Wikinews:Water cooler/Archive2

Summarized answers[edit]

Proofreading: All I'd like to do is some basic proofreading...
Yes, you can do that without messing anything up... go for it!
What is the interwiki link for referencing images that only appear in "en.wikipedia" and not in the Commons?
There is no such link, sadly. The real solution is to migrate those images to the Commons. Sj 02:10, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
de-interwiki links are now fixed.

Unanswered questions[edit]

Date formatting
Date formatting seems to be turned off for this wiki. Is this intentional? Anthony DiPierro 14:45, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki
What is the interwiki link to this site? For instance, with meta it's [[:meta:whatever]]. Anthony DiPierro 14:04, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In WikiPedia, the interwiki link is [[Wikinews:whatever]]. Also, as can be seen here, {{wikinews|Headline and stuff}} works. See w:How to edit a page#Variables, as well. --Drauh 15:15, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article review[edit]

many discussions at: Wikinews:Article review

Abstract ideas about Wikinews[edit]

WikiZeitGeist[edit]

As long as we are negotiating the purpose of wikinews, I wonder if I might propose a new name and a purpose at the same time. The chief motivation I can see for a wikinews type wiki is that the encyclopedia is getting clogged with lots of play by play news recording that really ought to be collected and aggregated somewhere else. Articles are forming with titles like "Controversy over the Country X election" which traditionally do not make it in to an encyclopedia. What WikiZeitgeist would allow is one stop shopping to find the latest on the OJ trial or the topic of the week/month/year/century that everyone is talking about. you would have reports of different duration, from "one day tidbits" (explosion in fallujah) to "events" (Operation Clear City) to "aggregated long term trends" (occupation of Iraq Fall 2004). Eventually, the long term trends would make it into the Wikipedia. that's a rough vision, but it may add some clarity to the discussion over what wikinews is all about. [w:User:MPS] 24.125.42.74 20:46, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Strong support for this concept, but not necessarily for hijacking the entire Wikinews project and changing its name. Keep the ideas above in mind while helping shape policies about how we archive and aggregate news over time. Take a look at summaries, and think of naming conventions that would help identify momentary news, longer-term reports, and predictions of the future -- in a coherent way that would make sense as one merges into another. Sj 01:43, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Primary Aims of wikinews[edit]

see Wikinews:Aims of Wikinews

I think its obvious that we don't want this to just be a cut-and-paste of CNN.com. There is a real danger of people wasting their lives just to recreate existing news sites.

So I just wanted to promote discussion on what we're really trying to acheive. The things I'd like to see:

News compilation: many stories progress over time, and it is useful to compile all the angles and history so it can be read all at once.
Alternate perspectives: freedom from big media and controlled news sources. Also see news from perspective of people throughout the world.
True citizen journalism: the best journalism is from eye-witnesses and participants. Once wikinews is well known perhaps every news event will have several contributors who "were there". Imagine aid workers contributing articles on what is happening in Africa and such.
Free press: especially useful for those in regions of the world where the press is highly controlled. If we do it right, this could become the most reliable news source in the world!
Investigative stories: People working for governments, corporations and other institutions often have access to a wealth of information that may interest the larger public.

Thoughts?

Sounds like you and Rebecca MacKinnon agree on a lot of things here. That's a good thing. :) Sj 01:43, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikinews:Aims of Wikinews.

Proportional distribution[edit]

In my opinion it could be an important difference to "usual" news sites, that the distribution of news per state could be absolutely proportional here.

I.e. a state with a population of 10.000.000 should produce ten times the amount of news in comparison to a state with just 1.000.000 people. That would open a very neutral view to the news of the world. Of course, in an english language news site, USA and UK will dominate the news. But my suggestion could give a chance to learn more about other states of the world, i.e. Congo, Bangladesh or Tadjikistan, which are usually forgotten in the international newspapers! 82.83.18.24 16:03, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bad idea in my opinion: either you only include English-speaking countries, then you virtually only have US and UK news, which is just the opposite of what you want to achieve. Or you include the other countries in your calculation - then most of your articles will be about China and India... In my opinion, the importance of news is fairly independent of a country's population: News about Palestina or Chechnia should not be suppressed just because they are small countries (or are not accepted as countries) - en:user:Marcika 80.139.137.29 22:46, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I desagree. I my opinion states like Congo, Bangladesh or Tadjikistan for example have a good chance in Wikinews, much better than in the international media. I dont think we will have just US and UK news. In my opinion, the demonstration wik has been showing the contrary until now.--carlosar 01:55 Nov 18 2004 (UTC)
A bad idea but a sensible one maybe. Making Wikinews a source based equally on news items from around the world would be ideal, but maybe unfeasible? There is an addage on fleet st. that a person's interest in a news item is approximately (people affected)x(distance from person) - i.e. a person would be interested in reading about 10 people dying in an accident in their home country, but only 100 people dying in a foreign nation would peak their interest (unless they were nationals of the home country). With respect to Wikinews the number of people reading are going to be representative of the proportions of people who are connected to the internet. Making it equally proportional to each nation may have the effect of making Wikinews an 'alternative' news source, effectively sidelining it as a potential player because of its attempts to give everybody a say. Just my 2 cents. Yrs, A.Newsguy, FltSt. 10:15 Nov 30 2004 (GMT)

Our definition of neutrality[edit]

What do we mean by neutral? Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy iis essentially that, as an encylopedia of human knowledge, any event/idea/etc. is to have all views represented in a way that supporters and detractors of each would agree is accurate. It does not seem we are to be writing "X thinks this, and Y thinks that", and then qualifying it, but we are, to a higher degree, trying to reach a decision on what assertions are actually supported by the facts. Perhaps this is a misconception on my part? I hope we're not just a summary, as balance isn't always the same as objectivity. What constitutes neutrality on Wikinews? --119 09:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Underrepresented news[edit]

In the traditional press there is always a concentration on certain topics to the exclusion of others. As a result other relevant news is not featured. Would it be an idea to have a wikimedia wide drive to spotlight the relevant news that is generally getting less prominence in the "classical" news media??

Things that are underrepresented on wikipedia, like Darfur Waziristan bilharzia in stead of Afghanistan Iraq and AIDS?? Even more over represented are Israel/Palestine .. Having this as a daily topic, that is selected when it is newsworthy and brush up the wikipedia articles at the same time. With the coming interproject links we can have the news here and have background information at the same time.

The benefit is that this will not only improve the wikipedia's but it will also generate intrest in improving both projects. It will also make wikinews more Neutral as it will be less biased as a consequence. GerardM 22:15, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikinews content[edit]

Columns[edit]

Hi, I've added a section name, called Columns, because every newspaper carries some. I used to write a column that reached 8 million readers in Bombay every Thursday for three years. The newspaper, Mid Day, killed my column. The reasons for this are described in my last published piece. I would like to write a column for the Wikinews, with your permission, people.

My columns archive is here: http://web.mid-day.com/asp/columnsarchive.asp?cat_id=737&st=0

Maybe you can have a vote on this? --Rohit Gupta ````

Rohit, do you have an account on wikinews?

I to would like to write a column for WikiNews. Can we settle on a few columns to write? For example, someone could do a world events column, I'll do a technology column, someone else will do an entertainment column, etc? — Francisco Melendez 14:59, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Columns are probably an inevitable outgrowth, but we have to make sure that this doesn't become like a Blog for some people. I do think that opinion/editorial pages and a letter/comments section would be a good addition, but we need to remember that this is news first. We also have to make sure that those pages are only done by people who can write it well and we need to make sure that it's balanced between liberal/conservative/etc. --Arca 04:04, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I suggest that there be categories of contributed columns, such as "Opinions", "Travelogue", "Personal Stories", etc.

You have my vote. btw how do i vote here? im a newbie :) -- Foant

first there has to *be* a well-defined vote! If you don't see one, and want one, create a new page for it, and announce it somewhere prominent... Sj

Columns are personal by definition. Therefore they are against wiki spirit. -- Lev

I agree. I think we need to think beyond newspapers. Wikinews is in a different medium. We can include reportage of opinion here by giving reports or synopses of prominent, notable bloggers and columnists. This could be similar to a "roundup" of opinons of the day, with one or two quotes from a news maker's opinion piece with a link to the actual column or blog on another site. This would still be newsworthy (a notable person's opinion), but would be NPOV since we are simply reporting what has happened elsewhere (the publication of a notable opinion column). Davodd | Talk 21:21, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Weather, or Weather News?[edit]

A lot of amazing work has gone into free-source website-scraped xml-backed wikiweather reports! Updates and discussion about weather moved to Talk:Weather.

Media agencies description pages[edit]

I would like to suggest a media agencies desciption page. Example:

Reuters: Reuters is a...etc etc... founded in ...etc etc
AP: AP is ....
BBC: BBC is .... etc...
ABr: ABr is a Brazilian... etc ...

The information about the news agencies could be put in Wikipedia also. --carlosar

That type of information should be kept in Wikipedia. We can link to it from here. There is no need to duplicate other Wikiprojects - Wikinews' obligation is already quite large as it is. Davodd | Talk 21:24, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category portals[edit]

Similar to the 'media agency description pages' suggestion, I would like to see descriptions of major organizations and nations which end up in the news, giving some context for new articles that pour in.

I think a reasonable place for portals is on the category page for those topics, for instance for each country, linking to articles that reference those cats (generally, but not always, articles that show up in the category listings) and contextualizing that collection of links with a few paragraphs of narrative. Sj 02:36, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Logos, graphics, IMAGES, and photos[edit]

What navigation cues should we add? How much attention should be paid to logos and graphics? Is it okay to use stock images to illustrate specific stories? Are Graphics Bad? Are people who desire graphics compensating for the size of their 'daily paper'?

Read more about it at Talk:Images!

The Logo[edit]

Another crucial element to establishing a visual hook for the site is its logo. I've submitted some logos on the logo idea page right off the bat (there are lots of good ideas on that page), because the logo is important to establish the brand of this site.

Style and format[edit]

Caps in titles[edit]

Is Wikinews supposed to use Headlines With Capitalized Words? (seeing that Wikipedia doesn't)

I've created an initial poll about this at Wikinews:Capitalization poll.--Eloquence

Section links[edit]

Instead of a section header being "Crime and Law" and then having a repeat of that just below with the wikilink, what do editors think about having the section link also be the wikilink? Lyellin 04:42, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. We may also want to create a sample portal soon.--Eloquence

Sources sections[edit]

Sources or References section in the article have been formatted?--carlosar 01:55 Nov 18 2004 (UTC) Some people write "References". Other people write "Sources". Some people write in the following format:

source a
source b

Other people write:

source a
source b

I think the best is to use the Sources and then use bullets instead of numering. Sources cannot be hierarchised unless there's a list of preference in the wikinews-ettiquette or something. But since preference will be less neutral, using (digital) bullets is the best (don't get me wrong, I said digital!).--83.116.2.193 17:38, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Date categories[edit]

The style guide recommends putting a link to the category for the particular date of the story, and so far the date categories have had a particular header format. I've created a template to make that formatting a bit easier, to wit:

{{datecategory|Today's date|Previous date|Tomorrow's date}}

This means that:

{{datecategory|November 20, 2004|November 19, 2004|November 21, 2004}}

would render as:

News articles for November 20, 2004.

< November 19, 2004 - November 21, 2004 >

Kurt Weber 18:23, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Standard format for articles[edit]

I propose someone designs a page on how articles should be formatted--what goes in the first paragraph, where links should go, capitalization, etc. I'll list my ideas here:...

suggestions have been moved to Wikinews talk:Style guide

Grouping articles by subject[edit]

Some article could be grouped by subject. Look at my Main Page example:

Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) attacked in Minas Gerais.
Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) invades in Bahia
Brazilian Landless Workers Movement invades city hall

All these articles belongs to MST Category. Later, someone could put an link like this:"related articles about MST" at the bottom at the pages. What do you think? How could this be done? --carlosar

I suggested this above. Kurt Weber 02:17, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I added a section for this above the region lists. Lyellin 04:18, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Naming: Queensland (Australia) vs. Florida[edit]

I would like to bring this pedantic naming issue up.

Someone has renamed the tilt train article to include the descriptive "Australia" at the end of the title. I don't have a problem with this specifically, but there are also references to Florida and the like on the Main Page.

Is there any plans to standardise the practice of adding the country names to stories (so we'd have "Florida (United States)'s Walt Disney World launches revamped attractions", or is this going to be an isolated thing? Because I feel that if we adopt a practice for doing this for some countries, and not for others, we're falling into the ethnocentricity trap that I brought up on Meta when this was first proposed.

I'm not saying that this was intentional, but I feel we should work this out now before it becomes a bit more of an issue :-) Lankiveil 06:27, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For online readers, we can simply add links to wikipedia articles. So, instead of beggining "September 19, 2004. FLORIDA -" we can do "September 19, 2004. FLORIDA."

We have readers that aren't online readers? :p

That wasn't my point. My point is, that labelling provinces in certain countries, while not labelling provinces in others, amounts to ethnocentrism, which is probably a technical violation of NPOV. Either we should adopt a consistent naming scheme on this matter, say "Train crash in Queensland/Train crash in Florida", or "Train crash in Queensland (Australia)/Train crash in Florida (USA)". Links to Wikipedia about geography are irrelevant to this particular issue (although, you're right, they should be discussed elsewhere) Lankiveil 12:18, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This should be a project for a worldwide audience, so some standard for specifying location needs to be adopted. An alternative, which I don't necessarily recommend, is that there would be categories by country, for example "Sports - Australia".

Categories and organization[edit]

I think the categories we have now should be one word whenever possible, as "Politics" and "Business" are comprehensive enough alone. Having only a category for topic and a category for location is too broad. Reading an article on the economy in Australia, you will be able to find more articles on Australia, and more articles on economics, but not more articles on the economy in Australia. There's no category.

So, I think an article about the United States making a decision on Iraq should instead be in the categories:

Politics [International, but only if it's of international significance, not catch-all where it can be avoided]
Politics (Iraq)
Politics (United States)
US-Iraq war [Special Report, like Ukraine political crisis]

That's really simple and intuitive, right?

This is mainly going to be an issue later I guess, as we move into separate topic portals. 119 05:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, how are we going to keep track of articles? We're very different from Wikipedia in this regard. Many Wikipedia articles are a search away, but titles may not be found or easily sorted by searching. So it's difficult to see how someone can use Wikinews as a "paper of record" in the future, because anything not on a topic page as new will get discarded. Should we try to keep an index of all articles created? 119 06:12, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Simple answer to that- Categories. By date, by country, by topic, etc. Lyellin 06:25, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I guess, it's just I wonder if the category's listing won't be too large to navigate easily in a year or whatever? 119 06:31, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I believe economics and business should hold seperate catagories. They are seperate entities and lumping them together creates confusion.

I think the new organization by date is a mistake. A really interesting feature about wikinews is that the content of stories can evolve... so what you want to see is the "important" stories (however that is determined!), not just the latest ones. The dates are just distracting.

Wikinews tools[edit]

RSS for Wikinews[edit]

I suggest RSS for Wikinews: --carlosar Nov 18 11:42:48 UTC 2004

I think this is a good idea, but would the fluctuating nature of Wikinews be an issue here? Would it be problematic if we were to remove articles? --Xanadu 23:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a problem especially since many current news sites use RSS.

I have never written a RSS site but as I understand it the content is simply distributed in a specified XML format that is considerably more strict that HTML which makes it easier for standard scripts and RSS Viewers to Parse it.--Jpbischo 01:07, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You would probably need several feed pages, one for news being developed, one for those being peer reviewed and another for news releases. If wikinews is going to be read widely, RSS must be worked in somehow since for the web this is a huge part of 'syndication', or, getting your links on other folk's sites.--Mcgeek 16:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please syndicate, though I agree with Mcgeek that there will likely need to be several feeds -- BBC News and Yahoo! News both offer many feeds, for example. Consider supporting RSS and Atom. --asciident 09:22, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Orphan articles section[edit]

I suggest an Orphan articles(you can choose another better name if you like) section. Articles older than 3 days(for example) would be put there automatically. --carlosar Nov 18 11:46:38 UTC 2004

I don't really see the point of this category/section. Could you explain it? If it's meant to be an archive, I think we need better solutions for that. Right now I'd go for one complete human-maintained index of all stories by date, and categories for the different sections.--Eloquence

Some articles have been abandoned and they are never finished. What do you sugest?--carlosar

Local News flagging[edit]

Is there any plan to allow news to be classified geographically? For example, "Show me all world news stories", or "Show me all my local news. Perhaps a geographic tag could be added to each story? For example, something along the lines of "Planet>Continent>Country>State>City>Suburb". A story "President Blows Up Earth" might be filed under "Earth", "India and Pakistan Sign Peace Accord" might be filed under "Earth>India" and "Earth>Pakistan" while "Grandmother Wins Apple Pie Competition" might be filed under "Earth>Oceania>Australia>NSW>Sydney>Eastwood".

