User talk:Dan100/2

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Can I invite you to?

You wrote:

Lay off the "personal/political agenda" thing for a bit? I'm beginning to lose count of the times you've accused me of having one! I can only give you my personal assurance that I do not have such an agenda. Dan100 (Talk) 17:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sure I'll accept your invitation, right after you accept my invitation to embrace contributors with a diverse set of perspectives and collaborate instead of dismissing those you disagree with out of hand. I'll accept your invitation after you accept my invitation to tolerate stories even when they don't fit your personal view of what's important in the world.

You've stated in the past that you don't give a damn about what others think of the news. Your true colors are showing today.

I invited you first. Why won't you accept my invitation?

— DV 18:30, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

David, why don't you actually collect some evidence to support this idea that I have a 'personal view', 'political agenda' etc? Or even something for your latest accusation that I do not tolerate views of others or do not collaborate?

Rather than continuing to cast around allegations, I'd like to see some real evidence I could respond to. Dan100 (Talk) 20:21, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You really need me to trot out your history to refresh your memory?

Wikinews has not had any use for the Request for Comments and Mediation "features" on Wikipedia so far. I want to keep it that way, so I'm not going to spend my day trolling through your 2000+ edit history to build a case. I'm not sure what it would accomplish, given your uniquely poor attitude.

The other contributors on this site seem to have worked out a way to collaborate on stories even when they aren't quite ready for prime time, but you see fit to waltz around declaring this story and that one is unworthy of your respect.

It's especially beyond the pale when you throw a Deletion request on an article without even lifting a finger to try and improve the article to see if it can be salvaged.

On other occassions, you have abused the spirit of "be bold" and made major changes to policy or guideline pages with no attempt at first building a consensus, despite numerous requests on talk pages to catch our breath and consider the implications of such changes.

Finally, you have a long history of making many non-minor edits with no comment at all, leaving your fellow editors mystified about what you are doing. In many professional circles this would be grounds for termination. Lucky for you we're all amatuers on this site. You've even mischaracterized a contribution by Paulrevere2005 as "vandalism" simply because you disagreed with his point of view.

I could go on, but your lack of substantive responsiveness to requests by several of the most senior and respected members of this site to be more collaborative, plus the recent rejection of your candidacy for Administrator, make it pretty clear that no more "proof" is necessary, if that's what you need to look in the mirror. — DV 20:54, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well if you aren't prepared to produce any evidence, that says it all, I think.

We obviously have different interpretations of policies such as "being bold" and "good faith". I am happy to continue quietly agreeing to disagree with you as I have done so far. Are you prepared to do that? Or will you just continue to make more and more attacks upon me because of some deep-rooted personal problems you seem to have with me? Dan100 (Talk) 08:53, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your assertion that I have not presented any evidence is disingenuous at best.

Since you insist on my trotting out your user history, I shall reluctantly do so. I have taken up The Bellman's friendly offer of mediation, so your user history can be laid out bare for all to see if you insist that is necessary. I regret it has come to mediation, but for the good of the community and a renewal of the "wiki spirit" I shall see you on whichever page The Bellman sees fit to set up. — DV 12:16, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

mediation

yeah im happy to help since i think you are both valuable contributors and dont like to see you fighting; but ive never done anything like this before and dont really know where to even start... I guess i'll go and read all of your and DV's talk page, the deleation requests talk page, and the spring articles talk page. Anywhere else that i should familiarise myself with? ~The bellman | Smile 10:26, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No I don't think you need to read anything else. Thanks for agreeing to help us! Dan100 (Talk) 12:10, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews:Dispute resolution. Hope i can help. ~The bellman | Smile 13:09, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

add finished articles to the top of the list of articles that day

You wrote me

BTW can I invite you to add finished articles to the top of the list of articles that day? New entries are easier to see then :)

Sorry for that. I thought I had to put at the bottom. I am already familiar to wiki code (I wrote some article on en wikipedia) AnyFile 12:54, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Variables in DPL

No, variables do not currently work in DPL, and it is already being worked on as a feature request. (We already have an updated version ready to be added, we just have to figure out the process of getting the extension updated.)

To build a "today's news" system you'll need to update the template by hand, probably something like this:

== News April 5, 2005 ==
<DynamicPageList>
category=April 5, 2005
category=Published
count=5
</DynamicPageList>

The date category would require manual updates every day, which is the reason for putting the date in the section name (to remind everyone what day is being listed, so it gets updated daily). - Amgine 19:37, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Right now I think the existing templates system you set up works better as it builds the daily/monthly archives at the same time which remain a good static record of when stories were posted to the Main Page. However I'm using the DPLs you set up on South America on other Region pages that get little upkeep, as it seems a reasonable way to keep them more up-to-date. Dan100 (Talk) 20:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

