There is a seemingly more attractive image, File:John Hickenlooper - 48260057156.jpg? In it the guy at least faces the camera. --Gryllida (talk) 04:27, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Done --DannyS712 (talk) 05:01, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Is 'speculation emerged' clarified anywhere in the article? It's not clear to me how this speculation was delivered. --Gryllida (talk) 04:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- I've clarified that it refers to CNN's report based on unnamed sources. --DannyS712 (talk) 05:03, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
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Revision 4500962 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 04:47, 15 August 2019 (UTC).Reply
- Copyright:
 Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Newsworthiness:
 Not ready: See below.
- Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- NPOV: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
Comments by reviewer:
- I'm not sure what specific event is described by "speculation emerged". Speculation by the news media isn't normally newsworthy (we don't report our own speculations per neutrality, nor those of other news orgs unless they become part of the news).
Questions about the above? Ask.
If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.
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- @Pi zero: - I've clarified that its rumors that emerged Wednesday, based on CNN's unnamed sources. I wrote "speculation emerged" because it wasn't confirmed by Hickenlooper. --DannyS712 (talk) 05:04, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
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Revision 4501002 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 06:43, 15 August 2019 (UTC).Reply
- Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Newsworthiness: Not ready: See below.
- Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- NPOV: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
Comments by reviewer:
- Some additional specificity has been offered, for which, thanks.
- There is a focus difficulty here still, which may be remediable.
- We don't report rumors, as such, which is still how this is mostly being presented atm. There's no source to pin down. The same problem applies to reporting someone "is expected to" do something — the passive-voice construction serves grammatically to allow omission of the actor, and thus begs the question of who the actor is: who does the expecting? (The headline atm uses the "expected to" form.)
- We also don't report that another news org has an exclusive. (Really this is a basic principle in itself, although one could try to ground it more classically by calling it "single-source".)
- Looking over the sources, though, it appears that all of them are citing anonymous sources close to the candidate. Which could be deliberate or not, but it's not anonymous rumor, and it's not a bunch of news sources speculating, it's apparently some unknown number of anonymous sources. There ought to be a way (though it might be tricky) to present that as the focal event; key to success would be finding the right way to describe who this is coming from. Keep in mind, we're not try to cover up the fact that we don't know much; we're trying to express concisely what we actually do know (which, rather sloppily stated, seems to be more-or-less that a whole bunch of news sources simultaneously come out with each one or more anonymous sources for this same allegation, all at once). Keep in mind, the shortest statement of it should be the headline, second shortest the lede, and then further details can be provided further down the inverted pyramid.
- Of course, I'm up already halfway through my night, I'll have to turn in now and I'm unlikely to be up early after being up so late, and by the time I can get back to this there may be a new development destroying freshness on the earlier story.
- Btw, in my prelim check for similarities to sources, in addition to one I acted on, I also noticed a couple of others of possible interest:
- The phrase "in a state where" is just barely long enough to show up on the radar (four consecutive words); at that length one might ask how distinctive it is (an exceptionally drab four-word sequence might squeak by, an exceptionally distinctive three-word sequence might not, depending in part on surrounding context). In this case, though, the paragraph really needs to have the state explicitly named at the start, which can completely eliminate the phrase and the question about it.
- The sequence "with a large lead" turns up, which comes with some internal punctuation — "with 'a large lead'" — but here again, before one quite gets to asking how distinctive it is, another issue comes up. [to wit: don't direct-quote sources]
Questions about the above? Ask.
If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.
|
Revision 4501002 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 06:43, 15 August 2019 (UTC).Reply
- Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Newsworthiness: Not ready: See below.
- Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- NPOV: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
- Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues.
Comments by reviewer:
- Some additional specificity has been offered, for which, thanks.
- There is a focus difficulty here still, which may be remediable.
- We don't report rumors, as such, which is still how this is mostly being presented atm. There's no source to pin down. The same problem applies to reporting someone "is expected to" do something — the passive-voice construction serves grammatically to allow omission of the actor, and thus begs the question of who the actor is: who does the expecting? (The headline atm uses the "expected to" form.)
- We also don't report that another news org has an exclusive. (Really this is a basic principle in itself, although one could try to ground it more classically by calling it "single-source".)
- Looking over the sources, though, it appears that all of them are citing anonymous sources close to the candidate. Which could be deliberate or not, but it's not anonymous rumor, and it's not a bunch of news sources speculating, it's apparently some unknown number of anonymous sources. There ought to be a way (though it might be tricky) to present that as the focal event; key to success would be finding the right way to describe who this is coming from. Keep in mind, we're not try to cover up the fact that we don't know much; we're trying to express concisely what we actually do know (which, rather sloppily stated, seems to be more-or-less that a whole bunch of news sources simultaneously come out with each one or more anonymous sources for this same allegation, all at once). Keep in mind, the shortest statement of it should be the headline, second shortest the lede, and then further details can be provided further down the inverted pyramid.
- Of course, I'm up already halfway through my night, I'll have to turn in now and I'm unlikely to be up early after being up so late, and by the time I can get back to this there may be a new development destroying freshness on the earlier story.
