Talk:German hotels step up boycotts against online travel agency HRS

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Review of revision 1416353 [Not ready][edit]

Links to German Wikipedia have been removed. --Bernhard Fastenrath 16:21, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The English sources I have found are part of the article already, they do not cover all aspects of the article, however. --Bernhard Fastenrath 16:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The German version of the article has now been published by German Wikinews. --Bernhard Fastenrath 19:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes[edit]

Occasionally it is possible to cope with non-English sources from which only direct quotes have been drawn.(comment by the reviewer in the related article pending review)

I can offer the following quotes in translation:
Stefanie Heckel:
(a) "How they handle it, lies in the entrepreneurial freedom of our members." and
Dehoga:
(b) "In Münsterland a part of the hoteliers' will at least for a certain period of time not cooperate anymore with the platforms hotel.de and HRS, announced the hotel and restaurant association (Dehoga) of Westphalia."
from http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.n-tv.de%2Fwirtschaft%2FHoteliers-boykottieren-HRS-article5592521.html&act=url (n-tv.de)
and
(c) Compared to other travel sites is the change [of the Terms and Conditions] a "distortion of competition", the Westphalian Dehoga manager Renate Dolling explained: "According to initial findings the majority of our members will contribute [to the boycott]" said Dolling.
from http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.die-glocke.de%2Flokalnachrichten%2Fregionales%2FWirte-rebellieren-gegen-Hotelportal-HRS-ae05015c-b381-4e89-9194-a9ca4e0f8b33-ds&act=url (Die Glocke)
The quotes are copied from Google Translate with only minor changes for better English and intelligibility. --Bernhard Fastenrath 16:34, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editorial cleanup[edit]

  • The related news sections has been removed as requested.
  • Non-English sources are only used where English sources are not available
    • See also: Foreign language sources: Anyone can run most foreign langauge documents through free online translation software (list). Google itslef has Chinese, Koren, and Japanese, plus all the usual suspects. Arabic [5], Farsi, Hindi, Indonesian, Russian, Romanian, Finnish all have sites for translation. You can also ask friends who speak said langauge to comment, you are involved in a wikimedia foundation project for crying out loud!


Detailed review of source usage:

1st paragraph: The company Hotel Reservation Service (HRS) has increasingly come under fire by the hotel industry because of its terms and conditions. The German Hotel and Restaurant Association (DEHOGA) Westphalia in Münster now announced many hotels in the region Münsterland would "at least for a certain period" boycott the HRS portals HRS.de and hotel.de.

Sources: Quotes (c) and (b)

2nd paragraph: The criticism of the hotel industry was caused by an attempt to increase the negotiated commission for hotel reservations from thirteen percent to fifteen percent, but also by a preferential treatment clause that denied hotels the right to offer better prices through any other booking channel. The European umbrella organization of the catering facilities HOTREC had already criticized this type of clause and similar contract clauses in May 2011 in a position paper.[1]

Sources: Increase of commission and most favoured treatment clause [1] (English source) and HOTREC paper [2] (English source)

3rd paragraph: The Westphalian DEHOGA managing director Renate Dolling said: "According to initial findings, the majority of our members participate". In how far the other DEHOGA associations in North Rhine-Westphalia followed the example was not yet known. A nationwide call for boycott did not exist, explained Stefanie Heckel, the press spokeswoman of the national DEHOGA federation. "How they handle this lies in the entrepreneurial freedom of our members.", said Ms. Heckel.

Sources: Quotes (c) and (a)

4th paragraph: On February 15 the higher regional court of Düsseldorf had ordered HRS in a preliminary injunction not to enforce its preferential treatment clause. Already on February 10 the German Federal Cartel Office had admonished the company for violating §§ 1 and 20 of the German Act against Restraints of Competition.

