User talk:Brian McNeil/Archive 19

Youth Olympics Game Nanjing 2014

Hi Brian, I`m planing a 5-day visit with photographers and authors to Nanjing. Today i have only the question to you: Would you like to visit China for 5 days between 16. and 28. August 2014? --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 12:02, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Wow! I'd love to visit Nanjing. I'm currently still looking for a new job, though. That could cause some issues, depending on what work I end up doing - if I don't simply go self-employed.

Have treated myself to a Canon EOS 400D since Strasbourg, which I'm still getting the hang of. Last time I owned an SLR was pre-digital cameras.

Oh, and the report I compiled from our visit to the EU Parliament is up as a Wikinews Featured Article Candidate; I used a couple of your photos on that, fairly-closely following your requested image credit. I just wish The Other Place (Wikipedia) would adopt something similar on images, it'd encourage far more pro photographers to donate work. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:49, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Fine! Today i only search the team, i must make a request at WMF and then we'll see. --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 08:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if you have to drop me to get any funding application to the WMF accepted. I'll not go into the sorry tale behind their attitude to me on-wiki, suffice to say that I've a handful of enemies/antagonists over on English Wikipedia who'd scream donor's funds were being misused if the Foundation even bought me a cup of coffee. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:02, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I have a Grant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Ralf_Roletschek/Youth_Olympic_Games_2014 - i need the best people for Nanjing. Diliff as the best photographer of Commons and you as Member of en.wikinews. The little projects need also a possibility to work, wikinews german is not very great, you must write in China every day some Articles. And i want, that you write some articles in english Wikipedia. Please go here: https://secure.registration.olympic.org/en/media-registration and take a accreditation to you with the Organisatin "Wikimedia Austria". Its without cost. You need a photo and your passport. All other later ;) --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 19:21, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I pulled up the registration page this morning, and it let me click through to the second page stating it recognised "Wikimedia Austria". But, I failed to find the passport-sized photo I had — have now got another to use. Now, it's telling me I'd have to register Wikimedia Austria as an org - which has prompted me to defer this until I find out if it's in-some-way changed (Österreich?).

Workload you're asking for isn't difficult, apart from writing for Wikipedia (because of the sourcing fun, which makes that far-easier post-visit). I know the IOC are absurdly strict on images and video from actual competition in the traditional Olympics, and Paralympics; I'm hoping they're more-relaxed about the Youth Olympics, but would work on the assumption I'd have to engage a lot of the competitors away from competition and do interviews — which are far more-likely to garner readers/viewers (yes, I'll be bringing everything I have that shoots video).

Let me know if I've an issue on the application (since it no-longer auto-completes Wikimedia Austria's details). I'm taking advantage of being unemployed to try and sign-up for a basic Chinese Language course with Edinburgh University. I'm genuinely terrible with foreign languages, but I at least want to be able to say thank you to people (as well as know if they're swearing at me :P). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Newsiebot?

I notice the sandbox didn't reset after I edited it yesterday. --Pi zero (talk) 09:57, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• I'll check the logs in a bit. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:02, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Figured out the issue; hosting company relocated wikinewsie.org, and the crontab wasn't migrated. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• Further update on this: reinstated relevant crontab entries, and my Newsiebot scripts are failing to verify the SSL cert of wikinews.org. Have raised a ticket with the hosting company for this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:11, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Watercooler discussion: Possible memorial fund?

Hi. I started a discussion on the English Wikinews water cooler at Memorial fund in Ashley-Nelson and Adrianne Wadewitz's honor?. I would really appreciate any feedback you could provide. --LauraHale (talk) 15:03, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter copy for this month

Brian, Could you take a look at this newsletter item about the education program at Wikinews? It's at [1] at Wikipedia Education Program newsletter site. Thank you, Crtew (talk) 15:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

• Looks good, and particularly positive, to me. As you might've noticed, UoW students are also in the process of submitting contributions - so a footnote on that might be worthwhile. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:21, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think the newsletter is PR and not what we do here at Wikinews! I'll change the copy to account for the UoW students but I don't know much about them. I'm trying to get a picture of my students by Wednesday. Crtew (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Wording near bottom of Cannabis article

Interested to hear your take on the wording/correction issue. Talk:Glasgow cannabis enthusiasts celebrate 'green' on city green#Discussion elsewhere. --Pi zero (talk) 04:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi there. You have uploaded one or more images to Wikinews in the past, but it is missing important information. All images uploaded to Wikinews require both a source (who made the file) and licensing information: anything that doesn't have both is assumed to be copyrighted and therefore ineligible for usage on Wikinews. Please check your files and ensure that your files fit the image use policy. Images identified as such include, but may not be limited to, the following:

• File:193px-University of Wollongong.png (fair use, without rationale, in userspace)
• File:Sample reporter card.jpg (no source or license)
• File:MEPs Parts 01-03.webm (no source or license)
• File:IMG 0002.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x2.25.ogg (no license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x1.75.ogg (no license)

Thanks, Microchip08 (talk) 10:15, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Image licensing

Hi there. You have uploaded one or more images to Wikinews in the past, but it is missing important information. All images uploaded to Wikinews require both a source (who made the file) and licensing information: anything that doesn't have both is assumed to be copyrighted and therefore ineligible for usage on Wikinews. Please check your files and ensure that your files fit the image use policy. Images identified as such include, but may not be limited to, the following:

• File:193px-University of Wollongong.png (fair use, without rationale, in userspace)
• File:Sample reporter card.jpg (no source or license)
• File:MEPs Parts 01-03.webm (no source or license)
• [[:* File:IMG 0001.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:IMG 0002.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x2.25.ogg (no license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x1.75.ogg (no license)

