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[edit] Transcluding DynamicPageList results to Wikipedia pages

Hi, I would like to be able to transclude (if that's what it's called) the results of Portal:Film's "Latest news" to Wikipedia's Film Portal "News" section. The applicable DynamicPageList code is below.

<DynamicPageList>
category=published
category=Film
count=15
notcategory=disputed
addfirstcategorydate=true
</DynamicPageList>

Can anyone show me how to display results like this from here at Wikipedia...or at least tell me where to go?! ;-) Thanks, RichardF 23:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge DPL doesn't work cross-wiki. You'd have to maintain the list in your userspace and manually list on WP. Sorry! --Brian McNeil / talk 23:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Short of convincing the devs of installing dpl on 'pedia, you need a bot, or do it manually as BrianMc said. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
There's the rub! We're trying to figure out a way to automate keeping news up-to-date in Wikipedia portals. I tried to "transclude" my sandbox from here to there, but that didn't work either. I'm not bot-literate, but that could be a way to go? Is there anyplace I can go begging for that in a way that could be used for any applicable Wikipedia portal?!  ;-) RichardF 00:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
You can only transclude stuff (short of using some javascript hackery that really wouldn't work that well) from within the project you're on (at least as far as wikimedia wikis are concerned). A bot for copying between the projects would probably not be very hard to do, as all it really has to do is copy one page and paste it into another. (Unfourtanatly I'm too busy at the moment to work on such a project. I'm sure there is somebody who would be able to do it for you). Bawolff ☺☻ 00:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Where's the best place to go begging for some help on this? ;-) RichardF 00:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
To be honest, I'm unsure. You could try poking arround some irc channels related to wikipedia maybe. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Okay, thanks! :-) RichardF 01:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
It would be great to have this for all kinda portals on Pedia. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 09:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

We have liftoff! See the Wikinews Importer Bot for how to implement importing Wikinews items into Wikipedia portals. Here are a few examples:

I really don't know my way around here, so someone could post this wherever announcements like this should go, or point me in the right direction. :-) RichardF 03:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I added something at Wikinews:Spread Wikinews#Use the Wikinews Importer Bot to automatically update Wikipedia portals. Any other good places? RichardF 03:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

This is related, but also off-topic. I recently archived a story (Pittsburgh's Bettis to work as NBC studio analyst, not that it matters) and because it was a recent change within Category:Television it showed up on Wikipedia among the most recent news (and still does as of this writing) on Portal:Television, even though it is from February 2006. Is there any way to make the dynamic lists use the date of the story and not the date of last edit? It would also be beneficial to our own infoboxes. --SVTCobra 04:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

  • I agree. It would be very useful if the dynamic lists could note the date of the story instead of the date of the last edit. Wilhelm 04:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
I guess I forgot to save my comment... I also agree this a is good idea. Does anyone know how to change the coding for that? I'm sure Wilhelm and I will make sure all the existing examples and pages get updated. RichardF 04:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
afaik, there's no way to do this presently. adding addfirstcategorydate=true and using published as the first category specified in the dpl comes close to it - adding the date on which the article was first categorised as published. –Doldrums(talk) 08:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't get it, addfirstcategorydate=true is already in all of the above examples, but the date still changes whenever someone edits the articles. Wilhelm 09:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
i believe the date changes if the categories are changed or the page is renamed. whereas this edit, for instance, did not affect the date in Portal:Science and technology/Wikipedia. it's a good idea to make 'Published' the first category in the dpl instance rather than the country or topical name. –Doldrums(talk) 10:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
For an explanation on why this happened, see bugzilla:12584. In a nutshell: Moving pages updates the time on DPLs. —Zachary talk 17:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Can we make it so that it does not, and so that times on DPLs are only by time of first published? Wilhelm 22:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
As soon as the code is updated for the site (r29615), page moves will not affect the time on the DPLs. —Zachary talk 00:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, great. So what will affect the time on the DPLs? Wilhelm 01:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC).
An article going from publish to {{develop}} will reset the date. It would then show the date the article was re-published. —Zachary talk 03:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page move restriction

I would like to have another vote on the page move restrictions for anon users, as the techs have now implemented it on all wikis. We have the option to opt out and i would like to see there is community consensus to do this. The previous discussions (here and here showed no real consensus either way. However as we are now included in this action i would now like to see if there is support to op out or whether people think we should keep the restrictions.

