User talk:Brian McNeil/Wikinews workflow

Impetus

The drive to put this together comes from meeting people at Wikimania and talking about Wikinews. I was ashamed when Sue Gardner said she had seen inaccuracies in Wikinews stories that had been there until old enough to archive. There is little comfort in that being followed with a comment that Wikipedia can live for weeks or months until an inaccuracy is spotted and corrected. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:02, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Since Sue is the one who has the newsroom experience I have emailed her, and the others present at the meeting we had to highlight this discussion. I only raised two points in the email, mainly to keep it short enough to allow answers to the questions raised in five minutes or less - and thus make answers more likely.

The obvious question from this discussion is how much closer does the proposal take us to the workflow of a traditional newsroom.

Second up, was obliquely related, and the one many, many people are keen to know about - FlaggedRevs. What we need there, based on my understanding, is the DPL extension enhanced to be aware of FlaggedRevs. All I am asking for there is a commitment from Sue to prod Brion to get one of the dev staff to look at an as-yet-unsubmitted bugzilla request to update DPL.

This second part should be a no-brainer for all contributors, but the devs often err on the side of caution and look for community consensus for a change. I'm sticking the poll here as this page seems to be getting attention and input, but if anyone feels it would be better on WN:WC then don't hesitate to move it.

I think RSS can wait, the existing full-feed extension currently isn't up to WMF standards.

Proposed enhancement to the DPL extension

Section moved to technical sub-page of the Water Cooler

{{ready}} - increase focus on this stage and drive to get there

Of the stages listed, I think {{ready}} is the one where our attention should be focused. I think ideally we should be aiming for all articles to reach ready, rather than going straight to publish, and then be reviewed by another contributor but this is of course a problem whilst the community is small and so articles might sit at ready for a while. I would agree that current reviewing tends to focus on formatting rather than facts and this needs to be expanded. Currently however, it is difficult to determine which of the many sources is being cited for a particular fact. I think we should consider ways of implementing inline references as used on Wikipedia although I don't think these should be visible to readers, sources should remain listed in the current way just with some wikicode indicating which each fact came from.

Regarding reviewing of ready articles, I think we should have a template to put on the talk page with items to check listed like is used on Good Article nominations on Wikipedia, w:Template:GAList. I would of course suggest that an important check would be that fair use images are appropriately used with a source and rationale, and that any images from Commons pass a basic test of having a source and license, and not appearing to be blatantly copied from a random website etc. Adambro (talk) 10:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Image checking would fit neatly into the revised flow at the ready stage. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:33, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I have added some checkpoints for images and other decorations at the revised ready stage. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Focusing on the {{ready}} template and driving fact-checking and copyediting towards this stage is the best way to go, IMO. I don't think inline references is the best way to go with this (perhaps notes on the talk page for specific portions or quotes as I mentioned below), but here is an idea. Why not just make it required that individuals who have been a major contributor to an article or the article's creator cannnot add the {{publish}} tag to that article? So the article creator or major contributor must at the most change the tag from {{develop}} to {{ready}} when they are done working on it, and seek out a third-party user to review the article and that person changes the tag from {{ready}} to {{publish}}. I often do this for articles I have created/worked on as a major contributor - I have sought out independent users either via IRC or on a talk page and requested that they review an article I wrote/contributed to and then change the tag to {{publish}}. Why don't we just make this required instead of a recommended step? Cirt (talk) 00:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

There is an issue with this in that people do not read sources and fact-check. In the past I likely have been as guilty of this as anyone, but what tends to happen between {{ready}} and {{publish}} is making sure the article reads well, some grammatical and spelling corrections, perhaps an image or an infobox gets added, and then it is published.

