Thanks for the welcome

I'm afraid I've been rather 'bold' with many of the changes I've made today. All of them were intended to make writing good articles easier for a newcomer. If you feel I've messed anything up, please don't hesitate to tell me on my talk page! Dan100 00:41, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just to be clear about the thinking behind all my (rather numerous!) changes, I've updated by userpage to illustrate my reasons. Thanks! Dan100 00:56, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Workspace and Editor tasks template

Hi, I'm pressing to make a few changes to this to make it easier and clearer to understand and use. I've started a discussion on the water cooler. Feel free to comment! Dan100 09:49, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Your WN:3RR concern.

I changed the part you objected to to read: "the 3RR may apply to small groups of two or three working in concert to harrass another person." Is that better? -- Davodd | Talk 11:37, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Request, if you still can.

If you still have sysop privs, could you delete this page: Talk:DirecTV tunes out Trio, network in limbo - it was vandalized (see first edit in history) and then self-blanked. -- Davodd | Talk 07:17, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fairuse and press links

Squeakfox discussion

Amgine, I think there is a misunderstanding. I did not say this article was a download from anywhere. I state here and now very clearly that I wrote the article on the morning of 4th January after reading this article from La Prensa, Honduras [[1]] and it was entirely my own original article. That is why I feel aggrieved at this plagiarism charge. The La Prensa article makes a link with this murder and another much more grisly murder that occurred on December 23rd, see [[2]] Pepe Lobo is a well known politician here in Honduras. As I say, none of this article was taken from anywhere other than the mentioned sources, and from my own personal knowledge of honduran affairs gleaned from living here. I do not want to be branded a plagiarist for an article that is my own original work. That is all. And obviously that the piece stays on wikinews. I hope this is all clear, and that you can let me know what is going on re the article.--Squeakfox 01:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wrote to Security PostNews (whom I do not and haave never worked for) telling them they had printed an article written by me and taken from wikinews by them. They have now removed the offending article, so please can a decision be quickly made on the fate of the original article. The person who spotted it as a download has apologised to me for their mistake. Squeakfox 23:10, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

dear Amgine, please why are you still questioning the validity of Two women strangled in further political violence in Honduras when I have admitted to being the author of this work, and have sourced it correctly. It was taken from wikinews along with two other articles, which are now also challenged, until this issue is sorted outSqueakfox 22:35, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My request on the Admin page

Well I would appreciate it much more if you made the fix I described to eliminate the extra white space at the top of the Main Page. :)

But if you only have time for one thing, Jamesday mentioned that he was hesitant to use his powers to delete the article in question himself, so if you can do so - great!

(However he mentioned something about deleting the archive tables so no one can undelete the page. Do you know how to do that?)

Regards,

— DV 19:56, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Thanks for the welcome note, and I did have an edit conflit while trying to fix up my sources. However, it was great hearing from you, and I thank you for your help! This would be my first contribution to the whole Wiki "sphere of stuff" so I'm still finding it a bit hard to get used to everything. All the help pages work. Messup 00:21, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the kind words.. And the challenging ones, too. I am glad people like you are around to challenge preconceptions and enable us to grow or see the world in ways that we had not thought of before. -- Davodd | Talk 06:35, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Developing stories template

This was an attempt to get developing stories on the front page ASAP. It's also an attempt to keep that page's format from being accidentally destroyed by a newbie. Yesterday we had 3 stories on the Workspace that never migrated to the front page until after I got home at about 9 p.m. California time. Do you have an idea on how to achieve these goals in an easier-to-use way? -- Davodd | Talk 21:25, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Daily page thing

Do you fancy leaving some notes on the Water cooler explaining the new pages? Is it a replacement for Digests? Dan100 (Talk) 15:51, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reverting the spam

It's a pleasure :) Ronline 09:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

DynamicPageList extension

Amgine, I've done some work on the extension and have put it to a test at http://www.ilya.us/wiki/ Please take a look. I've tried to run this by folks on #mediawiki but they weren't really helpful about moving this forward. Let me know what you think. With this extension (perhaps expanded to three categories max) we could list stories from, say, the union of Category:Spain and Category:Politics and conflicts, or Category:January 12, 2005 and Category:South America. Or Category:January 12, 2005 and Category:Published (the latter could be taken away if the page needs to not appear in listings while it's copyedited). The page using the tag would always need a purge to get new data, but it's still much easier than having to explicitely list stories. -- IlyaHaykinson 08:53, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Crossword