One of the neat things about the software we are using is the ability to put things into "categories". So if you type [[Category:United States]], it'll tag that article and put it onto a category page which will list all pages with that tag. We also have region pages to post various news sites on, and the very beginnings of two US state pages. Lyellin 06:22, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The interesting thing about news is that Grandma's pie may become world news if it is revealed that it contains Russian strains of anthrax. What is the mechanism for negotiating the importance of news? I might effectively hide news if I downgrade it from world to suburb classification. User:MPS 132.159.217.51 14:45, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Speed[edit]

It seems to me that the speed in which we release things may wind up being a bit slow, and could hurt the project some. This may just be because we've just started though. The perfect example is the train crash article- we got an article up pretty quickly after it occurred- but it never got out of the Dev stage. Now that it's in review, Ambi points out that many new things have occurred, making our article vastly out of date. We have the same problem with articles like the Brazilian Rep article, which is still in dev, even though the action actually occurred 3 days ago. That's my main worry with this- can we break the slow plodding mode Wikipedia has, and actually go fast enough to be newsworthy? More people who can publish articles will help I think- or perhaps set people during a time frame of the day who help move articles through the stages. *shrugs* mostly just thinking out loud. Lyellin 15:19, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I've been thinking about the same problem. We can't and shouldn't publish articles which are unfinished, but an article may already be very close to being finished long before the minimum review time is reached. One thing that could help is to amend the review process by allowing an article to be published to publication if there is a minimum number of users who find consensus without objections, even if the minimum time has not yet been reached. Another possible option would be to list articles in review on the index pages, clearly labeled as "under review". In general, we need to publicize the demo a bit more to get more people interested.--Eloquence

I more or less agree with the suggestion of publishing with a minimum number of reviewers before the set time is up. I think we're going to have to get some form of designated reviewers - preferably also sysops, to make things easier. This way, we could make sure that if we're going to require two or three people to vouch for an article, that it's two or three people that we actually trust and should be listening to. Ambi 13:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps a good way to do it is have all of this, but also to have a ranking system so people who again and again publish good, unbiased articles quickly can jump the list and have their stories get put up immediately. Or a variant of the karma system at slashdot, use the set number of reviews before publishing but give people that write regularly have a free review or two so less eyes have to see it before it goes out. The only problem is that we would need to make sure that the newer journalists(wikialists?) get their articles reviewed as well. --Arca 03:15, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps we could publish one or two paragraph summaries of breaking events before publishing the full artice. A short blurb should be much easier to approve and less controversial. Then when we're ready we can publish the full piece. Isomorphic 15:55, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The matter could be solved as the project expand and we get enough number of quality participant in a given area. But for the time being, and for minor areas, the problem may stay. I would say that we can try to be not like a daily newspaper or an hourly headline news broadcast, but weekly news magazines. Tomos 02:56, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another thing is that even thought articles get greenlighted they've been getting left on the yellow and red sections. I think we might want to move that to the bottom of the page(so people won't leave there stories there because it's easier to be noticed) and have a larger Latest News section. --Arca 05:31, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since the process of moving news around is not automatic (it isn't, is it?), and that's not very well explained in the help, people may not realize they need to do more than just write the news. I mean, one has to put the news in the workspace, put tags on it, then wait for comments, change the tag, move the news in the workspace, wait a bit more, change tags again, move news again, put it in a category, update the main page if needed... I think we need a few people that, instead of writing news, take care of the moving-around part so the articles don't wind up forever out of place and unfinished. --Shana 14:01, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've been working on it as much as I can, but it would be nice if someone could automate it. If we did we would need a way to declare the section the story is destined for so that we don't get something like Arafat dies in science and tech. --Arca 21:03, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, there's no way this thing will scale past the double-dozen articles we have now in review/dev status. We need to figure out a way to make that either an internal page linked from the main or something else. Maybe steal some layout sense from CNN or Slashdot?--Arca 22:18, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ok, so I've been updating category pages, the workspace, etc, and the only way we can get somewhere is if we get certain tasks automated, else it'll be impossible to keep up. It's already darned hard to do it with only 130 news, imagine when we get more people contributing.

The way I figure it is, when someone writes up a news item, they should categorize it, like Category:Europe, Category:Politics and conflicts. When the article has been reviewed, it should automatically appear in all the categories indicated, and (optionally) it should appear on the Major events box, depending on the date of the news item. It should also go to the main page (category box), depending on the date (maybe last 3 days?)

I think this way we'll have the sense that the site is more dynamic, and people will be able to write more news instead of being tied up with categorizing and moving the news. With something like this working, I think even the review process will feel quicker.--Shana 23:39, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia link[edit]

Editing a little today I have found it useful to check Wikipedia as I go. It would be very convenient to have a Wikipedia link in the left navigation bar. --119 04:01, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Updated by/Replaced by Template[edit]

If one reads Iran_Close_to_Decision_on_Nuclear_Program, it isn't clear until the end that this information has been replaced by a newer article. Perhaps we could use a template like stub that will make this clear in the beginning. --119 04:17, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I mean something like this. However, I'm not sure how useful it would be. --119 05:12, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That would be excellent. Ambi 13:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Deletion[edit]

Do we have a page/policy/etc for handling mistakes, mislabels, that kinda thing that needs to be deleted? Lyellin 20:57, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Some form of VFD would be helpful - at the moment speedy is our only means of deleting articles which are never going to be published. Ambi 13:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In my wondrous lack of examination, I did a brief scan on Recent Changes and the Article Workspace when I created Militants attack U.S. consulate in Jeddah, only to have discovered only now that someone had beat me to it with Terror Attack in Jeddah a few hours prior...since this needs to be rectified soon, my thoughts are to the articles together, and choose the title that's best. (I'm putting this here since it seems to be a good test of what to do in the future). --Xanadu 22:37, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Look and feel[edit]

One thing you are going to have to address before going live is the look and feel of the pages. At the moment its looks so amateurish, you won't be taken seriously. You need to make more use of tables and pictures. This project is a million miles before going live without undermining Wikipedia. 81.156.104.53 00:25, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In what way, and where? Suggustions? Lyellin 00:26, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Everywhere. Look at Wikipedia it is looking more and more stylish with the increasing use of templates. You need to create a number of templates for holding reports, with appropriate placeholders for dropping in a photo or two and links to the source reports used by Wikinews. I think a quick win for Wikipedia, would be to provide quick links to a number of different reports on the story, which give a wide spectrum of views. This would mean no matter how dull the Wikinews story is, it is the perfect place to start finding out about an event that has happened in the world. For instance, it would be perfectly appropriate to link to an Indymedia story to give the counter culture view. :81.156.104.53

We need a new skin. That would take care of everything. -- user:zanimum

Style is fluff. Content and ease of use are important. I do agree that providing an easy, standardized way to link to other news outlets would be useful. Isomorphic 22:11, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Style is not fluff, style add to the usability of the site. People don't want to use a threadbare, ugly site, even if it is the most user freindly thing in existance. Though perhaps style will happen on its own with the increase of functionality and usability. Never know. omestes

I prefer the default skins and know several people working on the Wikipedia project who do as well; the best thing to do at this point is work with templates, images, and article formatting. Adding additional skins would be a last-priority project, in my opinion. --Zarggg 14:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Couple things[edit]

I think we need a policy to deal with article titles that include time specific issues. Due to the nature of the wiki, the idea of a an article saying X, Y, Z, Today, seems to be detrimental.. what if it doesn't get published for another day, or two?

Also, I think we need a standard, flashy format for the various category pages, and the region pages, and then the country pages, and the country/region category pages... etc. I do not though, have the skill to make it flashy- perhaps someone else does.

Has thought been given to how regionalized we are going to go? For instance, I could probably get a good base of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh articles written, but are we going to go that local, or just stay at the country level? Lyellin 03:09, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, agreed, and I think we should go to that level - provided there's people willing to maintain it. Ambi 13:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

At first I doubt we'll have enough interested parties to sustain good regional and special-interest coverage. If we start with the most high-visibility stuff, smaller topics will naturally gain coverage as we add editors. Isomorphic 15:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Certainly - but I don't think we should discourage the creation of portals for smaller topics if there's interested people. Ambi 10:11, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Of course not. I meant rather the opposite: that we shouldn't try to artificially construct things for which there may not be enough editors. Local and special-interest projects will evolve naturally as the site matures. Isomorphic 22:06, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Followup Articles?[edit]

How do you deal with news items that progress slowly over a long period of time but still remain in the news? eg: arafat's health started deteriorating & then he dies after more than a week. do you add followups to the article or create new articles or create new articles only for a major occurrence like his death. Commonsense says the latter, but we need to have a policy for it. Pamri 16:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think we should have articles whenever there is a significant change in reports (i.e. ill, then another when he moved to France, then another when he went into a coma, then another on the conflicting reports, then another one when he died). This requires, however, that we make sure our review process is speedy. Ambi 10:10, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think this is where WikiNews could contribute the most. One of my biggest frustration with mainstream media is the lack of follow-up. For example, during the Iraq war there were three mysterious ships that didn't respond to radio traffic and were though to contain Iraqi WMD. What happened to them? I can't find any follow-up on that story. WikiNews stories could be linked lists, where at the end of one story there are links to later stories. I would also like to subscribe to story threads so that when follow-ups are posted to a story I'm interested in, I get notified. --Lkesteloot 23:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

News Alert/ Wikinews Wire service[edit]

I would like Wikinews to be a useful resource for journalists and newspaper publishers. But our coverage would remain quite sporadic for a while, I expect. So I think it is nice if we have some "Wikinews Wire Service" - subscribers of the service receives news alerts articles of his choice (in certain category or by keywords) via email. So the journalists and newspaper publishers do not have to spend time to come and search useful articles here.

That would take, I would say,

category system
keywords associated with news
some means of email notification

The first one is not difficult at all since we already have a category support. The second is not done in the past, but probably not difficult either. The last one needs some developers to realize, and I am not sure if the idea is feasible.

Tomos 02:48, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This would be superb, if it is at all possible. Ambi 10:09, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is perhaps not that difficult. I know there has been a discussion on, and possibly the code for, email notification of watchlist article edits.

What we can, if there is enough interest, is to submit a feature request at mediazilla, and we register to the site, and vote. That is a way to communicate our interest to our developers. Tomos 09:13, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I, for one, would love to see an RSS feed available, where I can request (eg) all Sci/Tech plus major events in the UK and AU

I would also enjoy seeing assorted RSS Feeds but I don't think doing it by region would be ideal at the beginning rather doing it similar to Yahoo! News having it separated by subject would suffice. --michael 02:21, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would find an RSS feed for WikiNews very useful. My preference would be for separating by subject, but if both subject and region could be supported, that would be even better. Perhaps other categories could also be supported, e.g., separating by time? --huw.evans 10:27, 30 Nov 2004 (GMT)

Unreviewed articles on the main page[edit]

Where did this come from? I thought this was specifically not going to happen. Also, why are articles like Arafat dies - with one outstanding objection, and no other comment apart from the author's support - being declared "reviewed" and being put on the main page.

Upon inquiring on IRC, I've been told that our review process apparently went out the window because Jimbo raised concerns on IRC. Why on earth have these concerns not been also raised here, what are they, and what are the suggested alternatives? We had something that was functioning surprisingly well, and in the last two days, this has started to seriously degenerate. Ambi 07:41, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I tend to worry that we're going to see a drop in quality when we ignore this process. Before, it was slow- we didn't have many editors. As this expands with new users, that review process will move quicker, and also allow for better articles- if we actually use the process that was designed. Lyellin 07:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's very diplomatic of you. ;) The drop in quality is obvious. We had a process that was churning out decent-quality articles, (mostly) in good time, and this was only going to improve with the number of editors. Now we have a free-for-all in which we're publishing anything on the main page, reviewed or not, and our quality bar for reviewed articles just went out the window. Ambi 08:15, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm annoyed that still nothing has been posted here to explain the change. Important things raised on IRC should also be raised on the appropriate wiki, because some of us aren't on IRC and discussion there is not logged. Isomorphic 22:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another day, and still no explanation - nor discussion, from Jimbo. He's rewritten the review policies in such a way that they're unworkable, and completely fail to acknowledge that a news site and an encyclopedia are two different things. He hasn't even been on IRC to explain himself, that I've seen. He's practically killed this project before it even got off the ground, and hasn't bothered to communicate the slightest reason why apart from edit summaries of "making it more wiki-like" and a handful of conversations on IRC. Ambi 03:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello. I'm not confident if I understand all that happened. And I don't go to IRC (these days), so I can't tell what the Jimbo's ideas are exactly. But I have at least more optimistic view than yours. I commented on the changes Jimbo made at Wikinews talk:Review process poll.

But my idea is that if we feature unreviewed story *clearly marked as such* readers will not mistake its POV, inaccuracy, incompletedness, etc. as what Wikinews have to offer, and we may be able to draw more participants. Tomos 03:57, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Weekly Portal[edit]

I suggest we look at creating a supplemental weekly format by, once weekly, freezing all articles that have not been created or had significant work done recently (or not-hasn't been done yet despite 7-day notice) and then put that on a weekly portal, with issue numbers. It's then a weekly display of articles that have had ample time to be reviewed. --119 21:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure if I understand your idea correct, but is this like creating a weekly news magazine out of our contents? I would like to see that happen. If you are talking more about how to organize our internal writing/editing/review process, that would be good as well. Tomos 03:22, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Here is a demonstration, Wikinews:Weekly. --119 04:35, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually I think this idea is great. Until there are large numbers of contributing users, all willing to do much research to make this any different from other news sources. Besides, it's hard to rely on a source that is constantly editing and the articles aren't even complete. So making it a weekly means the articles have time to be reviewed and become good quality. Then they get published, and perhaps, sent in an e-mail newsletter. 68.40.121.146 03:51, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. This is a great idea. In addition to a weekly portal/newsletter, we should also consider a daily and monthly as the site develops. Different people have different news habits, we should give them all the size and format of news that they want. Also, perhaps instead of -- or in addition to -- email, we can consider sending out a pdf version that includes some multimedia content (at least photographs). this way people can easily print it out if they like, and save copies. All in all, though, I REALLY like the idea of editions that help guide people who don't want to keep up with the constant editing of content.--Dotsquiggle 16:38, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Audio release[edit]

I hope that people can create audio files of some of the articles that people can download and distribute (and modify, if they want). I would do that if I were a native speaker. Tomos 03:22, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do you mean like a sort of audio WikiNews that people could listen to (stream/download)? Personally, I would be in favor of such an idea. But there would need to be strict rules for implementation. See Meta:Wikisound for a similar idea. Codernaut 22:34, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Neutrality issues[edit]

Eventually, I think there will be two issues of neutrality may arise. If some of you have prudent ideas about how to deal with them, it is not too early to share them.

First, editorial decisions on main page and other similar pages where we "present" stories to the readers and downstream users. Do we emphasize some articles more than others? If so, it could indicate our statement of what are important news and what are less noteworthy stories. Is this not a problem if all the stories are perfectly neutral?

Second, tendency in coverage. What if all the articles are good neutral pieces, but most of them are about corporate crimes, perils of unfair trades, etc. that certain political activists find more noteworthy. What if news dealing with certain religous organizations are almost always good news - like its philanthropic activities, speeches, celemonies, awards received, etc.? Do we have to somehow make sure, say, not featuring proportionately overwhelming amount of bad news about Africa to "balance" our coverage? Or can we relax and believe that scale and diversity of participants would eventually even out those biases?

Or should we explain to readers that we do not take any editorial decisions in terms of which stories to cover, and no intension should be interpreted from the proportion of stories?

Tomos 03:22, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

the main page decisions.... That's a struggle. We could set it so only certain people can add pages to the main page, but that's a worry due to generally going against wikideas, and also a hard thing to do, at least while we are tiny.

On the tendency in coverage, my inclination is to let it just go- I suspect that with the diversity of wikieditors, we'll get good coverage, and diverse coverage, which is what we want. Our strength comes in our diversity, so it's a good idea in my view to harness that. Lyellin 03:30, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My comments: -- Carlosar 01:43, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that scale and diversity of participants can resolve coverage tendencies problems.
The observation number 1(scale and diversty) may resolve tendency problems about coverage. But

the struggle of different point of views or tendencies also can lead to conspiracy theories and defamatory articles or propaganda(although I think propaganda is not so worst than the other two). Hence Wikinews may become NPOV but NPOV with a lot of conspiracy theories and defamatory articles. How do we deal with them? How do you detect them? So we need assuring accuracy in articles. It is not a easy task: if you are too rigorous you can interpose a true article, if you are too tolerant you can endorse a fake article. Some people assure some article is true, another people pledge the same article is fake. How do we resolve this?

Science and technology needs to be two categories[edit]

Every article in the category "Science and technology" is on technology. Shall we make these separate categories? --119 19:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think this may be a time to just wait. I suspect that will even out with more editors/writers. If not, we can split it later on down the road. Lyellin 19:39, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, it's not just the balance. It's that we seem to have a very large number of technology articles and perhaps it deserves its own category. Should an article on when the latest line of Athlons are coming out really go in science? --119 19:48, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gotcha. The way I look at it, it's a logical pairing, and we really aren't crowding the category yet, so it's not an issue. *shrugs* Could go either way, I suppose. Lyellin 19:59, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think they deserve to seperate categories (unless you want genetic breakthroughs in the same category as the cancellation of Intel's multicore processor program). Should we take a poll? --Astronouth7303 22:41, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yep, at first it seems like a logical pairing. BUt because it's on the internet, this site will definitly go more in depth on technology, that it should definitly have it's owm section.

Wrong goal: Should be aiming for a weekly magazine in the short term[edit]

I still have major doubts about this project, because I think you are trying to be far too ambitious. Why not write Wikinews as a weekly magazine in the meantime rather than as an up to the minute website? I'm not suggesting it as a long plan, but it is certainly a much more reasonable goal and you will produce a great product sooner. Once you get the hang of a weekly magazine, you could then make the big step of trying a daily newspaper approach. And if that works then you could add a breaking story approach.

Advantages of writing a weekly magazine:

It is a more feasible short term goal.
Efforts would be organised by working to a deadline. Certain policies would become obvious given a definite deadline.
It allows more time to write longer, in depth articles which would attract a readership.
It would be able to reuse the longer articles that Wikipedia produces about recent events with some tweaking. Indeed you would probably be able to feed Wikipedia some good articles.
It would not damage the credibility of Wikipedia, because you have time to work on the articles.
As a weekly magazine the strengths of the wiki process would really show through. A week, even a few days, is long enough to write some great articles on the big stories of the week.
It would give time to build the contributor base to the scale that you could run a successful news site.
Most importantly it allows time to develop the policies necessary to run Wikinews successfully. :ChrisG 02:15, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suggested virtually the same thing some time ago on this page. And I just found that even at the time of voting, someone suggested the idea of weekly.

