User talk:Brian McNeil/Archive 18

Wikibreak

I've been nagged, begged, and cajoled to work on Wikinews; to review submissions, involve myself in debates and discussions, and to get my lazy arse back to actively advocating for the project.

Real Life has impinged seriously on that. Since early in this year I've seen my paid work having me answering emails at 7am in the morning, and making myself available until 9pm, or later, on a near-daily basis. I'm working on a major project, with one of the UK's biggest telecomms companies, it's worth a huge amount to my employer and offers me long-term stable employment. It also happens to be a challenge I'm enjoying.

However, my recent time away from Wikinews is the second substantial break I have taken from the project following some of the most-problematic events Wikinews has dealt with. I would be vastly happier were certain WMF people (yes, I'm looking at you Philippe) acknowledged I have taken these breaks.

The problem is, acknowledging I've taken these breaks, acknowledging I've apologised for ill-judged and angry comments, and accepting that I - perhaps stupidly - keep coming back to fight Wikinews` corner, is accepting that Wikinews has any value.

I look at Wikinews and see the kernel of the Free Knowledge movement's international news agency. I am sick and tired of trying to get the WMF to accept that; those who take an intense dislike to me, who try and kill off Wikinews, who set the "barrier" to being considered a 'legitimate news source' so high, and portray in a capricious manner to suit their aims, the project as a "cancer" within the WMF need called on their bullshit. I, personally, am sick and tired of doing so. Philippe, you need to stop Assuming Good-Faith with people who demonstrate none whatsoever. The WMF? It desperately needs a new leader who doesn't think it is the "Wikipedia Foundation"; it needs a leader who doesn't post on Twitter and Facebook that the content a project like Wikinews outputs is toxic, and makes you more-stupid and afraid.

I suspect the above remarks might-well turn some of my allies into opponents. They may-well not want to rock the boat that much, but the last thing I'd accuse them of is of "caring less" about news than I do. What they care about is Wikinews not being turned into a trashy "Red Top" tabloid. Wikinews could steal every slogan from every major news agency (AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC) and deliver. Gee! we lack feeds from Lexis-Nexus to make us "more stupid". That doesn't make criticism of the project on the grounds "we don't tell you what to be scared of" valid, it shows those who shout such criticisms loudest are those who have been most "dumbed-down" by mainstream media. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:12, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Gryllida accreditation

I've closed the request as successful. --Pi zero (talk) 00:14, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

wikinewsie.org e-mail and chat

Hi. Nickserv and chatserv went stupid and I have ended up blocked on #wikinewsie. Can you hop on IRC and unblock me? Also, I cannot access wikinewsie.org e-mail and I have some things I need there for OR I am writing on same sex marriage. :( Do you know what is up there? --LauraHale (talk) 07:07, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Soroush

Thank you brian because of your review. I improved the article Iranian reformist candidate passes qualification process of Guardian Council, now the first paragraph is less than 60 words and the broken link is changed. --Soroush90gh (talk) 21:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• It still suffers greatly in terms of readability. Flesch Reading Ease still scores zero and the Flesch–Kincaid readability test scores 19.5. These scorings are not hard-and-fast rules. Rather, they form a good rule of thumb in judging if a broad audience will follow your text. Your scores on these metrics mean the submission is harder to read than the Harvard Law Review. A news report should be readily-accessible to a reasonably intelligent thirteen year-old. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:58, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm totally mixed up dear friend!!! It seems so readable to me! What do you mean, is there any sentence grammatically wrong? Or it's about coherence among sentences? Can you correct on of the mistakes if possible? I feel disappointed about writing in Wikinews :) --Soroush90gh (talk) 22:50, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

• Can you read it aloud? I can't; I lose the place, and the thread of it as a coherent narrative. News is a form of storytelling, not a jumble of facts — even if such loosely follows English sentence structure. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:19, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

User:EdwardsBot

Hi Brian. Please unprotect or delete User:EdwardsBot. It's inappropriate for you or Laura to selectively quote me and create a false version of history on my bot's user page here. Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

• declined; although, I will discuss elsewhere what is the most-reasonable way to document the bot's block and "insulting" request for privs. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:52, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I raised the issue here: Wikinews:Admin action alerts#Unprotection or deletion of User:EdwardsBot. I think it's pretty poor form to use admin tools in this way (reverting to your preferred version and fully protecting the page). It's anti-wiki and needlessly hostile. You want to block the bot, that's fine. But you don't then get to treat its user page with disrespect and then fully protect the page. That's not right. Please either delete the page or unprotect it. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:43, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• The issue is pending discussion. And, take your "anti-wiki" crap elsewhere; the 'norm' in any edit-warring is to revert to a revision by a trusted community member, protect from further meddling, and discuss the issue. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:46, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Theologians