Crosswords/2005/January/27 Dysprosia 08:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

logo

Have you seen the discussion about the process on the watercooler? I'm keen to keep the ball rolling towards getting rid of our current ugly logo, but I'm unclear as to where people think we should go next. I'd appreciate your input! Dan100 (Talk) 19:27, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Listing articles

You removed Zhao Ziyang's funeral scheduled for Saturday from Wikinews:2005/January/27. I dont see why you did this. Wikinews:Writing_an_article#List your article for others to read! tells us to list articles after completing them. If incomplete, I would like to know what needs to be fixed....but where this it say articles should not be listed? --Jiang 09:30, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have replied on my talk page. Please respond there or wherever else suggested. --Jiang 05:48, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Weather report

Hi Amgine,

I'm not sure if Ilya briefed you by e-mail or on IRC, but I posted this reply over on the Dutch Wikinews site when Waerth asked about the weather report:

The weather map is created with the open source WeatherChecker application. You can find out more by reading the image description for any of the map images on the Wikimedia Commons site.

Ilya and I are working on making the WeatherChecker application self-contained, so it will no longer require external XML, data-driven image files. Once this work is completed, it will be possible for anyone to generate the weather report without having to use proprietary tools. Ilya usually posts an announcement on the WeatherChecker site when new versions are posted, as well as on the WeatherChecker page over on English Wikinews.

One of the contributors on the Dutch site chose to strip off the Fahrenheit version of the map. I'm kind of surprised the German site didn't do the same thing.

Anyways, that's the latest status of what's been going on with the Weather report.

Regards,

— DV 22:49, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article names

Hey, thanks for changing the headline of my hospital article, i tend to forget that there is a small minority of people who are unlucky enough to live somewhere other than Australia :P Seriously though, i can see why the longer titles are needed, but they always seem to be less elegent, which is a pity. It would be nice if there was some way to have two articles which were exactly the same except for thier titles, one for the Australian (or any other country) section of the site, and one for the main page. It might end up opening the a pandoras box though... The bellman 22:19, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

yeah i know, but it doesnt change what the actual title on the top of the page is when i click on the link. :( The bellman 22:53, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image now added to Aircraft story

Thanks for the hints re. the use of Wikipedia images; now sorted, though I had to create a second Wikicommons account to do it. I reckon that issue needs sorting out permanently so people don't have to copy image licence information all over. It must be a bit of an obstacle to having the articles illustrated.

VikOlliver 06:52, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Historical RFC

Hi, Amgine. Thanks for the offer about User:Amgine/Maureen's RfC, but no thank you. I think that for me to accept it could aggravate any future problems. I do appreciate your support. Thanks, and I hope you're doing well. 63.19.192.24 05:48, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Archived March 20

Adminship

Hi Amgine,

you're now an admin. Enjoy!--Eloquence 13:41, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New front page?

You mention a new front page layout - was this discussed anywhere off IRC? I rarely have the time to be on IRC, and quite apart from my personal point of view, discussion of major changes needs to be documented somewhere on the wiki itself. Dan100 (Talk) 21:28, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Original research

G'day kido, Was there any particular reason that you made the OR template vertical rather than horizontal. I only ask because in Iraqi Elections kept low-key, but secure, in Paris it makes a whole heap of white space. Otherwise, i think you took my humble little start for the template, and made it into something much better. Thanks, The bellman 08:52, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the comment you left, Amgine... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hpnadig#Wikipedians_who_blog) the link you gave leads me to a blank article. Why not mail me the exact link to hpnadig at gmail dot com, and I'll reply back as soon as possible. thanks.

European Union Rejects Software Patents

Thanks for your comments. I saw that article yesterday, but did'nt get round to listing it. I'll put it up now after I change the image on the Economy and Business page (im after adding a new lead story about a minute ago). All the best. CGorman 21:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Xword

Well... you certainly start things! argh.. anyway... there are already two comments about removing the xword, and one pm to me about it. On this matter I think you may be mistaken, but please comment about it. Did you note how many people have edited that main page, and the masthead, and this one thing has not been touched? - Amgine 22:48, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I commented in watercooler. I do not think that one particular non-news article link deserves such prominent placement. Maybe a better place exists for the link aside from the main page banner. -- Davodd | Talk 23:06, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suppose we could always put it in 6-point type in the footer of the main page, too. Sorry... I'm a bit upset about this since it has been one of the very few highly successful recruitment efforts, and the back-and-forth arguing about it has cost us one contributor for sure and quite possibly Dysprosia as well. This was not, in my opinion, a disagreement worth having. - Amgine 07:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well that's just silly. Of course it is a disagreement worth having. Inclusion of games in the wikinews site is expanding our mission beyond that of being a news source. No one has yet explained in any way how inclusion of a game falls within our mission statement. Should we also include word searches and anagram puzzles? Should we include stratics for other games such as bridge or ches - or even video games? If we lose contributors whose only interst in Wikinews is creating a space for games, then I do not see how it hurts our mission as a news source, since they were never creating news or developing tools for writers, anyway. -- Davodd | Talk 10:08, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The contributor who, I believe, has left felt the admins are arbitrarily deletionist and opposed to making changes either to the content or to their personal concept of what online journalism consists of.