If we compete against some news media, this is perhaps the promising way, I think. Tomos 04:03, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this should be necessary - this would solve problems we're not presently having. We're having problems with quality control and review, not with the number of articles or their length (at least, we're only having problems with the length because Jimbo stopped us from controlling it). Ambi 04:50, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If there was a weekly cycle, then there could be a couple of days dedicated to quality control and review; by saying no more articles for this weeks magazine (Or more probably only emergency articles of worldwide significance, which would be very much an exception.) :ChrisG 10:01, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly support the weekly idea. Along with the benefits mentioned above, a weekly format would promote a more reflective approach to news reading. Producing a collection of articles each week comparable in quality to the Economist is a goal worth shooting for - and a collective contribution which can have more beneficial effect on public discourse. -- 18:15, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I also had this idea. The usefulness of the project is surely greatest if it functions as a half-way house between wikipedia (settled issues/history) and "What happened this morning". This means *digesting* news, which simply won't happen if it's not restricted to something like a weekly schedule - as a means of providing *distance* (time is a great filter, as it becomes clear that half the things you read about yesterday have no significance this morning). Already the dangers of not doing this are evident. The point of the project is surely not to distribute corporate press releases or "Breaking news: Bad Thing Happened, Some People Dead", which can be had easily enough elsewhere. It should be providing a longer-term perspective ("Last week, Bad Thing happened, some people died. And it's happened before. Find out more..."), an approach that can also maximise the use of links to wikipedia. IMHO Wikinews should (formatwise!) straightforwardly not be modelled on CNN, but on Time magazine. Certainly, if it ends up like the former, I don't expect either to read it or to contribute much. 193.60.78.118 18:59, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. We could settle on broad issues, like "ETA in Spain", "War in Iraq", "European policies", whatever, and add up all the stories around these in one place as links, so that a person could go to a subject and check everything that has happened that is related to it. That is more or less what we already have in the Reports, but we could give it more focus, direct people's attention more to those areas, and be less like a daily. The news can still be created just like we have done, but we can change / reorganize the categories in the main page to have the Reports organized in the general categories, eg. Politics and conflicts - War in Iraq, MST in Brazil, etc. Shana 01:10, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You can graft the newsmagazine format onto Wikinews with no problem. People who want to participate can; people who do not can continue the Drudgereport approach.

Simply create a "WikiProject: WikiZine." The goal of Wikiproject Wikizine would be to produce some limited number of high quality articles in each weekly cycle. Wikizine would define a specific weekly newscycle process including selection of articles, authoring, editing, and review. The front page could feature each week's Wikizine articles somewhere prominently near the top (and maybe the in-progress articles for the next cycle somewhere near the bottom).

Some folks can focus on Wikizine, producing their weekly magazine format stuff out of the raw materials provided by the rest of Wikinews or whatever resources they can provide themselves, while others can continue the main approach. 170.35.224.64 21:29, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Since it doesn't look like Wikinews is going to change, a Wikizine project is the next best thing (and obviously better from some people's POV). Somebody (with the time and energy and expertise) should definitely organise this, i.e. not me. 193.60.78.118 21:17, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Although I like the the idea of a weekly magazine, I have to object to the assumption that a news site would be more ambitous than a weekly magazine. In fact, it's the complete opposite. News just require people to add snippets, facts and spelling to the articles as they go. A weekly magazine needs editorials and analyzing to be meaningful. And that requires writers that write long deep articles, editors that read an approve them, an editorial board to decide weekly focus, and above all a purpose, a goal. Now *that* is ambitious. And, if you read later down, under "a little bias won't hurt", (or my personal page) you'll se some arguments to why an open wiki is the wrong format for a magazine. That said, if you start an on-line magazine like that, mail me. ;) If nothing else, my articles will probably result in lot's of hatemail. :-p --Regebro 00:27, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. A good news site worth having (which is useful and organised and doesn't substantially duplicate what's easily available elsewhere) is at least as ambitious as a weekly magazine.

A zine would still involve people adding "snippets, facts and spelling to the articles as they go", and involve a similar review process.
A zine doesn't *need* editorials or "deep" analysis - just a good summary of the week's news is a perfectly laudable goal. (In the UK there's a (printed) magazine called The Week, with a more usual editorial process, which does precisely this.)
It doesn't require anything worthy of the name "editorial board" (which is needed for most publications to allocate limited resources of money and editorial space!), or a "weekly focus" (I guess the Time magazine analogy is the source for this) or anything more elaborate as a goal than what people are already agreeing on.
As for "a little bias wouldn't hurt" - this is where the NPOV approach comes in. Yes it *would* hurt! However, there's a good case for having (signed?) explicitly-POV editorials in a clearly-separate section, the approach most newspapers currently take. (This should also make it easier to keep news articles NPOV as some of the controversy can be filtered off into editorials.) Unlike newspapers, there need be no limit on the number of editorials, especially with a good presentation mechanism that involves some measure of popularity (so dross is filtered down the list).
All of this is perfectly compatible with having an open wiki, certainly no less than Wikinews as it stands. 193.60.78.118 16:00, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What you describe here, with constantly editable articles that anyone can change, that summarizes an event (instead of having a whole host of separate but related articles), without an editorial board and with an NPOV approach and so on, is IMO opinion *exactly* what Wikinews should be. That, however, has absolutely no resemblance to any kind of weekly magazine. :)

If you don't have an editorial board deciding what gets published and when, they everything gets published and all the time. Then it's not a weekly magazine.
If you do add snippets facts and spelling as you go to the article, then articles are no longer written and then published, but articles are ongoing everlasting developments. Then it's not a weekly magazine.

So, possibly, we don't disagree on what it should be, we just use different words for it. :)

Oh, and I think there should be a section with signed POV editorials. The Wikimedia softare is not adapted for doing such a thing, and if people want to write they own editorials there are tons of free blog sites where they can create a blog to put their editorials. Wikis are about collective authoring. Blogs are very much about personal authoring. --Regebro 11:00, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Separate source pages[edit]

How about having separate pages for details on sources [starting with the biggest individual journalists and topic-specific sources]? See "Ukraine political crisis" for an example. Sj 03:13, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi. I think it could potentially become one of major strengths of this project, if done well. Tomos 03:23, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suggest a special page about all the sources cited in Wikinews. A new category, maybe?--carlosar

Check Wikinews:Resources Lyellin 23:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Alternative Review Process[edit]

I think that the current article development and review process prevents stories from appearing on prominent areas of the site quickly enough, gives too much responsibility / power to an editorial team, and does not provide adequately for the variety of article types (local vs national vs global, completed vs in-process, etc.) I thus suggest an Alternative Review Process Proposal as a slightly modified set of guidelines for working on Wikinews. -- IlyaHaykinson 02:36, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Main Page[edit]

I haven't been following issues here closely, but I wanted to say that I like the current main page format with a section for "current news" (as in finished articles) and a separate, clearly-marked section for articles in progress. Perhaps as the project grows we can have a main page that is entirely finished articles, but for now this is a good way to attract editors. Isomorphic 16:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

U.S. or US?[edit]

Should the United States be abbreviated as U.S. or US in page titles? --Xanadu 04:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

U.S. Its standard, and it only requires two more characters. -Stevertigo 06:57, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thought so, but most articles being written have US instead of U.S., someone needs to stop this because I think people could be interpreting it as the standard. --Xanadu 16:16, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree—neither is standard, which is the same situation with U.N. versus UN. To pick two random "mainstream media" examples, CNN uses the periods (U.S. and U.N.), while the BBC does not (US and UN). --Delirium 03:50, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Guess it should be like color/colour, no use imposing a standard just be consistent within articles. --wikt:user:eean

Agreed. --Xanadu 17:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Refer to Wikipedia. "U.S." is a special case. See also w:American_and_British_English_differences#Punctuation. --merriam 18:11, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Press releases and treating "statements" as events[edit]

Something that annoys me in the "mainstream" media is the reprinting as news articles of one-sided press releases containing unsubstantiated claims or allegations. Even if the allegations are correctly described as allegations and not facts, an article can easily lend undue credence to an unsupported (or, indeed, flatly false) set of claims.

This has a number of consequences. It imperils the truth, by presenting unsubstantiated allegations as important. It can also grant an unearned economic benefit (like a stock uptick) to the creator of the press release. And it can do harm -- not just hurt feelings, but economic damage -- to people or companies misportrayed in the press release.

To give an example: Microsoft has put out a number of press releases claiming (in effect) that Linux is illegal. Many of these have been covered by the mainstream media straight, that is to say, the substance of the story being Microsoft making a statement. There is no event here -- nobody has been sued for this "illegal"-ness; nobody is being prosecuted for it. Someone said something is not, at base, news; it is gossip.

It would be nice if Wikinews authors could restrain the urge to present people's statements of opinion as if they were events. A broad principle that statements are not news; happenings are news would go a long way to prevent the abuse of this medium. --68.169.5.247 01:51, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please see the discussion below titled "Do something to avoid becoming just another mouthpiece for the powerful." Tomos 20:16, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help me here if you please...[edit]

I am not a user of 'wiki'. I have heard of it though but never used it. To me it seems a sorta communal website thingy with a vague tie-in to IRC of some type. See...I said I didn't know much but I am coming to my question soon.

Why am I here then? I think I followed the link out of Slashdot.org , which I do quite often.

For a long time I have been very disenchanted with the major news media. I discovered the DrudgeReport long ago and gave that up for more consise reporting via Google New tab. I run thru Slashdot daily. I have recently started paying more attention to 'blogs' , now that they appear to be maturing.

My question then. Why does you news appear to be just 'more of the same'? All the news articles posted are to be found in the references I gave above.

I was looking for something a little more 'grassroots' perhaps. Something beyond the boring news of the world. Something with some 'teeth' in it. Maybe something closer to real life than just cut and pasted , dried out news. Reads just like the AP and UP. Reads just like all the rest.

Were you not striving to be different in some manner? How about if real people in Ukraine posted real events that never seem to hit the other news outlets?

For instance I live in a rural area. Down here close to the ground we all know what our neighbors are doing. Cheating, lying, and Sabbath Breaking, yet it never never hits the home town newspaper!!! I suspect that 'global' or 'worldwide' news is much the same.

Its been 'prepared' or shifted or fed some type of bias or a spin slightly imparted to it.

Here is a for instance. We are all tired of spam. Lycos took a big step and some success occurred and now suddenly Lycos has shut the door. Why? There is some news here. Its a huge event. Perhaps bigger than the Scott Peterson trial(well maybe not judging from the media) but you get my drift.

I am sick to of Scott Peterson. I am sick to of hearing about Dan Rather. About the gay marriage issue.

These are all news items with a PC curve or someone's agenda applied to it.

How about just the plain straight unvarnished TRUTH?

Thanks for listening. What then is your GOAL? How does it differ than all the rest? Why should I come back if its going to be just like 'all the rest'?

Your goals are in line with those of this wiki; the reason why the existing content isn't very exciting/accurate is that we're only just beginning. Because everyone can contribute you too can help to make this a good source. Browse around a little, read the discussions, and see where a difference might be made. 169.233.6.98 02:32, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Though it disappoints me to see a Drudge reader, I agree that Wikinews should strive to be what other sources are not, I think the way in which its created will make it hard to do otherwise. It would be nice to have an English-world oriented w:Ohmynews. --wikt:user:eean

Surely this could only properly start to occur if Wikinews compartmentalises more by country, e.g. Have a dedicated sysop/whatever for each country to co-ordinate grassroots news collecting there. Illanos 21:52, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The difference would come if wikinews starts to build up a archive. This way news is only added to it. Meaning that you can follow news through time. Meanwhile, the news will be presented in a most neutral way. If this subproject materialised, it can become more local/rural and categorised. This way, major events eventually will sees to progress (people aren't told the same story again and again) so that minor events can become more concentrated. Do know that the main project, Wikipedia, can be used in this subproject to link knowledge. Something unheard in news nowadays. I hope this answers you question and may you edit wiki as a wikipedian (or whatever you like).--83.116.2.193 21:37, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Do something to avoid becoming just another mouthpiece for the powerful.[edit]

What are the below if not product placement, free advertisement, and spreading Micosoft's malicious lies about Linux?

   * Governments using Linux risk violating law, says Microsoft's CEO
   * World's Most-Spammed Man
   * Longhorn for 2006, according to Gates

As is often said in the Open Source world, why don't you do something? --wikt:user:eean

I desagree. The articles are reliable, not ofensive and NPOV. This is Wikinews, not Linuxnews. The articles are for everyone, Linux users and pro-Microsoft users.Carlosar 19:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The news isn't supposed to be for anyone. It's supposed to report the facts, not report the "statements" of particular interest groups as if making a press-release were an event. --68.169.5.247 18:29, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We do report relevant and important statements by various groups. That is because the fact of some groups/organizations making statements is often relevant to the articles. Tomos 20:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Some kinds of statements (the ones called w:performative utterances) can be newsworthy events because they are taken to have real-world consequences. When a judge says, "I sentence John Smith to ten years in prison," she is not merely making a statement, but a command that will be obeyed by the justice system. Likewise when a government declares war, or a company declares bankruptcy. These are statements that are also events; they are news.

However, this is not the kind of "statement" I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about the covering of statements of opinion as news, in such a way that it permits interest groups to manipulate the media for their own profit. Microsoft claiming that Linux is illegal (or whatever) is not a performative utterance; it is not even so much as a promise by Microsoft to its stockholders that it will take some particular course of action. It is simply the disguised offering of an opinion, timed and phrased for the purpose of making money.

There's nothing wrong with making money. There's nothing wrong with making statements for the purpose of making money. (It's called advertising.) However, there is no need for news media (and especially this one) to give advertising space for free by giving coverage as news to partisan statements of opinion. There's plenty of space on the Web for Microsoft (or whoever) to post opinions. This doesn't need to be another. --68.169.5.247 03:00, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One of the main theorists (and experimenter) in advertising during the 20th century was w:Edward Bernays; his work is at the basis of advertising methods today. He himself preferred the term propaganda and gave that title to a major book he wrote about advertising. If we want to avoid non-neutrality in wikinews, it would good to look at the empirically tested and supported w:propaganda model for rich countries (propaganda methods in dictatorships are usually less subtle). Press releases either by companies or by governments spokespeople have effects, to a large degree, due to the fact that the media report them, and worse, report them uncritically and fail to note that these are (usually) minority points of view, unsubstantiated, or simply outright lies. IMHO, given that these statements have effects via the mainstream media, it cannot hurt to publish them as wikinews items, provided that we google a bit and add stuff about other points of view, context, e.g. as in U.S. calls Kyoto Treaty "not based on science", where the previous version said nothing about the fact that the person mocking global warming is someone who worked for an automative company and a big airlines/military company - whose interests are not exactly neutral... Boud 13:58, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I sort off agree with the statement, but anyways, if people want more news they might become more curious about the wiki-side of the story (which is/should be NPOV).

NPOV means that the reporter should not impose their own or someone else's POV implicitly. It is still possible to report on some specific person's POV ("vi is clunky, says Stallman", "Emacs is slow, says Joy"). Obviously, to maintain journalistic integrity in such pieces requires a little more care. A good reporter will usually go out and sollicit some quotes from someone with the opposite point of view ("When asked, Stallman, citing the latest Big Editor Benchmark results, claimed that even though Emacs runs slower per se, common editing tasks can often be performed faster.") Interestingly, sometimes opponents refuse to reply, or don't reply on time, in which case you're best off just stating that. ("In a press release last Wednesday, the Free Software Foundation accused Foosoft of FUD. Foosoft representatives refused to comment.") The reason for this is that it documents an attempt on your side to give a balanced report.

Main Page[edit]

Please see Talk:Main_Page#Main_Page_in_the_long-term for discussion on what the Main_Page should do and what it should include. 119 06:39, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wholley biased and liberal[edit]

The first time I visited Wikinews a couple minutes ago the little introduction paragraph read something like this:

"Welcome to Wikinews, a free content and wholley[sic] biased and liberal news source. We started in November 2004, and have currently written 121 articles. Our mission is to create an environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news we want you to know about."

I guess someone caught it because by the time I looked at the page again the standard intro was back. I don't know, I think that probably merits being brought to someone's attention.

I also found it pretty funny that 'wholly' was misspelled.

Full names as usernames.[edit]

I think post review updates would look more professional if usernames or signature nicknames were real full names. — Jeandré du Toit, 2004-12-04t22:34z, 2004-12-04t23:08z

Lets see if I can find how to reply here.

Ok Jeandre'...suppose your life was forfeit if you posted certain news items in certain countries?

Suppose they came to your house and burned it down?

I live in the most free country in the world(USA) and I refuse to use my full name even here.

. Spam harvesters
. Others who wish to do me harm for things I have said in other sites and forums(this includes some union thugs).
. What difference does it make anyway if you use your real name or not? You certainly wouldn't know it and not if it was real or not. How on earth does it make a difference then?
. Identity thief.
. For a small amount of money I can find all the financial data on you I wish along with much more.

Armed with this I could observe your activites and make lots of nefarious plans, involving thievery.

YOu tell someone your going on vacation for instance and its posted.

If you wish to blast your full name over the net , thats fine. Don't think others feel the same.

and lots more I don't care to think of right now.

I agree. Carlosar 19:11, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I didn't mean we should try to force people to use their RealNames and require 3 forms of visual ID on this wiki; I meant that review updates would look more professional if usernames or signature nicknames were real full names. Maybe asking people to consider using their real names on the "Create an account" page? — Jeandré du Toit, 2004-12-06t18:34z

>> I live in the most free country in the world (USA) I wish you knew how much I laughed when I read that...

