User talk:Cowicide

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Ban[edit]

Administrators may ban users at their discretion, if they feel that the said user is a non-contribuor or if the user's presence on Wikinews would be deterimental to the project. If you wish to appeal your ban, please use a legitimate acount (i.e User:Cowicide) to communicate with other users. You may also use {{unblock}} to have your block reviewed by another Administrator. If there is sufficient cause to unblock you, your ban will be lifted. Zeest(Talk)(Newpages) 11:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help, Zeest. : ) Cowicide 09:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I guess I should note that I've been no longer banned for quite some time now. I guess maybe a checkuser was performed or because both MrMiscellaneous and Amgine have been basically removed from Wikinews and/or had their administrator positions removed? Welp, anyway... thanks again, Zeest. Cowicide 05:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikinewsTicker (copied from water cooler)[edit]

This is the best newsticker code I can find out there... I've already tested this some time ago (as some may remember) and was able to get this to easily work with the Wikinews RSS feed and was able to customize the look and functionality (speed, etc.) with minimal code changes. It's got nice Web 2.0 ajax/php coding, seems to work on most browsers, pauses on mouseover, etc. and their terms of use are perfect for Wikinews. Let me know if you need any help customizing this, consultation, etc. Also, be sure and grab this logo I made for the first test I first worked on if you'd like to use it. If the logo is too big, etc., it's easy to re-edit if you use this photoshop file with layers, etc. still intact. Cowicide 07:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, I almost forgot... this would be a cool thing to let ppl put on their individual home pages & blogs. When you click on any of the headlines it would take ppl to the corresponding Wikinews article, of course and help build the Wikinews userbase.

Since Google News is being lame and not allowing WikiNews to become a valuable part of their news content, I say screw em' and let the blogotubes spread the word. I'm sure plenty of blogs and assorted websites out there would love to help support WikiNews by adding a stylish WikiNewsTicker to their homepages. Cowicide 09:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Per the description, it wouldn't be possible to allow people to use this on their external sites. They'd have to have PHP and set it up on their own machine at the same domain as the blog or whatever.
I'm also not so sure about the licensing requirements, I'll ask around. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right that the server would require PHP but almost all webhosts support PHP nowadays. Once the code is customized, it'll be pretty easy to add the ticker to a site or blog as long as their webhost provider allows them basic FTP access. They would just "drop in" a folder that has everything they need already pre-configured and paste in some code into their homepage. I tested this and I didn't even have to chmod the cache directory to 777; it worked just by dropping it in and going to the demo.htm page. Also, back in the day when I customized this for the wikinewsticker demo it worked just as well. (I lost that code when I shut down my Cowicide server, but can make it again if needed) Cowicide 14:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thats definitely an interesting idea. I'm not sure if there license terms are compatible though (Its definitely by no means open source), we'd have to ask someone who knows what the requirements for code licenses are. I think it'd be great to get some people syndicating wikinews, (not full out mirrors, but headlines and stuff) as we're CC-by, but not not a lot of people are copying. Also would be interesting is some integration with Audio wikinews. Bawolff 00:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As per the Terms of Use requirements, Wikinews would have to agree not to remove/edit the credit notice within the DHTML source code, or claim the code to be work of its own... and in the event the DHTML script is moved to an external .js file, Wikinews would need to make sure the credit notice is still retained within the SCRIPT tags, in the page's visible source.
Everything else looks rosey (so far) since Wikinews is part of a not-for-profit corporation. I've sent off an email to the original dev to see what she or he thinks.
On another note, I've set up an initial test on my server and will start adjusting the code again to make a working demo of it. It's on a private server, but I'll give anyone at Wikinews an account so they can log in and check it out once it's ready to be demo'd. Cowicide 01:15, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the main problem with the license is that we are not allowed to modify, and redistribute that modified code. Anyways, as far as servers go, if this actual happens (I mean as in beyond a demo), We'd proablly want to do it through the toolserver I would think. Bawolff 01:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just got an email back from the developer asking if Wikinews could modify and redistribute, they said:

Hi Cow:Yes, your understanding of our TOS is correct, and you're free to distribute this script as long as the original credit notice inside script remains intact. This also applies to any other RSS script on DD you may want to utilize. Good luck!

As long as Wikinews doesn't become a commercial project overnight, we are OK... haha... Bawolff, I'm going to familarize myself with the toolserver tonight. Cowicide 01:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well we can use it, but some people might not want to use something that restricted (for philosophical reasons). Bawolff 02:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You mean having to leave the credit notice inside the code or not using it for commerical purposes? Well, either way... I'll do a quicky demo of it and see if it floats. If not, at least it might inspire someone to make one like it from scratch and perhaps distribute it without any attribution, etc. restrictions. Cowicide 02:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure[edit]

Your welcome Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 12:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]