[edit] Votes

Indicate whether you wish to Keep the current restrictions or Remove them and request an opt out.

  • Remove Support the removal of the restrictions. --MarkTalk to me 17:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep —FellowWiki Newsie 17:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Remove for the same reasons I was against implementing them seperatly. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep the restrictions. We have a problem with page move vandalism, this will contribute towards addressing the issue with a very small chance of inconveniencing some genuine users. Would we rather readers see Magnitude 5.3 penis cockslaps Taiwan or National Sexpress awarded slut to lick pussy in major UK sex shop or seeing us being responsible and taking this step. Adambro 20:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose I do not believe a restriction on page moves will benefit us. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:03, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep restrictions. "The free news source you can write" is a great concept that I'm a big fan of, but I don't think that should extend to page moves, which are much lower in need compared to regular editing and can be more disruptive (as Adambro illustrated above, though those are a bit extreme... and the first one is really funny). I don't think the project will grind to a halt if the restrictions are removed, but I think that additional little layer of anti-vandalism protection is a good thing. EVula // talk // 23:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
    Just so you know, those were both genuine vandal move targets... Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 23:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep restrictions. I think the desire for anons to move pages in productive efforts is slim, and doesn't warrant lifting a good vandal-combat tool. I say re-review the issue in three months. --David Shankbone 23:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Remove restrictions. Anon makes page — 68 people die in landslide. another person dies after that. What happens then? Bawolff ☺☻ 00:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep restrictions. Too much potential for vandalism otherwise. --Skenmy(t•c•w•i) 17:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Remove per Bawolf.. plus archival mitigates much of vandalism the problem. Nyarlathotep 13:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep restrictions, anons contribute greatly to Wikinews but not with their pagemoves. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep With skenmy and adambro (!) on this one. Pilotguy roger that 04:49, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep as in there is no important reason we should opt out of a wiki-wide policy on this. Page-moves (renames of articles) can always be requested on the talk pages and are usually done pretty quickly. However, I don't buy into the vandalism argument, as most page-move vandalism is done by registered users (accounts usually created for that exact purpose). But even well-intentioned page-moves by anons can be problematic. They are not aware of WN:NC, and often use up-style resulting in further page-moves, usually creating a mess of double redirects. Anons can just object to the title on the collaboration page ... they can still contribute in the most meaningful ways which is editing the article itself. --SVTCobra 02:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. From what I can see, this would apply to anons and new users (~4 days?). I would rather have the inconvenience of a page-move restriction for new users than have visitors to the site reading a porn headline. --Jcart1534 15:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Jcart1534 (talk · contribs)'s argument makes perfect sense. And from personal experience (not with vandalism involving page moves but just on new articles) I think that if a new user or anon wants something moved and can't do it, they won't hesitate to comment about it somewhere and let us know. Cirt 16:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Remove per Bawolff --User:Anonymous101 Talk 18:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep restrictions on anonymous/new user page moves. I am an antinonymouseditarian. Vandalism by anonymous editors is a totally useless, system-supported waste of serious editors' and readers' time. RichardF 02:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep the restrictions. The vast potential for vandalism far outweighs Bawolff's (and others') "immediacy for updates" argument. For example, if a new user/anon were to move A very popular story to A very popular story offensive comment, and then edit the redirect, there is no way at all for that to be reversed until an admin can come along and delete the old redirect (or we find a new title and move there - less than ideal as I'll explain). In addition, I was recently re-reading the "breaking news" guidance here. It's stated that we should avoid moving pages too much to avoid damaging links in from other websites. It also states that any new findings should go into a new article, as we should be informing our visitors of events as they happen. Granted, this argument is very specific to the example Bawolff gave, but I think that the whole "more harm than good" idea holds fast. Martinp23 - (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

Is this regarding bug 12071 and the discussion at the Metapub? If so, it has nothing to do with anons. It is about new users being able to move pages. Greeves (talk • contribs) 20:40, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

  • We cannot allow anons/new users to create pages and not to move them. If we're gonna have this installed then we'll have to also take it upon ourselves to get people to create accounts before creating new pages. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 20:42, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Wikinews is not an encyclopedia, we can't wait until the middle of next week for a page move. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • This is looking like another bout of no concensuss, so which side do we do. Typically with no consensus we keep the status quo, but is the status quo not changing the restriction, or not opting out of a wikimedia wide change in restriction? Bawolff ☺☻ 06:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
We managed perfectly well when Willy On Wheels was regularly vandalising, I think the status-quo should be renames allowed as it was before. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Further to Bawolff's comment above I'd like to argue that status-quo is "Administrators and other regular contributors keep fixing page move vandalism". Failing that, I'll distract people with what Wikipedia has on Status Quo. :-P --Brian McNeil / talk 10:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Broken "opinions" tab

Why is it that when I click on the "opinions" tab from this article it takes me here instead of here?