Date format.[edit]

have a date format option. Preferences doesn't — Jeandré du Toit, 2004-12-04t22:34z

Not just a date option. There are some major discrepancies between the format of the articles, ie some have the date in bold, then skip a few lines and begin the article. Others just italicize the date and place, and start the article on the same line. It would look more professional if it were changed to make a standard (instead of editing Wikipedia-style, have a separate entry box for date for month, day, year and location, have it autoformat based on user preference for date formar, et cetera). Applegoddess 22:45, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What we really need is a format for how to do that all. Otherwise people will be making categories for 4 December 2004 and December 7 2007. Egads. Cap'n Refsmmat 21:53, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A little bias wouldn't hurt[edit]

There is no such thing as no bias. However a statement stating that firefox was well liked was considered not NPOV. I don't think wikinews should become NPOV by not allowing sections that are for one side, as long as the whole article is not written with too much bias.

Reub2000 03:39, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

News stories should include as much bias as possible, as long as it isn't the reporter's. Whenever a source is interviewed or consulted, it is with the explicit expectation that they will add a point of view to the story, whether in support of something someone else has said, or an entirely new thought. In the presentation of these points of view, we try to achieve balance. That is, we don't explicitly overstate or understate any particular point of view, but we let our opinionated sources do so.
If the relevant authorities or spokescritters state an outlandish claim, we are bound to both report their having that claim as a fact (though not necessarily the claim itself as a fact), and we are bound to research the validity of that claim.
Ed/Op pages on the other hand, are more like summations of facts in a manner biased toward the author's point of view...Magic5ball 07:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good journalism is always highly biased. What distinguishes the good biased journalism from the bad biased journalism is that the good journalism is open with it's bias, and argumentatively biased instead of emotionally biased (ie, it explains why it's biased, instead of just writing "the evil Mr" or "bitch-from-hell Miss..." or uses value laden words like "progressive", "democratic" or "dictatorial" without explaining why). If you want an example of excellent journalism, read a couple of issues of The Economist (www.economist.com). Examples of bad, or even outright horrible journalism are Michael Moore and Fox News. Both pretend to present unbiased facts, while they in fact are presenting what is either extremely biased, or in many cases outright lies. Fox News also pretends to be news, making things even worse.

However: I don't think there is any possibility on a Wiki-site to reach the level of "good journalism". It's not gonna happen, mainly because we don't choose our writers. ;) But then, I don't think wikinews IS about journalism. It's about *news* which is a completely different thing from journalism, whatever news-people want to tell you. Journalism is about analyzing, opinionating, and, if possible, digging up what is hidden. News is about giving out information about current events. News should be done with only one goal: Being as accurate as possible. Again, bias should be openly displayed, but at the same time, it should be kept to a minimum.

Examples of decent news is CNN. They only give you small fact-snippets, meaning that there is really no journalism to talk of. The problem with that is of course that you don't get an overview, there is never any summary of the facts so far, just the latest factoids. I think Wikinews can fill a hole there, by having constantly editable and updateable articles. When new factoids come to light, these can be integrated into existing articles about an event. I've noticed that some here want to continue the standard way of reporting news on the web, which is writing articles that are then to become static. I think this is a huge mistake. Mainly because CNN already does it, and much better too. ;)

Wikinews can be a great news site. If people try to be as unbiased and accurate, if we get articles about events up quickly BUT continue to improve them as new facts come to light, then Wikinews can be just as useful as Wikipedia is, but for new knowledge instead of old knowledge. --Regebro 16:08, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Regebro, what you're talking about closely resembles writing for a wire service, in that news is developed and stories are continuously written through to integrate the new information, while each incarnation of a particular story remains publishable. If that is the direction wikinews wants to go, it would need a revision/editing process that supports multiple writing and editing cycles.

The style of writing seems to have settled somewhat into quick news+important background format, which many magazines and SHNS do regularly with their features, and which CP/AP do with their backgrounders. There's nothing wrong with that, since wikinews doesn't appear to operate on a daily newscycle anyway, we can afford to go into the background and not worry about breaking stories on a daily basis.

As for teaching good journalism on wikinews, from personal experience I'm not convinced that doing so is impossible as long as we have a framework for doing so and people interested in learning. Over my December break, I might put together a short wiki book (for both my own and community use) about the basics of journalism, editing and techniques in the field.Magic5ball 03:48, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In the rewriting sense it is like a wire service, yes, but not in many other senses. Instead of just having short snipped we can, through rewriting and extending, keep the news up to date, and add background and depth. And yes, it needs a review process, and that review process is called "a wiki". Nothing else is needed. The review process of Wikipedia has shown that it works wonderfully well, we don't need to implement anything else, it will just hurt wikinews. I'm sure teaching good journalism is possible in this format, but most people are not willing or interested to learn. If we are gonna do journalism, we need to immediately close the wiki from public editing and start employing trusted writers. And then it's not wikimedia anymore, is it? :) Creating a good journalistic magazine, such as The Economist, is a worthy cause (I'dlove to do it myself), but an open wiki is not the place to do it, IMHO. --Regebro 11:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My two cents on this- if wikinews maintains a rigid NPOV policy and the articles that are presented on the site are strictly "news+important background" type a great opportunity would be missed. Neutral, unbiased news is important and should most definitely be offered on wikinews. However, journalism, where an article is written that attempts to analyze events and offer insight can be done well. It is still very important to achieve a semblance of balance and most importantly, to avoid dogma, but writing thought-provoking pieces is where wikinews can make a difference. Having said this, I can envision tortorous debates where community members try to hash out the merit of a particular article and whether it deserves to pass peer review. It will be a difficult process to develop, but it is most definitely worth an honest try. As virtually every new source offers, there should be news/editorial split with an article, particularly an editorial, recognized as such. jkrusky 11:09, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If somebody comes up with a suggestion for how you actually can integrate good editorials in this, I'm all for it, but I can't see how it can be done. Good editorials, as you mention, are thought provoking, and that means (as mentioned by me) that they are biased and opinionating. This will ALWAYS cause a conflict. Nothing wrong with a good old flamewar, but on a wikipedia that means an editwar. That editwar can only be stopped by not allowing editing of editorials. But that means we need to approve the authors of editorials as being good and thought provoking. And that means we need to decide what is thought prvoking and what is a just a heap of stupid crap.

See? Good editorials means that you need to have a standpoint. And what standpoint should that be? Well, personally, I'm all for declaring that Wikinews should promote globalisation, liberal democracy and capitalism, but I don't see how that is gonna be accepted generally. ;) --Regebro 11:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it would indeed be difficult to get editorials through the review process. There would have to be some consensus that as long as the editorial expresses an opinion based upon provable fact, and does not ignore opposing points of view, then the author's point of view would have to be accepted as such. The biggest problem is avoiding editwars. I can't think of an easy way to avoid that, other than, as suggested, authors are pre-approved. I wouldn't enjoying see articles that are a "heap of stupid crap" either. jkrusky 22:57, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The standard journalistic norms, unfortunately increasingly ignored especially in the US, are that "news articles" can contain opinions only coming from the sources quoted and marked so explicitly. Opinions from the contrary are to be sollicited from opponents and reported on too, preferably in the same article. NPOV, thus, applies to the *reporter*. Pieces in which the author's own opinion is expressed (so-called "opinion pieces") are, in good news media, explicitly marked as "editorials", "columns", "letters to the editor" and such. In accordance with that standard, it might be reasonable for Wikinews to have an "editorial" section in which opinion pieces were allowed, but it would have to be clearly marked and separate so as not to hurt the integrity of Wikinews as a news source. In that case, however, opinion pieces would need to be signed and immutable, which may go against the whole Wiki idea.

Voice of America[edit]

According to the VOAnews.com disclaimer, "All text, audio and video material produced exclusively by the Voice of America is public domain." This does mean we get to copy them? --Jiang 09:36, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes. User:Eloquence and User:AaronSw spotted this last month. Perhaps there should be a page on public domain sources. --merriam 10:33, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why you would ever want to source pure propaganda is beyond me but, OKAY! SURE! RIGHT ON!

Wait, VOA is pure propaganda? I don't know about that. Flying Hamster 19:04, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Does it not fall under the pentagon's budget? And even if it didn't, it's still a government project. - Che y Marijuana (not registered just yet)

So should we use their articles as stubs? Here's a test article Taiwan Voters Move Away From Chen's Agenda Mydotnet 23:21, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Defining 'News'[edit]

(moved to User_talk:Qadmon#Defining_.27News.27 --merriam 12:30, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC))

Deletion policy[edit]

Q.1 Are we going to delete any unpublishable article?

Q.2 When an article is deleted, should the accompanying talk page deleted, too?

Talk pages are a record of discussions. So I would say yes to Q.2.

We can identify who might lack good-faith in editing by looking at edit history, so some are good to keep.

Stubs, or very short articles with small number of edits should be deleted, but if an article is long and have gone through many edits, should we still delete it?

But I do not want Wikinews to have significant proportion of junk files, either.

Any take? Tomos 21:51, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Goodbye[edit]

(moved to User_talk:Qadmon#Goodbye --merriam 12:29, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC))

Terror Attack in Jeddah[edit]

Why isn't my story on the front page? I wrote it more or less as events occurred. It seems better than the one on the front page. What did I do wrong? [[Paul in Saudi 01:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)]]

Hey Paul. Welcome to Wikinews. There are few things unique about the wiki project that might be at issue here. One thing is that the story is still in development, which means that it should also pass through peer review (see Wikinews:Article stages), before being "published". Also, because a wiki is editable by anyone, we do not have any set editors or people to add things to certain pages. Any user can do that, and add an article to the main page or anywhere else. It might be good to add the article to the Wikinews:Workspace if you haven't already. Thanks for writing! Lyellin 03:11, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Use of word "terrorist" vs. "separatist", "army", "militia" etc.[edit]

After I wrote the article ETA detonates explosives in Madrid, a debate started on the talk page which has hindered the review process. Some people believe that the word "terrorist" is biased against the ETA, just as calling Hamas a terrorist organization would be considered a bias against the Palestinians. Others believe that calling the ETA a seperatist group is being too "nice" or "generous" to the terrorists. There does not seem to be a standard policy on Wikinews regarding this discrepancy. Any suggestions? Andrew pmk 22:23, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If I set off a bomb intending to cause some kind of political change, specifically the kind that benefits my group of people but not the target, then I am both a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

Not surprisingly, this debate is about bias, and specifically, which bias to adhere to. In Canada, the national CanWest Global newspaper, TV and Radio chain displays a pro-Israel bias. In most reporting about conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinians are always terrorists while the Israelis are always the victims. The competing conglomerate, Bell Globemedia, tends to take a more balanced approach by defining competing parties according to what they actually do.

Back to ETA, I think we are in the right to describe the parties functionally. "...[group], the self-described separatists..." is fair, as long as we also include something like "... victims and opposing authorities consider [group] to be terrorists..." Such a balance of bias is fair to any side of the conflict.Magic5ball 04:08, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"But first—a significant problem—terrorism must be defined. One of the panel's signal achievements is to offer such a definition, agreed to by all the panellists. It would define terrorism as any action intended to kill or seriously harm civilians or non-combatants, with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling action by a government or international organisation. States should use this definition to build consensus and strengthen the UN's response to this deadly scourge." - Kofi Annan http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3445764 With this definition ETA, and Hamas are terrorists. If they are freedom fighters as well is a matter of opinion, but that they are terrorists is not a matter of opinion. //Regebro 10:19, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Agree. --Carlosar 10:36, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"any action intended to kill or seriously harm civilians or non-combatants, with the purpose of intimidating a population" would also include actions by governments that cause deaths (which would include any war or military action). Would the killing of a political leader of Hamas be termed terrorism if the leader killed didn't personally kill anyone and the intention of the assasination was partly to intimidate Hamas? Would collective punishment in places like Chechnya, Gaza, the West Bank, Haiti ... be considered terrorism if many feel that certain policies are designed to kill civlians to intimidate the population into not fighting back? Terrorism is always a subjective term. How does one differentiate a missile attack in Baghdad on the headquarters of Sadr from an attack in Saudi Arabia on a building run by the US government? In both cases arguments can be made that the targets were not 100% civilian and in both cases the goal was intimidation yet I would assume that calling a US airstrike on a building run by Sadr couldnt be called a terrorist attack since doing so would violate the NPOV policy. --24.7.68.160 19:37, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"would also include actions by governments" - Yes, I noticed that too. However, you say "would also include actions by governments that cause deaths", but that is not a correct interpretation. Only actions that intend to kill or harm civilians or non-combattants to try to intimidate them are terrorism. Big difference. Killing a Hamas leader is therefore NOT terrorism. Killing non-combattant Palestinians is. Indimidating Hamas does not count. Intimidating non-combattant Palestinians do. So, almost everything you take up is NOT terrorism, because the victims are not non-combattants. But, for example, the Tianmen square massacre could be called terrorism under this definition. Now any definition will always have a fuzzy area. But this one works quite well, I think, and could be at least the basis for a definition used on Wikinews. If we for example exclude goverments, then the question becomes "what is part of the goverment". Are the Palestinian Authority a government? --Regebro 21:02, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RSS feeds of summaries[edit]

Hi folks, do we have the ability to serve up news headlines/digests in RSS format yet? This way other sites could get Wikinews feeds of headlines and display them, and also invite folks to come back here and edit them. For example, instead of my creating my own Hong Kong news headline repository for my site Chatter Garden, I'd rather do it at Wikinews for the benefit of more people. RSS could be used to feed it out to multiple recipients. So far, I think RSS feeds off Wikipedia have been hacks, and not really part of MediaWiki. Correct me if I'm wrong. Fuzheado 06:24, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is pretty much a required feature for Wikinews. I don't know much about MediaWiki though, so I don't know if this is possible to enable or easy to code. Off the top of my head, we'd at least want a feed of newly approved articles as well as a feed of articles newly submitted for review. Probably also feeds split by category. Rhobite 16:51, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I totally agree with the idea of a RSS feed!! Then i can see some new news, and some articles what would be interesting to edit. For many people, it is useful, because they can avoid to surf each time to this site (which is a little slow at some houres of the day). I hope there are some programmers that want to try to make a good script. koko 19:19, 7 Dec 2004

You can easily do this with the Python Wikipedia Robot Framework. It's much more flexible than coding into MediaWiki and python is a wonderful language that you can learn in a weekend if you know programming. Every experienced programmer familiar with Wikipedia could write some Wikinews2RSS-scripts in a week. -- Nichtich

Do we have a time machine?[edit]

Delta 4 Heavy rocket poised for maiden launch. Mmmkay, but it's poised now, the 7th, and it's gonna be launched the 14th, so setting a date of the 13th seems very strange. I think we need some consensus of what do to with articles that deal with upcoming events. Todays date, or the date of the event? Todays date in the intro makes more sense to me, but maybe the upcoming events date in the categories? The day before must be wrong in any case. --Regebro 23:39, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What is wrong with preparing an article in advance, for a known future event, and dating it appropriately? In this case the intention was to have the article completed on the eve of the launch. Duk 20:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with dating it appropriately. They day before an event is not appropriat, for reasons I named above. i have now been thinking a bit more about this, and I think the date of the event makes the most sense. --Regebro 01:21, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bylines[edit]

I've noticed that some contributers are adding more to the byline than the city itself. I have not seen an article from a major source that lists anything more than the city of origin. What should we go with? LOS ANGELES or LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA? --Xanadu 03:36, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about Los Angeles (properly capitalized, and linked to the specific Wikipedia article? -- IlyaHaykinson 05:56, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Let's get these terms straight. dateline and byline --merriam 09:05, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Merriam, I think we have a problem beyond that. What we are doing falls under neither definition--we list no names and our writers may never be in the location we give. So what is it? Should we change how we do things, or should we perhaps just rename the template {{header}} 119 17:30, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying. Make sure you understand the terms, and don't give fake datelines. Rename the template, and be careful if you use it. --merriam 09:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Subject To Discussion great online show with bloggers[edit]

This show is only on wednesday nights on LVROCKS.COM but its an awesome show.

Bloggers come on and talk about current events

Bold texti agree its a great low key show about current events all................