Thanks, Microchip08 (talk) 10:15, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

"Advice on a story idea"

I invite your thoughts at User talk:Pi zero#Advice on story idea. --Pi zero (talk) 10:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

spammers

Hey, could you delete this? It's a gibberish spammer. Thanks. DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 12:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Done --Pi zero (talk) 14:03, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Arbcom election 2014

Reminder (as you're on the current ArbCom). Nominations are open for the 2014 selection. You may nominate yourself, or I'd be pleased to nominate you. --Pi zero (talk) 21:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• Nom away, I've been up to my eyeballs in audio and video editing since a charity gig last weekend. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:01, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Resurrected: WP:NOTNEWS news belongs on Wikinews

I just noticed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_61#Resurrected:_WP:NOTNEWS.2C_news_belongs_on_Wikinews Just about anyone can close a discussion, and that one is quite the landslide, not to mention Jimbo's strong support. Has anything happened recently (in the last couple years)? I'm not involved, and I'd be happy to close it if it's revived, unless there's reason to think consensus has changed. Can't do the bot part though.--Elvey (talk) 00:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• Don't know if it is worth antagonising certain sections of the Wikipedia community in that way - no matter how well-intentioned actively highlighting the policy might be. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:02, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikinewsie

Hi Brian, I have talked with one contact in Twitter Mexico. He told me that is possible verified the Twitter accounts of Wikinews, but we need one email like the @wikinewsie.org. The platform that you created months ago still working? And, are you (in en.wikinews.) interested in verified your Twitter account? Regards --MadriCR (talk) 23:44, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'll pass on that; I don't have access (or, at least not to my knowledge) to any enWN twitter account. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:03, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikinews Photographer

Hi Brian, I have been contributing high quality concert photos to Wikimedia Commons this past year. See my Wikipedia user [2] page for my contributions. Does high quality photo conent alone qualify for credentials, or must one be a writer as well? I have a strong "prior track record" of having my photos published in newspapers and magazines. Peterchiapperino (talk) 23:06, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

• We run photoessays, Peter. As I'm sure you understand, the niggle is meeting NPOV, so we're delighted to take a bunch of photos with only a paragraph or two of supporting text as a workaround. I'm partway through one for Edinburgh Fringe 2014 - with a small aside into stop-motion, much-hated by the spam filter: youtu.be/vdP7kYNITgo. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Elected!

This is coming later than it should've (sorry!) You've officially been elected to the ArbCom for 2014! 3 cheers for you! --Bddpaux (talk) 15:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• :) Let's hope it stays unneeded. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users

Dear Brian McNeil,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

User:Gownirony

I'd welcome your input at, and about, User talk:Gownirony. --Pi zero (talk) 18:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• We've done "crowd-sourced" interviews in the past, so that isn't new. Someone finding that as a starting point is unique, though.

From constructive criticism of my own use of the form, it has the age-old tl;dr problem; it's an attempt to re-create what can be an engaging televisual — or audio — form of reporting using only text.

I'm going to assume nothing here, simply note that: if you want to bring up religion in-relation to gaming, there's a particularly-large can of conundrums wriggling around on a shelf somewhere. ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikinews:Accreditation requests/Microchip08 (2)‎

I've closed this as successful. --Pi zero (talk) 22:47, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

More bling!

FA....huzzah! Glasgow's Common Weal launch; 'Not me first. All of us first' --Bddpaux (talk) 21:10, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• Nice. Need to om, nom, nom, the Festival Wander now. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Referendum 'trivia'

Be very surprised if someone doesn't try and create an article, so will collect a few items of trivia here.

First up, from the Highland Council Election Office's Facebook page/twitter feed:

• "#Highland Returned Postal Ballot papers are now up to 35,148 = 90.15% #indyref"

That's 90% turnout - via postal ballot - before polling stations even open. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Youth Olympics Game Nanjing 2014

Hi Brian, I`m planing a 5-day visit with photographers and authors to Nanjing. Today i have only the question to you: Would you like to visit China for 5 days between 16. and 28. August 2014? --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 12:02, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Wow! I'd love to visit Nanjing. I'm currently still looking for a new job, though. That could cause some issues, depending on what work I end up doing - if I don't simply go self-employed.

Have treated myself to a Canon EOS 400D since Strasbourg, which I'm still getting the hang of. Last time I owned an SLR was pre-digital cameras.

Oh, and the report I compiled from our visit to the EU Parliament is up as a Wikinews Featured Article Candidate; I used a couple of your photos on that, fairly-closely following your requested image credit. I just wish The Other Place (Wikipedia) would adopt something similar on images, it'd encourage far more pro photographers to donate work. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:49, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Fine! Today i only search the team, i must make a request at WMF and then we'll see. --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 08:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Don't be surprised if you have to drop me to get any funding application to the WMF accepted. I'll not go into the sorry tale behind their attitude to me on-wiki, suffice to say that I've a handful of enemies/antagonists over on English Wikipedia who'd scream donor's funds were being misused if the Foundation even bought me a cup of coffee. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:02, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I have a Grant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Ralf_Roletschek/Youth_Olympic_Games_2014 - i need the best people for Nanjing. Diliff as the best photographer of Commons and you as Member of en.wikinews. The little projects need also a possibility to work, wikinews german is not very great, you must write in China every day some Articles. And i want, that you write some articles in english Wikipedia. Please go here: https://secure.registration.olympic.org/en/media-registration and take a accreditation to you with the Organisatin "Wikimedia Austria". Its without cost. You need a photo and your passport. All other later ;) --Ralf Roletschek (talk) 19:21, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I pulled up the registration page this morning, and it let me click through to the second page stating it recognised "Wikimedia Austria". But, I failed to find the passport-sized photo I had — have now got another to use. Now, it's telling me I'd have to register Wikimedia Austria as an org - which has prompted me to defer this until I find out if it's in-some-way changed (Österreich?).