Wikipedians seem an ideal group to target as potential fact-checkers and copyeditors. The drawback being there is not the same urgency on Wikipedia to perform such tasks. For our existing level of output we could get by with recruiting five or six globally distributed fact-checkers from Wikipedia and we would not face any loss of articles. With a Wikinews:Factchecking project page having a DPL they could log in when they have time, check the project page, pick an article, and verify it. Perhaps a half hour of their time is required. What is disappointing from my presentation at Wikimania is I do not seem to have persuaded more people to try Wikinews. The one clear new recruit I can identify is User:Majorly. If you look at his talk page, and contributions, you will see he has put up two new articles. His reaction to working on Wikinews? Yes, as I said in my presentation, it is easier than Wikipedia, and - the hook to catch people - there is more of a sense of achievement because you see your contributions up on the front page. Recruiting Majorly wasn't from the presentation, but more from evangelising throughout the conference, this is why we need to work on other items such as brochures, posters, and leaflets. Do we have people with the skills to put together posters? Who can write Wikinews-based advertising copy? Can we provide tutor/student material for inclusion in Wikipedia Academies? There are a multitude of things that need to all come together to really spur growth of Wikinews. This effort to improve quality is just one of them. I believe if we go with all the other to-do items without this then when we do have a large enough contributor base for this to be essential then inertia will see it shouted down and we will continue to fail to meet our obligations to our readers. There is a lot to do, a lot to discuss, and some of it involves hard decisions. This is the push towards Wikinews 2.0. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Inline references as an aid to fact-checking

For a long time I have strongly opposed use of inline references within Wikinews articles. They break the flow of a news report and are an invitation for people to leave the site and read what we have used as a source. The current visual appearance of your average Wikinews article is generally accepted, and a good presentation of the material we have.

However, the idea of "hidden" references for specific facts does have merit as an aid to fact-checking. This is a clear advantage in terms of trying to improve the reliability of our reporting, but it is an extra burden on those producing the articles. I am sure it would not be difficult to set up a simple template as opposed to the <ref> style, and have the contents of the template not appear in the rendered version of the article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, footnotes—as in the Wikipedia-style—would make it easier for fact-checkers, but with our overlapping multiple-source requirements it would also make for all kinds of sentences that end ^{[1] [2] [3]} and similar. If we are modeling our-selves after established news sources, none of them have footnotes. Also, I think it makes attribution rather burdensome. But as one who does do fact checking, there are clear advantages. Sometimes, I am reading source after source, to find a quote that is in an article. --SVTCobra 23:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, in that particular case - sources for certain specific quotes could be cited on the talk page of the article in a note (instead of in footnotes in the article itself). Cirt (talk) 00:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Some thoughts

How will the creation of new stages encourage the work to be done? If no-one is fact-checking during the "ready" stage, why would they do it if there is a fact-check stage? I think a better approach would be WikiProjects. Wikinews:Wikiproject_factcheck and Wikinews:Wikiproject_copyedit, and then we recruit people to those projects who are interested in those specific tasks. And the journalism professors can assign their students to the projects, where they will be directed by regular contributors to useful activities that are consistent with the workflow of a professional news agency. Um, just some thoughts, I haven't really been following the debate. - Borofkin (talk) 11:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I am open to any suggestions on how we can convince people to perform these tasks, but right now we are failing on a quality basis because they are not being done. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

So, the way it would work is that when an article is published, it would be tagged "fact check", and the fact check tag would be removed by members of Wikiproject_factcheck. But it wouldn't delay publishing, it just means that the published article would be tagged as not yet being fact-checked, which I don't have a problem with because it would be true, and we have nothing to fear from the truth. - Borofkin (talk) 11:30, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikinews Wikiprojects are notorious for just dying off and getting abandoned. I have little faith in such an approach working. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:31, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

To clarify/expand on that, a project page for fact-checkers may be appropriate. The primary purpose being to list volunteers who are prepared to carry out the work and outline the tasks they are expected to carry out. In the interests of keeping as open as possible, it would natually likely require a new template to be added to the talk page of an article indicating who carried out the fact checking, and any issues with it - such as use of foreign language sources that could only (poorly) be checked via use of an online translator. I suggest {{factchecked}} as the template, with a big tick on it.

One consideration that I'm not sure I can clearly explain - but will try to - is that factchecking may involve adding additional sources to get round issues with foreign language sources and poor translations. I don't think we should be deliberately shopping for sources that agree with what Wikinews has in its article, but if you're stuck with something in Hebrew you likely can't even read the article title or assess if it is an editorial piece. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The main advantage of the project approach is that projects tend to produce "todo" lists, and I think that is what is needed - a list of published articles that haven't been fact-checked. - Borofkin (talk) 12:50, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Having given this more thought, it is likely the most logical setup. We have the factcheck template, with its own category, via a DPL we list those requiring attention on the project page. Wikinews:Fact checking could be set up right now, one aspect I think may be tricky for this is where foreign language sources are used. As we go along we would need to start identifying which online translation services were best for specific languages. In some cases, the fact-checking people may need to look for additional English sources to verify the article.