<nod> I'll see if I can get a chance to look at what you're doing. I'm getting the most amazing run of help requests today... - Amgine 20:33, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, here's another! Do you know anything about Javascript? I'm trying to get a bookmarklet that fills in forms for a webpage for me to then actually submit the page without me clicking anything else. Could you help with that? I can show you the code so far. Dan100 (Talk) 20:43, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no... I know nothing about Javascript other than how to add one (sort of) to an html page. I actually don't know anyone who does, though obviously there are some excellent JS folks with the development team. - Amgine 20:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I might ask on #mediawiki then, but seeing as it's not directly connected with a Wikimedia thing I'll just ask nicely. Dan100 (Talk) 20:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not that I wouldn't ask nicely! Dan100 (Talk) 20:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can go ahead with Europe... but one thing, how come the latest story is listed last (no. 10)? → CGorman (Talk) 21:19, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that :/. You'd better ask Amgine! Dan100 (Talk) 21:35, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category redirects

Don't work. Instead, consider transcluding the page you want to redirect to. {{:Health}} for example. - Amgine 15:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

yeah they do! Try clicking on the categories at bottom of a story (that I've done a redirect on). I'll hold off doing more though. Dan100 (Talk) 15:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they redirect you to the topic page. But you no longer can see the list of articles in the category, which is what the category page is for. - Amgine 15:58, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aye, that's their use on Wikipedia, but isn't going to the appropiate topic/region page (with their nice layouts and DPLs) more useful here? Dan100 (Talk) 16:01, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perfect, Dan100... - Amgine 17:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS Feed

Hey, is it possible for you to use META REFRESH on blogger so that clicking the link takes me directly to the article instead? That would be a real winner. --me at work 19:01, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I know it's a problem - if I knew how to do what, I would! Could you (or anyone else reading this) give me any help with the code needed? Dan100 (Talk) 20:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed: <META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="3; URL=http://en.wikinews.org/">

Oops, looks like it's not going to happen. It's possible, however, to maybe use JavaScript to do it. Otherwise, maybe LiveJournal will allow it? The only thing you had against that, however, was 25 story limit.  :( --me at work 17:09, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

LJ won't do it, as far as I can tell. That 25 story limit was also a killer - that's only about 18 hours worth of stories, so no use to people who only check daily (let alone less often). To be honest this code is all well beyond me, but if you can come up with some Javascript to do it, great! I'm guessing the idea is that if one clicks on an RSS item, the Blogger blog fowards the one straight to the Wikinews article? Dan100 (Talk) 18:42, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that was the original idea. --me at work 20:00, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have found a hack, although it sucks. Since I can't do meta refresh, maybe we could use iframes (which apparently works fine) to either load a page which bounces you to another site (such as, http://www.site.com/wikinewsbounce.php?articlename=Fighting_in_Rwanda_again ) which would bounce you back to Wikinews (however I'm not sure if that will work). Another possibility is you can just iframe wikinews and people would read the story inside blogger itself. A few options are available! --me at work 20:08, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oops. Apparently we don't need a bounce, you can just encapsulate the page in an iframe of any size, and the MediaWiki code was actually already designed to bounce you out of it. The downside, however, is that people browsing the front page of your blog would instead be sent straight to the first wikinews article.

<iframe src="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_to_visit_Romania" height="50" width="50"><a href="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_to_visit_Romania">Bill Clinton to visit Romania</a></iframe>

This code shows the iframe (which breaks out of frames automatically) to normal browsers, while showing browsers which aren't capable of iframes a link to the article. It's win-win! --me at work 20:15, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, the next step has to be changing the BlogThis bookmarklet so it puts the right code instead of the current html. All I currently do is click the bookmarklet and then Publish. Here's the current Javascript the bookmarklet uses:

javascript:popw=;Q=;x=document;y=window;if(x.selection) {Q=x.selection.createRange().text;} else if (y.getSelection) {Q=y.getSelection();} else if (x.getSelection) {Q=x.getSelection();}popw = y.open('http://www.blogger.com/blog_this.pyra?t=' + escape(Q) + '&u=' + escape(location.href) + '&n=' + escape(document.title),'bloggerForm','scrollbars=no,width=475,height=300,top=175,left=75,status=yes,resizable=yes');if (!document.all) T = setTimeout('popw.focus()',50);void(0);

I tried to work out how to do this but, er, couldn't. Perhaps you can? Thanks for all your help so far! Don't worry about it messing up the Blogspot blog, I'm prepared to live with that Dan100 (Talk) 21:36, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah crap, I was just experimenting and Blogger has just totally died, AGAIN! Dan100 (Talk) 21:57, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Main page sandbox

Hey! I was checking that out! <grin> Nice job, actually. See also User:Amgine/Sandbox3, which is incomplete, but... - Amgine 19:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lol, I wasn't even getting close to the effect I wanted! I'm off to meta to read their table making guides :) Dan100 (Talk) 20:01, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have sacrificed your edits...

I am looking to see how to restore them in the un-merged article, but your excellent edits to Talk-therapy can make a difference in early treatment of severe depression are at least temporarily reverted due to un-merging the article. Simeon attempted to merge his duplicate article with a previously written one on the same topic (he apparently hadn't seen the other and wrote his at Study: cognitive therapy as good as medication, but lasts longer.) The merge resulted in considerable discomfort on all sides, and since Davodd had pointed out we can have more than one article on a single subject I decided to revert the merge to relieve the irritation.