As for the content you discuss above - if someone is willing to create this content the I can only say, boldly, Wikinews is not paper. There is no specific harm in carrying this content, it does not remove news nor limit it's presentation. - Amgine 15:11, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I fail to see how my actions were deletionist since I did not delete an article. I simply removed a link to a game that is consistently out of date from the Wikinews masthead. But if the community wants it there, then it should stay. (Notice I didn't revert it back out). -- Davodd | Talk 18:51, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You added it to a box headered "Browse latest news by" but removed it from a menu bar which had no news links in it? - Amgine 07:41, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was trying to find a place for the crossword, but as you aptly pointed out, there really is no appropriate place for it on Wikinews. So I guess the place for it is in the masthead banner. -- Davodd | Talk 10:09, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you look closely, most mastheads include brief tables of contents to their sections. The A&E section generally gets prominent billing, often simply "Comics". - Amgine 15:11, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you look closely, those same publications also have classified ads, display ads, how-to columns, movie reviews, horoscopes, recipies, original reporting, advice columns and the like. As you implied above, Wikinews is not (news)paper. -- Davodd | Talk 18:51, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admin action request for Weather report

I have a small request pending, which should take but a moment, at:

Wikinews:Administrators#Admin_action_required

I would be grateful if you could help me out with this change.

Thanks.

Regards,

David Vasquez

The table nesting problem is fixed now. Thanks for your help! This will make it easier to update the weather report. — DV 00:17, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedians who blog

You asked me to visit m:Wikinews and blogs, but that page has no text. Please advise. <>< tbc/^talk

Weather report updating

Hi Amgine,

Most of the updating you've seen in the past few days has been to add new regions to the weather report.

Now that the lowest-level link template has the "region" and "scale" parameters, there is only one template that needs to be updated on a regular basis, the one with the name of the most recent image, "CurWeatherMapImage".

I tried uploading on top of the same file name for updates, but it was unreliable. For some reason the most recent image would often refuse to appear, even after purging the page on which it appeared.

However, if you know of a way to reference a template on Commons, that would eliminate the need for updating the copy of the CurWeatherMapImage template on each Wikinews language site, since they could all share the same template on Commons to grab the name.

In any case, hopefully this is only a short-term issue. Once WeatherChecker, or some related script, is able to automatically update the "CurWeatherMapImage" template, this will be a moot point. I'm looking forward to automating the posting of the generated images and updating of the CurWeatherMapImage template, as we could then have hourly updates for a much more timely report.

Regards,

— DV 17:10, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Capitalization poll

Sorry that my edit was not clear as the poll did not show a true consensus. I was copying from the "style guide", which is only a proposed policy like the rest. How does this clarification of the policies page look? (I haven't changed the actual policy page this time.) The previous page said that the capitalization poll was still in progress, which it isn't. See: Wikinews:Policies and guidelines/Naming conventions and Wikinews:Style guide.

Convention: The Wikinews style guide, a proposed policy, says that downstyle capitalisation should be used. In this case, only the initial word and proper nouns are capitalized. In upstyle headlines (in less-frequent use, is considered to be more formal), all nouns and most other words with more than four letters are capitalized.

Downstyle: "Powell to lead U.S. delegation to Asian tsunami region" Upstyle: "Powell to Lead U.S. Delegation to Asian Tsunami Region". Downstyle (aka minimal) headlines are popular with most online and many print media publications.

However, after a recent poll about whether Wikinews should use upstyle or downstyle capitalization for headlines, the downstyle emerged only as the generally preferred method, as no consensus was reached. Therefore, either format can be used on Wikipedia, with a preference for downstyle. See: Wikinews:Polls

--Andrew pmk 03:19, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Revised example of above

Convention: Downstyle headlines are preferred on Wikipedia, but upstyle headlines are acceptable.

Downstyle: "Powell to lead U.S. delegation to Asian tsunami region"
Upstyle: "Powell to Lead U.S. Delegation to Asian Tsunami Region".