Where people list themselves for this, I would strongly advise listing the timezone people are in to give an indication when they may be available for the task. Within the task there obviously would be a mini-workflow, tagging on the talk that you have started fact-checking, and when complete, replacing that with a template that fills out a checklist. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:59, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

How will the creation of new stages encourage the work to be done? If no-one is fact-checking during the "ready" stage, why would they do it if there is a fact-check stage? - Borofkin (talk · contribs) said it best, above. We should first try to make sure that fact-checking gets done during the ready stage. I have a different idea I will suggest, in the above subsection {{ready}} - increase focus on this stage and drive to get there. Cirt (talk) 00:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the validity to this argument. You want to continue with a status-quo that isn't working because essential aspects of the required process are being missed. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I do not want to continue with the status quo - I am merely pointing out that adding more steps will not affect the behavior of others who will simply continue to go straight to publish. See also the comment below by Gopher65 (talk · contribs) - as well as other comments by Anonymous101 (talk · contribs) and Borofkin (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 21:17, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Well then there is always a policy we can make of it (not publishing right away), and I am sure there are ways we can prevent that with the developers help, if necessary. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:37, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> {{ready}} is misleading, it presupposes that the article has been checked for factual accuracy, copyedited, and only requires minor work. In most cases this is miles away from reality. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:07, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Original reporting

I feel a little ashamed to show my face here, I'm a major part of the problem singlehandedly as a regular contributer who bypasses 'ready', often leaving typos etc to be fixed. None-the less, reading it over it seems to work, but you want input on OR against the new system. It seems obvious to me; 'factcheck' should check OR notes and identify if it seems plausible, as well as check that background info is correct per cited sources. The rest of the worflow behaves much as normal. Or am I being oversimplistic and missing an obvious problem? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 11:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I was writing the below section at the same time as you wrote this. :) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Workflow with Original reporting

The main page for this really avoids the issue of original reporting. How do we fact-check this being the key issue. Interviews generally have transcripts, and emails can be shared where input from sources has been sought in this way, but certain items may not be so readily verified.

• What are the cases where we can provide guidelines for checking OR?
• What are the cases where the OR needs to be from a trusted contributor?
• Is being a trusted contributor enough?
• Do we need to set standards for OR notes?

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Can we have someplace central to forward emails to? At the moment I think forwarding to an admin is considered apropriate, but a lot of the people doing OR are already admins, so that essentially means it never goes anywhere. The same if they're accredated. Something a little like OTRS would be great for that. I think I remember a similar issue raised once on WC; anyone remember? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Part of the proposal to be worked on and put to the WMF for assistance in improving Wikinews is to transfer to it the wikinewsie.org domain. The flexibility this would give over hosting on GoDaddy would allow for a factcheck-l@lists.wikinewsie.org mailing list. If we consider this alongside Borofkin's comments then somewhere on-wiki you would have a list of people who were prepared to carry out the task, and they could subscribe to the list.

Issues arising from this are privacy of source's personal information. Which brings it back to an issue of trust. A list open for anyone to subscribe to would require that those forwarding mails which are part of OR scrub some personal details. Alternatively we need people to be trusted to be discrete and not share/leak source information, which may mean an invite-only list. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Just today (well, July 24 per UTC) we had this interesing Orignal Reporting example. The accredited reporter thought it was confirmation if he e-mailed his own notes to himself! You can view the discussion here: Talk:Marathon runner addresses Toronto, bringing attention to autism. --SVTCobra 00:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I saw that, my gut reaction was, "god! what a pompous ass!". --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

If we get the embargoed wiki up and running, this would be a good place for the OR notes, if someone doesn't want to post them in the collaboration page. In the mean-time we could perhaps require that they get e-mailed to scoop. Either way I think that we really need to get tougher on OR notes requirements, even for accredited and trusted contributors. The current policy is fine, but we don't enforce it enough. There are to many "I was there" type of notes. (Also, I don't particularly like OR claims for reading press releases or watching TV or listening to radio.) I am sure "real" news rooms require notes be given to the editor and that the reporters don't tell their editor-in-chief "welcome to the world of journalism". Without being tough on this point, regardless of how much the Wikinews community trusts the contributor, I don't think outsiders will view us as credible. --SVTCobra 22:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Part of the issue with the case you're referring to is approaching the project with a competitive mindset as opposed to a collaborative one. I wonder if that is totally missing the point of Wikinews. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

