Wikinews:Water cooler/policy

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

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

Contents

[edit] Strategic Planning

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

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

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

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

--Philippe

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

[edit] Wikinews:Featured article candidates - should not be nominated until they are archived

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  • Wikinews:Featured article candidates - Candidates should not be nominated for consideration until after they have been archived. In this manner, the actual article being considered will not be one that is itself subject to change, perhaps rapidly in the case of a breaking story, but rather is a page that is complete and finished, and has afterwards been archived and fully-protected as per WN:ARCHIVE policy. It is only a wait time of Seven Days. Cirt (talk) 21:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Note: This would only apply for future nominations, not retroactively. Current noms would of course be grandfathered in. Cirt (talk) 21:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

  • Symbol neutral vote.svg Neutral does it really matter that much? If it makes a difference, why not just have the article stay on WN:FAC an extra week. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
It's kind of silly to debate the merits of giving something this consideration while it is still being edited, especially if it is a breaking story, and such an easy change to make, and would make things a lot more appropriate, IMHO. Cirt (talk) 21:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't really care all that much either way, although there is a certain logic to this. One point - after 24 hours an article shouldn't be edited for content, so perhaps we should make the limit 24 hours instead of the full week? Tempodivalse [talk] 21:24, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
The full week is best to make this more in line with the already existing policy of WN:ARCHIVE, and this way, when the article is being considered as a candidate, it will already conveniently be fully-protected. Cirt (talk) 21:26, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
But really, what difference would it make? If someone alters the article for content after 24 hours, it's going to be reverted per WN:ARCHIVE. That's almost the same thing as locking up the article so no one can edit it in the first place. *shrugs* Tempodivalse [talk] 21:29, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Not necessarily. There are cases where things could be changed, or at least where people could argue that things could (or perhaps should) be changed or tweaked. There have been situations at WN:FAC where people have proposed changing parts of articles specifically so that they could be better candidates. Making this seven days, would effectively remove all those arguments as a possibility from the WN:FAC page, and help to better focus FAC discussions in the future. :) Cirt (talk) 21:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but those sort of suggestions can be made after archiving, as well as before, you said so yourself below. I still don't see much of a difference between a 24 hour and 1 week limit, and i like the former because I think it's more practical (e.g. allows an article to be nominated quicker while it's still reasonably fresh). Tempodivalse [talk]
Better not to nominate an article quicker, rather per Brian McNeil (talk · contribs), below, it is better to take the time to reflect on the article prior to proposing. Cirt (talk) 02:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Support

  1. Symbol support vote.svg Support, as proposed above. Cirt (talk) 21:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  2. Symbol support vote.svg Support Verily. No point to FAC'ing something that's been published for 2 hours. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 21:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  3. Yep. –Juliancolton | Talk 21:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  4. Symbol support vote.svg Support—sounds like a good idea to me. Dendodge T\C 22:26, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  5. Symbol support vote.svg Support because this is much better than not taking time to reflect on the article prior to proposing. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  6. Symbol support vote.svg Support although I would rather see either 24 or 48 hours, since it is quite possible to say, for example, 'could we budge that image a bit, its messing the formating up? Thats better' and then support. True, most or all of these things can be done post-archiving, but not everyone is an admin. We in the cabal cloakroom must bear that in mind. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 23:42, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
    I would agree with you that those are minor things that can be done post archiving, per WN:ARCHIVE. Cirt (talk) 23:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
  7. Symbol support vote.svg Support I think a week is just fine, though, I don't think we need to mold this as per archive. I think at the least, 72 hours may suffice. Though if its any number lower than archive period, I say we make a separate policy regarding FAC/FA. If not, then just go by archive. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
    Yeah, I just don't think it is worth the bother to do that, it is simpler to just modify it as per existing policy of WN:ARCHIVE. Cirt (talk) 03:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
  8. Symbol support vote.svg Support Logical idea, although I still prefer a shorter limit, like 24 or 48 hours. Tempodivalse [talk] 03:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
    I just don't see the overwhelming urgent need for an emergent desire to nominate articles to become FAs faster than waiting seven days. Cirt (talk) 03:49, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
    And I don't see the need to have to wait an entire week before being able to nominate an article. Smile.png I really don't have a strong opinion on it either way, as this is a relatively minor issue, wiki-wise, and won't significantly impact anything. I won't object to it regardless of which time limit is agreed upon, that's just my preference. It might be best to agree to disagree. :-) Tempodivalse [talk] 03:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
    Okay, no worries. :) Cirt (talk) 03:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
  9. Symbol support vote.svg Support Yeah. No reason to FAC a recent news. Pmlineditor ∞ 09:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

  • Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Articles that later become featured articles are going to become archived anyway, so what's the point? After all, we should be getting things done quickly, not waiting impatiently for about a week while the article that could become featured just lies there doing nothing. Rayboy8 (my talk) 07:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


[edit] Newsworthiness - how to define it?

I've recently noticed that, while we frequently mention newsworthiness and have a {{newsworthy}} template, we don't have a policy on it, or anything in the help/policy/guideline pages that describes how much newsworthiness a story needs before it can be published. This was especially brought to my attention when a new user created Benet Academy students raise money for leukemia patient, a very local news article, and was a bit confused as to why it wasn't newsworthy enough for publication. See also the thread on my talk page. The closest we have to newsworthiness criteria is at WN:CG as far as I can tell: "News must be relevant", which is very vague and subjective. I'd like to suggest we create a policy page (or at least guideline) that gives pointers on what our minimum standards for "newsworthiness" is. Thoughts? Tempodivalse [talk] 03:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I steered clear of that particular article less-so for notability, more because the sources were crappy and of questionably credibility. I think newsworthiness could be a particularly contentious issue to try and nail down as a policy. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Well we all agree that something like User:Edbrown05/Grass in Uncle G's back garden continues to grow is not news worthy. But where the line is, is a very good question, and one i think that would be very hard to figure out. In many ways this is similiar to Wikipedia's issue of what is notable, perhaps we can maybe look there for some ideas how to define newsworthiness (as in to see how they go about defining it, there definition of notability obviously is not a good definition of news worthiness). Bawolff ☺☻ 13:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought there was a newsworthiness policy — a very flexible and subjective one, which I think are probably beneficial traits, at least at the size and stage of development where we are now. Template:Newsworthy refers to WikiNews:Content guide, which says:

This doesn't actually say no local stories, although it does seem somewhat discouraging of them. And even that could have unfortunate long-term consequences. There is a deep question here about possible directions for the long-term evolution of WikiNews. Perhaps what we should be doing is providing more guidance on how to include local stories, making them as comprehensible and interesting for a wider audience as may be, and at the same time providing some sort of additional/modified infrastructure so that they don't become annoying clutter for those readers who aren't interested in them. Imagine a future in which Wikinews is a major source of news, both local and non-local, for myriad (English-speaking, in our case) localities around the world, with orders of magnitude more throughput than we have now. It's not that different a concept from Wikipedia providing lots of specialized articles, that might be looked at by anyone, but are only likely to be relevant to people with certain interests. --Pi zero (talk) 16:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


One thing I often make reference to is the fact that a traffic accident is typical local news. If the article is of similar 'importance' (in a news sense) to articles like Driver hits median strip, rolls vehicle in NSW, Australia, then it is newsworthy enough for inclusion without doubt. Just to throw that out there. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

  • Not ban local coverage, just not include anything that hasn't made its way onto the BBC or CNN or similar. If they don't consider it newsworthy, we can probably also do without it. All it serves to do is clog newpages with stuff people outside of that region are unlikely to read. Perhaps "of interest to people outside of a certain geographic area" would be better? Dendodge T\C 20:24, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • To me, not including anything that isn't on national news sites pretty much is a ban on local news. It's often quite haphazard what does and does not end up there and the best sources would tend to be the local ones anyway. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 20:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Limiting what we can report on to international news sources is not a very good idea, i think. We'd miss out on a lot of legitimate local news that way. My idea was not to create a "hard" policy on it, but to make some mention that "micro-local" (i.e. not very significant even at the local level) stories, such as Benet Academy students raise money for leukemia patient, are probably not going to be accepted. Tempodivalse [talk] 20:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I think you're probably right. A vague guideline is better than an en.wp-style hard policy. Cases should be assessed on their individual merits, not against a checklist of bureaucratic criteria. The last thing I want to do is ban local news. I think the hard part comes when we try to set a dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable local stories. I don't think, having thought about it more, that my proposals for a hard line are very good, and think a simple recommendation (with examples) would work better. Dendodge T\C 21:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey guys, sorry if I essentially opened up Pandora's box when I wrote that Benet article, but this discussion does bring up a point: how should "local news" be defined? Benny the mascot (talk) 22:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"Local news", from my perspective, is news that's only concerns/is of significance within a relatively small area or population (i.e. a town, small city, city district, etc. etc.), and isn't relevant to many people outside that area. (does that make sense?) I don't think there's any strict boundary between "local" and "national/international" news, it's pretty subjective and really depends on one's definition of "local". Tempodivalse [talk] 22:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
There is a reason for Category:Local only. Were Wikinews contributed to by as many people as Wikipedia there should be absolutely no reason to stop doing the legitimate local news. This — in theory — is the point of the Portal: namespace. If we end up with 20-30 people reporting from Pakistan and India, then those contributors can have a portal where they pick the leads for their geographic audience.
If you take the time to really explore something like the BBC News and Sport websites you'll find lots of interesting coverage that rarely makes the front page. A real gem to look out for hidden there is BBC Monitoring.
Wikinews can have authority by depth; well put together local news is a part of that. --Brian McNeil / talk 22:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I forgot we had "Local only"! I have nothing against any news, no matter how narrow its scope, as long as it does not push more important (in a news sense, not in the sense that students with lukaemia are unimportant, as that is obviously untrue) news off the DPLs and Latest News listings, while still allowing people who are genuinely interested to access it (through categories and/or portals). Dendodge T\C 22:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Aren't school related articles, therefore, to be considered as local news? A school is essentially a community of kids living in the same region. Benny the mascot (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Perhaps. But it does not make it a venue for you to publish your school newsletter. There are issues with contributor conflict of interest, self-promotion/PR, not to mention verifiability. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I would be fine with banning articles on trivial topics such as schools' extracurricular organizations, but since when did supporting a leukemia patient become NOT newsworthy? Benny the mascot (talk) 04:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
    • When you 'only' raised $205. I appreciate that's a very worthwhile result, but newsworthy? That is where this kind of discussion starts. Actually, we've needed to have this one for a while, so whatever we decide, the article did *something* important. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 07:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes, just providing intuition with more raw data can jump-start it. So in that spirit, how much would they have to have raised to make it newsworthy? We can probably agree that it would be news if they'd raised $205 million; and the boundary between the two is presumably fuzzy, but roughly where would that fuzzy boundary be? Would it be newsworthy at $205 thousand? $20.5 thousand? What about $2050? --Pi zero (talk) 13:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd say it's contextual; it can depend on the total annual income for the charity, the annual charitable donations by a group, or how it compares with the local GDP. Each case would need considered on merit. Perhaps better trying to build a list of questions; the story submitter reviews them and lists data for where there's a "yes" answer as a list of 'newsworthiness criteria'. $500 might be a lot in one case - if it was something like a village in Africa locally raising the funds to buy a small computer or a server for their OLPC users. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I find myself in complete agreement with Brian. Context is everything (c.f. my comment above). I like the idea of a list of questions: we could have a number of them, and an article may not have to fulfil every single one, just use it as a general guide as to the sense of newsworthiness (I don't believe in too many hard and fast rules or ticking every single box; sometimes things come down to judgement). I think one of the things that defines newsworthiness to me, is a story being out of the ordinary or being a notable achievement (though this introduces more fuzzy notions I fear). Something that is the exception, rather than the rule for example—a recent story on the BBC springs to mind, where an Indian schoolboy, after finishing his classes, went back to his village and was headmaster in a makeshift school for over 300 or so slightly-younger students, who otherwise would have had no education. Another thing maybe to bear in mind is the list of categories currently set up as guiding factors: whilst of course we can create new ones, they give a broad idea of what sort of articles we currently publish. Obviously these will develop over time, and I'm all for change. --Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 05:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Based on the gedankenexperiment about quantities of money raised, I was thinking that unusual-ness contributes to newsworthiness; and, thinking that that can't possible be all there is to it, I decided that having impact on a large number of people contributes to newsworthiness. But then I came across this story: London Lord Mayor's Show draws crowds despite bad weather. I loved this story. Why is it newsworthy? Yes, there's an historical connection between that culture and mine, but I'm pretty sure I'd similarly enjoy an analogous story in a different cultural setting... unless we got glutted with them. So maybe unusual-ness comes into play; but if so then, it seems to me, unusual-ness has such sweeping breadth to it that different aspects of it need separate explanation. And there's some sort of local-interest floating around here, of a sort that, I think, has some appeal for an international audience. Can stories be of equal local interest, yet not of equal newsworthiness by our standards because of how they'll play to a wider audience? And, is there something wrong with a notion of newsworthiness that would cause local stories to become less newsworthy simply because the number of them increases? --Pi zero (talk) 14:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] {{breaking}} and {{breaking review}} abuse