The host has interviewes presidential cananadates and also congress people as well. Add that in with his interest in bloggers and its a cool show.
i read a press release the chet from DNI will be on and USNDEMVET the next week and Oxblog the following, high brow guests for internet radio. byron in NYC

Is there such thing called author?[edit]

A lot of people see, write and rewrite the articles. For example: I have started the Firefox article but many wikiusers have worked on that text. So I think I cant say: I am the Firefox author anymore. I dont see this is a negative effect, on the contrary. I am just want to point out this phenomenon.-- Carlosar 02:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is correct. It's the whole point with a Wiki, really. :) It's also one of the main reason we can't have editorials or columns, really. (See the "A little bias wouldn't hurt" discussion). --Regebro 17:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Comments: MustEatYemen on irc[edit]

I logged into #wikinews to see if anyone was up. Lwicks was, also new to wikinews, and discussed what came to our minds. For clarification, "I" am MustEatYemen. I apoligize for the format/spelling/length but I thought they were good concerns about a project I'd like to see succede. Feel free to redo/trim the below into the main thoughts --ORBIT 10:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

musteatyemen: just stumbled into wikinews through wikipedia
lwicks: What did you think of wikinews? (I'm new to it also)
musteatyemen: so far i think it's a kick ass idea w/ some flaws
musteatyemen: something i saw imediatly is, you can't really change the article's title easily
musteatyemen: the "15 killed in Baghdad green-zone" is a good example
musteatyemen: the story is being updated, and is still under review, but as more info comes in, and corrections are made, they noticed that the death toll is different so they needed to change the title
musteatyemen: also, over the long term, the wiki system of naming will kill it
lwicks: how do you mean?
musteatyemen: what happens when another article comes along, "Ukraine election results delayed by court"
musteatyemen: 30 years or less from now
musteatyemen: a story w/ that name already exists
lwicks: Good point.
musteatyemen: maybe attaching automatically a date propety so that the date becomes part of the page title
lwicks: I had a similar thought, perhaps also spearating by topic might help.
musteatyemen: something else i'm confused on is, where do we get the sources is, since this is jounalism, and people are theoretically reporting in first person, that limits the amount of news that is generated, and kinda fudges other people's ability to review, as they don't know the facts as well
musteatyemen: or the alternative, is simply ripping off the other news outlets
musteatyemen: which is agaist the wikipedia/foudation tradtion in general
musteatyemen: wonder how much an AP/Reuters feed costs
musteatyemen: but they are asshats so it's probably not worth the costs
lwicks: A bit of both I think. I think at this stage it is mainly about news from other sources. But I suspect the longer term result will/could be news being posted here first.
lwicks: I could see wikinews becoming used by mainstream media eventually
lwicks: (like the Reuters news feed for exampel)
musteatyemen: finally, something that is missing from ALL news systems i've EVER seen, is tracking events over long term. IE lumping the Ukraine election situation under one main "event" then puting subarticle in it
musteatyemen: cnn/fox news "do it" but simply becuase they throw a gay grahpic/cg/sound thingie up before talking about it, not like i can track video archives and filter out to just the news about a topic/event
musteatyemen: for historitcal purposes it would be nice to connect realivent news articles under one or more events for things that continue to evolve
musteatyemen: i think this would sorta address something i saw on the water cooler page, where information comes in just as the article is finishing review (which takes 3+ days). instead of going back and reworking the article
musteatyemen: lump them together under a larger event notice, and then on that main event, keep that updated to the lastest info, and link to all the realivent sub article
musteatyemen: lwicks: what u think? :D
musteatyemen: i tihnk i'll post this on the watercooler page or something
lwicks: sorry had to get a bacon roll :) will catch up in a sec
musteatyemen: k :)
lwicks: Good ideas, I agree that some way of "grouping" would be useful.
lwicks: A good example might be the two greek athletes who initial refused to be drug tested and the saga has continued since, It would be good to easily be able to get all the news stories on them in a single train to events
lwicks: One other thing, seems a shame in ways that there is no "editorial"/"opinion" wanted. DRy fact based news seems to detract from the possibility of having news reported first-hand by someone who was there. I appreciate that the issues about slander/lies might make it too difficult to manage but it seems that if this is a "journalistic" site, it would be good to encourage to write proper journalistic articles as oposed to flat news reporti
lwicks: Or perhaps I should just browse the site a bit longer before commenting
musteatyemen: my thoery on news is that they'res 2 halves, the raw facts, and the perspective provided by the author(s)
musteatyemen: both are imporant, and very hard to seperate, i believe it is impossible to discuss complex issues w/o being unbiased
musteatyemen: i wish they could be sepearted in sucha fashion as, have facts on one side, and then the authors perspective and or arugemnt on the other (written like a normal article)
musteatyemen: i really like the discussion page, becuase it shows the thought process put into the editing of the content
lwicks: Again I agree. It is good to "see" the process whereby the news has been written. Something reassuring about seeing the process. As opposed to traditional news where you are just "given" news and really we have no idea about how it was created. (conspiracy theorist in me growing stronger.) :)
musteatyemen: ya, when was the last time a news program had any kind of source or proof :)
lwicks: Exactly, its like doing math when you are at school. Showing your working counts for as much as the result you come up with.

i removed the small tags, cause i thought it was too painful to read so much text in such a small font. The bellman 10:35, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dateline Poll[edit]

I have started a Dateline Poll to have a look at the issue of article title re-use. Please go, have a read, add your comments, and vote!

- Lankiveil 11:51, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

έλα

Upload media[edit]

I suggest direct this link to Wikimedia Commons. The uploaded images can be used in Wikinews and in all the Wikimedia Projects.

I suggested that at MediaWiki_talk:Uploaddisabled. Tomos 03:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

comment system[edit]

On nearly every newssite you can add comments to the news. Can you think of a way to add comments about the actual content of the news? This would be POV, but maybe it greatly enhances the Wiki-Newssystem. What do you think? Should we use the discussion page for such comments? --MilesTeg 02:33, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I totally support the idea of using the discussion page for the discussion of the news event — perhaps by convention we can separate the discussion solely about the news itself from the discussion about the article, but otherwise it's a good idea. --IlyaHaykinson 02:46, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

At the beginning of the demo, Eloquence had a template to add to the discussion page of newly published articles. It did require a page move of the discussion on the article, but it made it very clear that the discussion page was for comments such as what you suggust above. Is that the kind of thing you are looking for? Lyellin 08:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Original reporting[edit]

I am interested in starting a discussion about original reporting.

Original reporting is kind of an uncharted territory given the "no original research" rule in Wikipedia. So I am not hasty in practicing it.

One thing I would like to discuss is to interview/ get a quote from an expert or a stakeholder regarding a news event. The most conservative way is to ask it via email, and get the reply to a mailing list (perhaps limited only to wikinews jouralists). That way, it would be somewhat verifiable. Still, there are things to discuss, like:

Qualification: Can anyone become a wikinews journalist and contact anybody, ask any question? Do we want to somehow introduce a qualification?
Language: I figured that many of active participants are multilingual. If interview is in other languages than English, it could be not as verifiable as in English. What do we do?
Source selection: This is a tough part - suppose I wanted to get a quote from Glenn Otis Brown of Creative Commons about recent survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project on Musicians' take on the Internet. (Coverage is here, for example.)
Neutrality of quoting: How many of you can evaluate appropriateness of the selection? How many of you can evaluate if the way I quote him is appropriate?
Conflict of interest: What are the general principles here regarding who can quote whom? It is easier to go to someone I know, and get a quote. For example, I could do that to boost the person's reputation. I could do that so that I can get the exact kind of opinion I would want to report. And those practices sound unprofessional.

Tomos 11:07, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that wee need to mark original reporting and eyewittness accounts as such somehow. As long as this is done, it shouldn't be much of a problem. --Regebro 11:08, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How to modify interface language options[edit]

Just for your information.

One of the new features introduced with Mediawiki 1.4 is to override the interface language using user prerecence. I checked how Japanese interface works, and noticed it contains a fair amount of errors, invalid links, etc. I guess that is for other languages, too. Problems include:

Navigation and announcement using Wikinews:Recentchanges, for example, is not visible when some language is selected.
Legal texts such as Mediawiki:copyrightwarning, which asks contributors to agree to certain terms, is now replaced with that of Japanese Wikipedia. (And this has legal consequences, as I understand).

If you want to fix those things, I think you can go to the page meta:Locales for the Wikimedia projects, and submit a fixed version for use.

Tomos 12:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I also found out that pages like MediaWiki:1movedto2/fr, MediaWiki:1movedto2/es, MediaWiki:1movedto2/ja exist, and they may be editable for admins. That means we can perhaps make a great deal of changes in interface not through meta:Locales for the Wikimedia projects with administrators' help. (Pages starting with MediaWiki: are not editable for non-adiministrators. Tomos 04:32, 12 déc 2004 (UTC)

Um.. I found that the above pages do not seem to exist today... I suppose that is because things are still changing. Tomos 09:24, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quality over Quantity[edit]

I strongly feel that Wikinews needs to focus on the quality of articles, and that poorly written articles detract from the site and are a waste of effort. I've written up a proposal at Wikinews:Quality over Quantity on how to improve the quality to the point where Wikinews can become valuable in the short term. All feedback is appreciated. - TalkHard 13:07, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Did Wikinews BAN the China Daily?[edit]

I tried to edit Vanuatu PM accused of assaulting envoy by adding Category:Taiwan, but was unable to - I was blocked by the spam filter since the page contained a link to the China Daily. What is going on here? --Jiang 00:10, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's not Wikinews-I could do it. Do you live in China? Apparently they filter web pages so you can't see a lot of them-nasty thing. Cap'n Refsmmat 01:24, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm in the United States. It says http://www.chinadaily.com.cn was found by the filter. --Jiang 01:26, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn

meta:Spam blacklist has the list of blocked sites, but it does not include the site. So I don't know. And it looks like there is no filter for my editing, including the url.. Tomos03:39, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It works now. Apparently all .cn domain names were blocked earlier. --Jiang 05:17, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

China blocks Wikipedia, Wikipedia blocks China. Can't you grow up, people? Paranoid 02:40, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A proposal to fix potential legal complication[edit]

I have a proposal here:MediaWiki_talk:Prefs-help-userdata. Your feedback is appreciated very much. If the community agrees, earlier implementation of the suggested change is better than later to avoid legal complications among us. Tomos 04:08, 12 12月 2004 (UTC)

State of the Wiki[edit]

In case anyone is interested, I've written up my thoughts on the current state of Wikinews here.--Eloquence 08:05, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Local reporting[edit]

I'd like to ask/encourage everyone to watch Indiana over the next week. I think what I'm setting up there could serve as a model for other local reporting sections (at least in the US)...and if you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them.Kurt Weber 05:27, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Size of the Article[edit]

Hi. I've been in Wikipedia for over six months now. This is a really good idea to have a seperate site for current events. I have one question... Just how long must the news item be to consider it as a real "news article"?Jam2k 16:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So far, we've been somewhat broad in any requirement for this. A few articles have been a short paragraph, while others have 5 or more paragraphs. The general goal seems to be to write articles as comprehensive as possible, and to include and collect as much information as we can. That way, we provide yet another advantage over traditional news media. Lyellin 16:22, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I also think that comprehensiveness could become our strengh. But a breaking news could be just one paragraph and two or three sources, I think. We can grow them from then on. Tomos 19:50, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Subject categories[edit]

There are categories like Category:Politics and conflicts. But one year from now, it will be not very much interesting, I am afraid. It will become a box in which ancient and latest news sit together, mostly undistinguishable.

I want to suggest that the major subject categories that correspond to the Main page subject classification (Politics and conflicts, Sports, Culture and Entertainment, Science and technology, etc. ) have "Category:Subjectname_Monthname,_Year" format.

How do you think? Tomos 19:58, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Like "Category: Politics and Conflicts (December 2004)"?

It could work, but I can see some problems with the idea. Firstly, there are events that cover more than one month (multi-day news events like elections, battles, and revolutions), what category would they be put in? The other problem is that at the beginning of the month, the lists would be practically empty, so a new user surfing in would probably conclude that there's not much of anything here.

I suppose an ideal solution would be to have a page with all the stories from, say, the last month listed, sorted by publishing date. Unfortunately, I don't think there's an automated mechanism in Wikimedia that will handle such a thing, and having to manually maintain a large number of lists with a large number of items like that would be quite a lot of work.

Don't get me wrong, the core of the idea is good, it just needs development. Lankiveil 02:43, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I suggest that pages (like just Politics and conflicts) should be the current events, while categories (like Category:Politics and conflicts) collect events for a month or a year and then get moved by a (not yet made) bot to a "Category:Blah (2004)". This way we can always keep pages up to date; categories are places to get a full list of stories (and in theory down the line we'll be using more specific categories). -- IlyaHaykinson 06:47, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I mostly agree with IlyaHaykinson's idea, though it may not solve problems Lankiveil pointed out.

For the events spanning multiple months, the only solution I can think of is to categorize some articles into multiple months. This is not an elegant solution at all, I have to admit, but doable.

For the problem of category looking too empty at the beginning of a month, we can simply do what we do at the date category page - to link previous & next months. (An example of date category Category:December 1, 2004).

Alternatively, we can use Qarterly category, like Category:Sports_(1Q2004).

I have a feeling that categories are mostly for production purposes, not presentation. That is, we need to categorize (index) articles mostly in order to efficiently list them at subject portal pages (like Politics and conflicts), special coverage portals (like Ukrainian political crisis). These pages are for presentation to readers.

I also have a feeling that newbies do not necessarily know or care about category feature & how to use it. So it is a work of non-newbie Wikinews editors.

These issues are probably best solved by coding like a Mediawiki feature. But what kind of feature is good? I don't know yet. I made a feature request to boolean search pages using categories. [1] It could solve some of the issues, but not all. Tomos 08:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Focus on community building[edit]

I think in the next few weeks, we should focus on building a large, active community of editors, not necessarily on creating top notch articles (though we should take care to tag articles which have problems). I have therefore greatly simplified the article development process.--Eloquence 04:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reporting about Wikinews[edit]

In Wikimedia Foundation's newsletter Quarto, a short text is needed to introduce/ report Wikinews. Erik's earlier piece on this [2] offers a good perspective, but the production staff said shorter one is needed, and others' perspectives be included. I happened to be around those editors, and nobody was willing to do it, so I wrote a draft. Your comments and suggestions (and bold edits) are appreciated to make it better reflect the community's voices.

The draft is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Draft#Wikinews

Among the things I wanted to mention but could not are:

Our weather report (which I think is very impressive)
Many people pointed out that reviewer is needed more
Subject and region -based portals are still yet to be fully formed

I don't know how to incorporate them into that short text. And most probably some of you know other things that should be communicated to the readers.

If you don't know what Quarto is, it is a newsletter issued by the Wikimedia Foundation (the body formally representing Wikinews and other projects, and owns servers), and its target readers are Wikimedia's projects participants as well as outsiders, including potential/existing donors. It is delivered both online and in print. Tomos 17:33, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes, probably weather reports should be mentionned. What about possible giving a link or two to some of the most impressive news report ?

I also think region based portals should be mentionned.

Can someone improve the already very good report from Tomos to add this ?

Other ideas ?

Thanks

Anthere 17:38, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Keeping primary sources separate from news articles[edit]

One of the more interesting possibilities of Wikinews is clearly the opportunity to attract first-hand, eyewitness accounts of events. In the long run, a place where many different accounts are collected in the same place could be a more distinctive and more interesting role than being a news service. Looking back at history - I'm taking a long view here - it's often the trivia, the texture of daily life, which is just as interesting as the obvious 'news'; and primary sources for news events offer something that no carefully edited article will, however brilliantly written and carefully compiled.

So perhaps Wikinews needs a category of pages - 'first hand accounts' or whatever - which is clearly held distinct from reviewed articles?

Some issues arise. Although first-hand accounts would clearly complement the idea of a collaborative news source, they are inherently un-wiki-like in that they should not be edited by other people, which would compromise their authenticity. They are, by their nature, not NPOV, since one person's POV is exactly what they offer. Does that mean that a wiki is not the right venue for such a service? Would it mean that people just started using the wiki as a place to blog?

Perhaps there's a role for a completely separate site where anyone could submit accounts of things they do, with the most interesting ones (chosen by whatever means) appearing on a front page to form a global snapshot of that day. Or perhaps that could be a parallel role for Wikinews - a 'news articles' front page and a 'first-hand account' front page.

I've wandered slightly off the main point - if Wikinews is going to encourage first-hand reporting wherever possible, it needs a mechanism where first-hand reports are clearly marked as a separate kind of entity which is not editable by all-comers. Other people could then quote the first-hand sources, link to them, and even provide a precis, but the source itself would be left untouched. HarryR 01:02, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think you've hit upon the inherent self-contradiction of Wikinews.

If there is to be a NPOV, how can anyone report the news firsthand if we always require that more than one person provide their POV to achieve NPOV?

This issue has been wrestled with over on Wikipedia endlessly. Is NPOV a balanced point of view, or merely having more than one point of view in the same article? If NPOV is the latter, it would seem to preclude any firsthand reporting, unless Wikinews lucks out and happens to have more than one reporter at a given event. Here is the article on NPOV from meta. It's interesting that the definition is written with an eye towards Wikipedia, not Wikinews, so I would like some clarification of the applicability of NPOV on Wikinews.

The bottom line is that I wish Jimbo could lend more guidance to Wikinews, (as he is the ultimate authority on Foundation Issues), as we could all reach a consensus on this issue and then he could step in and tell us how things are really going to be run around here, invalidating all of our work to reach a consensus.

I would like to report firsthand, but until Jimbo or someone in charge clarifies the inherent conflict with NPOV, I am holding off on any such attempt.

By the way, NPOV would also seem to preclude any sort of Editorial page. I find that this limitation hurts Wikinews, as almost every major news outlet has an editorial board which manages the contents of such a page, and yet we are self-limiting in that regard unless Jimbo makes an exception to the foundation issues for NPOV on Wikinews.

To explore this issue in a way that should cause no great offense, I have set up movie listings with links to empty movie reviews in the Culture and entertainment section. Perhaps a movie review could help settle whether or not there is to be any kind of editorial face to Wikinews, or if it is merely a news aggregator from other sources.

Cheers,

— DV 01:36, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

By the way, here is a link that would seem to allow original reporting (firsthand reporting?) on Wikinews.

However, the same page also explains how NPOV should be implemented on Wikinews, so it is still confusing what the rules are in this regard.

This page says that POV-pushers will be excluded from the Wikinews community.

I'm not sure if this is specifically to avoid political controversies (isn't everything in the news ultimately a political controversy?) or if it includes anything in which an opinion is expressed, for example, is posting a movie review pushing a POV?

It would seem that any firsthand reporting is done with the peril of being banned as a POV-pusher, unless the aforementioned issues are first resolved in a more detailed manner.

I was about to post a movie review of "House of Flying Daggers", but after reading the aforementioned pages, I don't care to be banned by some over-zealous NPOV enforcer.

— DV 02:45, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If one person's direct experience - what it was like when the hurricane hit Florida, or at the street demonstrations in the Ukraine, for example - is clearly marked as their experience, and is not put forward as the official stance of Wikinews, I don't see that it breaches NPOV in principle at all. After all, on Wikipedia, you can report what people believe, as long as it's clearly true that they do believe that. There would be a danger of Wikinews relying on a skewed set of unsubstantiated first-hand reports (FHRs), but that's a different issue. One advantage of keeping FHRs as a separate category is that they could be marked automatically with a disclaimer - "this report has not been reviewed and only represents one person's experience". But the writing of FHRs really needs its own set of guidelines as well; the equivalent of NPOV for a FHR might be something like "communicate your experience, not your opinions", making sure people focus on things they saw/heard themselves. Similarly, anything people only heard from other people at the event with them should be clearly marked as hearsay. If people are planning to do this, they should also be encouraged to take notes if possible, not rely on their memory (and to keep the notes). On the other hand, it needs to be made easy for anyone who is not a regular Wikinews user to provide an account of anything they just happened to be caught up in. Perhaps all the news articles could have a button marked "I was there!" which would provide readers with a simple way to just note what they saw.