Now, back to fixing things. - Amgine 22:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

DPL

I've applied DPL to the Economy and business page - but in a different way to the other topic pages, take a look and decide which is better. I personally found the other pages simply too dull, so I figure we need at least one article. → CGorman (Talk) 19:51, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's great, hopefully when we get more editors the other pages will get a 'human touch' again too. I agree that the other pages are a bit dull but on balance being dull and up-to-date is probably better than interesting but out-of-date :) Dan100 (Talk) 22:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Medal of Persistance

I, CGorman, hereby award Dan100 the Wikinews Medal of Persistance for his work reverting vandalism

Thanks :) Dan100 (Talk) 22:23, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Duke

No, the account made an article using character codes, which I have set up as an alert in my RC stalking tools. I checked the article, it was obvious pelican shit vandalism, so I immediately blocked the user and deleted the vandalism as a speedy.

Then I went to check some of hir other "usual targets", alerting the dev team on the way, and we caught hir live on wikiquote. <grin> I even got a "personal" from hir there! Usual childish stuff, easy to fix - probably takes less time for me to fix as a non-admin than it does hir to do. Had also hit meta, so I fixed there too.

- Amgine/^talk 15:39, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

he he, I have no idea what you're talking about with half the above...

First, Pukey doesn't seem to have made any contribs, so how'd you know about the 'special characters' page? Or do the contributions to deleted articles disappear too?

hir - do you mean his or him?

who's the dev team? The people in #mediawiki?

finally, what are these special rc stalking tools? Sounds interesting.

Sorry for all the questions :) Dan100 (Talk) 16:41, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contributions to deleted articles also disappear, but you can see the log entry.

I sometimes use hir to avoid "him/her", since I don't know the gender of the individual.

who's on the dev team? Yes, the people in #mediawiki, and also #wikimedia-tech.

RC stalking. I use a variety of tools to watch the recent changes, but primarily I use #enrc.wikinews, Kate's live recent changes, and I'm learning to use elian's boyfriend's rcbirds tool (I'll get the url for that soon). The latter is a java bot that watches the RC channel and produces sounds based on what kind of change just happened; it is what alerted me to the duke's initial posting, and is how I caught it at a single posting rather than a half-dozen or more pages. - Amgine/^talk 17:27, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That rcbird thing sounds interesting. BTW, do you ever find that the rcdumper just, like, stops? I've been trying to use it a bit recently but it just stops displaying new changes after a quiet period :( Dan100 (Talk) 20:08, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I rely on the bot in IRC too. It occasionally just stops as well, so having both, plus checking the RC page as well, is a compromise. I'm working on another tool too... but I'm not a very good programmer. RC dumper I think will cut out after 20 or 30 minutes of no activity. - Amgine/^talk 20:15, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed's sudden deletion of story

Interesting how the Iraqi insurgency continues unabated, new hopes for a cabinet story suddenly disappeared from your RSS feed when the 1st lead story of yours British government considering new nuclear power stations was updated with Japanese commuter train derails, apartment building smashed.

I to this day can't understand how all the story headlines for the feed are delivered mostly two times in my rendering of the feed, so to speculate how Iraqi insurgency continues unabated, new hopes for a cabinet disappeared seems pointless. But I'll speculate anyway, were you pissed off? -Edbrown05 09:07, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The double-posting problem was due to Blogger making a total hash of a system upgrade, and shouldn't be happening any more. The insurgency story is still visible in my Firefox Live bookmarks (which I use to monitor the feed), and on the blog itself. Dan100 (Talk) 19:37, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Simeon's changes?

As you have probably noticed, Simeon is intent on competely re-writing almost all the Wikinews namespace articles. I object to this on a number of fronts: there's no consensus for such changes, the pages have existed as they were for a long time which I believe is a sign the community accepts them as they are; the existing pages have all been carefully written and constructed by several editors to be the best they can be; and Simeon's changes are to make them grossly longer and harder to read. And I must be honest - a couple of the pages were written by me. I obviously don't mind people altering them, but I do object to them being destroyed. Dan100 (Talk) 08:28, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do you consider Simeon's actions to be vandalism? Your characterization of Simeon's edits using the term "destroyed" is cause for concern. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here, says the warning to all editors.

I also find your characterization of Simeon's edits rather puzzling, given how often you have felt free in the past to be bold and make extensive changes to policy pages on your own initiative. Although I discourage radical edits to policy pages without working to build a consensus, (especially after objections are raised, as you are well aware), why doesn't Simeon have the same rights to make edits as you did in the first place when you wrote those pages?

As a more immediate and practical concern, before I vote on your nomination for administrative privileges, could you clarify what your idea of vandalism is, given that you are once again asking for adminstrative privileges under the pretense that you are now primarily interested in stopping vandalism? Does "destroyed" == "vandalism"? I only ask because of your past characterization of "childish" edits as "vandalism", so perhaps it would set some of the remaining regular contributor's minds at ease, who have not yet voted on your latest candidacy, if you could clarify your position on this point. Thanks. — DV 11:52, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Although I did say "this is verging on vandalism" or the like in one edit summary, I don't regard any of Simeon's changes as vandalism. When I said vandalism in my adminship application I was referring to purely simple vandalism as in the 'Ass puss' stuff and the hammer & sickle pictures recently. Further, I only want adminship for the ability to block purely-for-vandalism accounts, "for emergency use only" you could say.

