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response. I will do the Ukrainian translation. Just drop me a line at Wikinews or Wikipedia page. --99.241.144.3 04:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I can do this, in portuguese. Alex Pereira 11:12, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I also have translators in Spanish, Polish and Swedish. Mike Halterman (talk) 11:26, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

For translators:

You can translate any interview you wish, but the one I need translators for most urgently is the one we will be publishing on Monday. Since it's such a large interview, I'm moving pieces over right now so people can start now in a draft and go at their own pace instead of having to do a HUGE block on Monday. The link is Wikinews:Story preparation/Past Eurovision contestants give advice to this year's performers, speculate on who will win. So anyone who is interested can start a draft now. Mike Halterman (talk) 13:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I can also translate something (into German), although some help would - of course - be welcome. ;-) Regards, --Angela H. (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Seven of the nine have participated. I have not copyedited Tajci's transcript yet or moved it over. If Charlotte or Kalomoira do not respond by afternoon tomorrow, we will be going ahead with just the seven. Mike Halterman (talk) 18:26, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Charlotte's answers have been received. I may have to cut Kalomoira out of the interview plans for good because I've only heard from her publicist, who said she would be contacting me directly (and never did). Mike Halterman (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Kalomoira has not responded and at this point, she will not be participating. As soon as I get the go-ahead from Tajci regarding the phone tanscript, I will move her statements over and Charlotte's as well, then I will write the intro and everything will be set for a full translation for everyone. Mike Halterman (talk) 13:55, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

EVERYTHING IS NOW INCLUDED IN THE ENGLISH ARTICLE. For the translators who were waiting until everything was placed, you can start your work now. Thank you for all your help. :) Mike Halterman (talk) 00:58, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

List of translators for each language. These people either volunteered on this page or other pages, or we discussed translating in IRC and they have started:

Dutch: Groucho_NL Done

French: Otourly, Dereckson Done

German: Aholtman, Eptalon, Prince Kassad, Matthiasb Done

Hebrew: Shimrit Not done

Norwegian: noorse, h3st, brik, christel, bjelleklang Done

Polish: odder Done

Portuguese: Alexanderps  Translating it like 10 days after finals...what?

Russian: enhydra Done

Spanish: SkEmO Done

Swedish: HannesP Done

Ukrainian: Hillock65 Done

I think that's good enough, at least in terms of how many languages there are. If anyone would like to help the translators, sign up and I will let them know. The interviews ended up being LONG so it's a big task for someone to take on alone. :) Mike Halterman (talk) 09:24, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Small Update:

German:  5.5 of 8 interviews translated, also supported by Matthiasb.

--Angela H. (talk) 11:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Updated. Mike Halterman (talk) 13:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

{{Cred}}

New template, for use on WN:CV. I have put it on Sherujic to test it out. Anyone want to kick about ideas for improving it? I'm thinking we could add a |photo= option.

I know some people might not be totally comfortable with this, but to be realistic if Skenmy's idea for more professional ID goes through I think it should have pictures. There is also the thing that accredited reporters should at least have a chance of recognising each other even if they have never met before. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Tell me more!

I run a village website and I find it incredibly difficult to get local groups to tell me any news and it occurred to me that one way to improve on the local news, the kind that never makes it into the papers, would be to have a "wikinews". So I was very interested to spot this website as this is heading in the same direction.

But what worries me is that I'm talking about the problems of getting local news for a small village of 10,000, whereas from what I can see, this site is having problems getting news for the whole world of 6,000,000,000. Which leads me to think, that even if the idea sounds great, is it really practical even for world news let alone a small village?

Can someone help me understand the project. Is it right that because there are no articles listed under May 5th (and it is 15:30 GMT) that this means that there is currently no news from the 5th? 79.79.220.104 15:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

We are a small community - we have only five or six users who are frequent contributors to this site, and a further twenty or so who contribute occasionally. As such, our output is limited, and our coverage of world events is very patchy, as you have already noticed. You are correct in observing that we have no published articles for May 5, although we have several stories that are either in development or awaiting a peer review for publishing in the newsroom. I think this project has great potential, but we are severely hampered by having very few active content writers. You are certainly very much welcome to help us grow, and any contributions you could make will be greatly appreciated. tempodivalse 17:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Parents prosecuted after homeopathic treatment leads to daughter's death

I provided four background sources from scientific journals on homeopathy, but was told they wouldn't be necessary. Then someone went in and simply removed the mainstream medical view fromt he first paragraph.