Most likely, ? is a special character in uris, and the comment stuff doesn't handle them properly (encode them, or not strip them). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to use DynamicPageList to display from either of two categories at once?

Any help here? Wilhelm 12:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC).

  • Please see Portal:Current events/Wikipedia. I am trying to get it to input from either category=May 11, 2008, and/or the previous day, category=2008 May 10 , as opposed to what it's currently doing, which it looks like is just the first one. Wilhelm 12:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
can't be done with current version of dpl. –Doldrums(talk) 14:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Responded at Portal talk:Current events/Wikipedia. Wilhelm 15:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
If only we had DPL2... 21:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Directly linking to videos (and other weird uri schemas)

We filed a bug to allow linking to some uri schemas for videos as they broke {{source}}. A work arround is in place (see source documentation), but we still wanted the ability to link. Brion said that linking directly is a bad idea, and we should link to the page its on for context. Thoughts? (see bugzilla:12204) Bawolff ☺☻ 21:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Quote
Generally I'd rather see a link to a hosting web page on these sorts of things.

Direct-linking a video is a lot link direct-linking an image file; you lose surrounding context and have no ability to browse the target site, get at copyright info, grab alternate resolutions or formats, etc.

By going that deep (to low-level implemention details of linking a particular streaming format) you're losing a lot of flexibility and information, which hurts the person who has only the link to go on.

Going to WONTFIX this unless there's some compelling requirement for raw deep

streaming video links.


Well, I was the one that brought it up for this article: US Senate committee investigates credit card practices. The problem was, that there was no stable page on which they provided the link to the video. It was just on their "today's scheduled broadcasts" (I didn't go back to see what they exactly call it), which changes daily. Even now, it can only be found by doing a search like this. The only stable link seems to be the rtsp real media link. *though I just got a "not found" on that too. --SVTCobra 02:54, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment tab extension


This is an open poll listed on the Water cooler and Wikinews:Polls. Please remove the {{poll}} flag when the poll closes.

Please Discuss your poll ideas with the comunity before polling, and Don't vote on everything as Voting is evil.


I mentioned a few months back that I had created a MediaWiki extension to add the comment tab to the article and collaboration pages (and also add article and collaboration tabs to the comments page). A few people showed their support, a bug was filed, but I never really followed up with it, and it eventually got forgotten in the archives. I'd like to bring this back to attention, because having this would be a good idea, especially for our readers who have disabled JavaScript, or are using a browser incapable of running JavaScript.

I think that before this can actually get installed, we need to have some sort of poll or something, just to show the devs that the Wikinews community wants this. —Zachary talk 18:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Support: I think its a good idea. it would reduce some confusion as well. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support down with the java-crap. This is really something that should be done with an extention like yours. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support especially if it gets rid of code that breaks in edge cases. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:12, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Yea, I forgot to mention that the JS doesn't work that well in articles like Will Wikimedia "run on Sun"? (though the JS could/should replace " with %22). —Zachary talk 16:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Obvious benefits and I see no undesirable effects. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 16:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support--Cspurrier 18:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support duuuuhhhhh --Skenmy(t•c•w•i) 18:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support This sounds like a very good idea. Adambro 07:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - sounds good --SVTCobra 22:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. --Jcart1534 14:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support as suggester. —Zachary talk 19:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 09:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Booyah baby! --TUFKAAP 00:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] language list

where i can get language list of Wikinews and their respective links?


67.188.99.112 06:44, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, is this what you're looking for? Adambro 06:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
The above link will give you a table with details to judge how active various languages are. However, you can simply go to the Main page and you'll find a list of links down the left that lead to the same page in another language. These links will appear on any properly set up page that appears in one or more additional languages. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DPL getting date wrong?