Regarding Simeon's changes, we seem to have reached an unspoken compromise, and I'm more than happy with that and don't want to stir up things further. Dan100 (Talk) 19:43, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quick Answer

<Tries to beat amgine> The wired story is here → CGorman (Talk) 20:36, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ta. And there was me, getting all excited about some blogger discussing my nuke article, and Amgine and Davodd go and get interviewed by Wired. Apparently, it even said Amgine was the 'operator' at one point... Dan100 (Talk) 20:44, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll tell you something though. I'm tired of Jimbo Wales getting interviewed about Wikinews. He doesn't even seem to like the place, and never edits here. Erik Moller is Our Founder, and he should be getting the credit, not Wales. Dan100 (Talk) 20:46, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes that operator phrase really p***ed me off! Saw the blogger mention your nuke article, althought he was'nt in favor of nukes! That reminds me; why did you mention energy to amgine and me last night! We wasted an hour and a half talking about it! ;) → CGorman (Talk) 20:47, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah Erik did the ground work and has earned a lot of respect for that... but don't bear a grudge against Jimmy even if his ego is workin overtime! - ah no thats not fair, he did start the whole wiki idea and claims to read wikinews regularly. Likewise I would have loved a mention. → CGorman (Talk) 20:51, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I blogged about this to get it off my chest, he he :) Dan100 (Talk) 20:58, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Btw w:User:Jimbo Wales is what really bugs me about Jimbo. The bit about press enquiries, specifically. BTW, as I highlight in my blog, he clearly doesn't read Wikinews... Dan100 (Talk) 21:01, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that first wired story is long long time ago... wikipedia had scarecly started back then. I've know for along time about Jimmys first big internet success... but its still funny how the seller of erotic images (thats the wikipedia definition of bomis.com) turns into online britannica pioneer! → CGorman (Talk) 21:07, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Waits for Dan to get sick! → CGorman (Talk) 21:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Country of the Week

This weeks country of the week is Bhutan. As we are in a new week, you are entitled to vote again for another country. → CGorman (Talk) 21:17, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I've been slack about this. I'll be back on board soon. Dan100 (Talk) 21:42, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. I've decided to remind all interested wikinews every monday (thats quite a few people - you, the bellman... euh... and...thats it :(). Anyways write when you can, but don't worry about it. → CGorman (Talk) 21:44, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Published

This is an enhancement to the system, and I don't think there are plans to do away with the current "Latest news" archives. They're important in other ways, since the DPL does not currently deal with dates well.

There is also a soon-to-come-online feature for RSS by category. I don't know much about it, except that it is already submitted to the sourceforge repository. This didn't come out of Wikinews, so it might not work out for us. - Amgine/^talk 23:54, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS via catetgory would be good, as long as it doesn't output the same kind of garbage that the RSS for newpages does (it just dumps out the wikitext). Manual updating isn't a long-term solution, but I believe there's a certain level of quality the subscribers expect. Dan100 (Talk) 07:45, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mediation

I am wondering if you and I need it? lmk Paulrevere2005 15:06, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not particulary. Dan100 (Talk) 15:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Letter to the editor

Last Fridays edition of The Economist magazine had a major story about the future of journalism, intrigingly it mentioned wikipedia.org in very favourably terms but did not mention us. This provides an excellent chance to write a letter to the editor about Wikinews. I am asking a few people to do this before thursday afternoon (5/6pm) in the belief that if they receive several letters about wikinews, they will publish at least one. I have already sent a letter (email). The Economist sells on average 1 million copies a week - thats a lot of readers, so this is worth our while.

To do:

• Read the article (or at least the relevent part) at: Click here
• Write a short email in the form:

Sir -

(your text),

(Your name)

(your town and country)

(space)

(Your postal address)

• Send it to letters@economist.com
• Delete this message.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, this is just a request, not a demand, don't feel underpressure. (p.s. don't quote our article count, as i've already done that and it would look suspicious if they received several similier emails on the same day). → CGorman (Talk) 21:55, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Argh, I'm gutted I missed this. I don't have net access at work so couldn't do it in time. Thanks for highlighting it though :) Dan100 (Talk) 17:44, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

consensus

hi, since you're up...yesterday re; the background info on the saudi/bush meeting, amgine wouldn't let me put it back in because there were 3 editors who had taken it off which, amgine said, was the "consensus"...but there was you,me and dv who wanted it in????..so why would the other 3 be a strong enough consensus?? just curious here. Paulrevere2005 10:38, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed

That is actually still experimental, and we'd like to have at least 3-category searching for the feed, but I suppose you may if you'd like. Replace the feed where? - Amgine/^talk 21:17, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What people are subscribed to, and what's linked to on the main page, is the Feedburner feed. Feedburner converts whatever feed is fed into it into a version that'll work with any reader (or even browsers). It's currently fed by the native Atom output from Blogger. Feedburner also allows for seamless feed transitions, such as when I switched to LiveJournal briefly when Blogger crapped out big time recently. Otherwise getting 800+ people to change their feeds would be a pain...