The Wikinews style guide, a proposed policy, says that downstyle capitalisation should be used. In this case, only the initial word and proper nouns are capitalized. In upstyle headlines (in less-frequent use, is considered to be more formal), all nouns and most other words with more than four letters are capitalized.

Downstyle (aka minimal) headlines are popular with most online and many print media publications.

According to a recent poll regarding whether Wikinews should use upstyle or downstyle capitalization for headlines, downstyle emerged as the generally preferred method, but no consensus was reached. See: Wikinews:Polls

Comments? --Andrew pmk 03:30, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your comments on the crossword puzzle poll were correct

I admit it. Polls are evil.

It really is more productive to pursue collaboration to reach a consensus, instead of reducing everything to a vote.

If only the rest of the world saw it that way.

The current logo is doomed to be designed by committee or watered down to what offends the fewest number of voters anyways, so I won't get too worked up about it.

In light of your crossword puzzle poll comments, I am surprised that you are now a stickler regarding the rules of the logo poll. A strict interpretation of the polling rules defeats any effort to collaborate and try to improve the design based upon the feedback offered during the voting.

As I said in my remarks on the water cooler, I'll refrain from adding any more variations, but it seems kind of self-defeating to refuse improvements just because they weren't submitted prior to some arbitrary deadline.

— DV 06:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Amgine, I apologize for not listening to you. The discussion on the Crossword poll talk page has been very eye opening — I've been staying away from commenting until now because of a desire to understand why I misunderstood the community.

Thanks for being a voice of reason. I've amended the mission statement and changed my vote. -- IlyaHaykinson 07:35, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Different logo stuff

Amgine,

Responding to feedback by presenting variations which incorporate that feedback is not "cheating or rule breaking", it's "collaboration".

We are not running a commercial enterprise with deadlines based upon having to pay the rent. We can take our time to get things right around here, if we choose to do so.

Theories about voting systems and political gaming are not relevant when the goal is collaboration, so I don't understand the fixation by a few on "the rules" of the vote, when the ideal intent of any design vote should be to quickly elicit feedback to see if we are headed in the right direction, rather than to select "winners" and "losers".

Those who believe that we must have a "final vote" with "no modifications or variations" view this vote as an endpoint rather than a waypoint. This seems anti-wiki. I think we should always be able to make improvements. We will probably have to agree to disagree on that point.

Apparently, the community did not ascribe any importance to "the rules" either, as voters went ahead and voted up or down on the new variations anyways, and continue to do so.

We have the decision on which concept - "a globe with waves". The last minute tweaking was well-intentioned, and as you say yourself, "an improvement" on the theme of the originals.

To avoid conflict, I've pledged not to submit any more variations for the duration of the vote, despite the fact that this prevents responding to any more feedback.

So no harm, no foul, the vote runs until the 12th, after which we will have a better idea about the preferences of the average voter.

Who knows, perhaps a new wave of votes, selecting one of the original entries, will be entered as the poll progresses, and your concern about late entries will be a moot point.

— DV 17:55, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Guess what? I, too, am trying out a South America template system...

And I'd love to hear feed back from you about it.- talk/Amgine 19:49, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think it is much better than the current setup. How do I change to it? Thank you very much. --Carlosar 11:14, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hello?

I'm so confused about how this site works, but I think my story got published...

cdnjay

Sure Thing

Sure, if you get the press access for the Juno Site i'll be happy to have access to it to hopefully do some more reporting on it. I'm still having trouble with some of the special wiki editing stuff but hopefully i'll be able to work through it soon enough (how I managed to get that story published i'll never know). I'd also like to start a regional bureau for my provnice of Canada but I don't know how to do that. I'm taking a media production course in college right now so hopefully that will help me out with all of this.

Here's hoping this actually gets posted in your "my talk" section. \

cdnjay

Okey Dokey

My communications teacher used to be a newspaper writer so she may be a bit irked by the whole "anyone can edit" deal but i'll still let her know about what's goin on here. I think it would be cool if every student had to publish two stories on here a month or something (there's 23 of us.) The program is already fairly busy (between the two years of students involved we produce a daily live newscast, run a radio station, and have several other projects we have to do as well.) We do need to get our foot in the door with the whole internet thing though so maybe she'll give it a look.

I'll try and get her to contact you about it on Monday. No promises though since I'M even still learning how to contact you!

cdnjay 05:09, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

CanadaCopyright

Re: your comment on the page of Media:Paul martin

Amgine, the copyright tag for images from Canadian governmental websites is {{CanadaCopyright}}. It has been copied from en.wikipedia.org to Commons and added to commons:Copyright tags.