Workload you're asking for isn't difficult, apart from writing for Wikipedia (because of the sourcing fun, which makes that far-easier post-visit). I know the IOC are absurdly strict on images and video from actual competition in the traditional Olympics, and Paralympics; I'm hoping they're more-relaxed about the Youth Olympics, but would work on the assumption I'd have to engage a lot of the competitors away from competition and do interviews — which are far more-likely to garner readers/viewers (yes, I'll be bringing everything I have that shoots video).

Let me know if I've an issue on the application (since it no-longer auto-completes Wikimedia Austria's details). I'm taking advantage of being unemployed to try and sign-up for a basic Chinese Language course with Edinburgh University. I'm genuinely terrible with foreign languages, but I at least want to be able to say thank you to people (as well as know if they're swearing at me :P). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Newsiebot?

I notice the sandbox didn't reset after I edited it yesterday. --Pi zero (talk) 09:57, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• I'll check the logs in a bit. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:02, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Figured out the issue; hosting company relocated wikinewsie.org, and the crontab wasn't migrated. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• Further update on this: reinstated relevant crontab entries, and my Newsiebot scripts are failing to verify the SSL cert of wikinews.org. Have raised a ticket with the hosting company for this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:11, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Watercooler discussion: Possible memorial fund?

Hi. I started a discussion on the English Wikinews water cooler at Memorial fund in Ashley-Nelson and Adrianne Wadewitz's honor?. I would really appreciate any feedback you could provide. --LauraHale (talk) 15:03, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter copy for this month

Brian, Could you take a look at this newsletter item about the education program at Wikinews? It's at [3] at Wikipedia Education Program newsletter site. Thank you, Crtew (talk) 15:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

• Looks good, and particularly positive, to me. As you might've noticed, UoW students are also in the process of submitting contributions - so a footnote on that might be worthwhile. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:21, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think the newsletter is PR and not what we do here at Wikinews! I'll change the copy to account for the UoW students but I don't know much about them. I'm trying to get a picture of my students by Wednesday. Crtew (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Wording near bottom of Cannabis article

Interested to hear your take on the wording/correction issue. Talk:Glasgow cannabis enthusiasts celebrate 'green' on city green#Discussion elsewhere. --Pi zero (talk) 04:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi there. You have uploaded one or more images to Wikinews in the past, but it is missing important information. All images uploaded to Wikinews require both a source (who made the file) and licensing information: anything that doesn't have both is assumed to be copyrighted and therefore ineligible for usage on Wikinews. Please check your files and ensure that your files fit the image use policy. Images identified as such include, but may not be limited to, the following:

• File:193px-University of Wollongong.png (fair use, without rationale, in userspace)
• File:Sample reporter card.jpg (no source or license)
• File:MEPs Parts 01-03.webm (no source or license)
• File:IMG 0002.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x2.25.ogg (no license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x1.75.ogg (no license)

Thanks, Microchip08 (talk) 10:15, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Image licensing

Hi there. You have uploaded one or more images to Wikinews in the past, but it is missing important information. All images uploaded to Wikinews require both a source (who made the file) and licensing information: anything that doesn't have both is assumed to be copyrighted and therefore ineligible for usage on Wikinews. Please check your files and ensure that your files fit the image use policy. Images identified as such include, but may not be limited to, the following:

• File:193px-University of Wollongong.png (fair use, without rationale, in userspace)
• File:Sample reporter card.jpg (no source or license)
• File:MEPs Parts 01-03.webm (no source or license)
• [[:* File:IMG 0001.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:IMG 0002.JPG (generic name, no source or license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x2.25.ogg (no license)
• File:Duncan campbell-trans-x1.75.ogg (no license)

Thanks, Microchip08 (talk) 10:15, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

"Advice on a story idea"

I invite your thoughts at User talk:Pi zero#Advice on story idea. --Pi zero (talk) 10:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

spammers

Hey, could you delete this? It's a gibberish spammer. Thanks. DragonflySixtyseven (talk) 12:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Done --Pi zero (talk) 14:03, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Arbcom election 2014

Reminder (as you're on the current ArbCom). Nominations are open for the 2014 selection. You may nominate yourself, or I'd be pleased to nominate you. --Pi zero (talk) 21:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• Nom away, I've been up to my eyeballs in audio and video editing since a charity gig last weekend. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:01, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Resurrected: WP:NOTNEWS news belongs on Wikinews

I just noticed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_61#Resurrected:_WP:NOTNEWS.2C_news_belongs_on_Wikinews Just about anyone can close a discussion, and that one is quite the landslide, not to mention Jimbo's strong support. Has anything happened recently (in the last couple years)? I'm not involved, and I'd be happy to close it if it's revived, unless there's reason to think consensus has changed. Can't do the bot part though.--Elvey (talk) 00:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• Don't know if it is worth antagonising certain sections of the Wikipedia community in that way - no matter how well-intentioned actively highlighting the policy might be. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:02, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikinewsie

Hi Brian, I have talked with one contact in Twitter Mexico. He told me that is possible verified the Twitter accounts of Wikinews, but we need one email like the @wikinewsie.org. The platform that you created months ago still working? And, are you (in en.wikinews.) interested in verified your Twitter account? Regards --MadriCR (talk) 23:44, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'll pass on that; I don't have access (or, at least not to my knowledge) to any enWN twitter account. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:03, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikinews Photographer

Hi Brian, I have been contributing high quality concert photos to Wikimedia Commons this past year. See my Wikipedia user [4] page for my contributions. Does high quality photo conent alone qualify for credentials, or must one be a writer as well? I have a strong "prior track record" of having my photos published in newspapers and magazines. Peterchiapperino (talk) 23:06, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

• We run photoessays, Peter. As I'm sure you understand, the niggle is meeting NPOV, so we're delighted to take a bunch of photos with only a paragraph or two of supporting text as a workaround. I'm partway through one for Edinburgh Fringe 2014 - with a small aside into stop-motion, much-hated by the spam filter: youtu.be/vdP7kYNITgo. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Elected!