The only downside to the new system as I see it is that it would be very easy to spam or otherwise disrupt/vandalise it. I think I'd like to trial it a bit longer first. Dan100 (Talk) 21:47, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I found this (i guess you got tired of waiting for the other rss feed thing with blogger) today: http://rss.icerocket.com/. It lets you create your own channel and manually add entries. It's a bit more work than clicking a link than publish (it's filling in two fields, egads, maybe someone can javascript it up), but it does take you directly to the link, and doesn't have the current "stagnant" category bug that the hack does. --Tom 06:56, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Despite having to click-through twice, the existing Blogger feed is very popular, so will do for now. Eventually, when the category-based RSS feed is sorted, we can switch to that, as it's undoubtedly the best solution. Dan100 (Talk) 08:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews:Audio Wikinews

The script is collaborative - I'm using the News Briefs (This link will update automatically: News Briefs: December 31, 2024). I'm also grabbing news bullets from the w:Current events on Wikipedia.

I know almost nothing about Audacity, but trying to learn quickly. Will look for the settings you were talking about to get the file size down... - Amgine/^talk 21:39, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Didn't realise where the script is. Look for the Vorbis encoder quality setting, can't remember where it is off top of my head. Must sleep Dan100 (Talk)

Thanks! now that you pointed it out, I shifted down to 4 and it shrank to 2.9MB. Will try a q2 now - Amgine/^talk 22:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where is the Pope/religious mysticism story??

your tag says its up for deletion but I don't see it. Please advise. Thank you. Paulrevere2005 22:13, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The tag actually says may be listed on Dr. Dan100 (Talk) 17:45, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

TOC

Hi Dan, When did we make the decision to stop using TOC? --HiFlyer 22:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PS I like TOC in some articles, and I'm going to replace it in the Berlusconi story. --HiFlyer 23:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've never seen a web or print news story with a ToC - it's just not the kind of thing a reader needs, as a news story is written to be read in one go - you don't need to skip to particular sections, as you might with a encyclopedia entry. When the software auto-generated the ToC due to the use of headers, I just removed it to make room for more content on the page. Staring at a big ToC rather than the article itself ain't good. Dan100 (Talk) 17:48, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here's an interesting trick I've used on longer stories. Use the __NOTOC__ at the bottom of the article, but to place the TOC in a side box at a useful point but with word wrap around the box I use (you can float left or right):

<div style="float:left;">
__TOC__
</div>

Sweet, thanks for the tip. Whoever you are! Dan100 (Talk) 17:58, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We're jabbering about you...

or, at least, the article with the interview of you is published on the web, and we're talking about that. - Amgine/^talk 06:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where where where?! I MUST go to work on time, or I'll get sacked (I've had a written warning) Dan100 (Talk) 06:40, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://citizenskane.blogspot.com/ Go to work! - Amgine/^talk 06:41, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

lol not the NYT then! Thought they wouldn't run it - poor bloke only gets 1/4 his fee for that I think. Thanks Amgine, byieeeee!! Dan100 (Talk) 06:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Interesting to see how the guy talks about the magazine canning it. I actually asked him at the time if that could happen and what would become of his fee - did I tempt fate?! Ah well Dan100 (Talk) 17:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"operator"

I just saw that today! Agh! It's been up a couple days! <blush> Okay, so I don't actually *read* my user page that often... - Amgine/^talk 17:27, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

he he he Dan100 (Talk) 17:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS bug

That is not a feature! Will have to report that as soon as possible. - Amgine/^talk 19:20, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Admin status granted

Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban users except in cases of obvious vandalism or excessive edit warring (24-hour "cool down" ban). What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Deletion requests for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun!--Eloquence 08:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, all, for faith you've shown in me. Dan100 (Talk) 09:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Medal of Persistance

I, CGorman, hereby award Dan100 the Wikinews Medal of Persistance for his work reverting vandalism

Thanks :) Dan100 (Talk) 22:23, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed

That is actually still experimental, and we'd like to have at least 3-category searching for the feed, but I suppose you may if you'd like. Replace the feed where? - Amgine/^talk 21:17, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What people are subscribed to, and what's linked to on the main page, is the Feedburner feed. Feedburner converts whatever feed is fed into it into a version that'll work with any reader (or even browsers). It's currently fed by the native Atom output from Blogger. Feedburner also allows for seamless feed transitions, such as when I switched to LiveJournal briefly when Blogger crapped out big time recently. Otherwise getting 800+ people to change their feeds would be a pain...

The only downside to the new system as I see it is that it would be very easy to spam or otherwise disrupt/vandalise it. I think I'd like to trial it a bit longer first. Dan100 (Talk) 21:47, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I found this (i guess you got tired of waiting for the other rss feed thing with blogger) today: http://rss.icerocket.com/. It lets you create your own channel and manually add entries. It's a bit more work than clicking a link than publish (it's filling in two fields, egads, maybe someone can javascript it up), but it does take you directly to the link, and doesn't have the current "stagnant" category bug that the hack does. --Tom 06:56, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Despite having to click-through twice, the existing Blogger feed is very popular, so will do for now. Eventually, when the category-based RSS feed is sorted, we can switch to that, as it's undoubtedly the best solution. Dan100 (Talk) 08:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews:Audio Wikinews

The script is collaborative - I'm using the News Briefs (This link will update automatically: News Briefs: December 31, 2024). I'm also grabbing news bullets from the w:Current events on Wikipedia.