Sources: Preliminary injunction on Wikisource (Translated source) and most favoured treatment clause [3] (English source)

  • Comment You had to dig six years into the past, to a point prior to the introduction of a formal peer-review process on Wikinews, and quote from a "problematic" user to justify foreign language source-use? Please. The discussion you pulled makes reference to 'Original Research', at least in that translation work is a form of research. If your German is good, and the tweaked translations of quotes substantially match with what Google translate spews forth, then that can generally pass. However, if your German is good, pick a few English-language Wikinews articles and feed them into Google translate. See how many areas of the articles contain readily- misconstrued, or misunderstood, sections; that's why we no longer rely on GTrans to any great extent. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know the comment was obsolete, I'm not very often active on English Wikinews. I use Google Translate for translating my German Wikibooks to English or my English Wikibooks to German. Maybe I'm biased because I usually know what the author meant. Google Translate often offers wordings that are better or worse than what I would have chosen, but it's quite useful as a "second opinion". I thought the quotes where quite useful because we can actually put them on the discussion page in proper translations. --Bernhard Fastenrath 17:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A search with incategory:"Wikinews guidelines" would have been useful (I used 'prefix' instead). --Bernhard Fastenrath 18:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

== Original reporting ==

I will provide original reporting to support the story. --Bernhard Fastenrath 10:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC) [reply]

No responses from the interviewees yet. --Bernhard Fastenrath 13:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New event[edit]

The article has been rewritten and refocused on a new event. --Bernhard Fastenrath 12:44, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Review of revision 1435132 [Not ready][edit]

The appropriate way to do this would have been to leave a comment on this collaboration page; Matthiasb is not an authorized reviewer on English Wikinews, merely someone who has the bit for the specific purpose of sighting interwiki links. The fact that Matthiasb does not recognize xyr own lack of qualification to review neutrality is illustrative of the problem. --Pi zero (talk) 15:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I asked him merely because most editors on German Wikinews do not have a reviewing permission for English Wikinews and he appeared to have the required permission. --Bernhard Fastenrath 15:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to explain newsworthiness: The company has a revenue of 100 million euro per year, sells hotel reservation in 180 countries of the world and makes 30 % of its revenue outside Germany and has offices in five to ten other countries. News about the company, however, mostly appear in German only. Apparently a company with 'only' 100 million euro revenue per year only makes it 'barely' into international news. There are, however, court cases, disciplinary warning letters and boycotts concerning the company. All of that is happening now: The court case is open, the admonishment by the cartel office is unresolved, the boycotts have happened and are ongoing. I think that is newsworthy. --Bernhard Fastenrath 15:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been looking over Matthiasb's contribs elsewhere. Despite the fact that I (and, apparently, a number of de.Wikipedians) have felt the need to have a go at xyr, I nonetheless feel we can trust this user. There's no sign of dishonesty, a sysop on de.wikinews, and de.wp seems consistently keen to keep ahold of the user (and trust with rights!) despite strong disagreements, which is almost a better advertisement of trustworthyness than silence. This was largely a formality, since I've seen this user about and wasn't expecting anything nasty to show up. However, it may not be me who reviews it. If anyone else does: I'm satisfied to take the above at face value. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Does not matter anymore. I proposed the removal of the review right, and the bit was already removed by Pi zero. That the conflict starting sysop decided the proposal without further discussion shows much about the understanding of collaboration within this project. Good luck to all for the future. --Matthiasb (talk) 18:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why should we discuss your own request? I'm not aware of any rights anywhere that cannot be resigned (except possibly membership of some street gangs). Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, though I'm not native in English, I think that there is a difference between request and proposal. :/ Aside that, since when sysops are supposed to act in affairs in which they're involved in some way? --Matthiasb (talk) 18:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I must admit, I interpreted it as you handing your rights in (as, I assume, did Pi zero). If you want it talked over, I can re-open it for you. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 18:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Review of revision 1436303 [Passed][edit]

See http://esp.nongnu.org/. I wrote the draft to address the issues with HRS (and similar companies). --Bernhard Fastenrath 17:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]