Andrew pmk 01:15, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Grin back

) -Stevertigo

Thanks - Its been a while. -Stevertigo 00:50, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Template mess

I'm still not up to speed on what the whole deal with the edit section links is, but Dan100 informed me that you overwrote his entire talk page with a single comment. Was that intentional?--Eloquence 12:37, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

©

Why are you protecting so many pages?

According to the logs, you have taken it upon yourself to start protecting a large number of articles, almost all of which were not subject to repeated vandalism or edit warring.

I contributed to some of the articles which you have protected.

I don't understand why I no longer have the option to edit them.

If you feel compelled to protect a page, the protection should be temporary.

With the exception of the Main Page and the site-wide banner, I shouldn't have to be an Administrator to fully participate in editing any of the articles on this site.

Your action appears to be a direct violation of the Foundation issues.

Please reconsider this wide-ranging action, or at a minimum, first build a consensus for formally changing the site-wide policy, before you continue protecting such a large number of articles.

I have added additional comments to the Water Cooler which explain why I think pre-emptive page protection is a bad idea.

— DV 22:52, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't tell from the change logs, but are you being consistent about when you archive a story through page protection?

It would help to have a clear policy which states, "Articles will be protected for archival purposes after <N> days."

This will allow those of us who occassionally correct older articles to know when the deadline is coming up for any last-minute changes.

— DV 05:26, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

heya

I'm not quite back yet (more just popping in for a 5 min cup of tea), but dont worry, in a couple of days ill be back on freenode and ready to be trouted. :) The bellman 03:34, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews Trophy

For all your hard work and many hours (free of charge) helping build the Wikinews community and for your passionate arguments to keep the project on track and in focus. -- Davodd | Talk 06:41, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Request Undeletion of Article Google-Wikipedia

Request Undeletion of Article

I am a freshwoman to Wikinews and have great respect for your experience. I humbly request the revert of this speedy deletion of the article Google plans to help Wikipedia. I now think that you mean that the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license is too restrictive. I realized indeed that it could be difficult for Wikinews to use this text. So i changed the License to Creative Commons Attribution. Future suggestions are welcome.

I am the legitimate owner of the article http://sweetsilhouette.blogspot.com/2005/02/google-wants-to-host-wikipedia-or-its.html and have put it under the most generous and simple license i know. I believe in Collaborative Work and Wikipedia and want to contribute in Wikinews now. However i want to post my articles in my Blog [3] too. That's not as easy as it may seem. If i would write the article in Wikipedia or Wikinews first and later on in my Blog, i would have to add a lengthy origin notice and possibly even put all my content on my webpage under GFDL and add a local copy of the GFDL to refer to.

The other way round is much easier. There is even a decent tool for conversion of HTM2Wiki Markup but i saw this ingenious Wikipedia Tool unfortunately only today. So it was not a copy-paste job but more than 1 hour of adaptation to readable Wiki. I would like to respond to the questions of Dam100, but i can't do this if the history is deleted.

I am the legitimate creator of the Blog entry and I can put the text under Public Domain like stated in the edit form. I am aware that Wikinews is currently growing fast and has currently no Copyright policy, but let's just build one through consensus. :-) "2. Avoid copyright violation.

For more, Wikinews:Copyright - not yet created, since we do not have official licensing policy."

Update: Did you read Wikinews:Policies and guidelines/Fair use ? If the licenses Creative Commons CC-BY, Creative Commons CC-BY-SA, BSD license, GNU General Public License are acceptable for images, they should be OK for texts too. Wikinews:Policies and guidelines/Image use policy

PS: Why is there no record of the deletion ? No delete Request no Speedy Deletion Record, nothing. The article and its references vanished as if they never existed. I will remind you of the fact that i did not start the article nor did i the links in Developing Stories. I just extended it. The fact that the collaborative work of some members is deleted for this reason is worrying.