Category:Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama How is the Dalai Lama a theologian...? I don't know of anything he's ever written that's theological minus his book on Buddhism and Christianity and I've read three or four of his books. Please either respond on my talk or at least post to it to let me know that you wrote back. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:53, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah And now I actually see your edit summary. Why do you have to be so rude, especially when you're incorrect? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:55, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

He's a bit curmudgeonly. But edit summaries are routinely less than ideally phrased; they're typically written hurriedly, after all. Re the edit summary, I recommend shrugging and moving on. We're more interested in content. Speaking of which — I'm quite interested in this question of inclusion criteria for Category:Theologians. --Pi zero (talk) 01:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Theology One quick and dirty way to review is to simply look at w:Tenzin Gyatso and see that he's not mentioned or categorized as a theologian there. Similarly, look at a search engine. Buddhism is sometimes cast as non-theistic or transtheistic, so it doesn't focus on questions of God and the present Dalai Lama certainly doesn't. Simply put, the burden of proof is on the person arguing for him being categorized as a theologian and you will not find sources making this claim. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:07, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

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Funny thing is, ignoring your comment, that's exactly what I did this AM. Reflexive response to a change on a longtime-stable page. Apologies for the grouchy edit summary. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:42, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries Onwards and upwards. Thanks for the kind words. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:46, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello

How goes Wikinews? Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 08:38, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

• North, in search of geothermally-powered datacentres and press-freedoms. ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Reply

Heh, okay I'll think about it. :) -- Cirt (talk) 04:43, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Fuck

Two quality improvement projects over at en.wikipedia that I've worked on to successfully get up to Good Article quality status rating:

1. Fuck (film)
2. Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties

Thought you might enjoy those, -- Cirt (talk) 22:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

CC-BY-NC

Your bot uploaded File:USA v AUS 3404.JPG which is claimed to be licensed as CC-BY-NC. Is CC-BY-NC really an acceptable licence on Wikinews? That licence isn't acceptable on Wikipedia or Commons. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

It is acceptable on English Wikinews. There are often conditions for some pre-planned news events that images can only be used for news stories or for non-profit. As a remix license means images could be used for non-new news purposes, the images thus need to be licensed that way. I would bet dollar to donuts that Commons contains a large number of unacceptable images where the conditions of entry expressly prohibited people from taking images for commercial use, but Commons has them.2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games? Have you verified those licenses to check that they are compatible with conditions of entry? --LauraHale (talk) 16:42, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

To be clear: On English Wikipedia and Commons, have all pictures taken at Olympic and Paralympic venues during the Games been verified to determine that the photographer licensed them as work for hire images taken for a Broadcast Rights Holder or a National Olympic/Paralympic Committee who paid for Broad Rights Holder status in their country? If not, the images violate copyright law, which was specifically changed for the Games to prohibit anyone taking pictures for commercial re-use. There are a number of other cases where broadcast rights holders have exclusive COMMERCIAL copyright over all audio, video and pictures taken at an event with the exception of reporting them for news. I know many of these images are on commons and English Wikipedia. Commons and English Wikipedia are either 1) willfully violating broadcasters copyrights that they paid for, 2) encouraging people to lie about the copyright of the images in question by misrepresenting it, or 3) willfully ignorant about this issue. I would rather English Wikinews be on the correct side of copyright and not close doors by willfully violating copyright by having CC-BY-NC. That way, these pictures are free. --LauraHale (talk) 16:57, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you for handling that, Laura. Too many Commoners let their freethusiasm run away with them.

Our house, our rules, please read them. Not meaning to be rude in saying that; just like on Commons, we stomp up and down on serial copyright violators; just like on Wikipedia, we do not tolerate repeat copy-pasta-people.

Our 'reuse' policy is linked to from the Main Page's Welcome banner (The Copy Us link). If you don't get the humour behind framing it in the manner it's presented, see here. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:08, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The conditions for entry are a contract between the photographer and the person arranging the event, and apply only to the photographer. If I visit an event, and the conditions for entry mention that I can't publish any photos, but I nevertheless publish them under a CC-BY-SA licence, then the organiser can sue me for violating my contract. However, that is only an issue between me and the organiser; the CC-BY-SA licence is valid and doesn't affect anyone else's right to use the image. That said, since the organiser might sue me for violating the contract, it may be a bad idea for me to reveal my identity when I publish the image as this increases the possibility that the organiser will find me. In other cases, the contract might say that you promise to transfer the copyright to any photos you have taken to the organiser, and in that case, you are in a different situation: the CC-BY-SA licence is invalid. See also v:Museum photography#House rules: legal and psychological aspects.