- Btw, in my prelim check for similarities to sources, in addition to one I acted on, I also noticed a couple of others of possible interest:
- The phrase "in a state where" is just barely long enough to show up on the radar (four consecutive words); at that length one might ask how distinctive it is (an exceptionally drab four-word sequence might squeak by, an exceptionally distinctive three-word sequence might not, depending in part on surrounding context). In this case, though, the paragraph really needs to have the state explicitly named at the start, which can completely eliminate the phrase and the question about it.
- The sequence "with a large lead" turns up, which comes with some internal punctuation — "with 'a large lead'" — but here again, before one quite gets to asking how distinctive it is, another issue comes up. [to wit: don't direct-quote sources]
Questions about the above? Ask.
If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews. |
@DannyS712: If you will allow what I will call veteran tips, I will offer some advice which I think would have made this article publishable. Wikinews has always been very strict when it comes to future events. In this case, I would have attributed to sources already in the title: "Sources say Hickenlooper will end US presidential campaign in favor of a senate run" or something like that. You should have never framed the information as "rumor" or "speculation". I have read all three sources and that is not what this is. CNN and NBC are the ones saying this will happen, so I'll ignore NYT. CNN spoke to no fewer than three members of the Democratic party and NBC independently spoke to one. These details should have been stressed in the article. This is not idle speculation by some anonymous person looking at poll numbers. Instead, these are statements made by people in a position to have inside information, whose identities are known to CNN and NBC, but spoke on condition of not being named. You have to convey that there is good reason to believe the information and go into why. NYT provides additional backup, because just a day before, they had spoken to four (if I recall) Democrats which had stated this strategy was already under consideration before the CNN and NBC stories. In conclusion: Attribute, attribute, attribute!
All that being said, I am not sure of the overall value of Wikinews getting this story published, what? twelve hours before the actual event. It puts pressure on us to publish a follow-up, which doesn't always happen. In case he doesn't drop out, we could look like idiots with the article on our front page for more than a week (while over at CNN it would get buried in less than half a news cycle). Cheers, --SVTCobra 11:21, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @SVTCobra: thanks for the feedback. I decided to just wait and update the story after the rumor was confirmed, which it has been. --DannyS712 (talk) 23:42, 15 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
@DannyS712: I hope I didn't upset you too much by basically re-writing the article. I did not do it to shit on you or your writing style. I am, however, familiar with stories which carry from one day to the next. (I had one going for two weeks before published). The biggest bottleneck (and I am sure you already know this) is the review process. As writers, we should do our very best to make that job as easy as possible. This includes using reliable sources. FiveThirtyEight may be good for statistical analysis but for broader news they are just a synthesis site like us. I also understand the urge to cling to the sources you used yesterday. But if they are repeated in the new sources, it's just "why?" for the reviewer. If you just add new sources without verifying they confirm what you wrote yesterday, that's not helpful either.
I may have gone a little extreme on the "inverted pyramid", but I think it holds up. And yes, again, I will apologize for rewriting an article. It's just my best tool for teaching and/or giving examples. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:08, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
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Revision 4501425 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 18:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC).Reply
Comments by reviewer:
- Some of the intended background crept over into "analysis"; not so direly but what I was able to remedy reasonably within reviewer's purview.
- Handling the quote took some thought. My understanding of en.wn convention re LeftQuote/RightQuote is that it must be a pull-quote, i.e. repetition of something that's also quoted in the article-body proper (I've heard en.wp does pretty much the opposite), and my usual quick-and-dirty remedy has been simply to remove the quote; but here, I gradually concluded it was important to the article, to support the second half of the headline. So as an alternative I tried adjusting the frame of the quote to make it a paragraph inline rather than a LeftQuote; which seems to me to push reviewer's purview a bit, but at least isn't adding information as such because the quote appears to have been introduced with intent to contribute to the whole.
- Ideally, the lede would have a few words of support for the second half of the headline.
The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.
|
| Revision 4501425 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 18:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC).Reply
Comments by reviewer:
- Some of the intended background crept over into "analysis"; not so direly but what I was able to remedy reasonably within reviewer's purview.
- Handling the quote took some thought. My understanding of en.wn convention re LeftQuote/RightQuote is that it must be a pull-quote, i.e. repetition of something that's also quoted in the article-body proper (I've heard en.wp does pretty much the opposite), and my usual quick-and-dirty remedy has been simply to remove the quote; but here, I gradually concluded it was important to the article, to support the second half of the headline. So as an alternative I tried adjusting the frame of the quote to make it a paragraph inline rather than a LeftQuote; which seems to me to push reviewer's purview a bit, but at least isn't adding information as such because the quote appears to have been introduced with intent to contribute to the whole.
- Ideally, the lede would have a few words of support for the second half of the headline.
The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer. |
- @Pi zero: thanks so much. Originally, the quote did indeed repeat something already quoted in the body, but I guess SVTCobra (t · c · b) removed that during their development. Is it okay if I re-add the quote in the body, as well as the pull quote? --DannyS712 (talk) 19:12, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @DannyS712: The quote is in the body; I transmuted the LeftQuote into a paragraph in the stream of the text. If you want to try re-adding the pull-quote half of it, that might work. --Pi zero (talk) 19:16, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Pi zero: I've made the change I was imagining - can you take a look? --DannyS712 (talk) 21:10, 16 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