This is coming later than it should've (sorry!) You've officially been elected to the ArbCom for 2014! 3 cheers for you! --Bddpaux (talk) 15:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• :) Let's hope it stays unneeded. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users

Dear Brian McNeil,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

User:Gownirony

I'd welcome your input at, and about, User talk:Gownirony. --Pi zero (talk) 18:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• We've done "crowd-sourced" interviews in the past, so that isn't new. Someone finding that as a starting point is unique, though.

From constructive criticism of my own use of the form, it has the age-old tl;dr problem; it's an attempt to re-create what can be an engaging televisual — or audio — form of reporting using only text.

I'm going to assume nothing here, simply note that: if you want to bring up religion in-relation to gaming, there's a particularly-large can of conundrums wriggling around on a shelf somewhere. ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikinews:Accreditation requests/Microchip08 (2)‎

I've closed this as successful. --Pi zero (talk) 22:47, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

More bling!

FA....huzzah! Glasgow's Common Weal launch; 'Not me first. All of us first' --Bddpaux (talk) 21:10, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• Nice. Need to om, nom, nom, the Festival Wander now. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Referendum 'trivia'

Be very surprised if someone doesn't try and create an article, so will collect a few items of trivia here.

First up, from the Highland Council Election Office's Facebook page/twitter feed:

• "#Highland Returned Postal Ballot papers are now up to 35,148 = 90.15% #indyref"

That's 90% turnout - via postal ballot - before polling stations even open. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Being bothered by User:Pi zero

He is bothering me with rubbish each edit. He is never contributing. He deletes articles comments sites here, although the article is existing. Articles under development are clean up articles. I might not write about RB Leipzig. My started articles have interest and he says that other archived articles are which from amateur clubs, university clubs or something else. He wants to rename my name here and is not rename me. My articles are written after the style such as about other proven football match reports. He is psychic unable to name reasons. Please remove him from the board! He neither productive nor socially competent or educated, for a globally representative on public free sites. --Nikebrand (talk) 21:42, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

• You are being 'clueless' with regard to the job of a reviewer and administrator. Your user name implies you are a representative of Nike, which is potentially problematic. Similarly, the rambling comment I am responding to does not instil confidence in your ability to string together a coherent news story. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:04, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Nice to meet you :)

Dear Brian, It was fun to meet you at the EduWiki conference in Edinburgh earlier this month. Thank you so much for shooting the event. :) I look forward to seeing more uploads when you have a chance. I'm glad I got to see some of your photography at dinner; you're very talented! I particularly appreciated the stained glass in the Tron Kirk and I really liked this police box because they helped to tell a story. I've actually added them (from my volunteer account) to articles on en-wiki. I also enjoyed your photo tour of the Fringe Festival. Most of all, I'm really grateful we got to talk about Wikinews. I can't seem to find that beginner's intro page -- "New to Wikinews?" -- that you showed me. Please redirect me? I did manage to track down that paper you mentioned writing with Professor Blackall, "Wikinews - a safe haven for learning journalism, free of the usual suspects of spin and commercial agendas". Thank you for that! I look forward to following up on how to use Wikinews in the classroom. Take care, AKoval (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for that! Some bad news: I've a dead external hard disk which was the only copy of video, and a fair-bit of the photography, from EduWiki. It would've been backed up onto another computer, were it not for doing the Guy Fawkes night protest.

Any sort of 'intro' to Wikinews should be in the template automatically added to your talk page (i.e. {{Howdy}}). That could do with a hell of a lot of constructive feedback, which needs to come from people who've not, or only just, got over the initial learning curve. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thinking back, this might-well be the introduction you were referring to. Alternatively, it might be this old essay, which mainly covers the basic format/layout of a Wikinews article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

DVD cover added

Hi Brian, I did try my best uploading Little Spain's film art cover. Let me know if it's right. Thank you. Another question: the files uploaded in the english wikinews can be used by other wikinews such as the Spanish one...? I saw there by "uploading" a file only mean about using Commons...--FiloActual (talk) 16:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Live report of Commons images with DRs raised which are used on any Wikinews project

Hi Brian,

Based on the UNDEL commons discussion I have created c:User:Fæ/Wikinews DRs. This should update itself once a day (at 4am UK time) and covers Wikinews in its 32 languages. Feel free to share the link. If anyone has suggestions for simple improvements they ought to raise them on my Commons talk page or on the report talk page. I have vaguely been thinking of similar reports for DRs of interest, and your example images gave me the incentive to revisit the issue. --Fæ (talk) 21:43, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks. I'd almost prefer we worked with local upload, and then pushed to Commons later-on; however, the realistic approach is let Commons be as-strict as they are. Then, we can do as-done for the couple of recent images. As I remarked there, if something gets through review and published, the odds are against any images which Commons might find contentious not being eligible for Fair Use/Dealings on Wikinews. If something has made it that week past publish, and into the fully-protected archives, we'd do our best to draft a FU rationale for retention of an image Commons might reject.