That said, Wikinews may of course have whichever policies it wants, and my initial post was merely meant as a verification on whether the image complies with Wikinews policy or not. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:12, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Such a morally vacuous policy would be detrimental to the projects. Consider: A is running an event. B asks for accreditation to photograph the event, with obvious intent to make the photographs available to C. A accredits B to photograph the event under condition B does not allow the photographs to be used commercially. B flagrantly violates this contract by distributing the photographs under a commercial license. C publishes the photographs under this commercial license. A objects. C says they have the legal right to keep publishing the photographs under the commercial license and therefore A should go fuck themselves. A may or may not bother to take legal action against B, but A won't be in a hurry thereafter to accredit anyone associated with C. --Pi zero (talk) 15:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

That would indeed be a problem if you need to depend on being able to get a press accreditation for future events. I believe that the images on Wikipedia and Commons usually were taken by normal spectators who have no use for press accreditations. I assume that Commons and Wikinews have very different needs here: Wikinews needs press accreditations (so the freely licensed images can't be used), but Commons has no need for press accreditations (so the freely licensed images can be used). --Stefan2 (talk) 17:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest two amendments to that. One, Wikinews wants press accreditations, for common-sense reasons. Two, Commons and Wikipedia imagine they don't need press accreditations (but then, those sisters are chronically at risk of insularity). --Pi zero (talk) 18:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Email

Hi, I've sent an email to you through your Wikipedia user page. Regards, Ed ^{[talk] [w:majestic titan]} 21:31, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks, not able to check that account regularly. But, if it is about the revert I saw mentioned on Pi zero's page (which prompted me to log in) then, well. I can see your point.

I wish the detail had been in there to begin with; had the article been past the archiving deadline, you would most-likely have shrugged it off and thought "perhaps next time". It is journalistic, and most-human, fallibility to omit details such as that.

The detail would've been great to see there when the article was fresh; but, if missed as it was, a couple of days post-publish is out of the real window of visibility for the article. All we can hope is people go "Scapa?", click the link, and they're off to Wikipedia for the encyclopedic take on the subject.

As I say, I've not checked the mailbox your message went to; I can readily appreciate the revert seeming particularly pedantic, I'll say "I just don't know" whether or not I would've made the same decision. What I can say, is that I have 100% confidence the revert was made on the basis of policy.

I'm going to be particularly busy this week, with my transfer to a new company (not that I haven't been busy beforehand).

Rather than have upsets like this, care to take a look through archiving policy and see what you think? How should Wikinews handle the "grey area" still sitting there? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The email is about an entirely different matter—I was hoping to get you to do a Signpost op-ed. Apologies for the confusion, Ed ^{[talk] [w:majestic titan]} 00:26, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• Ah, likewise - apologies for being confused. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Shorts/Briefs

Hey Brian! I have a question. I noticed that an editor was working on WikiNews shorts (i.e. UK Wikinews Shorts: July 8, 2013) for the UK. I noticed a lot of shorts weren't being published anymore. Are these frowned upon? If not, I might propose creating one for the US. Or even an "interesting news" short or something. I hate to make things too "US focused" but, I'm one of the few active US editors here and there is some pretty interesting stuff in our many 50 states. Please let me know your thoughts. I can also bring this to the water cooler if needed (I wasn't sure where the best place was for it..) Thanks :D Sarah (talk) 00:40, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

<butting in> Shorts aren't done much because, on balance, they don't fit well with our workflow. The amount of effort needed to review each of the shorts in such a collection is not significantly less than is required to review a full-blown minimal article. The amount of effort needed to write each short is not too dramatically less than would be required to write a full-blown minimal article. The flexibility to deal with not-ready'ing individual shorts within the collection is significantly less than if they were separate articles. And the appearance of staleness may set in a bit faster. It's tried from time to time, it's not against the rules, and it sometimes works, but as you can tell, I don't highly recommend it. --Pi zero (talk)

Metrics and program effectiveness

There is an IRC meeting at wikimedia-office at 4pm UTC dealing with metrics and program effectiveness. There is also the Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Journal. I was wondering if you could promote a few things in these? They include meta:User:LauraHale/Wikinews Content Import Analysis, Research:Wikinews Review Analysis and File:Spanish competitors at the IPC Athletics World Championships.pdf. These all involve research and metrics related to Wikinews. I really suck at self promotion. Beyond that, any cross movement attention for our project and TWG is good for them. It normalizes them and makes them seem less ugly step child. It also highlights all the good things we are actually doing. And yeah, just nervous about doing it myself. If you want any research done related to your own Wikinews interests, let me know what general area and I can try to see about doing it.--LauraHale (talk) 17:41, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You might want to think about incorporating some of this

David Blackall overviews a project that asked journalism students at the University of Wollongong to write Wikinews stories.