It wasn't like I said it as fact, I simply said it was "widely considered as quackery" - which it is: to work, it would have to violate basic scientific laws, as explained in the last paragraph. But nonetheless, it would appear that Wikinews is unable to maintain decent scientific standards, nor is willing to let facts stand in articles.

I'm really, really steamed about this. I decided to start editing Wikinews because I thought that science and such were accepted here, and this was an incredibly nasty surprise. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments

1. How is homeopathy described in other mainstream media secondary sources reporting on this news event? We could model after/take our cues from those.
2. If the source(s) is being used for information in the body text of the article, it should not have been removed and should be restored. If it is "background" source, not used to support anything in the article's body text, no reason to have it as a source in the Sources section. Cirt (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

They discuss how it doesn't work, is ineffective, etc, a lot. However, I was summarising much longer reports. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure why these sources were removed as they are clearly from highly reliable sources that were being used in the article. I have added them back [12]. Cirt (talk) 21:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Adam, please read Wikinews:Avoid weasel words about using phrases like "widely considered as quackery". Though clearly it shouldn't have been just removed. Cheers,--SVTCobra 13:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Specific attribution is generally a good thing. :) Cirt (talk) 13:41, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

New Wikinewsie blog and wiki

This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.

I have installed a new blog on the wikinewsie.org site - http://wikinewsie.org/opinions/

The vague idea here is to do a blog that is not restricted just to accredited reporters, but to all established contributors. Content would be well thought-out opinions on issues in the news. I want to avoid having a run on particular topics, so those given access to post will have to take that into account - Like, don't run dozens of Scientology stories, don't make the blog look like a single-purpose crusade, so on.

First is sorting out a few things from the basic WordPress 2.7.1 installation. As this is distinct from the Editors' blog it should probably have a different theme or colour scheme. I'm open to suggestions on this, and there are libraries of themes on the WordPress site.

After that you have to look at add-ons such as RSS and http-based management/upgrading. Comments on these from anyone who has managed a blog would be welcome.

I also have a support query in with Godaddy to progress getting a Wiki up and running. Current problem is MediaWiki doesn't work with MtSQL v4.x, and for some reason I've not got 5.x on the hosting account. Should have an answer on that sometime today.

Any other suggestions welcome - I suspect when it comes time for the wiki to go up I'll be looking for people to help skin and theme it. Also expect to be putting in queries to #mediawiki on IRC about addons and such, anyone who can give advice on how best (a) to mimic the config on Wikinews, and (b) make it log-in only access with a main page visible please comment on these points. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Call me confused, but I have no idea what the purpose of this new Wiki would be. What would it be? —Calebrw (talk) 21:14, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

mediawiki should work with mySQL 4 (it needs version 5 of php) according to mw:Installation. (wikinews uses 4.0.40 of mysql according to special:version) From what i understand the wiki is a re-incarnation of embargo wiki proposal. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The wiki is now installed, it is intended to be a place where we store obituaries out of public view and other sensitive material. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:18, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Got it. Calebrw (talk) 14:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

http://www.wikinewsie.org/wiki/Main_Page As you can see, it desperately needs a new logo, that's five minutes with photoshop and a who-gives-a-bleep attitude. Size is 150px square, use png24. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

...it is intended to be a place where we store obituaries out of public view and other sensitive material... Does that mean that it is a closed wiki (i.e. cannot be read by unregistered users, sort of like the OTRS wiki)? Tempodivalse [talk] 17:45, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

It isn't... yet. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, never mind, I missed your comment above where you said you wanted to make it a closed wiki, but haven't managed to yet. In any case, this sounds like a good idea. A few questions, though:

1. How are we going to determine who can access this secret wiki? Do we limit the users to accredited reporters and/or administrators?
2. What sort of information would be sensitive enough to require being on a private-access wiki?

Tempodivalse [talk] 19:14, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

accredited reporters and administrators covers most contributors. A lot will depend on how fine-grained a security model can be set up. If we can have an "Obituaries:" namespace that anyone can access and a "Embargoed:" namespace with a smaller set of users, that'd be perfect.