Again, though, my main point - FHRs and news articles are in some ways different kinds of things, and I think it would help maintain the integrity of the FHRs and the NPOV of the news articles if they were systematically kept separate and treated differently. HarryR 10:37, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just a note: we are currently exploring original reporting on german wikinews, using an accreditation system (de:Wikinews:Akkreditierung). So far, we have two so called wikireporters, writing local news stories and it works pretty well (although problems may arise later). BTW, I disagree on the point that an original report shouldn't be edited by anyone except the auther: there is a lot which others can contribute to the article, either by improving the language or by adding their own first-hand experiences. --Elian 01:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I can't read German. Could you please summarize how a reporter becomes accredited on the German Wikinews?

I agree that even firsthand reports could use copy editing, as long as quotes remained intact, and as long as the original meaning of the reporter was not distorted in any way.

I'm still trying to make heads or tails out of how much of the original Wikinews proposal on meta is still relevant to what we are doing here. Is that document sacred? Or does community consensus override any of it? It seems several sections of that document are being ignored.

I'm really puzzled that the Foundation issues only make mention of Wikipedia, and not Wikinews.

Is there an authoritative page to govern how we conduct ourselves on Wikinews?

Or are the editors here free to build their own consensus for editorial policy changes as time goes by?

According to the Foundation Issues for Wikipedia, Jimbo is the ultimate authority, but so far he has taken a rather hands-off approach to this site. Jimbo may be commenting on how he wants Wikinews to be run elsewhere - can anyone point me to such conversations?

Unless Jimbo steps in to make policy pronouncements, or if anyone can point me to a sacred statement of policy for this site (that is being observed to any degree), it would seem that the community is free to invent its own rules on firsthand reporting, and in the larger picture, to agree upon the editorial face of this site.

To sum up my point - I simply don't see how a firsthand report can be written from a NPOV - there is a reason why the police collect reports from multiple witnesses at an accident or a crime scene - human beings naturally witness events through the filter of their own biases and interests. A firsthand report is always written from a POV. It's unavoidable.

I realize it's a trite example, but I ask that someone take a look at this movie review for The Incredibles. It's written from a fairly NPOV, but that's because there is no hint that anyone actually went to the movie! Where is the opinion of whether it was a good movie or a bad movie? How about whether the plot was well constructed? If it was entertaining? Absent all of these elements any "movie review" is nothing more than a sterile synopsis with some production notes. Is this how we want our firsthand reports to be written as well? If so, I submit to you that Wikinews will be a very boring news outlet, and really nothing more than a news aggregator with a folksy style, with the only redeeming quality that it is free of advertising.

If POV-pushers are to be banned from the community, I think we need to support any would-be reporters with an excellent set of guidelines on how to conduct themselves, otherwise the fun will stop and the yelling and screaming will start. (It's always fun until the yelling and screaming starts.)

Cheers,

— DV 06:21, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to make one more pitch for FHRs to be left unedited, though I accept that I'm probably losing this one. I've just been reading The Faber Book of Reportage, which is an anthology of eyewitness accounts of historical events, from Thucydides writing about the plague in Athens, via the sack of Jerusalem and the Great Fire of London up to the present. The reason that these things are still interesting today - and more appealing than a more balanced account by a professional historian would be - is their immediacy, and the personality of the witness. Copy-editing without distorting the original meaning of the account is easier said than done. I would rather see the original preserved - typos and all - than see eyewitness accounts descended on by a bunch of well-meaning editors with the intention of "improving the language", because that will often mean, in practice, that the language is blanded out and the personality removed. I imagine that most users of Wikinews will never look at the original document anyway - they'll look at news reports that quote from the eyewitness acounts, and compilations of the selected best bits (which can be copy-edited and argued over in the usual wiki manner). But the original text should be stored as a matter of record in a way which is easily accessible (i.e. not just via the wiki software's edit history). News reports that quote from them can then link to them so that readers can check for themselves the original context of a quote, or just read more of the account. What I'm describing is, obviously, not the norm for mainstream news reporting, but strikes me as a sensible move which plays to the strengths of a collaborative, open-access news service. It reduces the distance between the person who was actually at the event and the reader to the absolute minimum. HarryR 10:00, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that the very nature of a wiki makes this kind of unedited set-in-stone first-hand accounts to be nearly impossible when equated with regular articles: almost anything created by some author will get changed in some way (small or large) by someone else.

The solution, in my opinion, is to do all first-hand reporting in the User: namespace. By convention pages within that namespace and "under" your user page are not edited by others (and by its very nature can have an "author", unlike the rest of wikispace). There's nothing wrong with linking to those accounts from some place on Wikinews, but I think that if it's a particular user's opinion (or account), it should be created in that user's space.

Indeed, I think that this type of activity should be encouraged even at this early date. -- IlyaHaykinson 11:09, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The nature of a wiki is whatever it's programmed to be. Making a good news site is a more important (and interesting) aim than spreading the wiki gospel. I accept that I'm not winning this argument, but I think it's worth considering these issues beforehand and considering if any structural changes to the way the software works would benefit the main aim - creating a worldwide collaborative grassroots news service. In this case, the main change needed would be a new category of page which is clearly marked as different and is not editable after posting except, perhaps, by people with admin clearance doing things like fixing links. I know wikienthusiasts might regard that as undermining the wikinature, but I'm more interested in creating a good service. I seem to be the only person who thinks it's an important idea, though. The trouble with doing it through User pages is that the wiki needs to be easy to use for first-time visitors who have no interest in setting up a User page but have witnessed something they want to share; people who happen to be passengers on a train crash, for example.HarryR 13:30, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Video and audio on Wikinews?[edit]

I recently found two exciting articles on Wikipedia:

These royalty-free, open source video and audio codecs could help to make it possible for Wikinews to host narrated video clips for those stories that are not as effective using words and pictures alone.

If anyone can point me to some examples of Ogg Vorbis/Theora being used on Wikipedia, I would be most grateful, as I would like to contribute video and audio clips if it is possible to do so.

Cheers,

— DV 07:54, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

ogg files are easily found on articles about music R.E.M. for example. Theora is not mature enough for use yet. --156.34.210.141 17:25, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thoughts[edit]

In case anyone cares, I've assembled some of my thoughts about the project on this page. Please leave comments if you have any on the talk page. Lyellin 20:53, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Spam[edit]

I've noticed two instances of link spam lately.

When you find one, you can not only blank/revert it, but also report it at a page on meta. meta:Talk:Spam_blacklist#Please_add. Developers will review the reports and blacklist URLs if necessary so that any edit that includes blacklisted URL becomes blocked from being saved. Tomos 04:34, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Linking from Current Events[edit]

Hi. I just want to know if it would be possible to link every news headline in the Current Events page to the appropriate news article in Wikinews. We can refer to external links and wikinews as well. Jam2k 16:16, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can you erase somebody elses contribution[edit]

It's my first time here, and looks interesting. But I ask my self, Can I edit or erase somebody elses comment or contribution to a story?

yes. well, you can't erase stuff in the discussion forum-style pages (like this one), thats bad form. but do whatever you need to improve an article. --wikt:user:eean

Wiki-No-News?[edit]

I've been following Wikinews from it's inception - because I had firm beliefs that it might change the way news is gathered & presented for a global audience. But I have to say I've been very, very disappointed, and I think the Indian Ocean earthquake article is the final straw and I had to comment.

All over the Internet, blogspace etc people are recording their first-hand impressions, reporting from the spot via email, to their blogs etc etc, and all Wikinews can come up with is this: Strongest_earthquake_in_40_years_hits_Southeast_Asia. It's shameful. more than 36 hours after thousands of people were killed or injured in more than 8 countries. some personal blogs have more information. Wikipedia has a better article. Wikinews' front page states that 227 articles have been written since November 2004. Brilliant - less than 4 articles a day.

Why? In my mind, this is almost entirely due to the restrictive holier-than-though editorial policy, the almost fascist policing of the 'Neutral Point of View' policy and the painfully painfully slow process of 'Article approval'. There are no rewards for writing Wikinews articles, only sticks - ridiculous statements on discussion pages about NPOV style, 'editorial content' etc.

A classic comment from the Indian Ocean earthquake discussion page:

The estimates of how many were killed in this disaster keep going up 
in the various reports I am reading, sometimes wildly so, such that   
it's probably a good idea to hold off on updating the casualty figures 
until we start seeing reports that quote officials from the affected countries.

Oh really? So no death toll figures should be reported until the final body is counted??... I'm sorry but the news is dynamic, changing, evolving.

This is not WikiNews - this is WikiHistory. I am very sad to see such a brilliant project going down the tubes. I honestly think a drastic change in mindset is required if Wikinews is to achieve it's true potential.

Karim 21:40, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would like to point out a few things. If you've been following, you know the review policy has been basically scrapped- at best, it's optional, at worse, not even followed. You've also seen how few contributors we've had, and how they are concentrated in specific areas. One advantage many blogs have over us are the fact that they are people right on the scene.... that's how many iraq blogs took off- not because they were people who were already doing things, but Iraqis who suddenly found themselves in the warzone. I'd also really like to know what you mean by "Holier-than-thou" editorial policy. WHich one? what are you referring to? You'll also note that discussions have begun about NPOV- but NPOV is a major aspect of wikimedia, and is not easily discarded. That is as much ingrained as the software we run on. Lyellin 00:28, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Lyellin - thank you for your comments. I don't understand your distinction between people writing for Wikinews and 'people on the ground'. You're exactly right - people find themselves in the middle of an earthquake, warzone etc etc - and Wikinews should allow them to post their eyewitness accounts. The power of Wikinews must rest, like with Wikipedia, in the hands of the users. If your average user on the street is not allowed to write about News - but only to synthesize and re-hash journalism already reported by the news agencies - what is it about Wikinews that is so different? All you become is a human-generated news aggregation service.

The 'holier-than-thou' editorial policy is perhaps not policy, but can be seen on the discussion pages of nearly every Wikinews article. Many of the comments are over-critical, navel-gazing and have more to do with nit-picking words and phrases than improving each article. I am in no way in favour of removing the NPOV policy - however I do think that over-interpretation and total inflexibility on the 'Neutral' front is a) removing the interest from many articles and b) putting off users from contributing because they frankly don't want to deal with the hypercritical 'editors'. Neutral should be 'Balanced'. There should also be the opportunity for a story to be presented from two (or more) different sides if 'Balance' cannot be achieved. I do not think you can (or should) force people to be totally impassive in the face war or disaster that they see before their eyes.

The Wikimedia software Wikinews runs on gets updated regularly - little is 'ingrained'. There is no reason for Wikinews to be 'ingrained' into anything - especially when it's only 2 months old. Karim 01:21, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New contributions has decreased these days, and my hypothesis is that people are spending time off-line during the holiday season. But I also have a moment of doubts that people may be interested in commenting and expressing opinions rather than reporting. If so, bloggers might find their blogs a better place than wikinews.

I think NPOV policy is very important, so let me defend it a bit. What 'critical editors' should do is not to list NPOV articles on request for deletion, but suggest possible improvements, find sources to incorporate, and overall neutralize the article in a constructive manner. In other words, writers and editors should cooperate in good faith than be alarmed or combative. Given your description of what's happening, I would say the problem is not in the NPOV policy, but in the attitudes of the people involved. Tomos 03:11, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Karim- I'm not making a distinction, save for the fact that as of yet we've not had anyone willing to contribute first hand accounts of something. is this because no one is coming to the site yet and willing to, or because we are discouraging it? Good Question. I personally want to encourage it, but am unsure of how to go about it. We do stand the severe chance of having crackpots report nonsense stuff as well- so some sort of policy needs to be in place to stop that... but what? The german wikinews is using an accrediting policy to do that, but that might not work in a situation such as this. Do you have any ideas? I do not want this to become a news aggregate, but encouraging people to post here is something different than "we are failing" I think. I have to agree with the other posters here- I'm just not seeing the level of attacks you are in criticism. Wiki writers need to have a thick skin- things will get changed and commented on. ON the balanced issue, I think you'll find going back through wikipedia, talking on IRC, etc, that NPOV doesn't mean "balanced", that's BPOV. Now, do I think BPOV might be better than NPOV in this situation? Now that I'm thinking about it a bit...I'll ahve to get back to you. But the "Ingrained" stuff I mention is the ingrained attitude of the wikimedia foundation ( a central founding attitude of that foundation), for NPOV. Good, bad, otherwise, that is what we are working with. Lyellin 23:22, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Lyellin: 1. Neutral vs Balanced: Much of Neutral vs Balanced is semantic, but how 'Neutral' is perceived and policed will make a difference to how articles are read & perceived. Neutrality can be interpreted as balanced - and that is perfect. You can write a very neutral article that presents a situation from both sides. But pure harsh neutrality is just that - Neutered.

A good point on the semantics. I know for awhile the balanced attempt was tried on articles like [[w:john kerry}John Kerry]] at wikipedia, and it was decided that NPOV meant neutral, not balanced. I'm not sold as neutral being the right way to go on wikinews, and I think the way you describe balanced may be a better way, if it can be expanded a bit.

2. How do you get people to write for Wikinews instead of on their personal web page/blog viewed by 8 of their friends? Well - you make them feel welcome. You make sure it is easy for them to post an article, part of an article or whatever. You make sure they can see the results of their labours immediately - and others can too - even if these are subsequently edited into a more acceptable form, or promoted/demoted to different levels of prominence within the site. Most importantly, the whole web out there has to believe that the number one source of up to the minute news on a subject is Wikinews. In order for this to happen the original story has to get up there immediately - regardless of what form it's in or how it will subsequently develop. Exposure is what entices people to become journalists. Otherwise, as I have said before, you are writing a history book for academic interest. If you look out there into the blogspace, everyone is linking to the Wikipedia article on the Indian Ocean earthquake, not the Wikinews one. That has to be a serious failure of Wikinews. These events are the ones that will really show the world the power of Wikinews. The power is clearly there - the Wikipedia article is fantastic. But why isn't it here??? (I would point out that the current Wikinews article now reads very well, I am referring to the one that stood approximately 36 hours after the event).

So far I think it's very easy to post an article, or part of an article. We have that in the software, as well as seeing it immediatly. In terms of others seeing it immediatly, currently we do need things added to more than just that written article (main page, other pages), which I agree is a hurdle. I know talks have been made to create a software side way to fix this... but until then, can we come up with a better way to display new articles than what we are doing? I think the power isn't here might relate to the fact that Wikipedia has a pile more editors then we do, and editors across the globe. We really do not, and many of the frequent editors are not frequent news article writers.

3. How do you attribute articles that are difficult to attribute? This is a problem not just for original articles but also for any reference to off-line media. If I post an article that references a local newspaper that is not online - how does that get attributed. What about the minutes of a town hall meeting etc etc.? I think you need at least two elements: 1) You MUST be able to interact with the author - thus sources not immediately attributable must have a user name with an email contact address on their user page. This doesn't have to be their real name or primary email, but they must be contactable for verification purposes. 2) There should be a way of flagging references/ sources as verified or unverified to allow readers to make up their own minds as to how they interpret an article. Perhaps some sort of traffic-light code or something. As other writers corroborate this the verification status can be changed.

Great points. I really like the idea of attributed/unattributed tags on sources. In terms of the author interaction, I know I was thinking that if we accredited reporters, that they would be required to give an e-mail address and name with their accredidation. Would that do the trick for you? DE is working like this, and it seems to do pretty well for them so far.

4. 'You are not seeing the level of attacks in criticism' as I am. Fair enough - and as I've said before, writers must accept edits. I have read many 'discussion' pages that I feel are rude and, even if criticism is fair, in no way encourage the authors to continue writing. If I've spent a long time on an article and someone posts something like 'This piece is primarily opinion and should be deleted' then that's not encouraging, not helpful and doesn't promote collaboration at all. If said person were to take the time to edit the page themselves as they feel it should be, then that is useful editing - and what an Editor should do.

Karim 00:15, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, although I believe that may be an individual editor or a few, versus the editorial policy. Lyellin 01:35, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I encourage firsthand reporting[edit]

Karim, first of all, I hope you will contribute to Wikinews and bring some more life to it. We need more contributors. As for my original comment above, that you cited as a "classic", no one said anything about waiting until the last body is counted.

However, I hope you will agree that we shouldn't post wild rumors and speculation about disaster casualties. I simply think it is prudent to report casualty figures from official estimates rather than talk about "feared dead" and the like. For example, I think the headline of "42,000" dead? on the Drudge Report is irresponsible when the preponderance of reporting is giving numbers that are half that total.

I base this philosophy after wading through the early reporting on 9/11, some of which made wild claims about "50,000 dead" and the "most lost since The Battle of Antietam in the American Civil War", when the actual casualty count was in the low thousands. Those wild reports had to be quietly and sheepishly withdrawn by embarassed editors who were too eager to "get the scoop".

As for firsthand reporting, I am among the strongest proponents of such reporting here on Wikinews, and I have made numerous posts asking for anyone who has a firsthand report to please post it. I even think editors should be abe to write opinion columns on their user pages if they have a strong interest in doing so, after which we could copy the best columns into an Editorial section on the main page.

I agree with you that Wikinews will be a very boring site if it only has dry, sterile aggregations of news from other sources. But when reporting casualties, we have to exercise some degree of responsibility to build up our credibility for the future.