A bit tired to go through some of Leigh's other uploads, and I only listened to this whilst working on something else. Based on Pizero's comments, I just watched the slides of diffs. Now gramps really needs his afternoon nap. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:37, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

User:DanielTom

This user has now been blocked to the end of the month for disrupting the limited man hours we have. --RockerballAustralia c 00:09, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

This discussion and my comments here may be of interest. -- RockerballAustralia c 06:44, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I have changed it to indef after talking to people in the Stewards chatroom, and going to meta and the WMF wiki to look at the privacy implications regarding sending another person's extremely personal information without consent to people not identified with the Foundation. This behavior goes beyond disruption, especially when done twice. You cannot share another person's passport information without their consent. --LauraHale (talk) 07:37, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

• Dickishness is a perfectly reasonable block justification. I gave multiple warnings and have some real Wikinews work to do right now. The irony, from this cock-up, is Cirt is identified to the WMF - as am I. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:44, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

But my patience has been exhausted with regards to this particular issue, so I am glad other local admins are dealing with it. -- Cirt (talk) 14:12, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

(Also, recovering from some health problems at the moment.) Not pleasant stuff. :( -- Cirt (talk) 14:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry to hear you're unwell, Cirt. Obviously you need a holiday visit to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. ;)

This individual — with names obscured to protect the not-so-innocent — is going in a random log of "how to piss off an entire project's administrative community". --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:33, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

You are both free to visit Madrid from 5-12 August. :) I proposed a global block for our "friend" at meta:Steward requests/Global if you want to weigh in on the stupidity. --LauraHale (talk) 17:07, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the invites, both of you, that's very kind! But unfortunately I can't travel for a while, gotta change dressing and such, painful process but hopefully it will permanently resolve the issue. -- Cirt (talk) 16:35, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

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I'm going to be kicking about the fringe as-and-when I can. I'm putting stuff on Facebook due to the headaches with copyright. What I want? About a 'dozen Wikinewsies in Edinburgh for next year's Fringe and Festival. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Edinburgh

Are we planning on getting press credentials for next years Edinburgh Festival Fringe? --RockerballAustralia c 22:19, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

• I would very much like to, yes. A lot of that will depend on TWG being properly set-up. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom

Wikinews:Arbitration Committee/2013 election/Results. --Pi zero (talk) 15:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

De-accreditation

User:Hawkeye7 has resigned accreditation. --Pi zero (talk) 15:33, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Brian,

I would be happy to help out with your article. You seem like quite the seasoned Wikinews veteran so I'm not sure how much I could assist.

• I have an audio recording of the majority of Tony's talk. I'll send you a link to that (it's under embargo) and any work you, or your fellow students, can do on transcribing that would be hugely appreciated. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:18, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Workflow

I found myself just now, for the second time in a few weeks (I think it is), in a situation I simply don't have a roadmap for. Looking at a published article that should never have been published, with awful problems in it. I did the same thing this time as last time, but don't approve of it myself — I depublished. We don't even have a standard procedure for that. But we don't have a standard procedure either, within my experience, for an article that shouldn't have been published. {{correction}} makes sense for problems discovered in an article published more than 24 hours ago, but for something that needs immediate action... this situation doesn't seem to fit any pattern I know what to with. The closest I can think of is an extreme situation like a severe copyvio that calls for depublish or someting very like but of course that doesn't fit either. I started to try to submit fixes for someone to review, but when I realized the headline was completely wrong, on top of all the dates being misformatted, no categories, purple prose in the lede... it's the sort of article I'd do an early deep check on for copy-pasted passages because I'd be in doubt the author understood the story.

Any thoughts on what I should have done (and, for that matter, what ought to be done with the article now)? --Pi zero (talk) 03:28, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikinewsie

If I were to dig out my password for email on the above, would I a) still be able to get in and b) still have the right to use it for OR? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:02, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

• Yup. If you need a reset, let me know. Just finished for the day, eating, and trying to get the WiFi token re-issued so IRC will work. Worst-case webIRC interface. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:51, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Laura Hale deleting my user page

Can you help me to understand this? What's the appropriate place for me to lodge a complaint?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:58, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

• I'd suggest asking Laura directly, Jimmy. I tend to think she did the right thing; but, would be happy to email you a copy of the last deleted revision. Beyond that, and just like most wikis, there's regular Dispute resolution (if a nice cup of tea doesn't get things sorted).

Our 'most-shrill' critics were engaged in dedicated trolling of the discussion, and ignoring the far, far, more-important questions about journalism. I take it for-granted that they — with ongoing negative coverage via The Signpost — discouraged you from asking people on Wikinews where we'd got to.