{{archive}}

This isn't working at the moment. If we want to be credible, we have to archive things properly. I am at a loss as in to how we force this to become 1) up to date and 2) reiable ad efficient, but it must be done and is getting largely ignored. Thoughts? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:33, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The key thing is that it is an unseen and thankless task. I did over 3,000 articles until the process totally burnt me out. I suspect we may need to resort to admin-privved bots again just to minimise chances of overlooked vandalism. I think we have something like {{archived-unreviewed}}, if we have a smarter bot that says, "this article was edited >36 hours after publication and more than 5-10 characters were added or removed it might tag {{archived-review-requested}}. Implementation of a more strict workflow may reduce the load on people trying to do archiving. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

On a side note I think the purged listings of articles needing archiving at the bottom of WN:ARCHIVE is helping out a little bit, from time to time I see people archiving off of that list and I do that as well - it is less backlogged than it used to be. Cirt (talk) 23:48, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Exemptions and process circumvention

As has been highlighted in the similar discussion on the Water Cooler, there can be cases where a major news item cannot wait to go through the full process. Figuring out how we work with that may be a thorny issue, but is one that needs discussed. Can we keep it positive and make suggestions on how we can minimise exceptions? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:38, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The {{breaking}} tag, is one tool that we already have available. It provides some disclosure to the reader that the information is in flux. However, we will have to use it much more sparingly than currently seems to be the case. Some stories have been posted with the breaking tag when all it seemingly means is that it is the first that particular contributor heard of it. If this tag is appropriately used, it could serve this need, but how do we control that? If someone nefarious wants to circumvent process, they will quickly learn to use it. --SVTCobra 23:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, {{breaking}} is where the process circumvention can come in. The tag has been horribly abused by some contributors - I've even seen it on obituaries; what do people expect? The dead to rise up?

This will become less of an issue once we get FlaggedRevs because tagging as breaking will not get past whatever editorial control process we have using FlaggedRevs. A good thing to do is watch the BBC site and see how their use of a breaking news label works. You will see a very brief piece indicating that an event has occurred and limited details are available. At that point I believe they have an "all hands on deck" call and several reporters will be tasked with gathering information and providing a more comprehensive report.

The London bombings is a perfect example of where there would be a circumvention of the process. However, that would initially just be to provide notice to readers that we know there is a developing story and are working on it. This has the advantage of drawing in contributors who want to help flesh out the story, and preventing multiple copies of the article being started. Realistically, where we get situations like that and ten or more people are all working on one article a lot of the fact-checking and copyediting gets done by anyone who sees a new detail and wonders where it came from. If we consistently had that number of contributors per article, and that desire to provide factual information I do not think this proposal to put a more formal workflow in place would be needed. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

factcheck/copyedit

I do not think that these need to be their own stages - rather they should be rolled into {{develop}} or {{ready}} - ready could be a larger stage during which the factchecking/copyediting takes place. I agree with Anonymous101 (talk · contribs), who commented: I don't think we need to add extra steps to the review process. I think that in principle factchecking and copyediting obviously must take place, but I do not think they need to be delineated as separate steps with their own tags in the workflow process. Cirt (talk) 22:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

This is where we will have to agree to disagree. I do not trust people enough to believe these tasks will be carried out if not explicitly required. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I do not necessarily disagree - I just think we first have to agree that people are not even waiting with the {{ready}} tag and soliticing others for review for that step - so adding more steps will not make any difference. Cirt (talk) 00:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

There is certainly an issue that some people do not pass their articles through {{ready}}, but more importantly there are people moving articles from ready to publish without checking the sources. Right now I believe it would be trivial for just about any well-established contributor to create a plausible but total piece of fiction and cite Goatse as a source, mark it as ready, and some sucker would publish it. This may be overly cynical, but it is what I see. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

In my (admittedly limited;)) experience so far, people just want to get their stories published as soon as possible. Add that to the fact that if a story sits around for every one day with with a {{ready}} or {{develop}} tag it will almost certainly never get published, and it is easy to understand why people try and rush their stories. As others have said, this is obviously in part because of the tiny wikinews community; the number of people contributing to this site is simply insufficient for the workload.