That "Fair Use/Dealing for News" is rather bizarre to folks who don't get their head around what news actually is. We consider 'competing news sources' completely off-limits, but Wikipedia will happily plunder such imaqes.

Wikipedia will happily replace a 20 year-old photo of an article subject with a current one; and that's perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia entry. If we've been forced to go the Fair-Use/Dealng route? We want to keep the time-appropriate image, not one that might post-date an article by years. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:13, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

• Of possible interest: meta:Wikimedia Forum#Local administrators should be able to view Commons deleted file history. --Pi zero (talk) 00:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

And, as you might have noticed, there is an "Add local description" tab on File: pages where the media is on Commons. I'm quietly hopeful that "restore to local project" is on an unpublished list of MediaWiki development goals. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:43, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Enjoy!

		Happy Holiday Cheer
		Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user an Awesome Holiday and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone with whom you had disagreements in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings! Joys! Paine

• Thanks for that; something to brighten the darkest day. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:03, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Promoted to FA

Lobby groups oppose plans for EU copyright extension --Bddpaux (talk) 18:17, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks, I will schedule a update with that on Facebook for close-to 00:00 UTC. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:14, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

New group of students

Brian,

Greetings from USI! I have a new group of students for the class that contributes to Wikinews in the spring. I will meet them for the first time this week. I'm hoping that we can replicate what we did last time. Do you have any suggestions?

Crtew (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oooooh, tricky.

We're still bumping along on near-empty here, so my concern has to be how students can make life easier on reviewers. This, in a somewhat perverse way, mirrors real-world problems in journalism — where are the fact-checkers, copy-editors, and such? The odds are going to be that Pi zero (talk · contribs) will review many of their submissions, but they need not consider it in an adversarial manner. Reviewers are here to help, and to stand behind the stories journalists submit. They're more than welcome to pop into online chat and ask what might be the biggest-challenge to getting a potential story through review and published. Reviewers are, to some extent, the people who will defend the story they've just had published whilst they work on getting the next one. If we can clear that hurdle early-on, I suspect students will get far more out of contributing, as well as Wikinews getting far-more articles from assigning contributing as coursework.

It also reminds me I need to nag people in Wikimedia UK regarding the Train the Trainers course they put me through. Getting the accreditation on that will involve polishing up the "Intro to Wikinews" thrown together for that. I look at my local contributions for 2014, and know that wouldn't have been possible without our review process. Yes, my "dumbing down" into photojournalism is clearly evident, but I'd welcome seeing students going in completely their own direction. Knowing how to take something off the wire and put it in 'House Style' is the easy part, putting together stories which will get considered by wire services and sold internationally has to be part of the envelope students push. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 01:48, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much

Thank you for your comments at WN:AAA in support of me.

Much appreciated,

-- Cirt (talk) 19:58, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

bot request

Any thoughts on Wikinews:Bots#Revibot I (talk · contribs)? --Pi zero (talk) 15:11, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Rangeblock

You hit that range just as I was coming here to ask about which range we'd wanna bash. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Not yet sure about the 208. one. Zayo customer, looks like can just keep buying new tokens that'll be new IP addresses. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:47, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Tireless Contribution

With all due motivation and enthusiasm, I have been trying to develop Wikinews. I regret to say this but review's are discouraging me at any go. I require your guidance and experience but why do you seem to be so arrogant. After 3 days, having received no comment I have put two of my articles under publish Cricket World Cup: Bangladesh defeated Afghanistan by 105 runs, Demolition of Hindu temples in the US , wrote on the wall ' Get Out ' condemnation around. At least cite a reason for their shortfall, don't remain arrogant. --Abhinav619 (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Reviews (no apostrophe) are intended to set the bar particularly high. As the comments on the cricket article highlight, there's a line which reviewers cannot cross in-terms of how much editing they can undertake. That, incidentally, isn't a failing review; simply a recommendation to copyedit. Looking at the article, I think they key point from what is close to publication would be to make more use of active voice.

The second submission has similar issues; a need to copyedit: "Maha Shivaratri festival was celebrated in Washington,United States when hate messages were found written on the wall of the temple." Really? You do realise that reads as the festival being celebrated as a result of the hate messages?

It can be particularly difficult to write useful pointers into a review requesting additional work. Carrying out a complete rewrite isn't likely to significantly improve the quality of someone's submissions. This leaves us in a difficult situation with regards to constructive criticism. But, it's that insistence on writing quality which has led to three universities assigning contributing to Wikinews as a part of their journalism degree courses. They have articles that don't get through review, so you're in good company. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• I now also note you attempted to self-publish. That has been made technically impossible on English Wikinews, and is a particularly grave policy violation. The credibility of what we publish, and distribute through social media to 50,000-odd followers, rests on everything passing an independent review. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Awkward

I've changed my stance to neutral on CJR's RFP. With apologies both at the RFP and on CJR's user talk; and I didn't feel comfortable opposing because it seems that could reflect poorly on CJR, which I'd like to find a way to not do. All following this. --Pi zero (talk) 01:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Phoenix Bar Article

MusicrocksUOW (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Hey Brian, talked to David today. Whenever you'd like me to I'm happy to work on the article. If there's any contacts that you'd like me to interview for the story, let me know. I can send you my email address, and I will set up interview questions from there.