My attempt to start that discussion, albeit somewhat poorly-framed, was with the intention of pointing out we have looked at some of the 'institutional problems' that plague for-profit journalism. To be honest, when you take a long, hard look, there never really was a 'golden age' in the craft. The two periods the United States holds up are — in the first instance — William Randolph Hearst versus Joseph Pulitzer. Without that prestige, associated with the Pulitzer Prize, it would be remembered as two meglomaniacs - of similar dubious character to Rupert Murdoch - battling for 'ratings'.

The second 'golden age', is — unsurprisingly — the downfall of Richard M. Nixon. A lot of gambling, and calculated risks, led to that journalistic milestone.

It also led to the establishment of journalism as a profession; poisoned with the notion there is a mass-reproducible formula for news; in even viewing news from such a perspective, one is then seduced by the business side of turning 'formula' into 'cash'.

The Fourth Estate became a 'means to power', and Levenson was inevitable (if they didn't get away with it indefninitely).

That is the perspective I see in our critics; so-used to swimming in a sea of un-analysed data, they believe there must be a deluge of news; even if it is all echo-chamber mis-information delivered in a fog of drama, commercial breaks, and talking-head armchair-polemicists.

I apologise for not having the foresight to see that attempting to have an open discussion would end in that way. I tend to think we must be doing something right — if we provoke such determination to commit sororicide. I mean, if I can keep wikinewsie.org mostly up-and-running whilst unemployed, and even whilst homeless, how difficult would it be for them just to fork off? Nobody from enWN is likely to join them; we've set ourselves high standards; high-enough that we've had journalism students pointed at the project as a place to do coursework, repeatedly. Might want to ask Chad Tew about what "a small group of thoughtful, committed people" can do.

Is there any way to restart a conversation — without such fierce trolling and interference? I sincerely doubt it — at least were it public; I've had certain vocal contributors from The Signpost ask me — if I wouldn't mind — just nipping off and killing myself, because my existence offends them.

I'll drop you an email; but, any discussion would likely need picked up on my work email; I am absurdly busy. In the meantime, some quintessentially British humour about newspapers. :-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:27, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Tsk.

If we could avoid a flamewar between you and Jimbo (and no "But he started it!" :p) that would be desirable; so long as you two go down that route, nothing of value is going to happen there.
On a lighter note.... yes please to getting NewsieBot set up to help with category maintenance. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'm really not trying to start, or continue, any flamewar with Jimmy. I just get well-and-truly pissed-off at the "Wikipedia style" of discussion; it's too-circumspect, too-much 'dance-around-issues', too-little 'cut to the chase'.

So, that's my 'cut to the chase'; it isn't meant to be an insult, it isn't meant to be a personally-directed flame; blunt? No dispute there.

In 25 years IT experience, blunt gets things done; senior management (which is the role Jimmy has adopted here) have to take it; to allow the people best-able to do the job, they (good managers) take on the task of making the language more-diplomatic, or translating it into actionable tasks which others can pick up on.

I don't do diplomacy, I'd get arrested for the choice of rocks I'd carry around. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:18, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Then you should realize Jimbo has adopted this whole "communication" with wikinews in his fantasy role of chief moderator and religious leader of the equally non-existant 'wikimedia movement'. There is no substance in any of this. Be nice, be polite, but since nothing in this discussion has any weight in reality it cannot be worth getting worked up about. It's like arguing about policy with Tony1: the person hasn't a clue, will never have a clue because xe doesn't care enough to actually work on the content, and is only mucking with the policy to say (perhaps only to themselves) "I helped that project, set them on the true path."

Don't reinforce the delusion of the delusional by accepting their premises. - Amgine | t 04:16, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'm giving Jimmy 'time to learn'; you'll note how-long it took, via policy, to push people given 'honorary' positions of power here back; back to the point where they could only 'interfere' via formal channels as staff/members of the WMF.

He's still listening, and I count that as a plus point. I'm not trying to 'recruit' him as a contributor; and — apart from where the pair of us have, in all probability, read the worst-possible interpretation of each other's remarks — I think helping him work to a better understanding of how we work is worthwhile.

Incidentally, I was logging in to zap all those spammers when your remarks here distracted me. :) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:55, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Mmmm...

Anyway, about the spambot, why isn't en.WN using smarter Special:AbuseFilters? Not enough local skills in writing/maintaining them? (I can't see the hitcounts so I don't have much clue how effective they're being.) - Amgine | t 07:55, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Laura did something to upgrade the abuse filters, which did greatly cut down on the spambots, and every once in a while she blocks a bunch of users who don't have any edits on the project, which I understand to be for what they tried to do that didn't work because of the filters. I myself am clueless; have never studied abuse filters. --Pi zero (talk) 11:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

About the Article"The Bitter Reality of BITS-Pilani,Dubai

Well about the article, i have cited the source article from Gulf News. Actually i want to change the Article's main heading to "The Insight story of BITS-Pilani,Dubai" can you suggest me how to change the story's name?