Put some suggestions how to sort this out. Thank you --Sweets 23:12, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I responded on Talk:Google plans to help Wikipedia - Amgine 09:30, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Flags

The problem I have with worrying too much about NPOV flag position is just that one could easily interpret any arrangement as having any meaning at all. The fact that Palestine must be under Israel, or vice versa, no matter what, seems to be insurmountable for those who would be overly sensitive about such things (even left-right has meaning). I think that the blended version is a bit ugly. Why don't we wait to see if anybody is oversensitive enough to complain? If somebody really makes a huff over it, then maybe some discussion could go into what would be a totally value-neutral image (can there be such a thing?), but until then I will hope for the good sense of those involved not to overly interpret politics into a simple diagram (which again, could be done quite arbitrarily. Is Israel above Palestine because it is better than Palestine, or because it is oppressing Palestine? Either one is equally plausible, because there is no inherent meaning in such an arrangement). --Fastfission 01:14, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

By the way, to chime in on this, I made the original combination image. My original thought was to place the two flags offset from each other (so that they're not one contiguous rectangle). Israel's flag was placed first, but under Palestine's. I doubt that there are inherently more neutral ways to place these flags. The left-right issue is mostly moot, since being "first" is a matter of your writing's script: in both Arabic and Hebrew it would be right-to-left, and in English it's left-to-right.

All that said, flags are inherently POV (especially when a flag is disputable), and when we can avoid it we should use photos. -- IlyaHaykinson 01:23, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

and thats why we beat the pants off the BBC, because we care...

Thankyou, doing copy and pastes of names and what not will he so much easier now... The bellman 03:33, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

:P

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian language = Български език

Most of the bulgarian users can read it in UTF, because don't use mIRC client. -- DCLXVI 217.10.250.235 20:06, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A little

Im also pushed for time - i've done a little editing on the article... but its not ready yet. CGorman 22:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The article is fairly ok now, there were a few other edits over night, so i've put it up on the economy and business page. Sorry I could'nt finish it last night, I was just finishing up a draft of United Iraqi Alliance win slight majority before heading to bed. CGorman 14:36, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cricket

Hi - thanks for the feedback. You might know me better as "danzero" on irc :). The rivalry between Aus and NZ is huge in cricket, rugby and just about any other sport we both play. I'm hoping to keep posting throughout the series.

About Edits to United Iraqi Alliance win slight majority

Hi Amgine,

United Iraqi Alliance win slight majority was first edit on WikiNews, so thanks for looking it over and since you only made minor edits, I assume the other stuff I said was OK.

I did have one question about your edit. I assume you took out the bolded portion of this statement that I wrote because of NPOV:

Many Sunni voters stayed away from the pools either because of a fear of violence or to support the call by some radical clerics to boycott the elections. As a result the Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in parliament. The results are summarized in the following table:

But those two sentences were my attempt to rewrite the following sentence from the Boston Globe (to avoid Copyright problems):

The Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in parliament, because many Sunni Arabs avoided the elections either out of fear of violence or to support a boycott call by radical clerics opposed to the U.S. military.

So doesn't the fact that this was "reported" by a major US newspaper make it a fact and not a NPOV violation? Thanks for your help. -- FrankH 16:50, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment on my Talk page. NOW I have a better understanding of NPOV and changed the article the way you suggested. Thanks again. -- FrankH 17:50, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Interlanguage links

No problem for English!

Sorry for that... I searched for a method to be automaticaly updated the Romanian template when the English template is up2dated. If you have an idea, please give it to me too :-) --81.196.240.236 17:57, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That was strange

Quite curious that someone was trying to add a link to the CurWeatherMapImage template.

Thanks for catching the problem and fixing it. — DV 20:32, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I looked at what they were doing. For some reason someone from their site tried to substitute the page name variable for the page name template parameter, which only works if the page the template is sitting on doesn't have a space character in its name. Otherwise the template expands to include part of the "purge" URL text, and appears broken. They're getting away with it because in Romanian the main page site name appears as one word, whereas on en.wikinews, the Main Page page name was being interpreted as two words.

I'm still not sure what the "ro" text in the CurWeatherMapImage template was all about, however the version on their site doesn't have it, and they appear to have the weather map in working order at this time.

By the way, I never heard back from you if you know of a way to use text templates from Commons?

Regards,

— DV 20:49, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Transclusion

Yes I considered that course of action, but these new pages (in the the long run) are to include a lot of national news - news relevent to these countries but not to the world. I know that at present there are very few active editors on wikinews - but im prepared to keep these pages up to date. I live in Ireland so providing the UK/Ireland page with stories would be easy, ROnline and others produce a plentiful supply of Romanian news... not always of international relevence. That just leaves the Italy and Germany pages which I will try and keep up to date.

Another thing is Transclusions can be confusing to new writers trying to list there articles - God nows they used to confuse me! I hope your OK with this.

Oh, and am I familier enough yet! Please lend me your support for Admin status! Slán, agus géarr raibh míle maith agat (im Irish by the way!)