Do you have any firsthand reports that we can use? Would you like to write an opinion column?

Regards,

— DV 04:41, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

David, thank you for your response. Wild speculation about casualties is rampant in almost every disaster. Yet the reporter/journalist MUST give some estimate of the extent of damage/life lost when writing. This can only be done on the basis of information available at the time. The wonderful thing about the Wiki is that these numbers can be updated - up or down in real time. Yes you should report the facts, but facts evolve over time - I have been in mass casualty situations - this is the reality of the event. The facts only appear many days after the incident. But you have to report something?

But this is a side issue. My main point is that the current critical nature of the assessments of articles is discouraging users to post. It is also slowing down the publishing process and reducing the immediacy of information availability. I also think the review process as it currently stands takes the fun & pleasure out of writing for Wikinews. If all your piece generates is antagonism, what is the incentive to continue?

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between 'Blogs' and 'Wikinews' When the word is used here it's a substitute for 'opinion piece'. But a blog may be many things - and is often a 'journal'. All these people who in Iraq who are 'blogging', who were caught up in the earthquake who are 'blogging' - they are reporting what they have seen. Many people will have no access to a personal blog - but who should be encouraged to write for Wikinews. Even the people who currently post on their personal blog should be encouraged to contribute to a more general news repository that the world will see and whose content will be securely archived.

Would I like to write an opinion column? Not really. Not that I don't have an opinion of course - but I do not believe this is the primary function of Wikinews. And I do not think this is the panacea - have 'dry fact' articles and then 'opinion columns' to allow people to vent their frustrations. If I was <insert world famous BBC reporter name> arriving in <insert wartorn region> just after some massacre - I would expect (and be expected) to report what I see, and how it made me feel. I would not be expected to report 'I have arrived in xxx. There are dead people. Quite a lot of dead people. The situation is terrible. Or not.' Nor would <world famous BBC reporter> be phoned up every 15 minutes to tell him how they should have used this word not that, not used the emotional word 'terrible' etc etc. You file a report, it stands on its own merits. The editors back home can edit down reports and splice in subsequent broadcasts as new information becomes available. On Wikinews - the piece itself can be edited.

Karim 05:39, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Karim, so far I have chosen not to wait for others to drive the review process, I went right ahead and put the updated version of the Indian Ocean Earthquake story up on the main page when I felt it was as complete as it could be at the moment. I put another story in the "developing" section, so I am trying to work according to the "spirit" of the review process. No one stopped me. Probably because there aren't enough "policy wonks" on Wikinews yet who are demanding that someone act as a second party reviewer. (However, if a stronger consensus is reached to enforce a more formal review process, I will respect the community's judgment.)

As for a reward instead of a stick, I don't think anyone is here for more than the personal challenge of trying to do a good job on reporting the news, although it appears that a few folks have political agendas due to the stories they are choosing to report. Doing a good job at reporting the news is challenging and sometimes difficult work, I'm not sure how much "fun" or "pleasure" there is to be had.

As for criticisms in general, one has to have a fairly thick skin to contribute in a free and open wiki, that's simply the nature of the beast. Folks tend to edit your contributions mercilessly. Although so far on Wikinews, I have not seen too many active edit wars going on, nor any attempts to suppress or censor reporting.

As a constructive suggestion - if you or anyone else feels awkward contributing to Wikinews due to concerns of being criticized or reviewed by your peers, please feel free to use your User Page as a sandbox. Most folks respect the relative ownership that users have over their User page, and will allow you to edit freely in that area unchallenged.

However, I simply don't see that the editing environment is so hostile that you need to resort to this. If I am wrong, please point me to where you have found an author so intimidated that they were driven off. I am eager to help new contributors feel comfortable working on Wikinews, because we need them more than they need us!

Thanks again for your thoughts, and I hope you choose to become a contributor in the main article space. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you work on a story.

Regards,

— DV 06:45, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Karim, two short points here from me. One, I don't think we are trying to make it unfun, and as I said, review is really optional. I hope it's done in a way eventually that helps things to be well written, but doesn't make it unfun. On people who can't blog but can't come here, I'd just ask that you use my point above regarding accredidation. Thanks for all the comments! Lyellin 23:22, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As a new reader and contributor, I have to agree with the "editors" in this debate. There has been little (no) restriction of input or even any negativity at all, since I have been reading the stories and discussions. I saw the same suggestion that updates of casualties be held up, and responded with my own thoughts. The result seemed to be a speeding-up of the updates, without my needing to be the one to do the research. The impact of this site on my own experience of a natural disaster was overwhelmingly positive, IMHO, as I expect will be the case for many others when they discover it. The complaints of this user are based on an assumption that what is written in discussions constitutes hierarchical sanctioning. Instead, it is exactly what the spirit of this site demands, public debate for the betterment of the site and the world.

Linking[edit]

Quick help-desk-style question. How do you do a link from one of the other Wikimedia projects to Wikinews. Is there a shortcut for Wikinews like the [[m:page]] that links to meta? Isomorphic 02:45, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Examples: w:Wikipedia:About, commons:Main_Page. Tomos 02:55, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I meant how do I link to Wikinews from one of the other projects. Isomorphic 03:04, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, that's right.. Let me see.. Tomos 03:12, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Prefix n: seems to do it. See examples at the bottom of meta:Sandbox. Tomos 03:16, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yup, that works. Thanks. Isomorphic 03:45, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Earthquakes[edit]

The USGS earthquake data is public domain. Could we somehow display that data on Wikinews? I'm more concerned about properly (and interestingly) displaying rather than getting the data (which is publicly available and easily retrievable) -- IlyaHaykinson 05:44, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I went ahead and uploaded and posted more images from the USGS in the article. Is there more data you are interested in from that site? — DV 07:25, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The site actually provides automatic machine-readable feeds of recent earthquakes from around the world. The site also regularly generates maps of those earthquakes. It might be nice to incorporate those data feeds into Wikinews (a la weather, perhaps with some back-end bot support). -- IlyaHaykinson 07:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One interesting problem that needs to be solved for fully-automated reports is how to post an image to the Commons under programmatic or scripted control, using an application that is continuously running on someone's machine (at least until a Wiki developer is convinced to place it as a background process on the server). Such an image would be generated and posted whenever a continuously polled site returns some data that has either changed (in the case of the weather) or exceeded some threshold (in the case of earthquakes).

To help automate the weather updates, User Monet (from "de" Wikinews) suggested using a static name for the current weather report image. I'm going to change over to posting one pair of images with the subnames "current" and "previous", and another pair using the current naming scheme (for archival purposes). This will allow us to avoid having to update the links template every day.

But we'll still need the programmatic or scripted posting to fully automate this task. Especially for earthquakes, this is important in case an earthquake happens while we're all away from the site.

Please let me know if you have ideas of how we can automate posting a generated image (for both weather and earthquakes). I'm thinking part of this automation will involve monitoring a "watch directory" to check the modification date and time of certain local images on the machine of the person running the earthquake and weather processes.

— DV 16:24, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

When Wikinews is not news[edit]

I fear editors here are taking a Wikipedicentric view of articles and not recognizing that consumers of news rarely go back to an article written days (or even hours) ago. And almost NEVER go back and re-read an article already viewed. That is why it is odd to me that people continue to update already-published days-old articles (reports) instead of writing a new article with a fresh angle. This isn't WP - it's WN - and we need to realize that the audience will not change the way it reads news to accommodate our little project or desire to make an older article better or "more complete." So, we'd better change the way we think of articles to accommodate our readers. If an article is a day old and you have new information, write a NEW article with that new information as the lead. Davodd 02:10, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I notice that a lot of mainstream news sites recycle material from earlier stories in follow up stories. When a follow up story doesn't stand on its own, it seems like a good idea to recycle a portion of the original story, in addition to providing a link to the previous story in a "Related Stories" section. I'm curious if anyone else thinks this recycling practice is acceptable, or how one should decide what to recycle. — DV 07:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

1. (linking to previous articles) Value of a story increases when it becomes a part of a continuous coverage or special report. See, for example Lycos Europe ends its anti-spam campaign, Ukraine political crisis. Many people read/watch/listen to news sporadically, rather than daily, and that means having an archive of related stories would help them.

2. (editing old articles) I do understand your concern that editing days-old articles is less valuable. But if we were to give up old articles, would we simply keep them as incomplete/biased/inaccurate? Would we delete them? Either option does not sound very attractive, and I sometimes feel like polishing them is the best choice. But I could be wrong on this. I am interested to know what others think. Tomos 08:57, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is common practice (and helpful to the reader) when writing a follow-up story, to recap background details later on in the story. My suggestion: To write a followup, then have a links section to related articles (or previous news on the same topic). Davodd 09:42, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think we need to edit stories that are incorrect, biased, etc. Articles that don't fit our content or style criteria should be changed. However, if there is new news since the time the original article was written, that should be a separate article. If there's enough of these articles, we should probably have what I'm terming an "In Depth" topic page — like our current page on the tsunami disaster. -- IlyaHaykinson 09:38, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Do you think the in-depth type of story would be more appropriate at Wikipedia? If not, what would distinguish a WN in-depth feature from being a duplicate or in competition with a WP article? Isn't it a waste of resources, when we could just as easily point to WP for in-depth rather that try to duplicate that type of breadth here? Davodd 09:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the in-depth pages need to summarize the current event (after all, in theory Wikipedia should not be doing that — that's Wikinews's job; an encyclopedia's primary job is not news), but more specifically the in-depth page should be linking to the individual articles in a timeline fashion, showing how the news developed. It's not the best example because it's incomplete, but Ukraine political crisis kind of shows what I am referring to. I firmly believe that when people show up at Wikinews they will want context for their stories and we need to provide them such context without relying on Wikipedia to be as up to date on issues as we will be (especially when this deals with more local issues). -- IlyaHaykinson 10:47, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is the case. I can see two main ways in which people will access Wikinews. One is by bookmarking the main page, and logging in daily to read the latest news. The second is to follow a particular story. For example I'm regularly reloading the Indian Ocean Earthquake page at the moment. It would be even better if each page had an associated RSS feed that I could subscribe to so I would know when pages I was interested in had been updated. Both options have merits. There is no point having access to an old version of the Indian Ocean Earthquake page in my view - this is the 'overview' or summary page of the incident as it unfolds. This is not print - we don't have to reprint the page every time there's an update. This is not broadcast news - it is possible to re-edit old news. This is what Wikinews should take advantage of. However there will be plenty of spin-off stories that will deserve their own pages (lack of news in Myanmar, relief response, local stories etc etc... and they should all be linked to from the overview page as well as standing up in their own right. Karim 09:24, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sure, mistakes should be corrected. My fear is that the vision you present of Wikinews could put it in direct competition with Wikipedia as being a repository of information on non-breaking news items. I believe the strength of this project is that it can be a breaking news source that taps into the huge population of Internet users who can give timely, up-to-the-minute reports from every corner of the globe. The main weakness of Wikinews that I sense from some editors here is a dot-com-era type of arrogance that "the old ways" of journalism are outdated and do not apply here. They do. Wikipedia is Internet news - and it is competing with thousands of voices (as can be seen on [3]) and our older articles will be lost in the rush. It's a fact of life we must recognize. That said, I believe that our old articles will be very valuable as "clippings" or resources for Wikipedia. Davodd

The wikipedia article on THE earthquake is better than the wikinews one. Further, the wikinews one appears to be essentially an OLDER version of the Wikipedia article - rather than the other way around. Something is very off here. At first I thought maybe wikinews should be a subset of wikipedia, just have "current news" labeled wikipedia articles formated automaticlly onto a wikinews place/site/skin/whatever. Then I saw Davodd's comments and I thought maybe a 24 hour timeout thing might work. Perhaps like this: Any article created on wikinews disappears from wikinews after 24 hours, but goes to wikipedia for archive/deletion/whatever. Maybe identifying where it goes after 24 hours could be part of the article, like the title and its subject categoriy. ( And on a different area of concern about wikinews altogether - PLEASE DON'T CONFUSE PRODUCT PLACEMENT WITH NEWS (e.g. "Microsoft announces <advertisement deleted>".) -- anonymous

Unfortunately, the "newer" article on Wikipedia has also been prone to wild speculation and unsupported numbers. This type of sensationalism will be deadly for Wikinews.

I challenged the one user here who merely copied numbers from Wikipedia to provide a citation, as Wikipedia cannot be relied upon as a primary source. Unfortunately, he came and left.

We have to cite numbers that either come directly from officials of the affected countries, or from news organizations with reporters that are directly confirming their numbers with those officials.

Otherwise we have zero credibility.

I rather wait and have a slightly "older" article than Wikipedia, if that's what it takes to get the numbers right.

However, if we had more firsthand reporting (there was a Wikipedian from Chennai who posted some of the pictures) we would have a much more compelling story to tell without having to resort to speculating on "feared dead" numbers, (or posting dubious relief agency addresses and phone numbers), just to keep our article "newer" than everyone else.

I hope we're not so compelled to get the "scoop" over Wikipedia that we lower our what little standards we have so far.

— DV 12:18, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Source accreditation[edit]

(from Wiki-No-News above)

3. How do you attribute articles that are difficult to attribute? This is a problem not just for original articles but also for any reference to off-line media. If I post an article that references a local newspaper that is not online - how does that get attributed. What about the minutes of a town hall meeting etc etc.? I think you need at least two elements: 1) You MUST be able to interact with the author - thus sources not immediately attributable must have a user name with an email contact address on their user page. This doesn't have to be their real name or primary email, but they must be contactable for verification purposes. 2) There should be a way of flagging references/ sources as verified or unverified to allow readers to make up their own minds as to how they interpret an article. Perhaps some sort of traffic-light code or something. As other writers corroborate this the verification status can be changed. (Karim)

Great points. I really like the idea of attributed/unattributed tags on sources. In terms of the author interaction, I know I was thinking that if we accredited reporters, that they would be required to give an e-mail address and name with their accredidation. Would that do the trick for you? DE is working like this, and it seems to do pretty well for them so far. (Lyellin)

Lyellin. Yes this would work, except I'm not sure how one person or group 'accredits' a reporter. Certainly I think providing a contact email is the minimum requirement. I think after that a writer's accreditation will be more a matter of his/her reputation. The more a writer submits, the more their pieces are corroborrated, the more their 'reputation' grows and the more confidence people will have in them. I'm not sure whether this should be implicit, or some sort of explicit system such as on eBay, Shalshdot etc. Perhaps each user should have a colour-coded 'reputation' that appears next to their username? Karim 09:18, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Categories and topic pages[edit]

I've posted a proposed policy for categories, topic pages and managing latest news for pages other than the main page. Please see it at Wikinews:Categories and topic pages. I've updated site news too (but the sitenotice is protected, so I can't change the date last updated) -- IlyaHaykinson 10:37, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Questionable relief fund links and missing persons photos[edit]

In the recent changes log, I see a number of new pages, such as Aid_Agencies_&_Donations and Missing, the first of which has a few questionable links that lead directly to pages that take credit cards, the second of which has as a photo about a missing person.

In both cases, there is no way for our readers to assess the legitimacy of these pleas.

Should we delete these types of pages so as to insure that Wikinews is not somehow involved in something fraudulent?

I'm even starting to regret adding the relief fund links in the earthquake article at this point, because I am not familier enough with each of them to verify that all of them are legitimate.

The relief funds are especially vexing, because I could delete the ones I am not personally familiar with, but I'm sure someone would jump on me and say that wasn't fair, so does fairness dictate that we delete all of them?

All I'm saying is that we should take reasonable measures to insure that no one is somehow scammed by a page under the control of this site.

Does anyone else agree that we need to be more careful about this issue?

— DV 13:09, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As a temporary measure, I added the following text at the top of the relief fund listings:

WARNING: Due the nature of Wikinews, it cannot guarantee the veracity of outside links and scams involving charities are a danger. Beware of organizations that have names similar to that of well-known aid agencies.

For generous readers who want to donate, they should have enough common sense to either check things out or be choosy enough to only donate to well known agencies, but there's a sucker born every minute, so I hope this reminder is helpful. — DV 13:24, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think I did the same thing with another page elsewhere when I felt the same verifiability issue. I also tried to format the warning so that it is noticeable.

The surge in editing is partly because of the Tsunamihelp bloggers (at blogpost) decision to join/use Wikinews for their activity.

Tomos 23:45, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is a thorny issue. The scale of the disaster is significant &mash; roughly the same percentage of the world's population has been killed as the percentage of the US population killed on September 11, 2001. In these times people turn to news sites to find more information on how they can help, missing people, etc. As a responsible news organization we should be helping the relief effort as much as we can.

That said, Wikinews is very young and the influx of Tsunami Help users generated more site activity than probably all activity since the site's launch. This new set of users might misunderstand the purpose of Wikinews and turn it into something that the Wikimedia Foundation does not desire.

I recommend trying to segment the Tsunami Help editing into its own area (as User:Randy Johnston has started doing), placing obvious disclaimers on potentially unverified information, but otherwise doing as much as we can to support the effort. Perhaps the people contributing to those pages now will become active users in other areas down the line.

Also not to be forgotten is that our tsunami coverage has been seen by a lot of observers as a test of WikiNews. The Tsunami Help section is part of that experience, and it is providing serious value to those who need the information and knowledge. Let us embrace that for the sake of Wikinews's long-term plans. -- IlyaHaykinson 00:26, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yesterday, I seperated the sections under Tsunami_Help, because I thought having them not under Tsunami Help would make it more confusing. Hopefully that helped. --Randy Johnston 19:30, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think we can assume that their efforts have things in common with Wikinews' mission, or at least it is not very difficult for many of them to understand what Wikinews is about.

But my speculation includes that bloggers may find it quite redundant to summarize all the major news coverage from various sources at Wikinews. There are special coverages offered from all the major news organizations. Why duplicate their efforts? So while we all share common spirit, Wikinews proper and bloggers may have different priorities in terms of content development...