• Signing so the bot will finally archive these. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:10, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Herman Van Rompuy named as first permanent EU President (sic)

May I suggest that you add "accuracy" to your check-list? Ten seconds on Wikipedia would have told you that there is no such post as "EU President". (He is President of the European Council, essentially just a chairman).

• Signing so the bot will finally archive these. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:11, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on extension installation request

Could you please comment on Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#Install_education_extension_on_English_Wikinews? It is a request to install an extension on Wikinews to ease some of our processes around working with university courses. --LauraHale (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikinewsie

I'm getting an Account Suspended message when accessing Wikinewsie.org. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:18, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the heads-up; they've likely tried to charge the wrong card, or somesuch. Let me quickly check mail (once I'm on a train). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
• Ticket raised with the hosting company; gave them as-much detail as I could — I'm "guessing" this is down to losing a bank card a few weeks back. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:30, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• Once I've restored service, I'll be asking about shell access so I can start moving stuff from the Netherlands to Iceland (since I've, currently, two hosting accounts - the other just has things like http://tory.value-government.com on it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:33, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm told my account is invalid. I'd expected to spend every moment I could scrape up today (around my hardware problem) reviewing OR, trying to get it out of the way before the Monday morning flurry of student articles. This is ill-timed. --Pi zero (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• I've resolved the unpaid invoice; it was down to the card I'd registered with them being one I lost. Should be back up pretty quick. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:06, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, access restored :) Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 15:08, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• Whaddya expect from Tech Support to Tier One Telcos? :P We'd have a 12 hour SLA for an poutage like that, and I got it in 3. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Which means we got all the OR turned round in good time. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

• Tech Support is srs bznz. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:08, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of Wikinewsie, I was using scoop a few days back and didn't get any bounces. Hurrah! Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 11:59, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• There's going to be an 'urk!' moment pretty soon; I will be listing all the mailboxes which are about to be blown away (contents et-al).

The upshot will be that we can clear out a scary number of lapsed credentials. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:20, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

NewsieBot

I appreciate bot-coding is hardly likely to be your main priority right now; instead, treat this as an idea dump for what I see as needing done category-wise that can be automated;

• As mentioned on the WC, automatically adding cats to their parents would be ideal for a bot. I've taken the liberty of mocking up User:NewsieBot/Parent cats as a possible control page where admins can add hierarchies; critical is simplicity so any admin can quickly add reqs. Admins only because, obviously, this is effectively asking the bot to edit full-protected pages.
• Depopulate anything marked {{internal cat}} of mainspace articles. In some cases, convert to something more appropriate e.g. Cat:Musicians →‎ Cat:Music
• Seek out mainspace redirects to categories. Protect them, add Cat:Protected mainspace redirects, sight them. Make sure the redirect location is prefixed : so the redirect isn't listed in the category.
• A non-category function that's needed is to automatically add {{missing image}}; PiZ can advise on how that works. Obviously, the itsdeadjim parameter on the template would need manual adding sometime down the line as at present.
• Rename cats upon request by copying over content to new title, retargeting redirects, swapping the cats round on articles, copying over talk page content, and finally deleting the old cat and its talkpage.
  

These being non-urgent maintenance tasks, I see them being run once a month or so.Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:29, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• A good list. Perhaps overly-terse, because when I look at the "Rename Categories" one, I know that's:
  1. Build a list of page(s) in the source category
  2. For each article, add it to the target category
  3. Once successfully added to target, remove from source category
  4. Add the (above) category move to a 'periodic correction' job
  5. Rename (or copy and delete) source category to target category

If my API classes are still valid, these are simple to build as one-off jobs. I know Pi zero has immersed xyrself in javascript to handle a lot of the more-interactive automation; I've not even looked at Lua (gave up trying to chase the latest 'coding dragon' a long time back), so take a look at extension options for the moment. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:36, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• One more task is adding cats included as part of an infobox to articles the templates are transcluded onto. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 07:36, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Scoop

Just wondering; if/when scoop is deprecated, what's the replacement? Personally, I yearn for some way of archiving material sent there for longterm reference. OTRS sounds like a possibility; think the way Commons archives permissions emails, only we could archive emails needed for verification. Give all admins/accrediteds access, and never again worry about finding ancient emails when a legal threat comes over Godwin 2.0's desk (or yours, or mine) disputing an article from years back. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 07:40, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• IRC if you must know... --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:07, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Don't you ever sleep, Mr Durden? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 08:45, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'll sleep when I'm dead. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks much

Thank you for your Support of Wikinews interviews New York bar owner on Santorum cocktail for WN:FA, much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 14:19, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

re Accreditation

Sorry not interested at this time, will give it some thought for a later date, too busy in life in other things. -- Cirt (talk) 22:45, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Inactive policy

I'd forgotten entirely about the proposed inactive policy (though clearly I'd known at one time, because it was on my watchlist). I've marked it {{historical}} with link to superseding WN:PeP.