MusicrocksUOW (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I userfied the article. Seemed like a interesting article, especially when I think about some of the silly municipal noise ordinances we've got here. See User:Brian McNeil/Edinburgh music lovers start shouting down 'inaudibility' clause. —Mikemoral♪♫ 08:04, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks, would've helped if I looked here before digging for it myself. However, was passing on a detailed backgrounder to MusicrocksUOW. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

A new article

Hi Brian. I am back with a contribution. The address is here. I was for longer time preparing the article, being accurate, and reviewing Wikinews journalistic guidelines, in order to be as close as possible to a final result. I think also it is a very interesting matter. Please review it as soon as your agenda allows it. Thank you.--FiloActual (talk) 16:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

• I see it's now published, nicely done. Always worth a look at the differences between your last contribution and publication, or the edit summaries the reviewer has left on revisions in the "View history" tab of the article. Afraid I was busy most of the weekend, then doing a radio appearance Monday afternoon. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:49, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Much ado about accreditation

I'm getting a lot of grief, here, because somebody who's never contributed to en.wn requested accreditation and I tried, inarticulately perhaps (judging by the response), to suggest they should do some contribution to Wikinews first. We've now got two other non-Wikinewsies involved, on the request page, and the accreditation page's talk page, and the policy water cooler. I'd appreciate input from you, maybe at the policy water cooler and the request page (I tried to divert discussion from the third place to those two). --Pi zero (talk) 15:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

@Pi zero: no grief no stress no problem! I am only considering options and learning about the precedent here.

I would be happy to talk with either of you either on Wikinews or, if it saves time and trouble, by phone or Skype if you email me. I do not want to disrupt any process on Wikinews and wish to go forward acting in accord with Wikinews community precedent, whatever that is. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

• Wikinews:Accreditation_requests#Dennis_Bratland_.28talk.29
• Wikinews_talk:Accreditation_requests#Accreditation_for_Wikimedia_contributors
• Wikinews:Water_cooler/policy#Seeking_clarification_on_issuance_of_press_accreditation

Thanks Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Nordoff-Robbins

I saw that you uploaded Commons:Category:Nordoff-Robbins_gig,_March_25th_2015. I happen to work a bit with the counselors in New York City who teach Nordoff-Robbins and other forms of music therapy.

Do you know anyone in the field of practicing Nordoff-Robbins, or did you just happen to be at this event? I would be interested in meeting someone who might be able to give comments on some articles relating to music therapy on Wikipedia. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Brian, could do with a Edinburgh world heritage page, that links from the Edinburgh wiki page. Listing is "Edinburgh's Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site,[11] which have been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage Trust since 1999"

ArbCom election 2015

As a current Arb, are you willing to stand again this year? I'd be happy to nominate you; or of course you could nominate yourself. --Pi zero (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Old IP subpage

Hello. I realise you've not edited for a few weeks but I thought I'd ask about a page I've stumbled across. In January 2012, an anonymous user created an article about an earlier WN article which you moved to User:71.184.225.67/Thats not the worse thing i've ever said or done to a woman. It's been more than three years without further edits so I wondered if it is time to propose deletion of the page? Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 13:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I actually proposed some pages like this for deletion a long time back. The consensus at the time was they could stay as they weren't harming anybody. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:23, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, fair enough. It just seemed an odd sort of page, so I thought it best to ask first. Green Giant (talk) 01:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

• Just to be extra-sure, I put an explicit "" on the page.

FYI, not dead ... yet. They better not screw up this year's flu vaccine. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Cheers for attending to this. They probably will screw it up again. Probably the best thing to do is camp outside your GP's like people do at Wimbledon or Boxing Day. Green Giant (talk) 10:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Help us improve wikimeets by filling in the UK Wikimeet survey!

Hello! I'm running a survey to identify the best way to notify Wikimedians about upcoming UK wikimeets (informal, in-person social meetings of Wikimedians), and to see if we can improve UK wikimeets to make them accessible and attractive to more editors and readers. All questions are optional, and it will take about 10 minutes to complete. Please fill it in at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JJMNVVD

Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 18:06, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikinews interviews painter Pricasso on his art and freedom of expression

• Wikinews interviews painter Pricasso on his art and freedom of expression

It took me a while to research, do the interview, and put this all together. It was quite a coup to get a response back from the interviewee.

It's a nice piece related to freedom of speech and issues of censorship.

Do you think you could review it?

Thank you for your time,

-- Cirt (talk) 08:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

<poke>

Très amusé. Hope your legalese is up to the task, although of course if you have the opportunity to consult with a translator that would be the best choice of action. - Amgine | t 15:07, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• Sadly, no legal aid available for defamation. Though I'm sure the amusement value will encourage BRS to take a look. Found other stuff needing processed through Farcebook's IP infringement procedures. Quel Horreur! Methinks the defamation may end up compounded before the defendant is served. I'm sure a Friday evening in the pub will impair his, clearly, already pisspoor-enough judgement to have a good 'ole rant.

What was it you said about journalists being "professionally evil"? 3:) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:08, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Sly question

See here What is the "other place"? OpenGlobe is defunct as far as I'm aware... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

• Nothing whatsoever to do with OG. However, The Other Place has an article on the term. ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:15, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Thanks This other place looks kind of interesting. I'll have to check it out sometime. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:19, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

The origins of the use of the term here are remarkably similar to those attributed to the two Houses in the Palace of Westminster. :D --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:08, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Review

Currently, four articles needs review. Can you look for these two

• Miami doctor publicly apologizes for Uber misconduct (no longer fresh)
• Murray heads to Australian Open finals, defeating Raonic in four-hour thriller.