Speaking of 9/11, I also wondered if we would eventually "separate" some contents from Wikinews, just like 9/11 wiki was spun off from Wikipedia for various reasons, including that 9/11 contents are not encyclopediac enough.

To Tsunami help bloggers: if you are reading this and have some ideas how we can cooperate, I hope you will join this discussion. Tomos 01:00, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikinews stylebook for wikijournalists[edit]

For the sake of consistency, I am convinced we need to have a working Wikinews Stylebook for in-house use to allow budding writers access to ways to write more clearly. I've been a journalist for years and every newsroom I've worked in had a style guide (usually a house style supplimented by the AP Styleguide or the Chicago Manual of Style for issues not addressed in the house style book).

I suggest we develop a Wikinews Stylebook with guidelines decided by consesnus at: Wikinews:Stylebook and refer people to quality free online style guides for issues not addressed in our house writing style book. I have an incomplete example of what I mean in my user space at: User:Davodd/Stylebook.

What do you folks think of this idea? Davodd 01:06, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am going to try to integrate Wikinews:Style_guide and Wikinews:Content guide into a one-stop resource for writers unless folks start objecting. Davodd 01:12, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. I've just re-read the AP style guide (the little book by their former editor-in-chief) and totally agree that we need to provide a guide in order to have a more consistent voice. -- IlyaHaykinson 01:13, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First draft is done. Davodd | Talk 23:54, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I completely agree with you Davodd, thanks for all the work. Lyellin 00:30, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Excellent idea! I like what you've done so far. Lankiveil 06:19, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What benefit does Wikinews provide, redundancy aside?[edit]

Ok, so we have the wikipedia article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, and the Wikinews article on Strongest earthquake in 40 years hits Southeast Asia. We have the wikipedia {{current}} template for current events, and we have a likewise disclaimer on wikinews for current events. Both are articles, both are NPOV. The Wikipedia article is vastly better and provides more information. The Wikinews article links to a bunch of wikipedia articles and copies the content, simply writing it in a different style. Further, Wikipedia has on its main page an "In the news" section, and those articles are updated to reflect the changes. In addition, Wikipedia has a current events page.

So essentially, we have two wikis reporting the same information in likewise articles that are simply written differently. I don't see the point. I'd rather see all of our resources pooled to the other projects rather than continuous and unnecessary decentralization. This project defeats one of Wikipedia's biggest advantages: it is accurate up to the second. (maybe that sounds like a pipedream ideology but just you wait a few years) --Alterego 07:58, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My take is that Wikipedia is good for writing a large issue, long-term events, etc. Things like local news and small news stories are not good for Wikipedia. See list of articles on Science and technology, or Category:Politics and conflicts, for example. Many of them do not find any place in Wikipedia because they are not encyclopediac enough. Tomos 08:24, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Wikipedia's strength are for historically significant news items and for reasonably 'static' data. Wikinews feels like it's strength would be in topical and volatile items - stuff that needs a lot of detail today but loses all relevance after a week or so. If an article grows and starts treating the topic comprehensively, then that's probably a good candidate for migrating it over into Wikipedia. BryceHarrington 09:29, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The main answer to the question presented is: Wikinews is news; Wikipedia is history. Sure there will be some overlap of subject matter, but the emphasis and calling for each project is different. Davodd | Talk 23:29, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikinews should post detailed information about every single event related to the earthquake, while Wikipedia should contain summaries of these events (which could link to the Wikinews articles). I think we should not have "report" type pages on Wikinews that are very similar to Wikipedia articles.--Eloquence

Index Page Navigation[edit]

Very exciting and important project, my respects to everyone's obvious hard work. My first impression as a news consumer and webdesigner is that the index page offers a lot more access to the mechanics of producing the news than it does to the news itself. This means I had to go hunting to find the actual news and it took me a while to understand I was expected to scroll right down the page to get to the site content. Could we please have links to all the major sections - not just spread out on the index page - grouped as a menu section up in the first screen? This would mean having links to

Latest News/ Ongoing Reports/ Special Reports

Politics and conflicts/ Economy and business/ Science and technology/ Disasters and accidents/ Crime and law/ Environment/ Health/ Culture and entertainment/ Sport/ Obituaries/ Weather

Regions: N America/ S America/ Europe/ Africa/ Middle East/ Asia/ Oceania

Wikinews editing: News in Brief/ Ongoing Disputes/Editing Needed/ Requested Articles

--Shan-UK 10:51, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

These types of suggestions have been discussed before, but didn't get far because the site was too new, and later on because of the page protection.

(Unfortunately vandals made it necessary to protect the main page, so most of us can't improve the layout of the main page without getting an Admin's permission.)

I'm working on a "sandbox page" right now, where I plan to show a better page design to the Admins.

I'll post a link once I have a sandbox page that is worth taking a look at.

— DV 16:17, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I set up a sandbox for the Main Page to illustrate an improved layout that addresses some of the points you made.

Please check it out and let me know what you think on the Main Page sandbox discussion page.

Thanks for your constructive feedback.

— DV 20:21, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks DV (damn holidays taking all my time). I'm trying to stay abreast of this and will put up any changes as soon as people want them up . Sorry that it had to be protected :(. Lyellin 23:42, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

--Carlosar 00:05, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC) I have a general idea to the Developing stories here

Great ideas. I left comments on the talk page. Davodd | Talk 01:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Are we being hijacked overrun by Tsunami Help folk?[edit]

It appears that Wikinews is being overrun by well-meaning, but otherwise disruptive group of wiki-squatters bent on turning this project into a help center for the Indian Ocean crisis. Although I feel for their mission, and some of what they are doing could be valuable to a news consumer, they are consistently publishing articles in a fashion that violate Wikinews conventions and our mission on many facets, including: Using main article namespace for chat-type organizing, posting copyrited material, posting guides in languages other than English, and generally posting content that is not journalistic in nature. Am I wrong in thinking that much of the Tsunami Help posting traffic does not belong here? -- Davodd | Talk 14:25, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I don't want to be the one who goes and shuts down a well-meaning charity effort though, even though my feelings are that pretty much all of those articles don't belong here. An exception can be made for those non-English pages. I'd even list them on VfsD, if it weren't for the fact that there's no policy specifically prohibiting non-English things here (this probably needs to be addressed). Lankiveil 15:38, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC).

My "favorite" blatant hijackings are: Tsunami Help/Tsunami Blog In The Media, a media contacts list; Tsunami Help/Contributors, their editorial masthead; and, their turning of the phrase "page history" into a redirect into their area. -- Davodd | Talk 15:48, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that last one is quite horrible, and I'm going to list it on VfD. Unfortunately, a lot of the particularly blatant pages, while they quite clearly violate our policy, don't come under the speedy deletion criteria, so I'm not going to go ahead and start shooting them down. But yeah, something really has to be done about this, because this really isn't the place for their little project. Lankiveil 16:06, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC).

I almost wish we could set up something akin to the Sept 11th wiki for this purpose? Think that might be possible? Could even provide a link here to that wiki, but it really does not fit here at all, I agree. Lyellin 21:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To borrow a page from wikipedia, I started Wikinews:What Wikinews is not in hopes of jump-starting this discussion. Davodd | Talk 22:40, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

After a LENGHTY IRC conversation with many of the Tsunami bloggers, we have come to an understanding that Wikinews editors will consistently watch the Tsunami Help content to keep POV creep under control and out of their pages. Blatant POV articles (acknowledgements, brag pages) will be moved to the Talk page of the main Tsunami Help page with the original POV article turned into a redirect to the specific Talk page subsection. -- Davodd | Talk 10:10, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have already made suggestions about items listed on Request for Deletion, but I think they just do not share some basic assumptions experienced wikimedians have and take for granted. Let's don't bite newbies. And I think it is important that we discuss things with Tsunami Help bloggers in good faith. (And for that matter I really appreciate Davodd's effort on IRC). I will post my report & opinion about some potential and existing issues to their mailinglist, including POV, language issue, etc.

Let me also mention that while I thought some of the contents are rather not like news, others on IRC, including Jimbo, said they are.

And I hope the bloggers will not hesitate to join our discussion. Someone calling you a hijacker does not mean that you are simply supposed to go away, and I am very sure Davodd doesn't mean it. Tomos 11:09, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By "hijack" I meant a group coming in, using this space and not participating in the Wikinews community. Maybe I should have said "squatters" instead of the h-word ... but that is moot now. I find the vast majority of the Tsunami Help content is useful and newsworthy (I did add a link to it on Latest News and even created the helpout template that is on the front page). My main concern has been that the blog folk may not understand that by posting their content here on Wikinews, that as part of this wikimedia project, they give up proprietary rights to control it - that content of Tsunami Help will most likely be bodly edited by fellow wikijournalists. Including my moving of any POV (personal opinion, gratitudes, acknowledgements) off main namespace and into to appropriate talk or project pages. On a personal note, I find the passion these folk have for their effort to be inspiring and I hope as many of them as possible will continue to be in the Wikinews community as contributors long after this current crisis passes into history. -- Davodd | Talk 21:55, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Database Corruption?[edit]

Is anyone else seeing Francisco Melendez as the last editor in this page history?

I tried two small edits (removing a space) and he still appears as the most recent editor, leading one to the mistaken impression that he is removing other folks comments, yet editing the document or purging and refreshing the page shows that is not the case.

I am starting to save the contents of all the articles I work on in separate text files locally on my machine, because if the database is getting corrupted, we could lose all of our content if the backups are corrupted as well.

Please let me know if you see this problem cropping up in this case or elsewhere.

— DV 01:34, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am seeing it too. I am not sure what's going on — you might want to file a bug at http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org -- IlyaHaykinson 01:58, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion Policy[edit]

I have created (well, copied from en.wikipedia) a speedy deletion policy. You can see it here: Wikinews:Policies and guidelines/Deletion guidelines/Speedy deletion. Please let me know what you think about it. Lankiveil 07:49, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC).

Local reporting--different policies?[edit]

As we start to branch into local reporting, is there any objection to the WN communities that arise around those local areas establish their own policies that may differ from the broader WN ones?Kurt Weber 19:59, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Use of IRC to set Wikinews policy[edit]

I am uncormforatable about a recent trend to rely upon chats in the Wikinews IRC channel as policy-making sessions for Wikinews. There are no written records kept of such meetings and community participation in IRC is sporadic. So in reality no true sense of a community consensus can be gotten from IRC participation. IRC is, on the other hand, a great way to quickly discuss an issue between or among a small group of folks. But as for official WN policy? I hope not. -- Davodd | Talk 00:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think it sometimes happens that folks discuss things on IRC leading to productive results. However, if proposed policy emerges from such chat sessions, they need to be logged and archived on the site (see m:Wikinews/IRC_meeting_Oct_27 for an example of a log of a meeting). -- IlyaHaykinson 01:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I raised a big stink about setting policy on IRC on Wikipedia, as I am a big proponent of open meeting laws to force policy-makers to allow the community to participate.

However, the best I got out of the discussion was an invitation to hang out on IRC. :)

(The reasoning seems to be that IRC is open to everyone should they have the desire to lurk there.)

However, for those of us who have no desire to hang around in a chat room, I hope if any policy discussions are held on IRC, that someone will do the rest of us the courtesy of posting a log of that discussion (as Ilya has done above), as we need to be careful to prevent the classic small-town phenomenon of town meetings that are only held for show, where it is obvious that a discussion was held somewhere else to organize a block of votes, and the rest of the community members in attendance are left wondering why it appears that everything has already been decided everytime they bother to show up for the official town meeting.

I realize that there is no way to enforce this, and if you enjoy discussing Wikinews on IRC, that's your business, but I hope folks will see the wisdom of keeping any policy discussions as open as possible.

Regards,

— DV 03:25, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree, while IRC is a good place to talk shop, it's hardly a good place to set policy. I think that any proposed policy new should be listed here in the Water Cooler and discussed, before it's adopted. Lankiveil 03:38, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC).

I also agree on this. And those who discuss things on IRC should be encouraged to report the results so that others can join on Wikinews.

An exception, sort of, I can think of is that when there is some emergency, for example a wave of vandals or a very urgent deletion request related to privacy& stalking, it is good that administrators or whoever dealing with that decide on things based on discussions with others on IRC than act unilaterally. Tomos 03:47, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have a major problem with the current model of policy development on Wikinews. For example, this page sucks. There are more than 80 sub-sections. Unless you are constantly patrolling (easier to do in IRC, btw), you cannot keep abreast of the policy discussions. I also have found almost no attempts to develop consensus; instead, divisive polls with, as often as not, nearly deadlocked votes, are used to enforce a "democratic" model of majority tyrany.

I do not have a specific solution for this problem, other than to massively cut the clutter, build a more complex but easier-to-navigate system of letting the contributors know about policy discussions. And develop consensus, not majority rules. - Amgine 06:50, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The "patrolled" feature[edit]

Has anyone else noticed the exclamation points marking "unpatrolled" edits?

I read the discussion on this feature over on the Village pump and it appears that if anyone is interested in using this feature, they can only mark "diffs" as patrolled. There is no way to mark new articles as patrolled, because there is no diff.

It appears that no one is using this feature on Wikinews, so for now, it's simply a visual annoyance that is cluttering up the recent changes log.

Does anyone plan to use this feature?

— DV 03:25, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think I need a computer science degree to figure out either how to use it - or how to turn it off. :-) -- Davodd | Talk 05:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would like to use this feature, and am trying to get a live RC channel set up at #enrc.wikinews right now. - Amgine 06:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tsunami Relief[edit]

Just a suggestion from a "newbie" on blogs: What if we start a groundswell suggesting that President Bush take two unprecedented stands to help the tsunami victims AND take a giant step towards peace in the Mid-East:

Have a small, simple swearing-in ceremony and send the $$millions NOT spent on an elaborate inaugeration to the tsunami destroyed countries.
Call on the warring factions in the entire Middle East (Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis) to cease fighting and send aid to their Muslim brothers and sisters in the tsunami-stricken countries.

(above edit from an anonymous IP address)

While these are pleasant suggestions, Wikinews is not a political advocacy organization.

Also, it's my understanding that the American presidential inauguration ceremony is being funded by private individuals and organizations, so President Bush does not directly control that money.

Perhaps if you could find a notable organization that is advocating the above proposal, Wikinews could publish a story about that organization's efforts should they have success with generating support for these ideas.

— DV 07:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Help! The water cooler is too full![edit]

This page is over 200K in size, and my browser is about to crash from editing this page!

Candidates for Admin (you know who you are :) will receive my accolades for helping to move some of these discussions onto subpages.

— DV 07:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anon IP Reply re: Tsunami Relief[edit]

I am not a political advocate....I'm a concerned grandmother with an idea I'd like to see get some legs, just to stop the criticism about the U.S. not responding with enough speed or money to this tragedy. So if President Bush does not control the inaugeration money, surely he has influence on those who do. And what could be wrong in suggesting that the people in the Middle EAst conflicts put down their weapons and send aid to the starving and suffering victims of this terrible tsunami? Those who are fighting certainly can relate to suffering and destruction of their homes and land.

   I don't belong to any organizations to make this suggestion to...that's why I started searching for blogs, and found Wikinews.  Can you suggest any?
   Thanks,  just call me "Grandma Pepper"

Wikinews:Water cooler/Archive2

Summarized answers[edit]

Unanswered questions[edit]

Article review[edit]

Abstract ideas about Wikinews[edit]

WikiZeitGeist[edit]

Primary Aims of wikinews[edit]

Proportional distribution[edit]

Our definition of neutrality[edit]

Underrepresented news[edit]

Wikinews content[edit]

Columns[edit]

Weather, or Weather News?[edit]

Media agencies description pages[edit]

Category portals[edit]

Logos, graphics, IMAGES, and photos[edit]

The Logo[edit]

Style and format[edit]

Caps in titles[edit]

Section links[edit]

Sources sections[edit]

Date categories[edit]

Standard format for articles[edit]

Grouping articles by subject[edit]

Naming: Queensland (Australia) vs. Florida[edit]

Categories and organization[edit]

Wikinews tools[edit]

RSS for Wikinews[edit]

Orphan articles section[edit]

Local News flagging[edit]

Other Questions[edit]

Speed[edit]

Wikipedia link[edit]

Updated by/Replaced by Template[edit]

Deletion[edit]

Look and feel[edit]

Couple things[edit]

Followup Articles?[edit]

News Alert/ Wikinews Wire service[edit]

Unreviewed articles on the main page[edit]

Weekly Portal[edit]

Audio release[edit]

Neutrality issues[edit]

Science and technology needs to be two categories[edit]

Wrong goal: Should be aiming for a weekly magazine in the short term[edit]

Separate source pages[edit]

Alternative Review Process[edit]

Main Page[edit]

U.S. or US?[edit]

Press releases and treating "statements" as events[edit]

Help me here if you please...[edit]

Do something to avoid becoming just another mouthpiece for the powerful.[edit]

Main Page[edit]

Wholley biased and liberal[edit]

Full names as usernames.[edit]

Date format.[edit]

A little bias wouldn't hurt[edit]

Voice of America[edit]

Defining 'News'[edit]

Deletion policy[edit]

Goodbye[edit]

Terror Attack in Jeddah[edit]

Use of word "terrorist" vs. "separatist", "army", "militia" etc.[edit]

RSS feeds of summaries[edit]

Do we have a time machine?[edit]

Bylines[edit]

Subject To Discussion great online show with bloggers[edit]

Is there such thing called author?[edit]

Comments: MustEatYemen on irc[edit]

Dateline Poll[edit]

Upload media[edit]

comment system[edit]

Original reporting[edit]

How to modify interface language options[edit]

Quality over Quantity[edit]

Did Wikinews BAN the China Daily?[edit]

A proposal to fix potential legal complication[edit]

State of the Wiki[edit]

Local reporting[edit]

Size of the Article[edit]