I'd say that people probably won't bother using additional tags, given that even in my short time here I've seen numerous people go straight from develop to publish. I'd suggest that instead of making additional tags that may not be used, just change the {{ready}} tag to {{factcheck}}. Copyediting is pretty much intrinsic to factchecking, since you have to carefully read both the article and its sources. This won't stop a few nuts from going straight to publish, but it will keep regular users from feeling like their articles are buried in a quagmire of redtape. Gopher65_talk 18:51, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Gopher65 (talk · contribs) - that sounds like a most excellent idea. Cirt (talk) 21:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Well we need, if we ant to have credibility among bigger sites and such, some kind of editorial process. That is the main reason why we are not indexed in google news and everyone else is. That is why the blog is in google news, and we aren't. We might be small, but we need a process. Everyone else has one, and yes I know we are different, but having one is part of being credible. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 21:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

In fact, way back in like 2005, there was a small template that was used on discussion pages or something that said the article went through a "community review." I have only seen it skimming random articles, so I have no clue what the template name is. Also, we have enough people that it does not take a day to go through and just do a quick skim and look at sources in articles. If i can whip up an article in five to ten minutes, it should take just as long, if not shorter, to do a review. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 21:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes that is true, sometimes it isn't. I just did one that I intended to skim through, but it ended up taking me an hour and a half to read through all the sources and their linked material, find an appropriate picture, and read up on the background enough that I could understand what was going on well enough to factcheck and copyedit unfamiliar words and names. Now maybe I should have left that particular article to someone better acquainted with the subject, but I don't know that it would have got done otherwise (again, small community). Gopher65_talk 22:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

That does not negate from the fact that we need a process. We go virtually unnoticed because of a simple process that can be easily resolved. We are not only missing out on contributers, but readers. As it stands, we only get noticed when someone else somewhere talks about us or other media write about a story we ended up having. That includes media and et al. But even if it might take a little more time, in some cases, the fact that you had to c/e, or etc, shows we need and should have some kind of process. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you there. What do you suggest other than simply adding a {{factcheck}} tag? Gopher65_talk 03:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> I see no reason why {{factcheck}} and {{copyedit}} can't be added to an article at the same time. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

So why don't we go with Gopher65 (talk · contribs)'s idea or something along those lines - abolish {{ready}} and instead use a combined {{factcheck}}/{{copyedit}} tag - and make it a required stage? Or rather, instead of all of those, roll them into a tag called {{review stage}} or something like that? Cirt (talk) 15:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename {{Ready}} to {{Review}}

I think as a preliminary stage we could move the {{Ready}} tag to {{Review}} - because in essence the article may or may not be "ready" at that point, but in practice the tag is used to ask others to review the article. We could spruce up the message that appears in the template itself - this could be the main stage where factchecking and copyediting take place - and the article would sit in that stage until all those tasks were done by a third-party editor. Cirt (talk) 16:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

In any event, at the very least the name should be changed to "Review", because that's really what this stage is at the present time. Cirt (talk) 16:16, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

As a preliminary step I changed the bolded phrasing "This article is marked as ready for publishing." in Template:Ready to ready for review. I also moved an optional parameter out of small formatting, for greater emphasis. So by using that parameter, we could use the current template to yield:

This article is marked as ready for review. This article needs factchecking and copyediting before it can be published. Please check if it complies with Wikinews policies and guidelines. To publish the article, replace the {{ready}} tag with {{publish}}; If not, with {{develop}}, noting reasons on the Talk page.

This article is marked as ready for review. This article needs factchecking and copyediting before it can be published. Please check if it complies with Wikinews policies and guidelines. To publish the article, replace the {{ready}} tag with {{publish}}; If not, with {{develop}}, noting reasons on the Talk page.