Because you reviewed the other semifinal, this one would be easy, and quick to do.
AGastya (talk) 07:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• The only thing that's ever "quick to review" are photoessays. Check the edit history on the prior tennis one to see that.

I'll try and get to it, since I disqualified myself on the other with substantial edits to the article, but am in the middle of dealing with some legal stuff. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:19, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• I notice there's still a formatting issue with that scorecard template. It will be dependent on size of display, but I see the last row shifted left as it's completely clear of the caption below the photo. Is there any way to properly centre the entire template, not just each row. My CSS isn't particularly good, and for the last I simply had to throw in a clear — which pushed it right below the bottom of the infobox as well. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:24, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I will come to it after this article. Currently, there is so much to write. But after January, my college resumes and I won't have time.
AGastya (talk) 11:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

By the way, can you help me with #if parameters needed if the match completes before 5 sets?
AGastya (talk) 12:00, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

• I was trying to sort that alternate account template yesterday, and haven't touched the more esoteric parts of wikicode in ages. I gave up. I know offhand that the source template has conditionals for author (no attempt to display if not present), and there are some other templates out there which do far more-sophisticated stuff with conditionals. When, quite some time ago now, I've worked on more-complex templates I usually copy them into a text editor. Once there, I chuck in line breaks and indenting so they look more like a programming language. Knowing where 'statements' finish makes debugging much easier; although, have to take out all the indents and line breaks when saving a copy to test. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Dennis Bratland

Do we have a wikinewsie email address for Dennis? diff --Pi zero (talk) 23:42, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

• firstname dot lastname at wikinewsie dot org. ;)

I've not added him to the spam fest that is scoop; offered to, but didn't get a yes/no answer. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I feel I used to know what to do with the reporter id field, but I definitely don't recall atm. diff. --Pi zero (talk) 03:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

• User ID. Let me see if I can refresh my memory as to where that's found. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:00, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I found mention, as I suspected, of this having been visible when viewing your preferences page. Alas, it is no longer displayed there. I don't know if that's related to CentralAuth, something else, or just removing a detail no other project actually had - even an obscure - use for. Looked through special pages, and similarly can't find anything. So, at a bit of a loss currently. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:17, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Aha. Memory jogged, maybe mystery solved. I too had recalled a screen somewhere that had such a number (I'd really hoped to find it at Special:Contributions or maybe Special:UserRights), but the only such screen I found had a different number than shown for any given accredited reporter. On reflection, though, of course it's a different number. That whole part of the wiki software was completely overhauled, not so long ago, to give each user a single unified account for all sister projects. So it will have changed for every user; all the entries in the accredited reporter list will need updating. Found by following the SUL link on Special:Contributions (one would think there ought to be a way to get to it using the toollabs: prefix, but I'm not sure what it would be). E.g., for Brian, whose id is listed on the accreditation page as 4460, the new number is 1263. (I'd have guessed they'd all be huge now. Huh.) --Pi zero (talk) 11:52, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Pinging

In fact, since you mention it, we have two articles now that might still be pushed. The article published yesterday was an obit (the most recent development in it was a tribute on Friday, but an obit doesn't age quickly for this purpose I think); and the article published today is an event from yesterday. --Pi zero (talk) 22:47, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikinewsie e-mail

My password appears to have stopped working for my Wikinewsie e-mail account. Is there currently a problem with the server or was it reset somehow? --William S. Saturn (talk) 19:47, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

The issue has been resolved. --William S. Saturn (talk) 06:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Recent pings?

Wondering if my recent pings have gotten through. --Pi zero (talk) 21:06, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Email access has, for me, been intermittent. Still using my non-wikinewsie for most things. Few points to note/clarify:

• Could do with someone else, more-regularly active, who could be trusted to push updates to Facebook.
• No luck getting the hosting company to admit their cock-up on the lost database(s); will need to recreate the wikinewsie.org and editors. sites again.
• wikinewsie.org domain has about 30 days left until renewal is due. I'm going to be struggling on that (and am struggling on the hosting at the moment).
• For latter points, it's donate at wikinewsie.org which funds would need deposited in.
• Seems to me looking for another admin or two might be in order. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:53, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

  <waves hand> - Amgine | t 16:43, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

• Admin volunteering? I think, in your case, that'd be a speedy re-grant; but, not been active enough recently to say could/should be my call. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:13, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Can I become an admin? I often hang around till a review is successful and then tweet it.
acagastya 18:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

• Here, or on Facebook? For the moment, that's where we do need stuff pushed. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, atm wikinewsie.org says "Full site will return soon", so there is no donation form. --Pi zero (talk) 01:23, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Re "For latter points, it's donate at wikinewsie.org which funds would need deposited in. ", how? Is this a PayPal address? I'd throw a fair bit there (through a friend who has a PayPal, if that's what we are using.) Gryllida 02:19, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Talking about the twitter handle or facebook page.
acagastya 04:42, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

• Yep, the donate email address is for Paypal. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:05, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't see anything on the fb or twitter pages; maybe I'd need to log in? (Which of course I can't on fb. I could get a twitter account if I have to.) --Pi zero (talk) 10:53, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Svetlana has been added to the Wikinews page on Facebook as an editor. To add others, with the same right to push articles, I'll need to know they've liked the page on FB and what email they've registered there with. Twitter? I've no idea who has the 'keys' to that account.