I know almost nothing about Audacity, but trying to learn quickly. Will look for the settings you were talking about to get the file size down... - Amgine/^talk 21:39, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Didn't realise where the script is. Look for the Vorbis encoder quality setting, can't remember where it is off top of my head. Must sleep Dan100 (Talk)

Thanks! now that you pointed it out, I shifted down to 4 and it shrank to 2.9MB. Will try a q2 now - Amgine/^talk 22:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where is the Pope/religious mysticism story??

your tag says its up for deletion but I don't see it. Please advise. Thank you. Paulrevere2005 22:13, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The tag actually says may be listed on Dr. Dan100 (Talk) 17:45, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

TOC

Hi Dan, When did we make the decision to stop using TOC? --HiFlyer 22:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PS I like TOC in some articles, and I'm going to replace it in the Berlusconi story. --HiFlyer 23:02, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've never seen a web or print news story with a ToC - it's just not the kind of thing a reader needs, as a news story is written to be read in one go - you don't need to skip to particular sections, as you might with a encyclopedia entry. When the software auto-generated the ToC due to the use of headers, I just removed it to make room for more content on the page. Staring at a big ToC rather than the article itself ain't good. Dan100 (Talk) 17:48, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Here's an interesting trick I've used on longer stories. Use the __NOTOC__ at the bottom of the article, but to place the TOC in a side box at a useful point but with word wrap around the box I use (you can float left or right):

<div style="float:left;">
__TOC__
</div>

Sweet, thanks for the tip. Whoever you are! Dan100 (Talk) 17:58, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We're jabbering about you...

or, at least, the article with the interview of you is published on the web, and we're talking about that. - Amgine/^talk 06:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where where where?! I MUST go to work on time, or I'll get sacked (I've had a written warning) Dan100 (Talk) 06:40, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://citizenskane.blogspot.com/ Go to work! - Amgine/^talk 06:41, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

lol not the NYT then! Thought they wouldn't run it - poor bloke only gets 1/4 his fee for that I think. Thanks Amgine, byieeeee!! Dan100 (Talk) 06:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Interesting to see how the guy talks about the magazine canning it. I actually asked him at the time if that could happen and what would become of his fee - did I tempt fate?! Ah well Dan100 (Talk) 17:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"operator"

I just saw that today! Agh! It's been up a couple days! <blush> Okay, so I don't actually *read* my user page that often... - Amgine/^talk 17:27, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

he he he Dan100 (Talk) 17:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RSS bug

That is not a feature! Will have to report that as soon as possible. - Amgine/^talk 19:20, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Admin status granted

Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban users except in cases of obvious vandalism or excessive edit warring (24-hour "cool down" ban). What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Deletion requests for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun!--Eloquence 08:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, all, for faith you've shown in me. Dan100 (Talk) 09:05, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your latest vandalism cleanup.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference or not, but you added an extra "User:" prefix to YukiDuki's user name in the block log.

Also, can you please rollback all of YukiDuki's changes?

There is still a page with a nonsense name in the history which was not deleted and redirects to the now-deleted "Null" page, so if you can delete that one as well, it should complete the job. Thanks a lot. VandalFighter 00:16, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't know how to do a mass-rollback. But it looks like you got all his changes rv'd anyway, within a minute in most cases. Well done! Bagged the nonsense page, and have now blocked WoW properly (I hope).

I only got admin status this morning, still learning the ropes :)

BTW I talked to a developer about this vandal. He's on dial-up, which means he uses a random IP for every attack. We can't block him via IP :( Dan100 (Talk) 00:35, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

• Congratulations Dan100. All the best. Paulrevere2005 01:57, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Good luck, Dan. Keep up the good work chasing bad guys. It can be tiring and every set of eyes helps to keep WN a bounty of interesting information and nice cameraderie between users. --HiFlyer 23:15, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Notnews

I've responded on my talk page, 'cuz that's where the discussion is. - Amgine/^talk 18:59, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Annoyed with me?

It seems odd to me that you'd be annoyed with me for something that a reporter wrote. I hope you'll give me the opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.

First, you wrote that "He doesn't even seem to like the place, and never edits here." It is simply untrue that I don't like the place, I love it, I'm extremely excited and supportive of Wikinews. The interview strategy that I'm following is one that Erik and I jointly devised: we are indicating in every venue that Wikinews is young, exciting, and growing... that if there are things that we don't do well yet, it's important not to judge us on that, because we don't pretend to be better than traditional news outlets yet.

Why do we say this? Well, first and foremost, of course it is true. But additionally if we went to the media with a lot of bluster about Wikinews being perfect and awesome, they'd take us down a notch or two and we would start getting a bad reputation from the beginning. Better to be modest and have the media not laughing at our arrogance.  :-)

Second, of course I never edit here... I never edit _anywhere_ for the most part.