Cirt (talk) 16:35, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

We can change templates etc, but that still isn't going to stop someone from immediately publishing something, whether its ready or not. We would have to somehow make it a requirement. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:53, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree wholeheartedly. But it is a step in the right direction. Cirt (talk) 16:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Started a poll for this renaming at Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals. Cirt (talk) 17:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Disappointed

This time last week I was sat in Alexandria, the Wikimania conference was finished, and the cumulative fatigue from getting by on 2-3 hours sleep each night was catching up on me. I'd nearly fallen asleep in the morning keynote when they dimmed the lights, but kept through it and got the print edition on paper and copied in time for the morning coffee break. I can't recall what sessions I had to miss to do that, but it had become apparent fairly early on that I was not going to get to everything I wanted to attend if I was going to be the project evangelist. Despite being issued a media pass, I can honestly say Craig Spurrier really only attended as an interested Wikimedian. I believe a look at his Wikimania-based contributions will back up this opinion. It's a joke that anyone has the nerve to put "very active contributor" next to a vote for his membership on the Arbcom.

However, I was happy with what I had achieved at the conference. I had not gone for myself, but for the project. A lot more people knew about the project, and I had been given some great opportunities to do some networking. I'd been given feedback and encouragement by attendees from the four corners of the Earth, staff and board members had listened to my concerns and gone on to offer help for the project. From past experience I can testify that trying to get this level of attention and support by email is impossible.

In the time since I got home on Sunday night - as well as getting Internet access in a cafe in Cairo airport - I have tried to share what I learned, and what opportunities are open to us. This proposal was a key part of that, as such it is a drive to significantly improve the quality of Wikinews output, provide a documented editorial process, and open the door to collaboration with journalism schools.

Some of those much newer contributors who have gone out of their way to drag this proposal down a dark alley and give it a good kicking couldn't even find it when told it was flagged. Disappointed? Perhaps I should be disgusted that people involved themselves with policy and proposal and don't know where to look for a list of flagged discussions. That's before I even mention the other flagged page I set up. NOBODY has commented on that, and there are offers there from the WMF to spend money on Wikinews. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I can not speak to others, but for me I do know how to find something if it has been flagged, in this particular instance I just forgot for a moment and blanked on that. For that I apologize. This page has been quite active lately and getting some discussion from multiple different individuals, and I think that is a good thing. We are moving forward in a good direction and the important thing is not to get discouraged but to continue to have a polite and professional dialogue. Cirt (talk) 17:52, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The proposed alternative kills stone dead any possibility of getting a journalism school from anywhere in the world involved in the project. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Which proposed alternative? Cirt (talk) 18:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

<unindent>Assuming you mean the "not creating 2 new templates that wouldn't be used except by a few die-hards" bit, well, *points back a few words*, that's why. Unless you can change the software to make the use of those templates MANDATORY, any such action will be utterly useless (and personally, if that can be done, I'd be much more apt to support new templates, cause then they'd get used).

I don't think anyone here disagrees with your assertion that wikinews needs to have a better defined workflow, with emphasis on accuracy... but you appear to be suggesting that the whole of what needs to be done is to modify the template usage! In my view, what you are suggesting with these new templates can be just as easily accomplished by modifying the existing {{ready}} template. People appear to use that one at least some of the time, so that would be a good start. As for fixing wikinews in a more substantial way, well, if you (or anyone else) come up with a real, workable suggestion on how to fix wikinews (as we all know it needs to be fixed), then I'm sure everyone will leap on it. But adding additional unused templates is not the way. That isn't even a bandaide solution; it isn't a solution at all. Now personally, I can't think of any realistic way to fix wikinews, but that may just be a lack of imagination on my part. It seems to me that the concept of an open wiki isn't entirely compatible with the concept of a secure, reliable, immediately available newsource. But... I could be wrong. I hope I am:P.

Note: I use the word "you" in the following paragraph a fair number of times, but I am not speaking of any individual person, but rather wikinewsies in general. To reply to your other point, about people not knowing where the flagged articles links are, wikinews has a god-awful layout, and an all but non-existent help section. I found the links to flagged articles a few days ago, but that was just because I have randomly browsed just about every (non-article non-talk non-user) page on this site, just to see what was there. And you know what I found? Templates with no associated help pages, rife with spelling errors. No acceptable help pages for new users. No explanation of basic site functions, or of the appropriate use of those that are listed. If I didn't have years of experience on wikipedia, I'd have been totally lost here. A new user would be clueless, and would probably give up due to the unnecessarily steep learning curve. I've heard several people speak about new users not knowing things, but you make no apparent effort to create a new-user friendly environment. Gopher65_talk 18:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I have been trying for months, maybe even a year for an embargoed Wiki "to fix Wikinews." Brianmc implemented the wikinsewsie e-mail address. I started the Wikinews Reports blog. We have been trying and trying, but it seems that there are contributers who do not want to see changes in Wikinews or the policies no matter how much we change proposals and such.