Why is the output for the new article at Category:Scientology showing the 24th instead of the proper date of publish, the 23rd? Wilhelm 04:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

This is caused by the a bug in DPL (Intersection). It's actually showing the date as defined by "addfirstcategorydate" - which is unpredictable at the best of times. --Skenmy(t•c•w) 19:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Ugh, and there's no way to fix it? At least it's only off by one day... Wilhelm 20:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm actually chasing up the introduction of DPL2 onto Wikimedia wikis - the version we run is horribly outdated and has only the bare minimum of features. --Skenmy(t•c•w) 20:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Good to hear, I'm sure that will be much appreciated by all. Wilhelm 15:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Microformats and coordinates

What happened about Microformats and coordinates? Andy Mabbett 14:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm semi-intrested in the idea. Do you by any chance have a list of actual benifits this would provide wikinews, that may get more people intrested. For anything like this to work, the actual benifits of the microformats has to outweigh the cost of adding them. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DPL userdateformat parametrs

I don't know how using parametrs in <DynamicPageLink>. Now this functions returns events in format Day-Month-Year Title news (for example Site at Wikinews-pl with DPL function - i'm polish Wikimedian). I want to this functions return events without Year. Do you know it make it? I please wrtite to my at pl.wikinews.org (my disution site at polish wikinews)--Wyksztalcioch 00:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Responded to user elsewhere. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Wikipedia Tool Wikinews Needs

Have you guys seen this tool for Wikipedia? It tells you the traffic on articles, breaking it down by day, and total viewing. We need this for Wikinews! --David Shankbone 21:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow thats cool. That would definitly be useful. Looks like w:User:Henrik would be the person who maintains it. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm...lets do it :) DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 23:20, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I left a note on his talk page. He seems a little bogged down with requests relating to the tool at the the moment though. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You can even see traffic for images, user pages and talk pages. --David Shankbone 18:20, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It's...perfect. It's better then Alexa I say, I mean just by typing in Main Page you get the Main Page results, so that will be perfect for seeing who browses what on a given day... damn, if only we had this before the whole Scientology thing we could really measure how much traffic we got. --TUFKAAP 00:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
The best proxy for that right now is traffic for the Scientology article. According to that, it was a one-day event as far as increasing traffic goes. RichardF 13:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
The stats apperently come from here. So if thoose include wikinews, I don't see why they wouldn't include before scientology. also of intrest: [1] Bawolff ☺☻ 10:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm nmot sure if we're included in these statistics - [2]. Also these would be much better then alexa, as alexa is fairly biased (how many people do you know with the alexa toolbar?). These are the real stats. Bawolff ☺☻ 11:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ticker efficency

I noticed that the ticker was taking quite a bit of processing power, so I've been experimenting with different ways of doing it to see if there is more efficient method. Using css instead of changing the innerHTML seems to be much less resource heavy. I was wondering if anyone else notices a difference and if people like the look of doing it this way (only downside is it would look weird if the news had a line break). You can test by adding

addOnloadHook(function () {window.setTimeout((function () {importScript("User:Bawolff/Sandbox/tick.js");}), 300)});

to your special:mypage/monobook.js/equivelent (note: code still needs to be fixed up a bit yet, it isn't perfect yet, this is a demo more then anything). Bawolff ☺☻ 10:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] #tag

new pp installing the tag parser function hook would improve accessibility on Template:Fancy-image lead as well as make updating a little easier. cf. w:Template:Click. –Doldrums(talk) 18:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It should be installed when we switch to the new parser (which i belive is soon based on what i've heard after the initial bugs are fixed at 'pedia, you can test by adding ?timtest=newpp to the url - for example [3]). See m:Migration_to_the_new_preprocessor. (I am also very excitedly awaiting this, the image lead template is horrible. I've tested some wikinews templates, so far the only thing that doesn't work are the dynamic continent templates (now fixed) and the move comment page message in mediawiki namespace, but i have not tested that extensivly). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I didn't read your link. According to that, the thing i'm talking about is slightly different, but should still do the same thing. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
when is the new pp going to be installed and who do we have to talk to to make it happen? –Doldrums(talk) 08:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I believe Tim Starling is the person who is in charge of it (or at least thats the impression the meta page gives). Bawolff ☺☻ 00:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RSS Not Updating

