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De-Recognition of Wikimedia Hong Kong

This is an update from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee. Translations are available.

Recognition as a Wikimedia movement affiliate — a chapter, thematic organization, or user group — is a privilege that allows an independent group to officially use the Wikimedia trademarks to further the Wikimedia mission.

The principal Wikimedia movement affiliate in the Hong Kong region is Wikimedia Hong Kong, a Wikimedia chapter recognized in 2008. As a result of Wikimedia Hong Kong’s long-standing non-compliance with reporting requirements, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Affiliations Committee have determined that Wikimedia Hong Kong’s status as a Wikimedia chapter will not be renewed after February 1, 2017.

If you have questions about what this means for the community members in your region or language areas, we have put together a basic FAQ. We also invite you to visit the main Wikimedia movement affiliates page for more information on currently active movement affiliates and more information on the Wikimedia movement affiliates system.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Affiliations Committee, 16:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:

• Update 1 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (15 December 2016)
  • Introduction to process and information about budget spending resolution to support it
• Update 2 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (23 December 2016)
  • Start of search for Lead Architect for movement strategy process
• Update 3 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (8 January 2017)
  • Plans for strategy sessions at upcoming Wikimedia Conference 2017
• Update 4 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (11 January 2017)
  • Introduction of williamsworks
• Update 5 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 February 2017)
  • The core movement strategy team, team tracks being developed, introduction of the Community Process Steering Committee, discussions at WikiIndaba conference 2017 and the Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland
• Update 6 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (10 February 2017)
  • Tracks A & B process prototypes and providing feedback, updates on development of all four Tracks

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

• Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
  • Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
• Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
  • Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
• Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
  • Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

• Find out more about the movement strategy process
• Learn more about volunteering to be a Discussion Coordinator

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams

05:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

A local page for this at Wikinews:Wikimedia Strategy 2017 has been created, if you'd prefer to participate here instead of on Metawiki. Please let your fellow editors know, in the optimum locations for you. Looking forward to your input! :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-13

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• When you edit with the visual editor, you can see a visual diff as well as a wikitext diff when you review your changes. [1]

Problems

• Special:AllPages was disabled for two days due to some performance issues. It is back, but the filter for redirects is gone as the cause of the performance problem. It still needs to be fixed. [2][3]

Changes this week

• New filters for Recent changes will be released on Portuguese and Polish Wikipedias and MediaWikiwiki on March 28. Other wikis will get it progressively. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and, on certain wikis, user intent prediction.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from March 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from March 29. It will be on all wikis from March 30 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:46, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [4]
• The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [5]
• English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [6]

Problems

• Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [7]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [8]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Category

One of the journalism students posted an article about Australian Aborigines and I've been digging around for any sort of "indigenous peoples" or "Indigenous rights" category. Do we actually not have one? Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:37, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: If we had, it should be a subcat of Category:Human rights, which it isn't; also Special:Search turns up nothing relevant in category space for native or aboriginal (and, really, if it were there I'd likely have run across it at some point). --Pi zero (talk) 12:07, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Well it's good to know I don't just have category blindness. We might want to think of establishing one of those (the category, not the blindness). Although Australian and Taiwanese first nations are very different from American Indians in most ways, there are aspects of colonialism that affect them similarly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:18, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: How does such a category relate to, say, Ireland or Scotland or Wales, or Basque Country (or for that matter Cornwall, though one doesn't hear about that so much)? Or... Israel and Palestine? --Pi zero (talk) 12:47, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

For Ireland, I don't think they do. The general understanding of "indigenous peoples" is populations of people who were displaced or similarly affected by migrations/invasions of other populations during the early modern period (colonialism). Kind of like how "Republican" refers to the American political party and "republican" to anyone who promotes republics and how Catholicism is a specific religion but being catholic just means anything inclusive or open to everyone. So technically the descendants of people living in Ireland before the Celtic migrations could be called indigenous without violating the dictionary definition, but they don't fit into modern discourse in the same way.

It sounds like what you really want to know is "How do we at Wikinews determine who is and isn't an indigenous person?" My take is that we shouldn't. We should look for and then follow established journalistic practices.