Yes templates can be made mandatory. We already have a few in the starting an article area such as {{haveyoursay}} and the date template. So it is doable. The point is, all these proposals throughout the last few months have been workable. I am just getting tired of people saying NO constantly, but then don't give anything in return on how to make the proposals better, and if they did, still would say no.

If we don't change things, then really we miss out on millions of readers and contributers...all because all we need to do is make a few small changes. Its not like we don't already do these things, we just don't make them required. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:38, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we are all in agreement that we should somehow require a hashed-out review stage and not allow direct-to-{{publish}}. Cirt (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Gopher65, thank you for the pointless rant. Flagged Revisions will allow the enforcement of the proposed changes, or will you oppose that too? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Discounting someone's comments and calling them a "pointless rant" is inappropriate and impolite, and not the best way to foster Recruitment and Retention. Gopher65 (talk · contribs)'s first edit to this project was July 6, 2008. We should be more polite and welcoming if we expect users to stay and contribute here and write more articles and contribute to more areas of this project. Cirt (talk) 18:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps "pointless rant" was a bit strong, but a great deal of the thrust of his comment was wholly unrelated to this discussion and a massive complaint about poor organisation of project and help pages. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:59, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - but it is related to the Recruitment and Retention subsection of User:Brianmc/Request for Foundation assistance, and Gopher65 (talk · contribs) has said on IRC he may be willing to help make some of the help pages on Wikinews more user-friendly, which is something we definitely need. Cirt (talk) 19:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

There was no offer to help in the lengthy comment that I gave a gut response to. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:06, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

<unindent>(argg for edit conflicts, heh) I should have explained better why I was ranting about help pages and the like. Many of the complaints have been about people not properly constructing articles, and not following a reasonable procedure (even those procedures currently set out), and thus damaging wikinews - but I think that this is simply the result of new users not knowing any better. I believe that proper organization of the site and flushed out help files would go a long way toward increasing not only the level of participation, but the quality of participation by users. As for your last comment, I feel that anyone who is here has automatically indicated their willingness to do what they can to help fix the problems that they see, so I didn't feel the need to explicitly state that. Gopher65_talk 19:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

In any case Gopher65 (talk · contribs), and this is again more relevant to User:Brianmc/Request for Foundation assistance than to here specifically, if you could give us even just a preliminary list of help pages needing improvement in a subpage in your userspace that would be helpful and something that we could try to work on. Cirt (talk) 19:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

My apologies for being so curt Gopher65, but I remain deeply disappointed that this proposal has not been taken up. It makes Cirt's offer on my talk page to pursue a journalism school's involvement pointless. No professor will be convinced there is merit becoming involved here if we do not break down the flow from start to publish into more discrete stages. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm not getting any work done, so I really have to be quick here. Before I start, I just want to say that I am in no way attempting to be rude, however I come across, nor am I meaning to say that I am necessarily completely right about what I am saying. This is strictly intended to be constructive criticism, and, like all such things, is up for discussion.

While I was getting ready for bed last night, I think I hit upon my problem with this proposal: it is too broad. Too unspecific. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. When I see a policy proposal, it needs to be split into a few parts:

1) What's broken,

2) Why it's broken,

3) What specific problem/issue this causes,

4) What solution(s) is(are) being provided.

I think parts 2 and 3 were where I was snagged when reading this proposal. No specific problem was given, but the solution was very specific. Far to specific and narrow to fix the very generalized nature of part 1. Reading your posts, both here and on several other pages, I think I've pieced together at least a little bit of what you had on your mind (probably not all of it though, cause I can't read minds (unfortunately)):

2) Why it's broken — The poor workflow described in part one means that wikinews does not qualify as a decent teaching tool for journalism schools. This means that wikinews is not benefiting from a potentially huge number of high quality contributors.

3) Specific issue to be fixed — Improve workflow in order to draw in journalism professors, and their students.