On clicking the orange RSS button on the front page of Wikinews, I have discovered that the RSS is not updating. Why is this? --888gavin 19:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes the RSS does not work. User:Cspurrier is the one who operates it. You can either contact him or wait for it to work again. I'm sure it will be working soon as these problems are only temporary. —FellowWiki Newsie 21:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Photography laws

After enduring days and days of public humiliation on no less than three admin boards and four talk pages on Wikipedia at the hands of a homophobic Jew who hates w:Michael Lucas (porn star) because of some anti-Hasid column he wrote, I thought it might benefit WN to share this article. Maybe not technical-technical, this is an excellent article that gives you the technical laws and resources of what you can photograph and what you can publish in the United States, which is the only law relevant to our U.S.-based servers. It's really excellent, and it gives links to more legal resources if needed, and addresses questions such as, "Can I photograph those people sitting on a park bench and publish it on Wikinews?" --David Shankbone 03:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Very cool article. I wish it had touched on the issue of sporting events as well. On occasion, I get to attend some baseball games in very good seats. As anyone who watches the sport on TV, fans are constantly taking photographs, as seen by the flashes from the stands. However, on the back of every MLB ticket is also bunch legal-eze, commonly known as boilerplate, that says you are not allowed to take pictures and if you did any photo you took is the property of MLB and that you can't reproduce it anywhere ... it practically fills the back of the ticket. Yet, everyone takes pictures of everything, often themselves with the event as a background. I, too, have taken pictures, despite the boilerplate. However, I stopped myself short of posting them to Wikinews for a game report. The only checking I did was looking at Commons and finding it devoid of such material, and thus concluded that the MLB boilerplate held up under scrutiny. [You know, I don't like to mess with rules]/ Cheers, --SVTCobra 04:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Ah, the article does address the sporting event issue: "You can take photos any place that's open to the public, whether or not it's private property. A mall, for example, is open to the public. So are most office buildings (at least the lobbies). You don't need permission; if you have permission to enter, you have permission to shoot." Later it expounds upon that idea: "You can be on private property (a mall or office-building lobby), or even be trespassing and still legally take pictures. Whether you can be someplace and whether you can take pictures are two completely separate issues." And still: "Let's say you're banned by the local mall for taking photos there, but you go back anyway and take more. Now you're trespassing. But unless the photos you take violate someone's expectation of privacy, your taking photos isn't illegal — only being there." --David Shankbone 16:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Sporting events, at least professional ones, are not open to the public in the same sense that a mall is. You have to buy a ticket and by entering into such a transaction one could say that a contract as been formed. The tickets often say that by purchasing the ticket you agree to the terms and conditions, which often includes text like "all images are the property of so-and-so and any rebroadcast is illegal" etc. Now, I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if it holds up in court or wheter there have been test cases. In an extreme example, I am pretty sure that if I video taped an entire game and sold the videos I would have my pants sued off. Something less overt such as a still photo to illustrate a news article, I am not so sure. So, no I don't think the sporting event question is fully addressed in the article. But it is a good article. --SVTCobra 16:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archives/categories

The mediawiki system of categorization is good for databases, but it is not to good for services like Wikinews, cause if you want to find something in category, you must know the name of article (a first word). Probably you know when the event has happened, but you don't know name of article - especialy if you are not active user. The best for our archives will be sorting by date of published articles, not by alfabetical list. Was it notified in bugzilla? If yes - could you give the link? (I don't remember discution about this problem) Przykuta - (talk) 23:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This is actually doable. It could be acomplished as an extention (the correct way to go about doing it, but not something I could do, as I just simply don't know php), or as javascript using the api. (I have a page started in my sandbox, but I don't really have a lot of time to spend on it (read that as: if you know javascript, please feel free to edit it mercilessly)

[edit] Wikinews search?