I note, part of the reason for not requiring notification prior to reduction of privileges was to minimize drama. --Pi zero (talk) 00:00, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Whereas I forgot we'd nailed the thing into policy; thanks for noticing before I did more than talk page alerts. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:49, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

just an Hi

Hi Brian,

You done well cutting my sysop rights ( make me a bit sad anyway :). Sadly i have no more time for wikinews even if i love Wikinews.

You make a great job

bye

jacques divol

• Jacques, thanks for being understanding. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:55, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Lou Reed obit

I notice you characterized it as stale on several user talks, but didn't not-ready the article itself. Had you intended to? It's in the discretionary 2–3 range, so a call either way would be unexceptional. --Pi zero (talk) 14:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

• I left that open; because, with a huge amount of effort, it might-just be salvageable. I also characterised both articles as "news reports of his death", feeling neither really qualified as a good obit. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Re: Privileges

I am aware of the announcement on WN:RfP, I went there after you noted on my talk page. I did however make minor edits between when it was announced on RfP and when my admin rights were revoked :) - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 06:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

• The eventually-agreed-upon policy is WN:PeP, with expiry at nine months for admin. The bit on speedily recovering privs is written with cases just like yours in mind. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:57, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Requesting your opinion

Hi. Can you offer your opinion in this consensus discussion? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

• No. That is a discussion for encyclopædists, not for journalists. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:44, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Restoration of Accreditation

Could you please restore my Wikinews accreditation? The IPC requires that you be affiliated with an organisation. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The factors motivating withdrawal do not appear to have changed. For what purpose that you have in mind does the IPC require accreditation (I suspect you may be thinking of something for which Wikinews accreditation is inadequate anyway)? --Pi zero (talk) 21:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

They have changed. I withdrew only to avoid trouble for you at a time when Wikinews was under attack, on the understanding that they could be speedily restored. The factors that prompted my original accreditation have not changed though. I note that other accredited editors cite the very same reason. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

They require freelancers produce a business card and evidence of at least two contributions in the previous six months. Organisations like Wikinews are accepted at their discretion. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Where are these requirements published? The above wouldn't get you into the National Press Club for example. Independent Australia has been trying for years to get its people admitted without success. Orderinchaos (talk) 07:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

On the IPC site [1]. I admit that they wouldn't get you into the Press Club. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Errrm... might want to check that site. That's the Institute for Printed Circuits. [2] Orderinchaos (talk) 23:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps [3]. --Pi zero (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
Given the circumstances of the withdrawal (which are not documented on-wiki), this would be more-appropriately handled as a new request, with supporting links as-to the IPC requirements and event(s) where lack of credentials are a barrier. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

It is not possible to raise a new request, because the mechanism does not allow this. Nor is there a need; our policy allows speedy restoration of accreditation. Hawkeye7 (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• Then, the talk page of accreditation requests would be the appropriate place for the discussion. It is, after all, "Community-accredited". --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Moved my request there. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• Hawkeye7, I can't speak to why you agreed to withdraw; however, that is not what I was referring to when I mentioned factors that do not appear to have changed. The private request was based on not wanting to make a big public spectacle about concerns of others that, I recall, you failed to recognize the legitimacy of at the time. Those concerns have not changed, and honestly, your failure at the time to understand the concerns was disturbing.

Concerning IPC recognition of accreditation, it's been my impression — of course Laura is the expert on this — that accreditation needs to be by a legal entity. Wikinews being not a legal entity. WMF is a legal entity, but is unwilling to accredit reporters. TWG is to be a legal entity, but doesn't exist yet. Wikinews (we're really speaking here specifically of en.wn) is not a legal entity. --Pi zero (talk) 16:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Scottish Independence

I'm sure that the issue has been flogged to death and people are sick of hearing about it in Scotland, but there has been very little coverage of this in the world media. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:40, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

• I can hardly be said to be impartial, or not have a big-ass conflict of interest, when it comes to Scottish Independence; when I lived in Brussels, I ended up with a bunch of the English ex-pats there nicknaming me "Braveheart".

There's few who're actually sick of the issue; sick of the verbal sewage being spewed out of Westminster? Oh, yes. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm certainly happy to continue covering it (if I can find the time and energy to write about it, and with the proviso that I'm in London not Scotland). If you want to write about it, I'm happy to check for neutrality as I'm fairly agnostic on the matter (basically, my current views: I'm happy for the Scottish to leave the Union, but I fear for what happens to the remaining countries without the counterbalancing force of Scottish political influence, plus I'm not sure about the practicalities of some of the things Salmond and Co. says). —Tom Morris (talk) 08:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

• Yep, you're more likely to be neutral than I am. Whether this would push the rUK to re-evaluate their politics, I don't know. I'd hope so; because, with Labour having become a centre-right party, the politics of Westminster have more in-common with Mussolini's Italy than past UK governments.