If this had been the proposal, I'd probably support it. Is this what you had in mind Brianmc? I honestly don't mean to nitpick here, but remember, I don't know what you have in mind. Your proposal leaves a great deal out, and doesn't say what it is all about. It just says, "The wiki is broken, and here's what i want to do about it", without saying WHY. In any consensus based environment, like this one, the WHY of the matter is the most important part. Without that, other contributors can't get a handle on what you're trying to say, and your proposal will be shot down, due to a simple lack of communication on both sides.

Gopher65_talk 16:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought the "what's broken" was fairly apparent. The former head of CBC.ca regularly checks Wikinews and told me, to my face, she had seen inaccuracies remain in place on Wikinews. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is certainly a problem. A giant problem, with many different aspects. As I said, that's like saying "wikinews is busted. We need change". Ok, now what *specific* things need to be changed, and what will each of those *specific* changes do? It is absolutely apparent that wikinews has inaccuracies, but that is a generalized issue, not a specific problem that can be analyzed and solved. So, I looked at the solution that you had provided (the template changes), and, based on your other posts, I found a specific problem that that change could help to solve. A template won't magically solve the enormous, overwhelming accuracy issue, but it might help solve one little part of it, which is "lack of journalism student contributors, due to poorly defined workflow". That's why this accuracy issue need to be dealt with in little chunks. Changing templates is one chunk, and OR accuracy is another chunk, and I'm sure there are a myriad of other small problems, each of which contributes to the overall issue. Each problem needs its own well defined proposal. Gopher65_talk 17:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> Significant progress is not made by taking steps as small as those of a millipede. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

You and Dragon have said several times that you are frustrated with the lack of community consensus with your proposals. Isn't *some* progress better than none? And I can't see it taking any more time to look at 5 small, specific proposals instead of one, giant, extremely vague proposal, like those you are submitting now. I actually think it would be faster! Consensus on small proposals tends to be reached nearly instantly, while big proposals tend to take a long, long time to hash out, if they move ahead at all. It almost always makes more sense to break a(ny) problem down into manageable chunks instead of trying to (unsuccessfully) deal with it all at once. This is how businesses get their problems solved. They do it this way because it works, and things get done. Gopher65_talk 02:38, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

First off, I strongly object to this proposal being described as "extremely vague", it isn't. It clearly lays out what should happen between an article being started and it being published. The description of the existing process highlights that {{ready}} is not working, and that aspects of the work required there are being skipped or overlooked. It seems counter-intuitive to label an article {{ready}} when it has not been fact-checked or copyedited; the common sense assumption for someone new to the project seeing an article with that tag is that it is a way of posing the question, "is it good enough?"

The additional two stages, {{factcheck}} and {{copyedit}}, make it clear that there are specific tasks that must be performed. Within a content management system (Eg Confluence) that a traditional newsroom would use, technical measures will enforce use of such steps. MediaWiki does not have the ability to do this, it relies on the community enforcing the process; that, in and of itself, is not a reason to dismiss the proposal.

In hindsight, the appropriate approach would simply to have been bold and implemented the proposal without first seeking community input. It not just, as you imply, a route to collaboration with journalism schools, but a plan to make volunteer contributors do due diligence. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Who objects?

In reviewing this discussion I count quite a few people commenting on the proposal, but only about three outright opposing it. That's not a majority of the Wikinews community. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

If we are specifically commenting on {{factcheck}} and {{copyedit}} as separate additional steps to be added to the process as opposed to inherent in {{ready}} (or {{review}} at some point) then I do not think that is the best way to go, though I may change my mind at some point if we can get a much faster and seamless process going that won't slow down the article-process too much (an Flagged Revision may change the dynamic of this as well). But I think to gather formal opinions this should be a discussion/poll at Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals, and not an informal discussion in userspace. Cirt (talk) 18:44, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

This is supposed to be a discussion, and a way to improve the proposal etc. This is not to slow down any process, but to give WN more credibility and opportunities. Simply changing a template or a few words in it is not changing a process. Flagged revisions is something we need, and has had community consensus for quite sometime. They are here and will be implimented and used as soon as the developers can get around to it. Flagged revisions is not up for debate, at least not here. I really don't think having an editorial process is slowing anything down, its improving what we do. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right, and perhaps it won't slow down the process all that much, but if we are attempting to gauge input from the community as to object/support at this point then IMO further discussion should take place at Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals. Cirt (talk) 18:58, 27 July 2008 (UTC)