Similar problem. We need web search engine like google news, not like google. If you want to find latest news in our search engines, you get... you know. Nothing special. We need better search engine. Przykuta - (talk) 23:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? The first step in fixing a problem is knowing exactly what you mean. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I think about results of searching - if you search "linux" you want to find latest news with this word, but you get old news as first. Przykuta - (talk) 23:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I think thats something to add to the wishlist. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Audio file

I have a short WAV file I was wondering if someone could convert for me to OGG and upload, and then tell me how you did it (program, steps, etc.). It's for an interview I'm going to publish soon. --David Shankbone - (talk) 00:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, see you talk page for how to send it to me --Please vote or comment on my RfaAnonymous101 Talk RfA 16:13, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I actually did it using an on-line program. I tried to listen to the audio file at home, but it crashed my Firefox (but not so for the Firefox at my office). Could you try to play it and see what happens? It's on the Billy West interview. --David Shankbone - (talk) 16:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
By the way, it is very easy for thoose who use linux (or mac probably). if you can find a copy ffmpeg for win, that also works well for audio (not video) ogg. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Updating the new leads

After my bold edit to the Main Page, the method for updating leads has now changed. If you visit Template:Main Page Leads you will find 4 links at the top that point to the appropriate editing pages for each of the 4 leads - please ensure that you read the documentation on each of the new lead article pages! --Skenmy(t•c•w) 14:30, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. The Main page collaboration page should be updated with the information to avoid havoc with editing old design/new design. --David Shankbone - (talk) 14:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Skenmy the main page doesn't look right in IE. Stuff is overlapping other stuff.--SVTCobra 14:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
It's not that bad in my Explorer, just the middle section is slightly "thinner" than the top and bottom. AzaToth's other redesign of three columns, which looks really good and will help accommodate things like a "Wikipedia news" section or other new features, will take care of it. --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Fixed for now - not the most elegant of solutions (uses tables) but works well! --Skenmy(t•c•w) 15:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Can you make the blue box lead longer, but not wider, so that the third lead's text does not run over? --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
AzaToth fixed it again using a more elegant div solution. --Skenmy(t•c•w) 15:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Not in IE, and I think I actually was the one who fixed it by adding in more text into the blue box lead, to make it longer (which it needed to be anyway). I'm very excited about this new look. Really. --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
From what I can tel in my IE testing it is fixed. Time shall tell :) --Skenmy(t•c•w) 15:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I reverted myself and now look at it in IE. --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
(bump back) All the articles stay in their appropriate columns for me... what version of IE are you using? (IE7 for me) --Skenmy(t•c•w) 15:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Version 6.0. --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
And that be your problem :P I'll it on to AzaToth to see what he can do - perhaps upgrade to IE 7? --Skenmy(t•c•w) 15:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Haha - I'm at work at a very large law firm, but I will put in the suggestion ;-) --David Shankbone - (talk) 15:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
IE 6 is still widely used enough that the main page should look pretty in it. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikinews WAP


This conversation has been marked for the community's attention.

Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.


There appears to be a WAP version of Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.7val.com/ . Who manages this, and who can fix it, because it doesn't seem to be updating? Can we add it to Wikinews:Syndication once it's fixed? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

According to this (old) article, 7VAL removed support for projects other than Wikipedia due to traffic. I didn't find any other relevant information. --SVTCobra 01:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

(copied from Talk:Main Page by SVTCobra 02:42, 21 February 2008 (UTC)): Instead of using an external site, shouldn't we convince the powers to be to set up something similiar to http://en.wap.wikipedia.org ? Bawolff ☺☻ 06:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Definitely. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Audio update

Many will be happy to know that I have excellent software, Sony Sound Forge, that not only allows me to make razor-sharp edits to take out "off the record" material from my interviews, but also converts to OGG beautifully. The problem I am contending with now: the size. 20MB is the upload limited, and some of these are over 60MB they are so long. So, I'm trying to figure out a work-around that doesn't entail splitting them up. Open to suggestions. I have Billy West and Al Sharpton ready to go up. --David Shankbone - (talk) 01:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you think audio is bad, try video. Solution: split up or save in lower quality. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 02:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I tried lower quality. Maybe I need to go lower. I'm experimenting. But for those who are always chanting 'Where's the audio?' know that I am working on it as promised. --David Shankbone - (talk) 02:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
We - I - really appreciate that. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 02:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Sound forge is a really great program, by the way. If one works in audio like I do, I have to recommend it. It's what one is looking for. --David Shankbone - (talk) 02:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Try changing codecs (if your program allows). For plain speech, I believe (based on what I've read. I have no practical experience, and otherwise don't really know what I'm talking about...), ogg speex can be significantly smaller then ogg vorbis or ogg flac. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikinews has a problem" - "This site is experiencing technical difficulties"