Third, I clearly *do* read Wikinews, and I don't know where you think you have evidence that I don't. The quote that you mention in your blog is shortened and perhaps this misled you. We had, on the day that I was interviewed, 5 stories up, 2 about Romania. Presumably that's not the norm _for news sources in general_. The point was, and is, perfectly valid. We have a tendency to closely follow the interests of the contributors that we have at this moment in time, which means that our emphasis is a bit odd at times. AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. It's the way a wiki works best: people doing what gives them passion.

Fourth, can you explain to me what bothers you about "the bit about press enquiries" on my talk page. Can you do me a favor and edit it so that it doesn't bother you anymore? I do 2-3 interviews every single day, and many of them come through that phone number, and that phone numbers gets a great many very strange calls that are not for press enquiries. I'm sorry if it seems arrogant to you in some way; I don't think my ego is working overtime or anything, it's just that I get a lot of press enquiries.

In every interview, I try to make a very strong case that I am personally not to be thanked for much of anything. It's the volunteers who matter. It's *you* who matters. So please give me the opportunity to apologize and make things right if you think I've done something annoying or wrong.

--Jimbo Wales 16:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

First up, it's great that you've taken the time to read and respond to what I wrote. What my criticism boils down to is that I strongly believe in "credit where it's due".

Yes, absolutely I agree completely. Did you see this story ? This was supposed to be for NYT Magazine, but it got killed, and you're extensively quoted of course.

Although the Wired article did not say you were the founder of Wikinews, it would be easy to come away from the article with that impression. I'd simply would have liked to have seen Erik interviewed, because if it was not for him and his ideas, we would not be here.

I agree with you.

Of course, in hindsight I realise that if the journalist concerned doesn't want to print that, there's not much you can do about it.

Right. All I can do is try to point people in the right direction. Remember the big Wired Magazine story about Wikipedia in March? Well, that reporter (Dan Pink) did an overall excellent job and he *nearly* came to Berlin (but couldn't make it). If he had come to Berlin, maybe the story wouldn't have ended up so english-centric, but he didn't, and the story did. It was still a good story but, *sigh*, the lack of international focus was unfortunate, despite me pitching that angle several times to him. It's just not the story he wanted to write.

My point is that I try to distribute credit as widely as I can, which is why all these articles end up interviewing contributors -- this is what I tell reporters to do.

I'm still a bit suprised that you said "Presumably that's not the norm", because if you did read the site, you'd have known that it's not the norm, no presumably about it! (Mind you, I support Ronline's Romanian efforts.)

You still miss my point. The "presumably that's not the norm" is about MAINSTREAM media... It's a joke, the point was that I don't pay much attention to the mainstream media, but _presumably_ they don't cover Romania as much as we do.

If you read it as "Presumably that's not the norm for wikinews, but I have no idea because I don't read the site" then you're misunderstanding. It is "Presumably that's no the norm for mainstream media, but I have no idea because I don't pay attention to the mainstream media" then you understand it in the context that I said it.

Does that make you feel better?

I also didn't like it when you forced us to call ourselves 'BETA'. It's pretty clear we're young and not great (a point I stress myself - "give us time to grow") - and I don't think we need a bit of tech jargon on every page. Further, I really think we're out of any 'beta' stage in the strict use of the word - we're working on pretty fixed procedures and guidelines now, and have been for some time. Perhaps it's time for that 'BETA' in the subtitle to go?

Well, the things you said to the reporter indicate to me that you and I agree 100% on the substantive issue: "All the people who are writing stories, they need to give us a chance, give us some time." You just object to the word "BETA" because... it is tech jargon? Google News is, I think, the #1 news site in the world, and it says Beta -- and has for how many years now? I don't think Beta is tech jargon at all -- it's widely understood by virtually all consumers.

Finally, I'll edit your user page :). The fact it says Wikinewies may not use the press enquiries number gives the impression that we're not equal to other journalists, and by implication our site is not as good as other news sits. While that may actually be true, it's a shame that it appears that the founder of Wikimedia doesn't see doesn't see us as good enough to talk too (I realise that's not true, having read your interview for Wikinews with Amgine). Dan100 (Talk) 17:14, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

WHOA! I did not write that bit. I just looked at your change and I support it 100%. This was a bit of vandalism that slipped through -- I had not seen it and I'm quite upset about it. It is no wonder at all that you were mad at me if you thought I wrote that. --Jimbo Wales 17:02, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah, now I get that 'presumably' thing :). Re the 'beta', well I hope we get rid of it one day, and I've made it a little less obstrusive (just as the BETA on Google News is quite small and faint). 18:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey Dan; I actually like the fact that 'BETA' appears at the top of everypage; it ensures that readers understand that we are still growing and that defining our policy. Remember Google News is still BETA, but yet most people would describe it as a fantasticly reliable news collector. → CGorman (Talk) 17:30, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

But that assumes people know what 'beta' means. Of course tech-savvy people like us do, but most laymen who just browse the web probably don't. That's probably what I dislike most about that 'BETA' actually. Dan100 (Talk) 17:40, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Why are you deleting 90% of the article up for deletion?