Once I get round to rebuilding the wikinewsie.org site, I can possibly pull together a simple WordPress plugin to push articles to Facebook. In the meantime, I've just pushed the Barrier Reef article; there's an issue there in that the image on it is so small Facebook didn't choose to use it. Just going to schedule the most-recently published article to go out in a couple of hours. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

That's good to hear, though it still leaves me without an evident way to donate. :-S 

Btw, in fact acagastya has requested the mop and bucket on-wiki. --Pi zero (talk) 11:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘
Annoyingly enough, donations via the button on the wikinewsie.org site were 'taxed' by Paypal. The donate button may-well have allowed a transfer without actually registering, but they now require you create an account even if you use it for nothing else.

I noted the Mop and Bucket request, will respond on that in due course; got a load to get done this afternoon. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:46, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

PayPal is known to lock accounts of users without a good reason.

If you don't want to give me your bank details then I can send you over PayPal this weekend. --Gryllida 03:42, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

*I* was referring to the server sysadmining, not en.WN. I have far too much drahma happening to be able to get active with en.WN for the nonce. Side note: deposit routing numbers allow deposits, but not withdrawals; talk to your bank if you don't believe me. - Amgine | t 04:46, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Syrian hospital bombing

Hello, Brian, Dave Blackall here. I have been trying to get the Syrian hospital bombing story published, which you did some work on earlier, and I have changed it a lot as there are new developments and much of the mainstream news centers around propaganda, which I am trying to correct and highlight in this story. I know I am trying to do too much in a news story, but it would be great to get some truth out about George Soros' White Helmets. So it is a very important story but is difficult to get it into shape. Would you be able to take a look at it, please? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nudge (talk • contribs)

I've taken a stab at copyediting the article. It was jumping all over the place, which makes it well-nigh impossible for readers to in any way timeline events. As noted in the last review on it, the WSJ source will have to go; it's paywalled, thus can't be used on Wikinews. If a syndicated, freely accessible, duplicate can be found that could be used instead. However, the biggest concern is the number of sources; usual question applies: "Are they all really needed?" If it's triangulating details from independent sources, then trimming to the minimum needed to cover all details and providing the supplementary sources on the talk page will greatly speed reviewing. An additional point to speed reviewing is the use of HTML comments (which look like <!-- see BBC for death toll -->) within the article's body can further speed the fact-check aspect of the article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:01, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

@Nudge: Published with some revisions, as I imagine you'll have noticed. I'm impressed you were able to find time to continually improve it (having an academic background so I've some notion just how busy you'd be atm). A tricky story, with plenty of twists and fog-of-war to complicate the synthesis. --Pi zero (talk) 16:59, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

I hear one of the shares of this on facebook went with a comment starting "didn't see this on the main stream news". Moments like that are worth savoring (or savouring, to taste). --Pi zero (talk) 17:23, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Was shared/reposted on Facebook with the comment: "Didn't see this on the main stream news, if it was in England or even Europe people would be screaming for war ...". The article has reached just shy of 4,000 people via Facebook; that's very good given it didn't get posted with an image.

From a little trial-and-error over Facebook posting, seems we need images to be around 260px (at least not as small as 240px) before they'll be picked up with posted on Facebook. If Facebook has managed to spider the article already — which, I believe, it likely does off our syndication feed(s) — then there's a special developers' page the link needs pushed through. There's quite a list of complaints about the OpenGraph data for all our articles; since I now see the Wikipedia FB page being used to post, I suspect the OG data will start to improve. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:39, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm hoping 250px might be big enough for them. --Pi zero (talk) 18:18, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom election 2016

Would you be willing to stand for ArbCom this year? I would be happy to nominate you, if you'd rather not nominate yourself. I'm hoping we can have more nominees than slots this year (we had only as many as slots, last year). --Pi zero (talk) 01:44, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikinewsie.org

This morning I've being told by the mail interface that my account is not authorized for mail. This is disconcerting since William S. Saturn's monthly article is currently taking shape. --Pi zero (talk) 11:11, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Working now. --Pi zero (talk) 03:12, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Query

Wikinews:Water cooler/technical#Wikinewsie upgrade? --Pi zero (talk) 22:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Google News for Wikinews

Hi! I saw the English Wikinews is shown on Google News. Is something like that possible for other Wikinews-versions too? Livenws (talk) 07:58, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Noting events before writing about them

Do you have ideas for software that could be used to take note of events that have occurred very recently, or are occurring now? It may help with organizing local groups that report on the news in their respective areas. It may also ease learning of newcomers - they may add an event into such a system instead of writing a full article.

I expect such software to show events on a map as well as in an ordered list with fresh first which corresponds to the currently active region of the map. The availability of such software may make it easier to identify news to write about. And then recommendations could be shown to users based on current Twitter or Facebook trends.

There is mw:Extension:Cargo/Display_formats which has a map and a time line however this needs to be hosted on a separate wiki and is unlikely to be installed directly here. And adding events to it looks like a rather manual process.. Gryllida (talk) 11:54, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Future reporting

wikt:can and wikt:may are not quite synonymous. (Did not check the original source.) Also, it's alive! - Amgine | t 14:22, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Growing Wikinews to counter the Balkanization of the body politic

Hello:

I'm asking all the Wikinews administrators for their thoughts on how Wikinews and the Wikimedia Foundation more generally might respond more effectively to the challenges to democracy and world peace that many people perceive in the rise of the xenophobic right in the US, Europe, India, the Philippines, and elsewhere. I've proposed a workshop on this subject for WikiConference North America, October 18-21, and I've engaged User:Pi zero and User:Gryllida in discussing this at Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals#Retaining contributors with compatible projects. Pi zero and Gryllida think the numbers I scraped from meta:Wikinews are wrong. That may be, but I don't think it changes the fundamental question.

I hope you will contribute your thoughts to this discussion -- both online and hopefully also at WikiConference North America.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 01:07, 17 August 2018 (UTC)