Scotland's counterbalance to how the rest of the UK votes is far less than you might think, though. Only two elections in the last 100 years have been decided by the Scottish vote.

As-to what the SNP say? There's some things I'd take with a large pinch of salt; but, others — often when the No camp scream loudest that they're impossible — I have no problem seeing happen.

What I've not seen the mainstream press actually citing recently are current survey/polling on how the vote is likely to go. Nor has enough detail of prior polls been disclosed to give me confidence in how the results will match up to the published details. It's a given that getting the 'No' vote out to the polling stations will be far harder than those who want to ask for change. And, a lot of people I know, who are otherwise utterly disillusioned with politics, intend to vote, and intend to vote Yes.

One of the biggest problems with covering the debate, is the mainstream press being so rooted in the status quo. There's a distinct lack of imagination, at least when it comes to where they'll sit in an independent Scotland. The BBC are, currently, the classic example of this. To the mandarins in London, a Yes vote is unimaginable; from that viewpoint, everything said by those in-favour of independence is assumed 'ridiculous' until proven to be plausible. They'll accept that MPs lied through their teeth about expenses, but won't accept they'd direct government departments to lie about independence. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:04, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I do wonder, when you say only two elections in the last 100 years have been decided by the Scottish vote, whether that's slightly different from Scottish political influence. Presumably the politicial dynamics of England-and-Wales would be different from the politicial dynamics of England-Scotland-and-Wales, though how it'd differ is obscure to me. --Pi zero (talk) 13:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

And to me. A number of things could be meant: (a) that Scotland's population is small relative to the rest of the UK, so it doesn't comprise a lot of seats; (b) that it votes along the same lines as the rest of the kingdom, so is not differentiable; (c) or that it always votes the same way, and is therefore not a political battleground. And, as PiZero suggests, there's also the possibility of influential politicians coming from Scotland, like Tony Blair or Gordon Brown? (Wouldn't their opinion be more newsworthy than John Major's for that reason?) Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:56, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Learning opportunities

Brian, I've been giving this a good deal of thought since last time (2012). Is it possible for editors to move deletions-rejections of my students' work to their user spaces. These are great learning opportunities, comments and all, that we lose sometimes in the blink of an eye, which makes it difficult to actually go over the problems and correct them as a collective. Would it be disruptive? It's kind of like a review of the feedback from assignments. Crtew (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• It is, but is a manual process at the moment. Worst-case is an admin not aware of the requirement to save unpassed student work may delete it when it becomes stale. That can be undone, provided we can easily identify the deleted page. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:38, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• There is a sort of partial support for this right now: an optional parameter userspace on the template that tags articles as abandoned. Ordinarily, an article is tagged at least four days after work on it stops, and then two days after that it can be deleted (two days' notice); but one could add to the tag |userspace=Crtew (for example), so the instructions on the tag say to move it to Crtew's userspace instead of deleting it. Of course, an admin still takes action on it manually so could accidentally delete it, not noticing that the message says to move it to userspace; eventually we hope to semi-automated these things, so there'll be a button for the admin to click, which will "do the right thing".

If an article tagged with {{abandoned}} should be userspaced, changing the tag to {{abandoned|userspace=Crtew}} switches it to say the article should be moved to Crtew's userspace. --Pi zero (talk) 12:07, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Google News

Did Google news drop Wikinews in its aggregation? I noticed that stories searched no longer appear. Or is that a result of the end of 2013 plan to revise Google News and its search? Crtew (talk) 05:07, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• We've someone having a quiet word with a few people regarding the spotty coverage. It very much looks like action is needed that only the WMF devs can complete. That being registering a Google Webmaster Tools account for the wikinews.org domain, and serving their news spider appropriate sitemaps.

We are recognised as a source (search for 'source:Wikinews' on GNews), but the indexing is a little patchy. I'd chase it up with Google directly, but my contact with them was promoted out of GNews a few years back. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:36, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Collapsed Rana Plaza win two World Press Photo award

Thanks mentioning. I think, have to read more about the guideline and other process. Till then, best wishes. --- Sufidisciple (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Sending emails to interviewees

Hi, are you able to send an email around to some interviewees who have been really helpful in the production of their answers regarding the Ukrainian invasion similarly to when you did at the write up of the Syrian interview article by any chance please. Thanks in advance. --Computron (talk) 12:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

• Yup. Juse email me a list of who; saves me digging out the emails from my scoop archive. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:40, 4 March 2014 (UTC)