A ga.wikinews! Slán, agus géarr raibh míle maith agat is about the full extent of my Irish! Very few people in Ireland are fluet in Irish... and those that are... well lets just say they would generally not be in the demographic group that uses the internet or computers! The gaeilge wikipedia is run by a handful of dedicated writers and entusiasts. As for my little experimenting with new country portals... I'd still like to try and run them for a while to see how things go! CGorman 22:48, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Looking for inactive/ex-Wikipedians

Hi, Amgine, I'm conducting a series of interview studies about the Wikipedia and one of the things I'm trying hard to find minority voices--people who left for whatever reason. I've found a few through a variety of channels, but it's clearly a lot harder to find ex-pedians than current ones! I'd love to talk to you about your experiences.

If you are not interested, remove this message and forget it was ever there. If you are interested, please understand that any information you provide in an interview will be held in complete confidence and no identifiable details about you will be included if/when the results of this study are written up for publication.

If you would like to participate, please read and submit the form: consent form to consent to the study and I or one of my co-investigators will contact you to set up a (preferably phone) interview at a convenient time. For more information about me and my research, please feel free to visit my userpage on Wikipedia. Thanks for your time! Andrea Forte aka [Andicat] 23:46, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: study

Hi, if you have specific questions about the study I'm conducting, you can contact me directly at aforte(a)cc.gatech.edu. The basics are, I'm just beginning a long-term research project (my dissertation work) that will focus on knowledge building in online environments. The study is exploratory and qualitative. I'm doing interviews (along with three other graduate students) to learn about the experiences that people have had on Wikipedia to understand the dynamics of that particular community. -Andicat

Conspiracy theories

If conspiracy theories do not count as "patent nonsense" I am not sure what does. If we do not take a hard stance on this sort of thing it will be the doom of this project and any shreds of credibility it could ever have. The time scale for weeding out such things is much smaller in a news source than it is in an encyclopedia, in my opinion, and we need a much more forceful policy on this than a VfD page. In my opinion. --Fastfission 23:37, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think that particular user is just a POV-pusher/conspiracy theorist who will be of no eventual value to this project, but we will see, I suppose. The fact that his article contains a "little bit of factual information" is beside the point: there has never been a conspiracy theory which did not try to buttress its more ridiculous claims on the connection of unrelated things. Anyway, we will see. --Fastfission 03:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Weather updates

You're welcome.

For a while there, after the power outage, my attempts to post the latest weather maps resulted in one window or another timing out or having a mysterious "read" error.

Have you seen any database corruptions or strange histories since the recovery? — DV 22:12, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

water cooler topic "conspiracy theories"

hi, thanks for your efforts to help me fit in. I noticed last night you moved the watercooler topic "conspiracy theories" from policy to miscelaneous, but now it seems to have disappeared altogether.Please tell me what happened to it?Paulrevere2005 14:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't seem to be able to edit the article.

Hi,how can I open the Hunter Thompson article to editing so I can try to "fix"it?Paulrevere2005 22:38, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admin status

Thanks! CGorman 14:48, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

if only it were that simple.

Basicly, my uni sucks. The whole network is down, and will continue to be down for some time yet (im writing this from a public library). Im having wiki withdrawal symptoms damnit. The bellman 03:40, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Story on Dublin Airport quarantine

Hi Amgine,

I'm new to Wikinews and don't know the submission rules, so I wonder could you explain why you removed my story on the Dublin Airport Quarantine? [4] I thought Wikinews was for on-the-spot 'citizen-reporters', and not simply rewording stories from other media. The story did eventually turn up in the Sunday Times, a week later [5].

Seabhcan 11:37, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

notes

Very interesting ! I would need to explore more the evolution of the editing process during the crisis of the tsunami. I like the idea of a process which strongly evolved due to a real life event. Making us grow. Anthere

gah

"will not be on IRC" try "can not be on IRC". And thanks for those links to the web based IRC thingos, but unfortunatly they dont work from behind this freaking network either. The bellman 12:06, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Main page

It used to be perfectly straightforward to put on article on the front page. Now it is well nigh impossible, and I cannot figure hoe to get my new article Proposal to ban VoIP in Costa Rica onto the front page. Why is it now so difficult. HELP! --Squeakfox 16:43, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

4.65.88.109 has added links to a page that i can not see when looking at that article. how is that possible? i understand this was a form of link spam, according to your definition, but shouldn't it be addressed in the forum, rather than just make them disappear?

never mind..i think there was a delay in updating. they are the links at the bottom of the article "another author..."

removing templates/tags

I don't know how to do it and would not do it.Paulrevere2005

templates

Ok, yes you're right,I did it. I thought that was just an anonymous edit..I will re-read the site use instructions again.Sorry , Paulrevere2005

Problems with skin

I have changed the monobook skin (Monobook.css) for http://pt.wikinews.org/ . However, after the change I cannot see the flollowing icons: lock_icon.gif, mail_icon.gif, external.png, etc, anymore. So, when I use a link like [http://www.yahoo.com Yahoo link] I don't see the external.png icon. How do I fix that? Thank you very much. --Carlosar 16:11, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

French or English Canada?