Apart from obituaries, this should give us a chance to start getting embargoed press releases from organisations and work on stories from them without leaking the release information. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

On a separate note, as far as making the configuration wikinews like, the two most important extensions are mw:extension:Intersection (aka DPLv1) and mw:extension:parserfunctions. Most of the other extensions on wikinews aren't really used. Whats really important is some of the key templates - {{source}} , {{date}}, {{wikinews}} and the like. Those should probably be imported using special:export/special:import. The mediawiki wiki has some info on restricting access. As for skinning, I'd suggest using something like Datrio's or stw's css so that its clearly visible that it is not wikinews but still noticeable that it is a wiki. Another option is Wikinews:Custom skin however it is kind of abandoned so your millage will most definitly vary with it (I did get it to kind of work on mediawiki 1.11 a very long time ago). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Great idea on the new skin part. We should defiantly take a strong look at the old skin and make sure that it can be easily updated to the latest version of MW (1.15.x) and to the latest CSS code. From what I saw, it looked pretty good. PS: created account on the new wiki. Calebrw (talk) 05:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Import/Export will be vital. Not just for setting up templates and things on the Wikinewsie wiki, but for taking stories ready for publication from the wiki and importing them to Wikinews with full edit history. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Securing the wiki

I've implemented some of the basic security features for the wiki - anon users cannot now browse and anyone wanting an account will have to ask from one of the already established users - myself, Bawolff, Blood Red Sandman, Calebrw, and DragonFire1024. All users will be made sysops - I don't see a need for a hierarchy here. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that most if not all users should be given administrative privileges - avoids a hierarchy. However, how do we decide becomes bureaucrat? I don't think we should give out 'crat to everybody who has an account, as bureaucrat is a very powerful tool (especially on a non-wmf wiki where they can desysop). Maybe we could limit the bureaucrat group to only administrators and/or have a separate RfB page on the wiki? Tempodivalse [talk] 14:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

This is currently the "throw changes into the setting and figure out what will work" stage. Probably right that we need an RfB page - but on Wikinewsie, or here? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I feel that since the RfBs pertain to the Wikinewsie wiki and not this project, requests and discussion should be made over there. In any case, I've left a few suggestions and notes at the community portal over there on suggestions how we could promote users, comments are welcome. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:46, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to note, I've created a new page where users can request to be given an account at the cabal wiki: see Wikinews:Request an account at Wikinewsie. I think it's better to have requests made all in one place. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Public namespace

Thanks to help from Bawolff (talk · contribs), wikinewsie's public namespace is now available to all.

A project for Wikinewsies to work on is Freedom of Information. I have just submitted a FoI request to test out and document the system for the Scottish Parliament. Computerjoe (talk · contribs) is working through one at UK level. Someone at least get US level, and I know there's been a dig at one where we were told the data was not covered - please document these. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Notice - Discussion at Meta on Global policy

Please see Wikinews:Water_cooler/policy#Proposed_new_global_policy:_m:Biographies_of_living_people. Cirt (talk) 21:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

FOX Quoted us

FOX News quoted us recently. I just thought I would make a mention of it for a few reasons. I am not complaining they did, but on their part it was crappy journalism working in our favor. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,523238,00.html

I only mention this because of the problem we had with them with the Chris Benoit story. In the recent post above, they mention the statement WP made when they Blocked Scientology. With a click of one link they could have gotten to that page, but chose to quote us :-D Lazy yes....but good for us! DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 10:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Nice. Maybe that's where the Scientology hits came from. Well, whatever works. Calebrw (talk) 13:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

That's probably where we got the high traffic on Scientology pages from. I wish they would spell our name right, though. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Possible news

[13] - Law enforcement authorities have apparently been contacted. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

• This is more notable fo' sure? Jolly Ω Janner 21:37, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
  • @Cirt: I'm not sure this would meet our newsworthiness guidelines. By looking at the user's IP address talk page, I'd say it's just a twelve-year-old buffoon who has nothing better to do but vandalise Wikipedia. Plus, I can't imagine this is the first time someone has made an threat to kill someone on Wikipedia .... Tempodivalse [talk] 21:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
• Wikinews is not the Wikimedia witchfinder-general. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Okay, no worries. I was not sure it would be of interest, that's why I put it up here. Cirt (talk) 01:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
    • It was interesting to see, but I think Bored teen trolls Wikipedia with presidential death threats would be a non-article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:13, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I did laugh at the guy begging to get the FBI uninvolved on his talk page (check the history... there's more than just what's there). I'd say in the unlike event he's arrested or charged then there's a news article, but not otherwise. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 09:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
        • Re to above: Noted, thanks. Cirt (talk) 12:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

What about the other story that Jolly Janner pointed to, though? It was picked up by the Daily Herald (New Zealand), the Independent (London), and the Daily Mail over the weekend. Uncle G (talk) 18:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews:Citation guidelines

Do we have anything like this?