Recently, today especially, I have noticed that message coming up very often. It seems to happen when I am saving edits with about a quarter (probably more) of my edits today producing this message. Is this related to my browser/ISP/Operating System or is it a problem with Wikimedia servers? Is there any way this can be fixed or do I just have to live with it? Is this just a temporary problem? My knowledge of technical issues like this is very poor so I apologise if the answers to these questions are obvious. I also apologise if I sound angry, this is completely unintended. --Anonymous101 Talk 18:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I have experienced this at times, but it seems not as often as you. I'd also like an answer. Cirt - (talk) 20:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Its a problem with wikimedia servers. If it keeps coming up a lot, you can ask the technies at #wikimedia-tech. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shankbone Audio Interviews

I think perhaps the best way to circumnavigate the size limitation issue for my audio files is to split them up, but not at the max allowed, but by section. The problem with this is that in my earlier interviews (primarily, but some in my later) I would ask questions all over the place. For instance, perhaps I would bring up the Iraq War early on, but then later on in the hour we would revisit the topic. I would move the conversation so that it would all be together topically. So, an audio interview on some of them wouldn't conform exactly to the order of the transcript. Ideas? Suggestions? --David Shankbone - (talk) 21:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I can understand where you are coming from with this idea but suggest that it would be better to keep audio in the order in which it was recorded, even if this does split up topics discussed. By doing so it means that the listener is provided with the context in which a comment has been made which may be important. Adambro - (talk) 21:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
We really need to get the upload limit higher somehow. Its sad that gmail has a higher attachment limit, then wikimedia has for upload limit. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Does this audio file crash your browser like it does mine (be forewarned)

Billy West five minute clip for Voice acting article on Wikipedia
Billy West five minute clip for Voice acting article on Wikipedia

IF so, it may be a problem with the OGG vorbis (as opposed to the other OGG formats), or perhaps I am uploading it too high quality (CD, 128mbps). It's only a five minute clip that I inserted on the w:Voice acting article. --David Shankbone - (talk) 04:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

128/mbps - ! no wonder your having space issues. (you probably meant to write a k there). Bawolff ☺☻ 05:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The java plugin sometimes crashes. I don't think this is your fault. looking. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Works fine for me. If it consistantly does it, you may wish to write down your browser version and java version and file a bug report. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
It was Java on my browser. Thanks Bawolff. --David Shankbone - (talk) 05:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Still, it shouldn't cause your browser to crash no matter what. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments talk: namespace

List of pages in Comments talk:

I'm not 100% sure how people end up here, since both an article and its talk page link only to Comments:, and the comments page itself has no tabs, and yet they do. And once you're in this namespace, there is no edit tab, so you have to manually enter the URL to edit it. There's also no consistent treatment of such pages - some have been moved/redirected to Talk:, others to Comments:, and still others left alone. Can we somehow (a) deactivate this namespace, (b) delete all the pages in it, or at the very least (c) add an edit tab? Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 00:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

..or we could fix the javascript so its not as much of a piece of crap :) (but there doesn't seem much point considering the php extension will come online in the near future). Bawolff ☺☻ 05:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
It's probably just not compatible with the piece of crap browser I have at work. I'll try to test it on Safari/Firefox at home. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 23:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
No, their are issues with it in firefox. It works fine, but I still think that the interface is a bit confusing. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia article traffic statistics