I know a few Canadians who like to speak in French to each other when they're just out of earshot. I think they're from Quebec.

Do you speak any French?

I hope you're enjoying your stay in Canada. My wife seems to think Toronto would be a nice place to visit.

I only see the cold temperatures on the weather map, so I'm not so sure.

If you don't care to disclose the name of the city you live in, could you at least reveal what latitude you are living at?

Cheers,

— DV 08:13, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for volunteering as an Admin

Amgine, I see you've decided to take a break from volunteering as an Admin.

Thank you for your service as an Admin on Wikinews.

You really made a difference on this site.

Best wishes for an enjoyable break.

— DV

Help

me! Dan100 (Talk) 21:45, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the clean-up tag is justified. Is it really that badly written? I can't see how such a short story could be put any other way. It certainly couldn't be longer with so few facts available. Dan100 (Talk)

Thanks for mediating and calming everything that evening. Dan100 (Talk) 20:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

what to do about vandalism?

Hi, Dan100 took the opium piece off entirely with the reason being "give it a break". what should/can I do to complain? Paulrevere2005 12:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I re-added it to the day it was originally published on (Feb 11). (I hadn't actually realised it had been de-listed that day.) Although it's not an issue we've come to any conclusions over, I don't see why any article that has passed a DR should be re-listed at a later date. This leaves a conumdrum - the article that was too poor to be published at the time of DR listing, but is later improved and survives DR. By that stage it is going to be stale, old news that no-one is going to want to read. A tricky one. Dan100 (Talk) 20:00, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let's scrap deletion requests

I'm proposing that we scrap deletion requests, and I'd appreciate your input! Dan100 (Talk) 11:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cuban Propaganda?

Please, take a look at the Spanish Wikinews. Can we do that? --Carlosar 05:09, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your help at es:Wikinews. --Ascánder 11:21, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re:Spanish Main page issue

Hi. You did the right thing. That user had previously vandalized the help page. It was not only vandalism but copyvio too. Thanks a lot for your collaboration. Julián Ortega 15:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

I was very grateful to see that the original author of the piece (User:Carlosar) translated it. I was not trying to impede this work -- it saved me a great deal of work myself. I just wanted to make absolutely sure that no one else was going to write a rather shoddy article instead of his wonderful one (though we can have multiple articles on the same subject, of course). Anyway, I should have checked who had written the article, but I was in a big hurry. Zantastik 04:45, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Workspace and Editor tasks template

Your WN:3RR concern.

Request, if you still can.

Fairuse and press links

Squeakfox discussion

My request on the Admin page

Thanks for the note

Thanks

Developing stories template

Daily page thing

Reverting the spam

DynamicPageList extension

Crossword

logo

Listing articles

Weather report

Article names

Image now added to Aircraft story

Historical RFC

Archived March 20

Adminship

New front page?

Original research

European Union Rejects Software Patents

Xword

Admin action request for Weather report

Wikipedians who blog

Weather report updating

Re: Capitalization poll

Revised example of above

Your comments on the crossword puzzle poll were correct

Different logo stuff

Guess what? I, too, am trying out a South America template system...

Sure Thing

Okey Dokey

CanadaCopyright

Grin back

Template mess

©

More copyright questions

Why are you protecting so many pages?

heya

Wikinews Trophy

Request Undeletion of Article Google-Wikipedia

Flags

and thats why we beat the pants off the BBC, because we care...

Bulgarian language

A little

Cricket

About Edits to United Iraqi Alliance win slight majority

Re: Interlanguage links

That was strange

Transclusion

Looking for inactive/ex-Wikipedians

Re: study

Re: study

Conspiracy theories

Weather updates

water cooler topic "conspiracy theories"

I don't seem to be able to edit the article.

Admin status

if only it were that simple.

Story on Dublin Airport quarantine

notes

gah

Main page

removing templates/tags

templates

Problems with skin

French or English Canada?

Thank you for volunteering as an Admin

Help

what to do about vandalism?

Let's scrap deletion requests

Cuban Propaganda?

Re:Spanish Main page issue

Thanks