According to the United Nations, "Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them." It seems to come from José R. Martínez Cobo's "Study on the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations." I could check the AP and Economist style guides at some point to see if they have a take on this. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:57, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: I'd imagined you had in mind a topic category, i.e., a category that published news articles would go into (rather than an internal category for people who are indigenous). A good topic category has some characteristics... I don't think I can name them all (it's more of an "i can't define it but I know if it I see it" kind of thing), but two of them are

• It should be clear what articles should and shouldn't go in it. The name of the category is part of that, and there may be a usage note field on the {{topic cat}} template to clarify.
• There should be some key words, that are quite likely to occur on articles that belong in the category and are likely to be wikilinked, so they can be made mainspace redirects to the category and thereby help to assure the category will continue to be populated with appropriate articles as they are published over time.

--15:36, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

No, I mean it would be a category for articles about indigenous peoples and the issues that affect them, not for individual people. The closest homolog I can see is CAT:LGBT. It might be more accurate to call it "Indigenous issues" but that's not what people say (which makes it hard for the article's first author to remember what to put after CAT:), and "Indigenous rights" would not be appropriate for articles about, say, a show full of indigenous art.

Hm, I guess key words would be things like "Native Americans," "American Indians," "Aborigines," maybe the names of specific indigenous peoples like "Cherokee" and "Sami." Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:48, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections

Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.

• April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
• April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
• April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
• May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
• May 15–19 – Board vote checking
• May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:

• Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
  • There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

• Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
  • One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,
Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:38, 7 April 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

The last week of the 1st cycle of Wikimedia strategy conversation

Hi, I'm Szymon, a MetaWiki Strategy Coordinator. 3 weeks ago, we invited you to join a broad discussion about Wikimedia's future role in the world. The discussion is divided into 3 cycles, and the first one ends on April, 15. So far, Wikimedians have been discussing mainly about technological improvements, multilingual support, friendly environment, cooperation with other organizations and networks.

• If you'd like to get detailed information about the discussed topics, have a look at → that page.
• If you'd like to join the discussions, please comment → on the talk page of that page or on Meta-Wiki.
• If you have any questions that weren't answered there, feel free to ask me.

I'm pinging one of 2 recently active admins. I hope you'll help me with passing along the news, maybe even join the discussion. @Bddpaux:. (Pi zero, I didn't want you to get cross-wiki spammed :)

Looking forward to your input. Thank you in advance! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:33, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Truthfully I'm not favorably disposed to the process. The Foundation's institutional objectives (not a reflection on individuals within the Foundation) are fundamentally incompatible with those of the collective volunteer community; in the long run, I see only two alternatives: either the sisterhood will find a way to get out from under the thumb of the Foundation (though atm I can't imagine how), or the sisterhood will whither and die. --Pi zero (talk) 00:45, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@Pi zero: I understand that. The future of some projects, e.g. Wikinews, seems to be uncertain. By the way, that's actually a strategy-related comment and is perfectly eligible for being copy-pasted to one of the pages I mentioned in the second bullet point :) SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:50, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): The Foundation is inherently anti-wiki; it can't help being so; and that's just as much of a problem for Wikipedia as for any other sister. I do think Wikinews is something of a bellwether: if Wikinews goes down, the rest of the sisters will fall like dominoes, with Wikipedia at the end of the row. My point is that the Foundation is singularly unqualified to make long-term plans for the sisterhood. Any plans the Foundation touches will be twisted by the nature of the Foundation. --Pi zero (talk) 01:10, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [9]

Changes this week

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [10]
• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [11]
• The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
• RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:33, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• You can add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [13]
• You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [14]
• The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [15]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
• Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [16]
• From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [17][18]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [19]
• When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [20]

Problems

• Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [21]

Changes this week

• The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [22]
• Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [23]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikitribune is launched

I figured this might interest the community. E.g. http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/04/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-launches-wikitribune-news-by-the-people-and-for-the-people/ and https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-to-fight-fake-news-with-new-wikitribune-site. See also: https://vimeo.com/214586867. The main page is supposedly at https://www.wikitribune.com/ but it's a 502 error for me now. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

The website works now, and I see 483 supporters, 29 days remaining, and no journalists hired yet. --George Ho (talk) 09:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Newbie here: I see the implication in the news that Wikitribune this is a WMF project. Any comments Victuallers (talk) 10:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

So there will be two news projects? Or will Wikinews somehow merge in to Wikitribune? --12.42.51.27 (talk) 12:15, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Jimbo has repeatedly demonstrated inability to understand Wikinews. He came here a while back and asked us a bunch of questions, and frankly I think both sides came away perceiving that the other side had trolled them. --Pi zero (talk) 12:38, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been concerned about what is now being called 'fake news' for a couple decades... and when Wikinews came out hoped that it could become a strong counter to that problem and the disintegration of the traditional news organization. However, it never seemed to have the backing and promotion needed to get there. So now it seems like Wales has come to the same conclusions and is pushing such an effort... but why do so separate from an established community ostensibly under the same umbrella? --12.42.51.27 (talk) 13:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Folks, can you not read... the news? Nieman Lab piece: "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikitribune, an independent site (not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation)." -- Fuzheado (talk) 13:29, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

In my experience, Jimmy Wales has had two major difficulties in his interactions with Wikinews: he hasn't gotten along with individuals at Wikinews, and he doesn't seem to have ever really understood Wikinews. The two are not unrelated, presumably. I admit I was quite disappointed when he came here a few years ago and started asking questions... and they seemed to be unuseful questions. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but decided to go along with it and try to help him with the questions he'd asked, on the theory that he would know best the order in which he needed to learn things. In retrospect, it might have been more useful to suggest that different questions ought to be asked... though one wonders if there was any way to anticipate, at the time, what other questions ought to have been recommended. While I was thinking in terms of giving him another chance to try to learn what Wikinews is about, I no longer have any confidence that was what he had in mind to do.

It seems possible he's so steeped in the Wikipedian way it interferes with his ability to recognize that there is any other way for a wiki to work. It's especially unfortunate if his difficulties interacting with Wikinews have cut him off from the very wikimedians who could provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of traditional journalistic techniques in a wiki environment and the dynamics of applying wikis to those strengths and weaknesses. --Pi zero (talk) 15:54, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

On its face, it seems to maybe have some viability. But, other than the small number of paid journalists, I can't see that its much different than WN. We've just always had such a darned steep learning curve and people get frustrated very easily (when they're pressured to learn things gradually). I dunno. Maybe it'll fly well....I just don't know. --Bddpaux (talk) 18:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales has stated on his talk page that all Wikitribune content will be published under a license compatible with Wikinews. --Yair rand (talk) 18:41, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, does anyone think that a story on WikiTribune is worthwhile? Maybe for when it's actually live? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:46, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe an interview would be interesting.
acagastya 18:50, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Let’s hope that Wikitribune is better than WikiNews. At almost midnight in the UK on Tuesday 25 April 2017, the WikiNews main headline is 'Theresa May calls for June general election' – the article is dated 'Friday, April 21, 2017' and relates to an announcement that May had made on 18 April. I'm struggling to see how this is helpful to anyone with even a passing interest in the news, or how the publication of such a basic and uncontested fact needs another outlet. Wikipedia, of course, already has articles with more up-to-date detail JezGrove (talk) 22:35, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@JezGrove: No doubt. The problem with Wikinews versus all other WMF projects is that something has to be more-or-less complete when it's posted. An encyclopedia article can be in various stages of writing and still be useful or at least something that a layman could expand or tweak. A news story which is half-written after three days is no longer news. So anyone working here has to be on top of it and have a quick turnaround all the time. I don't envy those who assess articles here and I wish I had more time to be useful to this community. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:04, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

There's remarkably little new here. People who don't know about Wikinews pronouncing it "dead". A new non-WMF project is proposed that has some similarities to Wikinews but fails to recognize the things that Wikinewsies already know about crowdsourced journalism; and it seems likely that those setting up the new project failed to learn that stuff because they were informed by the anti-Wikinews crowd who required on principle that Wikinews have nothing to teach them. Meanwhile, Wikinews needs crowdsourced semi-automation to enable it to handle more expert tasks more easily, which we already knew was what it needs (and which is being developed, neither more nor less quickly than yesterday). --Pi zero (talk) 23:55, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

The fact that our current limiting reagent seems to be reviewers leaves me thinking Wikinews would be okay if it just had more people. Fortunately, there's no rule against working at both Wikinews and Wikitribune. Honestly it looks like they just want a bunch of Wikignomes and fact-checkers for the heavy lifting (as opposed to the terribly glamorous work we do now exclusively for name recognition, heh).

There doesn't seem much for us to do just yet. I could give it a go at least. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:14, 26 April 2017 (UTC)