I ask because I have a Wikinews OTRS ticket from someone seeking permission to use a screenshot of Wikinews in a book. The ironic part is, this is as a labelled graphic to illustrate how to cite a wiki.

I'd like to see something like the above, and link to it from the Mediawiki:copyright message - perhaps "Citing or copying from Wikinews? See here." --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• I agree - such a page is needed. One of the original goals of wikinews, was to have third party re-users. It would probably help if there was some sort of guideline on that. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
• A Wikimedia project's copyright policy is always at Project:Copyrights (the MediaWiki setting for this previously being MediaWiki:Copyrightpage), and you'll find that in most other projects that's what's linked to from Mediawiki:copyright. Uncle G (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Profanity warnings

I was looking through some template lists recently, and stumbled upon {{language}}. It appears as though it is supposed to be used to warn readers of expletives in the article (although it seems it has never been used). Since we do not censor, I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to have such warnings? If so, should we start using it? Open to thoughts. Tempodivalse [talk] 23:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The template's ugly, mind. I'm more comfortable with the kind of note displayed in Teräsbetoni frontman J. Ahola on representing Finland at Eurovision 2008 & more. We should really try and decide what the standard is, though. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 06:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

No need to have such warnings on an article by article basis since we already have them in the disclaimers. To add warnings to particular articles would be problematic since what language would be considered to merit a warning won't be straightforward to determine. As a news site, it wouldn't be reasonable of our readers to expect that all of the language in our articles will be universally accepted as appropriate. Adambro (talk) 13:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

{{howdy}}

Please see Template_talk:Howdy#New_image. Please comment there. Calebrw (talk) 02:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, please take a look at Template_talk:Howdy#MediaWiki:Welcomecreation, a derivative of the same discussion. Calebrw (talk) 05:43, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

• I have proposed a "write" tab on the template's talk. Anyone have ideas on squeezing a creation form into a tab? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Flood flag poll

There is currently a proposal at the proposals water cooler section to enable a m:flood flag at this wiki. The poll has been open for almost an entire month and support has been unanimous, do we have consensus to close it and file a request at Bugzilla? Tempodivalse [talk] 20:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I would say so, given this amount of time. I haven't voiced an opinion, but I will look at again and tell you what I think on that page. Calebrw (talk) 14:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews:Wikinews Bulletin

Is anyone interested in reviving the Wikinews Bulletin? I noticed it's not been updated for close to a year now. If not, it should probably be tagged as {{historical}}. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:01, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• Tag it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Done Tempodivalse [talk] 02:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Study_says_nearly_every_species_of_animal_engages_in_homosexual_behavior

Looks like there have been some issues raise on this talk page. Thanks. Calebrw (talk) 18:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• For what it's worth: If DGG raises concerns about scientific publication, they are worth looking in to. Uncle G (talk) 03:28, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

BBC GCSE Literature quiz

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8116627.stm

I scored 5/7. I simply hadn't read some of the works questions were taken from. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:36, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• Same score, same reason. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
• 4/7 and that was through guessing on all. Brits must have it easy. ;) Honestly, I never ready "Jane Eyre," "Romeo and Juliet," "Of Mice and Men" or "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; I have read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and portions of "Macbeth" but still was only able to guess the answers; did see "Much ado about Nothing" as a play 8 years or so ago. Calebrw (talk) 14:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Unless exams have changed radically since I took them (mutters something about this being about 25 years ago) the question would not be provided with answers to pick from. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:08, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Massacre in Baharestan, Iran

Listen to this YouTube video YouTube.

Then read about this: Baharestan

Get informed. I think we need more people covering what is going on in Iran. Cirt (talk) 13:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyone near Netherland?

Anyone going to be near enough to do a report from Netherland if/when Michael Jackson's body is put on display there-rumoured to be Friday? Sounds a bit weird I know! Dotty••|☎ 12:32, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The Netherlands is a country to the north of Belgium that is better known to the English speaking world as Holland. Neverland is the warped playground Michael Jackson built for himself and those with the same mental age. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:01, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Whoops!    Dotty••   15:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

GLAM -Challenge

On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the

• Wikimedia Foundation
• Australian War Memorial
• ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre

In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnangarra (talk) 12:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)