This, 40th H1N1 swine flu death recorded in Scotland, by no stretch of the imagination, can be considered deserving of an urgent review.

All the — oft-repeated — expert opinions are that H1N1-A is no more deadly than the general annual flu season. There is some difference in the groups where serious illness and death occurs, but it is not new, it is not killing thousands, and it is well-understood.

Not to mention that when I just looked at the opening of the above article it started, "A Adult".

I'm sure there's a few other people might like to give an opinion on use of {{breaking}} and {{breaking review}}. I don't think we should follow the Fox-style dramatisation of news and attention-grabbing tactics splattering things like that over everything entails. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:26, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I've also noticed that {{breaking}} seems to be used as an excuse to to hash out a mediocre article. –Juliancolton | Talk 17:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree too. In my opinion, the {{breaking}} and {{breaking review}} tags should only be used when the story is about something that has happened just minutes ago, or when it's an event that's actively ongoing and likely to change dramatically within a short period of time - e.g., stuff like the Fort Hood shootings or the Hudson River jet crash. Maybe we should create a guideline page to give suggestions and explanations for when the breaking tags are appropriate? Tempodivalse [talk] 17:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to have slightly more leeway with the {{breaking review}} template. My reasoning behind that is that sometimes when a story unlikely to change breaks (EU Presidency, for example) it is nice to throw the article out in a timescale to match the newswires. Julian raises a good point though: the excuse behind a crappy article. We can have crappy filler articles if no-one writes anything better, but we should be careful not to do that purely because that's all we have to do. Wikinews at its best os going above and beyond. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
There is a narrow window of opportunity where, for the new EU Pres story, we could have beat the NYT twitter feed. It is never an excuse to submit something for review that, within the first sentence, breaks rules of English you should learn before nine or ten. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
My feeling concerning the use of the breaking review template is that either: (i) the information is hot off the press (so to speak) and we can position ourselves as a provider of the latest news (the EU Presidency article was a good example); (ii) the news is being updated regularly and so we don't want the article to sit around forever for review (Food Hood shootings spring to mind); and perhaps, and to be used sparingly, (iii) when the article is about an event that is to take place in a few hours (the celebrations for the anniversary of the Berlin Wall spring to mind). On the other hand, if the information is not going to change substantially in the next few hours, we should try and review the article as quickly as possible certainly, but we should not use the breaking review template as a means to draw attention to an article one would like to see reviewed quickly. That should come about through us (and I include myself here as being guilty of leaving articles up for review too long) clearing the backlog quicker. --Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 09:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


Another point I'd like to raise is that sometimes it's unclear if we should use the template or not. I've been guilty, for example, of deeming based on my sources and the general spread on Gnews that the article is breaking, and therefore sticking the template on it. Of course, such articles rarely get updates and I find myself wondering wether it was appropriate to use the template. Just to throw that out there: When is breaking news not breaking news? Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 17:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

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