How can the community make a decision when 90% of the article is gone? Did you intend to remove the deletion tag when you removed the notnews tag ? Paulrevere2005 00:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Any editor is free to edit any article at any time, as long as their editing does not contravene the policies of the site. Dan100 (Talk) 06:52, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

logged out

I do it so often, people have memorized my IP...<sigh> - Amgine/^talk 07:34, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

The source of the anti-wikinews comment on my en user page

This edit reveals that the original source of the anti-wikinews comment on my user page was Anthony DiPierro. If you know the history of Anthony's trolling in wikipedia, you will not be shocked to learn that he wrote something which caused mysterious friction between you and me.

Let me say this plainly and strongly: I apologize to you and all Wikinewsies for this appearing on my user page for so long. The reason it was there is the very simple fact that I never noticed it. Lots of people edit that page and do a nice job of keeping it clean. I read and edit my user_talk page but I just trust the community to keep my user page straight. However, it was wrong of me to be so neglectful of it that it could contain a comment like that for months.

I fully support the right of Wikinewsies to interview me by phone or otherwise, and I regret that I carelessly allowed my userpage to indicate otherwise for such a long time.

--Jimbo Wales 17:14, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah crap, I'm sorry I ever accused you of putting that on your page. I had a suspicion that it had been done by someone else, but when I saw the length of the edit history of your user page, I didn't check; I was too lazy. I know who Anthony was so I'm not at all suprised that it was him!

Must check my facts, must check my facts...

In fact now that I think about it all I needed to do was scan back to the date Wikinews was created checking for edits by you, which wouldn't have taken long at all. D'oh. Dan100 (Talk) 17:42, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• kudos to Dan100 for noticing,addressing and fixing that reference. Paulrevere2005 11:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

RSS behavior

Hello Dan,

the person responsible for the RSS extension is Gabriel Wicke. The RSS feeds are sorted by category timestamps, i.e., the time the category was added to the article. The problem is that the timestamps for all categories are updated when you add a new category to an article. So, if I have an article in Category:Published from two months ago, and I add Category:South Africa to it, that article will show up at the top of the feed list for Category:Published as well! Perhaps you can report this behavior to Gabriel.--Eloquence 10:17, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, mailed him. Dan100 (Talk) 11:57, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Cheers!

I've been busy with studies and missed the window to add my support for your admin nomination. Congrats! -- Davodd | Talk 07:09, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Can we chat about this, to avoid a revert war?

Well it would help if you left your name... Dan100 (Talk) 21:46, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Oh it's Amgine. You were looking a bit like someone else then... Dan100 (Talk) 21:47, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<looks around for a quick excuse> Uhm, I left my brain in bed? - Amgine/^talk 21:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

please remove the "delete" tag

for the Pope Benedict article as the 7 days is more than up and the consensus is keep. Paulrevere2005 00:05, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

OS Tiger story

I noticed in the May 7 headlines history tab that Azkabaz blanked the OS Tiger: "It's like being in the future" story. A lot of work went into that. Can you take a look? I wouldn't know how to roll it back. -Edbrown05 09:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Eventful day, yesterday...

• DV decided to leave Wikinews, see his user page
• Alan likewise, you'll need to see the last three edits to his talk page (which he requested be deleted, which I did) to see why (see also Me at work's talk page)
• Paulrevere2005 had extended his block period, so I unblocked him. He has posted a lengthy discussion of admins, primarily you and I, on the watercooler. He has also requested a mediation, although I'm not yet sure on what grounds; he has not made an initial statement.
• TalkHard has likewise decided to request a mediation, regarding Soldiers sue U.S. government over 'stop-loss' policy (see the talk page there.)
• No hits from the vandals this period, but previous attack was on all the en. projects, particularly en.wikiquote
• Articles to watch include the Sellafield lead (needs help, too), Bush/Nazi series, the UK silence/torture article, the Pope series, and the MacOS article. And maybe the NZ squid one... haven't had time to track the changes there, sorry.

  I had noticed ;). Just blogging about all this now! I do wonder if we shouldn't delete Alan's talk page though - other users had made comments on there, and we probably shouldn't touch other people's comments. Dan100 (Talk) 08:48, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

  Yes, I'd worried about that too, so I checked on Wikipedia. Policy there is the user's talk page is their space, and that contributors to a user's talk page assume the liability that their comments may be deleted. (And they could make their comments in their own space and transclude it, like User:Amgine/Welcome). Since our other policy is descended where relevant... - Amgine/^talk 08:52, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

  Oh, and User:Grue create Russia celebrates the Victory Day as a stub. And it's 2am here, so I need to sleep. Go to work! - Amgine/^talk 08:55, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Nothing more went on and is going on at New Zealand recalls squid boats than some good solid collaborative editing building up a good news article. There are no disputes. Victory Day 60th anniversary commemorated in Russia has been expanded somewhat, and I've mentioned what more I think should be done to it to bring it up to snuff by the end of the day. Uncle G 11:01, 9 May 2005 (UTC)