http://stats.grok.se/

Does anyone know if this tool can be made to work for Wikinews articles, or if there are other (working/active) tools for Wikinews? If there are more than one, we should make a list somewhere of all of them. Cirt - (talk) 05:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't work for wikinews, because the stats its based on are currently only released for 'pedia (we need to harass one of the developer for it, can't remember who. maybe Domas? I made a post about it on wc earlier i think). Leon's tool used to provide as stats but that died. Statistics are collected at Special:Statistics (look at external links section) and Wikinews:Awareness statistics. Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
In order to show that we are interested in this type of thing, we at Wikinews should create a page to collect the various ways to collect statistics on specific articles, and not just the project as a whole, as a page off of Wikinews:, like perhaps Wikinews:Article statistics, or something like that. Cirt - (talk) 05:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
While Wikinews:In the news, template:Popular articles(broken) and template:Popular articles/recent (broken). Main issue is we do not have such statistics at the moment, so such a page would be empty. Do you have any idea where we can get some? Bawolff ☺☻ 05:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
We could steal wikt:wiktionary's survey system. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I really don't know of the best place to get these sorts of statistics on individual articles like they have for http://stats.grok.se/ - that is why I was posting a request here, to get stuff moving/brainstorming. Cirt - (talk) 05:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I see two possible ways:
  • get the wikipedia stats for wikinews. see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-December/035463.html
  • Get Leon's tool back (Don't know if we should yell at Leon, or get a wikinewsie who has a toolserver account to make a new one. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    • I have a toolserver account but I'm not sure how the tool would work. Bjweeks - (talk) 17:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Heres how it used to work: We have js that causes 1 in 50 users to load an image from toolserver (we should actually disable that now). Every half an hour, an awk script (or was it java program., can't remember) read the apache log file and fed hits per page into a db. php page displayed results. Once a month table was rolled over into a new month. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:20, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
        • I'll give it a shot early next week, I think I have an idea. Bjweeks - (talk) 06:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
          • Ooh exciting, glad you all are working on this. Cirt - (talk) 06:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Editprotected and Template:Archived

For some reason, the DPL of pages with protected page edit requests has suddenly ballooned to thousands of entries. The actual {{editprotected}} tag, however, appears on none of them. What they do have on them, however, is {{archived}}, which includes a reference to "editprotected" in nowiki tags. For reasons I am unable to fathom, the dynamic listing is still picking up this nowikied reference and adding the articles to the list. I would suggest that, until the DPL issue is fixed, the "archived" tag be modified to link to the editprotected template, since this use on other templates seems to be safe. (I would have made the suggested on WN:AAA or by putting an editprotected request on the template, but I'm rather afraid it would get lost in the mess.) Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 02:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Having thought about it, of course the problem isn't with the DPL itself, but with Category:Protected edit requests. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 03:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know what happened, but it is getting fixed. Mediawiki takes some time to delink lots of stuff (Job que is how many things in waiting list), so its going to take sometime for them to be out of the category. Making a blank edit to page will also force it out of category immediatly. (Theres also some other issues. for example anon101's page was in the ready cat). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WN:AAA dynamic list for edit-protected

The dynamic list on WN:AAA that is supposed to list current {{editprotected}} has gone "berserk" and is now an impossibly long list. I checked a couple of the listed articles and they do not actually have {{editprotected}} on their talk pages. I am not sure what caused this. --SVTCobra 02:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I noticed this yesterday (see above section), but apparently it isn't resolved yet. So far, the only thing I can see these articles having in common is that they've got the archived tag on them - if you look at, for example, the list of pages in userspace that supposedly include editprotected[4], they all have the archived tag on them. In fact, when I removed the archived tag from User:202.63.163.8/Philippines, it stopped including editprotected, supporting my theory. The tricky bit is working out why {{archived}}, which only includes editprotected inside nowiki tags, is apparently counting as an inclusion. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 03:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Although, there are at least a few pages that have the archive tag that don't include the editprotected one (again, easier to see if you look in the User: namespace), so I'm stumped. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 03:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
This should be fixing itself now. {{Archived}} was indeed the culprit, it was treating <nowiki>{{editprotected}}</nowiki> as a template use, even though it didn't show the template itself. For future reference, <nowiki> doesn't work well inside of templates anymore (new mediawiki parser I think), and you should instead use {{#tag:nowiki| ... }}. It may take a while for Category:Protected edit requests to empty out. (→Zachary) 07:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it is fixed. I tried a hard refresh and purge and it still shows a bunch of pages that shouldn't be there. --SVTCobra 07:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Assuming the edit that fixed it was this then I wouldn't start concluding that it isn't fixed. The template is used on thousands of pages, it will take time for this change to make its way through the system. Special:Statistics is showing over 600 jobs in the job queue, these could well be the update of the template, I'd suggest it is too early to start worrying that it hasn't been fixed just yet. Adambro - (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
It was also {{Archive-unreviewed}} that was using the broken <nowiki> stuff. So it should really be fixing now. (→Zachary) 17:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Still not fixed, WikinewsImporterBot is still adding year old stories as just published. Tip for those experiencing this, exclude category "archived" (prolly a VERY dodgy fix). 86.21.74.40 01:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Editing titles?

hi, cobra suggested editing the title of an article I'm working on. how does one do this? Thanks in advance!

Leila Monaghan - (talk) 21:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit]