User talk:Darkfrog24

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Chemotherapy cocktail may stimulate rejuvenation of ova in adult women

Hi. Fortunately nothing bad came of it in this case, but, please don't edit the article while it's {{under review}}. (In fact, I quite agree with both edits you made; it's not just a matter of potential edit conflicts, though, it can be confusing, not to say frustrating, to immerse oneself in an article for in-depth review only to have it shift under one's metaphorical feet.) --Pi zero (talk) 03:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Haven't seen you in a couple years Pi zero. How've you been? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Cooking up something to try to rescue... well, when I started I thought I was trying to rescue Wikinews from neglect by the Foundation, but now I've come to the Awful Realization I'm trying to rescue the entire sisterhood from misjudgments by the Foundation. I'd finally given up on Wikipedia, whose problems I figured were just too big for me so I'd stick to something more modest (yeah, that didn't work out quite how I'd envisioned). (From a quick glance at your en.wp user talk, I think I shouldn't ask how things are going for you over there.) Anyway, to the point.

The article avoids a whole lot of problems that first-time contributors over here often have. The current draft does need work; see my review comments (and, of course, detailed history of edits during review; some of that is personal preference, some not so much). --Pi zero (talk) 04:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Heh, if you've seen my user talk, then you already know. Let's talk about you.

What's the sisterhood? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:12, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

{{sisterprojects}}. My understanding of the terminology is that a "sister" cuts across languages (or I'm just wrong about that) — so there are only about a dozen sisters, lots of languages, and the number of projects is something less than the product of those two numbers. --Pi zero (talk) 04:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

So you think that the Wikimedia Foundation is misjudging the Wikipedias, Wikinews, Wiktionary and other projects? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:35, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the Foundation is under a number of deep misapprehensions about the sisters, yes. Starting with the relationship between the Foundation and the sisters; it's there to find in the wording of the mission, iirc, but words are what you make of them. The Foundation does not share with the volunteers a mission of educating the world; the Foundation is not responsible for information providing, that's the volunteer's job; the Foundation's job is to empower the volunteers to be information providers. The volunteers come to participate in information providing By the People; it's about ordinary human beings having a voice in the information flow. The thing that makes that possible is wiki markup; I go into that some in User:Pi zero/essays/vision/sisters. The Foundation keeps trying to centralize control of everything, which is directly at odds both with the grassroots, bottom-up nature of the wikis, and with the Foundation's proper mission of empowering the volunteers. The Foundation has this robustly constructed, self-consistent set of answers for everything — including why participation in Wikipedia was going up and up until right about the time the Foundation finished getting set up and kicked its agenda into high gear (this is when the position of Executive Director was filled), after which the volunteer communities have shrunk. --Pi zero (talk) 04:54, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I really need to develop an elevator speech for that stuff. :-P  --Pi zero (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Why do you think membership took a hit? These days I see a lot of people citing increasingly hostile environments, and one guy I know IRL says that's to be expected whenever an online project hits critical mass. I agree, but I think part of it might also be the economy. During the mid-aughts, there was a whole generation of highly educated people starved for intellectual activity who had nothing better to do, but now that the job market's picked up, there are more people willing to pay them for their time, so off they went. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:47, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘

Ah, cause of membership decline. I'll take a stab at that, below... after explaining why I think it's the wrong question.

The Foundation has this mindset it's got stuck in; asking certain questions that lock in required assumptions is part of it. I even know better and yet find myself naturally drawn into the game of asking these questions. The Foundation by asking why the membership decline skips glibly over questions of what their role is, what the volunteers' role is, and why the membership ever grew in the first place. I see the Foundation failing to understand any of those things, and once they've got those basics wrong there's no way they can choose right actions. Why did the sisterhood succeed in the first place? Mainly two things: idealism and wiki markup; the Foundation has been undermining the first through not understanding it, and the second through failing to understand its importance and instead trying to move away from it.

Saying this sort of membership decline happens whenever a project reaches a critical mass is completely begging the question of why. Various excuses can be offered, but I do maintain that a crucial factor is a form of Conway's Law: the Foundation is a centralized, top-down organization and creates software reflecting this, which fundamentally fails to meet the needs of the inherently distributed, bottom-up wiki contributor base. Also, the idealism that is crucial to motivating the volunteers is based on the perception that the wikis are information-providing "by the People", and the Foundation seems to think it should be a sort of cheerleader for the wikis but the more it cheerleads the more it destroys the appearance that the wikis are a grass-roots movement and thereby undermines the idealism that is the core source of volunteerism for the projects. It's also, btw, supremely ironic that one of the greatest goods done by Wikipedia was to stem the tide of rampant propaganda on the internet, yet the Foundation's cheerleading has gone systemic so that the Foundation is now itself a source of propaganda. While we're listing reasons for declining membership, I agree that sour social atmosphere (aka "increasingly hostile environments") is also involved, and would add that the principle of AGF, with its surrounding supporting principles of civility and etiquette, have nurtured the problem.

Btw, congrats! You're a published journalist on Wikinews. --Pi zero (talk) 21:49, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

So you're crediting the Wikipedia interface, as opposed to something like the new visual editor, with helping Wikipedia grow. Because ...you think it's accessible? Because it's accessible only to certain people? And you think the Foundation should be a lot more hands-off? And you think that AGF made things worse ...by allowing certain people to get away with things?

Oh no, the person I know said that the environment becomes hostile when projects reach critical mass.

Awesome!! That oughtta look good on the ol' block appeal. I don't think they were too impressed with my translating the Euryarchaota subcategory into Spanish. That's not-in-English twice over. And here I was ready to give you the old "Oh well. It's nothing personal" speech. Wikinews seems scant on micro and cell biology coverage in any case. I see a niche here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm hesitating to get into the wiki markup issue (because it's such a time sink), and as usual that probably means it'll all come out backwards in dribs and drabs so my position won't end up in its best light. But yes, wiki markup is crucial to the success of the wikis. No software that isn't based on plain text can have real flexibility or real permanence to it; programming languages still use plain text after people have been trying for half a century to make a go of "visual programming languages". And wiki markup is extraordinarily easy — compared to the alternatives; yes things can be done to make it easier to use, but to do so without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs you have to understand why it's worked so well. Part of that is that even the most casual edit — a spelling correction, which as I recall was my first wiki edit — causes the user to see wiki markup that others have written; there's not much to it, and what there is, users tend to pick up by osmosis through constant exposure. Except, of course, that VE systematically deprives users of that exposure and thereby prevents them from learning. While the introduction of other languages such as Lua and javascript (not that I don't think Lua a very nice little procedural language, reminds me of an old-time VW beetle) simply locks ordinary wiki users out of infrastructure development, the sort of centralization I'd expect to be favored by a centralized organization like the Foundation. It's all killing the wiki volunteer community by inches.

AGF. The best thing I can say about AGF is that it's idealistic. Not a small thing to say; idealism is the one thing that can motivate passionate volunteerism. I remember when I first registered at Wikipedia and was presented with (tbh) vastly more rules regulations principles help pages and whatnot than I could possibly read, but quickly sorted out AGF as a key principle. I thought, wow, this is totally unrealistic; this is insane, pie-in-the-sky idealism — count me in. It took me several years to fully grok AGF (discovering WP:ZEN was a milestone), and by then I was so indoctrinated that, when I finally got past Wikibooks (where I was a bit concerned to find they'd never officially adopted AGF, though they treated it as generally recommended) to Wikinews where AGF was actively rejected, I thought that was as crazy as I had originally thought AGF was. After a few years here I understood that the reasons Wikinews gets along as well as it does without AGF are things about news writing that differ from encyclopedic writing, but I was still trying to be tolerant about Wikipedians, I guess, by taking the position that AGF was right for Wikipedia even though it was manifestly wrong for Wikinews (eventually we wrote down what had been done here for years, at WN:Never assume). Until finally I admitted that AGF doesn't work on Wikipedia, either. My short-list of problems with AGF was that (1) if taken literally, it says to assume something, which is a bad thing to teach to information providers; (2) if taken for what it actually means — cf. WP:ZEN — it says to say something different than one means, which is also bad to teach to information providers; and (3) people who don't mean well (in one sense or another) can learn to use it as first a shield and then a weapon, defending themselves by requiring others to AGF, and needling others until their victims are provoked into reacting in a way that gets their victims into trouble from failing to AGF. What one does instead is, I freely admit, difficult to work out; it doesn't seem to me that WN:Never assume in its form here would work there, but just what would work there I don't know (and I don't immediately see a path that would lead en.wp to exchange AGF for something else). --Pi zero (talk) 22:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Aleppo evacuation resumes after claims of weapon smuggling, roadblocks

Alas. Heavily covered developing stories tend to be a difficult fit for the Wikinews workflow model; I remember when Mubarak was overthrown we had an appallingly difficult time covering it (there was little review labor available at the time while the article would repeatedly lose freshness in a matter of hours due to further dramatic developments). In the aftermath of the Mubarak overthrow I put some thought into how we could better cover such things, but I never really came up with much of a solution, and we have more basic infrastructural challenges that I felt/feel need to be addressed first (and that I've been pouring my time into for pretty much all the time since then). --Pi zero (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I imagine this would be less of a problem if Wikinews got more foot traffic. Still, I came into this with a win-some-lose-some approach. If the article on Aleppo has aged out then it's aged out. At least we got all those nice comments about the electoral college article. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I remember after the first of the Romney-Obama debates — the one everyone agreed Romney had won, and Republicans crowed about it while Democrats said it was simply because Romney had lied his ass off from start to finish, which Obama hadn't had a prepared strategy to counter — we wrote a (rather minor) article on it, and someone commented that they were being required to write a paper about it for school, and having searched on the subject, they said, we had the only neutral article about that debate on the entire internet. :-P  Moments like that do encourage us to keep going.

One of the regular long-time Wikinewsies (Bddpaux) regularly advises prospective Wikinews contributors to be willing to let an article go — "don't marry the article", I think he once put it — write it, submit it, and move on. Your willingness to win some and lose some (which sounds a very healthy attitude, to me) may help explain why you've been doing fairly well here. --Pi zero (talk) 20:30, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Well yes and no one has filed any heavily falsified complaints about me to WN's equivalent of AE or laid down a sanction without telling me what I supposedly did. That helps immensely.

The impression I'm getting is that Wikinews concerns the news in some way but is not about journalism as it is generally understood. With journalism, it is accepted that there will be some editorializing, but that doesn't seem to fly here. There's also less tolerance for the elements of writing as art that we would see in news features. This is more like Factcheck.org than like any newspaper I've seen. The service that it provides to the reader is very different. If something's tripping up new users, that might be it. They think they're supposed to write news articles. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Had to look that one up. Arbitration enforcement? As in ArbCom? Sounds like Secret Police.

This is news. Hard news, as opposed to soft news. We resist some trends in current msm, including a blurring of the line between reporting and editorializing. Cf. [1]. --Pi zero (talk) 02:49, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes it feels that way.

Yes, but "hard news" can still have funnel openings or start with a detail and has a variety of writing styles, some of them quite artistic. If those are trends, they're trends that have been holding for literally centuries. This is a lot more uniform. And editorializing isn't remotely new. If anything, the 20th century saw a decline in the practice (you should have seen what they were printing in the 1770s). Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:00, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the ideal of objective news has never existed perfectly (of course, perfection never does), and broadly speaking the closest things have come to that ideal was in the twentieth century. Sure. Wikinews represents a unique strategy at the intersection of journalism and wiki, resulting in something that has some unusual properties as journalism and some unusual properties as wiki. Offering, if I may say, some needed input into the blend of the journalism world, and some needed input into the blend of the wiki world. We grapple with many of the same journalistic challenges as the big msm outlets, and many of the same wiki challenges as the biggest wikis. Other "citizen journalism" efforts with fewer ideals have come and gone while we continue forward. --Pi zero (talk) 11:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I am under the impression that Wikinews doesn't have much readership, that people who get their news from Project Wiki do so through Wikipedia instead. Are there any metrics on this? Darkfrog24 (talk) 06:25, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

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On one hand, one of the evils of commercial news is to care more about readership than quality. It's good that google news recognizes Wikinews as a news site rather than a blog (thus, in the same class as AlJaz, BBC, AFP, etc. rather than, say, Wikipedia), but I take that as evidence of google being right about something rather than as some sort of needed validation for us. What we do would be valid even if google were to get that wrong. I don't often bother to dig into such statistics; I recall a theory suggested a while back that we may get more traffic from our Facebook page than from gnews, anyway. I don't know all that much about facebook statistics, and don't have access to very much since facebook decided a few years ago that I wasn't human unless I had a desire to give them my phone number, which I found an especially offensive demand from them because they were pretending their reason for asking was about verification rather than advertising (I took that to be essentially a lie and I have much contempt for liars); but I do note, at this writing, our Facebook page says near the top, "119,097 people like this". Somewhere in there we've migrated from one hand toward the other hand, which would be actual numbers. One can, once stats become available following whatever technical delays, get a general sense of article view stats by looking on the article's history page, near the top where it says "External tools: Page view statistics". According to which, for example, our recent article Hijackers divert Libyan passenger jet to Malta got 489 hits yesterday. I see in that no evidence that our readership is dropping off. --Pi zero (talk) 12:27, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I share your contempt for liars. I was trying to return an item to a store once, receipt in my hand and they kept demanding my phone number. I was all, "I don't want you to call me." "We won't." "Then why do you want my phone number?"

I mean this more along the lines of "Yeah, but is anyone reading this?" Does Wikinews serve the public, the way that we know Wikipedia serves the public? There's also the questioof whether Wikinews is redundant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:51, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikinews is definitely not redundant; there's nothing else like it, we produce output and training that nobody else does. Yes, Wikinews does a public service, in both those aspects. Btw, also in the area of stats I don't have at my fingertips, I recall a (now former) Wikinewsie had some impressive statistics on the use of our archives, which get a lot of traffic. --Pi zero (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

There is another aspect to this, btw. I was just making the point that we now provide a valuable public service. There's also the question of our potential. I see the potential for Wikinews to become something that can transform the human condition in as profound a way as (but, of course, differently than) Wikipedia has done. To bring about a vast effect from merely human actions requires a vision of the dynamics of things, where small inputs will have large long-term consequences; determination; and a willingness to persevere despite ridicule because there's no way to prove one is right except after the fact. I'm inclined to immerse myself in the subtle dynamics of a system and find my way to the point from which the behavior of the whole system can be tuned (recalling the punchline of an old joke, "knowing where to tap"). One thing I don't know how to do, thus far, is succinctly explain my vision, or the means by which I'm pursuing it, alas; I do note that what I'm doing seems to me fundamentally not something a centralized org like the WMF would be capable of doing, and my inability to succinctly articulate seems consistent with that — a big centralized organization wants plans, all laid out carefully ahead of time, and therefore about the most alien thing for such an org would be a development effort that inherently cannot be foreseen, requiring improvisation every step of the way. --Pi zero (talk) 14:58, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't mean to ridicule your efforts here. That's not what I meant at all. But as you've probably guessed, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been blocked from Wikipedia or if my work at es.wiki had been recognized as valuable, and I'm getting an early start on collecting the information to use to decide whether and how much to continue at Wikinews after the block is lifted. I enjoy the collaboration that we have on project Wiki and I like the contribution that it makes to the accessibility of human knowledge, but whether the articles are read by the public vs. whether we're just entertaining each other (and there's nothing wrong with that) makes a difference. Like anyone who went through standard schooling, I spent years writing essays and reports that were going to be read once and thrown away. It seems that a least a few people read these articles, at least right now.

Don't worry too much about explaining the vision. The plan is that I'm here at least until March. I wouldn't mind talking more about your ideas, but I expect I'll pick a little of it up as I go. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:15, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I do understand (and do not take ill) you washed up here because you couldn't get your wikimedian fix from Wikipedia atm. I didn't take your remarks as ridicule; I would not expect that of you, as I recall our disagreements at WP:MOS as quite respectful. My intended point was simply that participation on Wikinews sometimes entails taking some flak for it, as does pursuit of any project with a long lead-time. --Pi zero (talk) 17:49, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Good to know. There have been too many misunderstandings lately. After all that time at WP:MoS and WP:COPYEDIT, I've got quite a high tolerance for putting effort into things that others do not appreciate (or, if done well, never notice). Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:06, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Duplicate article

There's an article on the review queue about Debbie Reynolds. --Pi zero (talk) 02:50, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I see. I only checked the development page. Fast work. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The Newsroom has sections for everything prior to publication, if it's refreshed.

Zanimum was writing an article about "Debbie Reynolds hospitalized", then at 2:04UTC renamed it with "Debbie Reynolds dies". Though I'm too tired to do a review tonight, so either someone else picks it up or it waits eight, nine hours or more. --Pi zero (talk) 03:14, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Nine hours. Whatever shall we do? Wikinews does have more than two reviewers, right? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:02, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I recall Gryllida, Bddpaux, and RockerballAustralia doing reviews within the past... few months? Review labor shortfall is a basic imbalance in the dynamic equation of Wikinews, central in my thinking about project infrastructure. --Pi zero (talk) 04:22, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I like the term "limiting reagent." Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:32, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

That's quite good, yes. --Pi zero (talk) 05:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Shall I tag this duplicate article for deletion? The other one is pending review. --George Ho (talk) 09:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Might be best if I did it. How does the tag work? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:36, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Since intent was clearly expressed here, I took care of it (with sufficient info in the edit description for someone to reconstruct the grounds for deletion). The template would be {{delete}}, anything that clearly expressed the grounds for the request would do in such a situation (e.g., {{delete|author request}}). If you want it undeleted for some reason, of course, we can do that. --Pi zero (talk) 14:58, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Nah. I transplanted most of the good stuff to the other one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Relative date

Here's what I recommend: When using the term "today" or "yesterday" in an article (or "tomorrow", though we use that a lot less), embed an html comment after it naming the weekday. Such as

Yesterday<!-- On Thursday -->,

This makes it vastly easier for reviewers (and anyone else editing things) to keep track of which day is actually meant as time passes. It's useful not only in case the article doesn't get published the same day it's written, but also, even if it is published the same day, when making it a lead on the main page one edits the lede to use a day of the week rather than "today" or "yesterday" and this makes it much easier to remember to do that and to get it right. --Pi zero (talk) 00:19, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I saw a couple of those. Didn't know what they were for. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:43, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Re: help template

Hey, thanks for your offer of help on my talk page, but I think I may have done it wrong. I put it there as a kind of "I am a noob, beware my mistakes"(not that I've made any contribs so far, shame on me), so sorry if it's not right, I'll take it down. And sorry again if this isn't how to reply to a message :P —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Steelthumbs (talk • contribs)

Election article

....please see my review comments. --Bddpaux (talk) 16:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

{{under review}}

BRS has the Obama farewell address article tagged {{under review}}. Just to note. --Pi zero (talk) 14:04, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that about a second after the edit conflict. Really have been watching for that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:09, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

It happens :) BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:10, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Need help on "At least 26 killed in another Brazil prison riot"

Hey, Darkfrog. I need your assistance on "At least 26 killed in another Brazil prison riot". I haven't yet submitted a request for review. I hope you can help me on this. Thank you. --George Ho (talk) 09:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

What does it need? Copyedit? Sourcing? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Knock, knock.

A team barnstar for you! A total of seven news articles were published on January 18, 2017, including yours! Cheers.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 10:47, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

THANKS! THIS IS SO NICE! Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 19 January 2017 (UTC) @AGastya: ...is it okay if I fix the typo? I want to display the thing on my userpage and I don't want you to be embarassed. If you don't care, just don't respond. It's just a "yous" instead of "yours." Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I guess the problem is solved now. I feel like Woody.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 05:47, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Donald Trump inaugurated as 45th U.S. president

Was wondering if you are going to write about the story. There is a chance somebody else might jump to contribute to the article, use {{editing}} template. And it seems, AlvaroMolina is writing the same story on other page.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 19:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Template:Replyto I plan to write more when I'm done with my work, but I absolutely don't mind if someone builds on what I've already written, even if it ends up looking completely different. As for duplicate pages, that's the nature of the Wikibeast. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It is the {{ping}} template. When I edited your article, I felt there is a chance of edit conflict, that's why I notified you.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 19:33, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Donald Trump inaugurated as 45th U.S. president‎ and Donald Trump assumes as the new U.S. president‎

Hi, I noticed that you were writing the article Donald Trump inaugurated as 45th U.S. president, however, I did not notice and also accidentally created another article «Donald Trump assumes as the new U.S. president‎». I would like to know if you want me to integrate what I have written to your article or conversely. I wait your answer. Regards. 20px Alvaro Molina (Let's Talk) 19:28, 20 January 2017 (UTC) Sorry if my English is not good.

1) I have absolutely no problem if you want to incorporate your stuff into the article that I started or copy text from the article I started into yours. Yours already has sources.

2) The inauguration is such a big story that there could be more than one article. The one I started could be deleted or shifted to focus on just one part of the inauguration, like the protesters.

Mainly, I was worried that Wikinews wouldn't cover this at all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:31, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I will integrate what I have written in your article, yours also has the advantage of being written in a more fluent English and perhaps mine is not the case. Likewise, these things often happen when one does not look at recent changes. 20px Alvaro Molina (Let's Talk) 19:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

As you have mentioned on your userpage that you have es-2 degree of understanding, Darkfrog24, you and AlvaroMolina can translate from Spanish Wikinews and add more information to the story. I think there will be a good long article about the event. Good luck to both!
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 19:40, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

How about...

Why do we have two articles (Trump inauguration draws protesters, peaceful and otherwise and Donald Trump inaugurated as 45th U.S. president? I was thinking why not include the reaction to the inauguration article? It can provide the readers overall idea rather than going to the second story to find out. Finally, it is up to you, but /I/ feel one article describing it can also be okay.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 13:57, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Because they're about two different things. One is about the inauguration in general and the other one is about the protesters. Look at the New York Times or any other major publication. They have more than one article about the inauguration, all focusing on different parts of the day.

This discussion is best made on one or more of the collaboration pages of those articles. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree there is slight difference in the focus. But it can be included to the other article without losing most of the information and quality. I know that there are so many US based websites, which displays inauguration, protest, reaction, opinions, polls, ... And the same case is with some non American news websites like BBC and The Moscow Times which is kind of annoying because the whole home page of their website is filled with that news and I need to scroll down, make some clicks to find news about other ongoing events. Ah, lot of personal opinions for those websites. Well, I left the message on your talk because you are the author of this article, and co-author of that one. Finally, it is up to you.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 05:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

You have a new message

--Svetlana Tkachenko / Gryllida (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Review trough

Alas. Standing back from the details that appear to govern these things in specific cases, it's a very familiar pattern that when we have a big spike in review, as last week with those seven publications in one day, there's likely to be a trough in review activity for a while afterward. Sorry the innauguration-protest article hasn't gotten more prompt attention. :-S  --Pi zero (talk) 23:52, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Just breathe, remember that you're a volunteer, and think of those dandelion summer slow news days. Hey, maybe Trump will turn out to be a dull and sensible leader and leave us nothing to do but report on scientists making laser-activated ferrets this time. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:54, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

There's been some unfortunate coincidences, too; the use of Spanish sources kept me out of one review, the protests made sense to be published after, and other times stuff has been reviewable have conflicted with Real Life. (I think we should think big, as Trump would have; if he's been quiet and sensible, let's have laser-activated rhinos.) BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 00:24, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

We do have a Category:Rhinoceros, whereas it looks like we've only got one article on ferrets (from 2007). --Pi zero (talk) 00:43, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Question

I was wondering if you would like to write about "Mexico's President Pena Nieto calls off Trump meeting".
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 17:17, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

If you start it I'll swing by. I don't know how much time I'm going to have. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I will finish German teenager sentenced six years for stabbing police officer in some time, and then, if you are not editing the Peña Nieto article, I would add something to it too. I would suggest using {{editing}} template to avoid editing conflicts.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 15:00, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I will surely take that into consideration. Krishna Kaasyap (talk) 02:02, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Spaces

I have noticed you use two spaces after the period, like typing of a typewriter. We don't use it online. If you want to remove multiple spaces, copy this importScript('User:Agastya Chandrakant/space.js'); to your Common JS page. You will find a link under the Tools section on the left-hand side, which reads Space fix. That will take care of the spaces.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 18:31, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not in favor of removing double spaces, as I see it as losing information (there's no equally simple way to put the spaces back by looking at the text, so it must be losing information). But, we know I first developed the habit of two spaces after a sentence-end by first learning to type on a typewriter (doesn't make it a bad idea, but that is where I picked it up). So I really wonder about the correlation with online culture. I do expect that if the software didn't fail by treating multiple spaces as if they were single spaces, the use of two spaces between sentences would be much more alive and well than it is. --Pi zero (talk) 19:39, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Is that what all those edits of yours marked "spaces" are for? Thank heck. I thought I was leaving vertical space and then forgetting about it. The Wikicode is actually rendered the same way. Check this out. There is one space after this sentence. And there are two after this one. Use your select function as you roll over. Don't they render the same?

In fact, adding or removing a double space is often used as a dummy edit (when you want to add an edit note but not the edit itself). I prefer two spaces, but if they irk you, I don't mind if you remove them. It's six to one half a dozen to the other. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:02, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

They are rendered the same way, yes. The fact that they're rendered that way seems substantially responsible for the decline of the two-space sentence separator. Like you I prefer two, finding it easier to read the raw text (where it is visible); but yeah, I wouldn't consider it worth raising a fuss about. --Pi zero (talk) 23:23, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I know that only one side is displayed, but that increases the size of the page. Since the two space is visible in the source only, it would not be useful until somebody is using the source, that to in wiki markup. Whatever it may be, it was never my primary reason to built the script. Darkfrog24, just because I remove it does not mean I am against it out I find it annoying.
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 07:08, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Size as in file size and load time on slow connections or size as in just how much space it takes up on your screen? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:40, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Pacing

I'm doing this here because I want to talk to both of you. @Pi zero: @Blood Red Sandman:

Do you want me to slow down? I'm having a good time covering American politics and the occasional laser mouse but there is a lot of it. Sometimes even something that we do for fun can feel like an obligation, and not everyone needs that right now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, you can see the rate at which I'm addressing your articles. This Yemen article (now on its last day) is proving very challenging; I think in this case you may have underestimated the level of uncertainty and confusion in the story. In practice this article looks to take up all my review attention for two days. --Pi zero (talk) 15:34, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Okay. You can imagine me taking notes here. Basically I don't want to turn off other contributors by monopolizing the review team. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with BRS that it's good to have a collection of articles in the archives providing wider coherent coverage. Atm, though, since we have an article by a Wikinewsie who hasn't been around much lately, I'm reviewing that, with the unfortunate consequence your two queued articles are sliding later. With the weather where I am sapping some of my time/energy/attention, I seem to be getting about one full review in a day. --Pi zero (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Alas and alack. I missed reviewing today entirely; I did a neat ballpark estimate that I moved about five tons of snow, but I really mean to also review that other article. I noticed you updated it, but, I think something more would be needed; I'm going to take a look now. --Pi zero (talk) 00:00, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it would need some sort of update. :S --Pi zero (talk) 00:44, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflictx2) I've been neglecting enwn recently, and I know I have. I consider a bulk of US politics articles much more valuable to the archive than simply a sum of the parts contained. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll dig in again. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:39, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. One of the things I wanted to know was whether I was spending too much time on redundant articles. I imagine Wikipedia is covering Trump extensively. They're less likely to cover the laser mice.

And as that came out of my fingers I realized how dumb it sounded. I just checked. No we don't cover the laser mice on Wikipedia but we totally would. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:00, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

North Korea

Good grief, but that story is seriously moving. --Pi zero (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

It's a nice change, but I wouldn't want them all to be like this. There's not much new information yet.

At least I finally managed to write a short one. It's got almost only two sources and everything. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:37, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's actually pushing our minimal length (a bit shy on total text volume, relative to our standard rule of thumb). And yet, in so little text, manages to dredge up some of the murkiest, messiest lexical-neutrality issues around :P.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Erk. In the end I just wasn't comfortable with the length on that item. --Pi zero (talk) 16:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

As hope springs eternal, I still hope I might find a review in me tonight; if so I hope to do the North Korean item. I notice you added to the white supremacist article, giving it a good safety margin over minimum; at this point, though, on Wikinews (which keeps UTC) it's Sunday, making the article appear to be four days old. I usually treat the outer end of the 2–3 freshness threshold as measuring from local date of event to Wikinews date of publication, because that's what's readily visible in the article: if published at this point it would say "this happened on Wednesday" (which is local time) and "this was published on Sunday" (which is Wikinews time), and that sounds like four days even though less it's less than 96 hours elapsed. I see there's something more expected on Tuesday. --Pi zero (talk) 00:52, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Limited reviewer resources and otherwise publishable articles timing out are nature of the beast on Wikinews. Given the sources and context, shouldn't the number of days elapsed take into account in which time zone the event took place? If Pence gives a speech at 9:00 p.m. on Monday in Washington D.C., it should count as Tuesday for UTC timeout purposes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:22, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

If Mike Pence gives a speech, it's likely to be so well covered that the article may go stale faster. Freshness is a complex issue. (I'd best not spend a lot of time discussing it just now. Btw, have I remarked how much I appreciate the embedded sourcing comments, on these many-source articles such as the NK one can't help being after focal shifting?) --Pi zero (talk) 03:10, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

The Mike Pence bit was just an example of something likely to happen in the eastern U.S. Let's say that anything Mike Pence does at 9:00 a.m. in Washington D.C. should be considered five hours fresher than anything he did at 9:00 a.m. in Greenwich (and yes he could get there that fast if they brought back supersonic flight, and given that this would be over the ocean it shouldn't be a problem). Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:49, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Of course it was just an example; and I was just using the example as an occasion to remark this subject is very fraught. No way I can cover much of it now. A few small remarks, then. Yes, my formula skews things by timezone, giving more time east of Greenwich, less west of Greenwich. How old an article feels matters to freshness, and by the time an article is that long in the tooth, the biggest feature visible in the vicinity on the psychological landscape is likely the transition from apparently-three-days-after to apparently-four-days-after. Which makes that transition a good fixed reference point for navigation in that vicinity. --Pi zero (talk) 04:46, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion

I recommend a gadget we provide under "User interface gadgets", called "Underline in green categorizable {{w}} links". By making it obvious when a link is localized by the template, it suggests categories to consider adding; for example, viewing this white supremacist article through the gadget, the existence of a local category for the FBI leaps out. --Pi zero (talk) 13:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. Where do I find it? Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:02, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Special:Preferences, Gadgets tab, under "User interface gadgets"; atm it's fifth from the bottom of that section. (We have a lot of clutter in our gadgets list; I suspect most of them don't even work, but checking that gadget-by-gadget would be a mess.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Found it. ...wow. That is annoying as hell. I'll try it out for a while. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:32, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Lol. I wonder if I felt that way when I first started using it? Nowadays operating with out it feels like flying blind. --Pi zero (talk) 14:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

When you told me about it I figured it would show up in the text editing window and not the shut up I'm trying to read window. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:04, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Some conceivably-of-interest background about the motive for {{w}}; I don't think I've described this to you (if I have, well, score another for absent-mindedness). When I came to Wikinews, amongst the systemic problems I found were the following snarl:

• Although local policy says to wikilink locally when a local target is available in preference to targets on Wikipedia (or other sister projects), actually doing it was finicky, tedious, error-prone work — determining for each keyword whether or not there was a local target, and coding [[target]] if there was, [[w:target|]] if not — frankly an absurd burden to put on an article author whose hands should be quite full worrying about content. In practice the practical thing, even for experienced Wikinewsies, was to use local links for countries and US states (because one could be sure those were all locally available) and Wikipedia links for everything else. Reviewers too had more than enough to worry about without such nonsense, so the problem tended not to get fixed during review, either.
• If a new category were created, providing a local target for previously non-local wikilinks, finding the links to be localized would be a big, messy task, far worse than finding all the articles in our archives that should go in the new category (which could be messy in itself). This discouraged creation of new categories.
• Following the creation of a new category, later published articles that ought to be in that new category would only get added if somebody remembered the category was there. Typically, this meant the person responsible for creation of the category would add new articles to it for a while, and then the category would have increasingly spotty coverage after its creator forgot or moved on. Which further discouraged the creation of new categories.
• All these things together meant that most links went to Wikipedia; few local targets and fewer linked to. A project whose wikilinks aren't local subtly fails to feel like a real project. Ideally, a reader should be able to wander about for as long as their attention lasts, and each link they click on will take them to another place on the project. The prevalence of Wikipedia links was a drain on the project identity, and thus community cohesiveness, of Wikinews.

Despite the interconnections, what all these difficulties really have in common is the simple device to fix them. A template, {{w}}, that automatically checks for a local target and links to it if available or to a sister project otherwise, and uses hidden categories to document which was done. The author can just use {{w}} for everything (or, if they prefer, when in doubt). Non-local links automagically divert to a new category once its mainspace redirect is created. Because {{w}} flags its local links, article curators can, sooner or later, consider each one to decide whether the article ought to be added to the targeted category, and then replace the {{w}} with a hard local link so it's removed from the list. New categories are reliably populated as time goes on (provided the categories were chosen to be the targets of keywords likely to be linked). The discouragements to category creation are mitigated, so that over time the number of local targets available increases. Ultimately, the proportion of local links increases dramatically, and the project subtly feels more cohesive. --Pi zero (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Good to know. I thought the {{w|whatever}} thing only sent things to the 'pedia. That is a good tool and far less irritating. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Reviewer status

I was kind of hoping I'd get to your article this evening after all; I keep telling myself it's important not to "apologize" for not getting to a review on a volunteer project, but I do admit I'm disappointed I didn't get to it. --Pi zero (talk) 03:48, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

And if we miss it, some other new craziness will take place, and I'll write an article about that. There's no Wikilaw saying you can't have other stuff to do or even, heck, just not feel like it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:54, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

spaceflight article

Unfortunately the article had to be deleted as blatant copyvio. I'm about to write a note to the contributor. --Pi zero (talk) 13:46, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh darn it. Well that happens with newbs. Ask the guy where the sources were. No reason we can't put together a new one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

A new contributor posts material with no sources, polished prose showing characteristics of news such as a lede sentence, but missing basic characteristics of Wikinews (and even, of wiki) formatting. Plenty of warning signs, there. I've found there is often no malice in it, just an unawareness of what one ought to be doing (and ought not to be doing). --Pi zero (talk) 14:13, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

While you're here, I've got something that's scheduled to start the middle of this coming week, so I might not be around so much. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:16, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Redundant redirects

Insight, from an incident just now: If you rename an article during its development, and wish to nominate the redirect for speedy deletion, put the {{delete}} template below the #redirect line, rather than above. That way the redirect still works. I just had to deal with an (apparently) confused IP who got derailed looking for information on Wikinews about the Kim Jong Nam story when they washed up at the deletion-nominated page and thought it meant our article on the subject had been deleted. (Yes, getting to the deletion more promptly would have avoided the problem too; just figuring the more prevention measures the better.) --Pi zero (talk) 21:50, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, okay. I didn't know it made a difference. Darkfrog24 (talk)

Sessions article

Fwiw, I'd hoped to tackle this right after lunch, and then just before lunch a minor crisis irl called me away. I doubt I'll be able to get to it before midnight UTC, which (unless another reviewer comes along) means either I tackle it this evening (after midnight UTC) or tomorrow morning (after 1200 UTC). --Pi zero (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I'll see if I can find time to check the outlets for new developments before you hit the review.

We're actually in the same time zone. You don't have to say UTC. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:15, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, UTC (1) is the time kept by Wikinews; midnight UTC is when the visible date of publication changes, in this case from Friday to Saturday (which is why if I'd seen a shot at getting it published before then, I would have taken it). (2) keeps me oriented to the globe (I recall Joseph Campbell had some things to say about this sort of outward focus). (3) avoids deeply confusing tangles since we do interact with people in lots of different time zones. --Pi zero (talk) 22:52, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Series of little crises and distractions here. You got this submitted in an admirably timely manner and I fumbled, repeatedly. But it did get out the door. --Pi zero (talk) 14:33, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Glad to hear it. Life is going to be life. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:34, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Royal Commission article

Oops. Sorry. I was writing a quick review, and should have known better than to do so without first marking the article as {{under review}}.

Btw, as a matter of curiosity — in case you hadn't deduced what was going on — we've evidently got another UoW class coming through. Generally there's first a trickle of new user accounts created with names with "uow" in them; then more accounts created and a few students get an early start on submitting articles (often needing some basic guidance on the pillars); and then at some point lots of students submitting, typically most of them at some particular time of week, which may reflect when the class meets. --Pi zero (talk) 04:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

University of Wollongong? This is a little new to me for "another" to apply. Do they have a relationship with Wikinews? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:56, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

David Blackall (first-listed author of [2]). Cf. Category:UoW. --Pi zero (talk) 05:14, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The class may be Monday morning (in Australia) this semester; there seem to be a lot of submissions materializing. Looks as if when I wake up in the morning there may be a bunch more; I'm thinking I should take a look at yours (and Ssr's) before spending much time on whatever accumulates overnight. --Pi zero (talk) 05:42, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I was thinking of hitting the six-month mark before requesting reviewer status. You think I should go early? And the Kim Jong Nam article is basically "here's what's happened since last time." NBD to bump that back a couple days or punt it to development until the next thing happens. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Deciding when to apply for reviewer status can be a tricky thing. It's guaranteed to be idiosyncratic. In my case... well, when I applied the standards were different. Time was, reviewer was sometimes given out to folks who really weren't ready to do full reviews yet; we don't do that anymore, after we had some problems with someone who was really meant to use the review bit just to sight interwikis, and then... I don't remember exactly what went wrong, but, we're more cautious now. Anyway, when I went for reviewer, I basically said at my nomination I felt I understood the project well enough to not use the review bit for full reviews before I was ready to. And the community accepted that. I think the first full review I did was about half a year later. Iirc it was much longer than that before I undertook to review an OR article, as I wasn't confident I grokked that aspect of things. And of course I was the one who started the water-cooler thread that eventually led to page WN:Tips on reviewing articles. The point was that there wasn't any guidance on how to review; I still don't feel there's as much, or as good, as there should be, and the last time we gave someone the review bit, they used it once to review an article and never again, which might just be distraction from other projects... but I wonder if they just found it too difficult/scary. It is scary.

I was thinking about whether I should offer a suggestion here about what aspect of review you should be most cautious about, but, you know, when I tried to imagine that in my head it just sounded so overbearing. (The thing about "no self-review" is too obvious, and beyond that, well.)

At any rate, when you feel you're ready, I suspect you'll have no problem getting in... though it may prove desirable to leave the nomination open for a while, depending on the number of active Wikinewsies who drop in on it. --Pi zero (talk) 14:58, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Fwiw, I've reviewed and published the Kim Jong Nam article. I'd rather not waste an article that's by an experienced Wikinewsie and therefore very unlikely to have any fundamental problem (other perhaps than staleness if left too long) that would actually prevent publication; as opposed to articles by folks who haven't got their sea legs yet.

(I looked back over the 'Tips' page, and found it's better on the big-picture issues than I'd remembered; I guess I'd forgotten how many times it's gotten tweaked over the past several years as various issues have come up.) --Pi zero (talk) 19:51, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Reviewing these influxes of student articles has a distinctive feel to it. They're students; I know that sort from both sides (I spent a good seven or eight years as a TA, so did a great deal of homework-grading). They're earnest (though more distracted in their last year), but they'll also push the envelope; one has to be diligent on "copyright" (which of course also includes plagiarism, and can get quite subtle), focus, and sometimes basic formatting issues. The sheer mass of submissions changes things too; triage gets more brutal, and it's only at low submission rates that I can sometimes try to review everything in the order submitted: when things get crazy, the next one to do is the freshest article that seems likely to pass when reviewed.

At any rate, I managed to get into the swing of things early, yesterday, and keep my pace for most of the day, whereas today I'm having trouble getting into it. I'm hoping I can get into it a bit after lunch, and if I can get started I hope to keep moving as long as possible. It gets kind of discouraging, I admit, when in the evening, just as I'm starting to fade, the students in Australia wake up and start submitting. I'm tentatively planning to do your article first. --Pi zero (talk) 15:35, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch. I've got some stuff going on this weekend or else I'd be more in-there, if only with the c/e. Def. got the impression that the hopper is full enough. Just didn't want to skip this issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:58, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Pockets of best-practice

Had the subject of single-quotes versus double-quotes never come up? Huh. Lots of little tidbits lying about, I suppose. --Pi zero (talk)

There's some evidence that double outperform single, but I don't think we need a rule about it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

We try for consistency. --Pi zero (talk) 18:47, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, that's intra-article consistency, not Wikiproject level or Wikipedia-level. Same here? Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:00, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Consistency within an article is clearly most important. In this case I was actually talking about consistency between articles (what, couldn't you tell by reading my mind?) The preference for single-quotes in headlines actually is mentioned in the style guide (I had to look there to see if it was, but it's standard practice), and the preference for double-quotes in articles is one of those things it had never occurred to me even needed to be said explicitly. I'm not sure I'd ever seen anyone consistently using single-quotes in the article text, but if I had I'd not have blinked at changing it to double-quotes; afaik that's just standard English punctuation. --Pi zero (talk) 19:38, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't see inter-article consistency as necessary or desirable for a project of this kind. So long as it's correct English, let people do what they like. Single quotes are one of the correct options in British English, and the spelling was British, so I kept them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:46, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Consistency as totally unimportant is clearly an exaggeration. Consistency as a major priority across the board is clearly an exaggeration. Consistency has some degree of desirability, how much depends on what one is contemplating being consistent/inconsistent about, and there's also likely to be huge variations in what other considerations come into play so that it may get completely overwhelmed and become a practical irrelevance in some cases. This particular issue strikes me as a rather small point of style, which I could easily see different reviewers handling either way (leave it or change it to double quotes). It is interesting to hear there's a variant style of that sort in British usage; I might well leave such a thing alone when encountering it in an article in future (or at least, think seriously about doing so). The part about using single-quotes in headlines is of a different sort, because headlines get viewed en masse so that consistency across articles has a meaningful impact; that seems to me a sufficient explanation of why the headline consideration is in the SG while the handling in the article text afaict is not. --Pi zero (talk) 20:45, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

depends on what one is contemplating being consistent/inconsistent about Yup. That's it right there. The articles all have the same layout and format because that makes them easier to read. They don't all need to be in the same variety of English or have the same take on the serial comma because 1) learning how to read more than one variety correctly is educational and 2) it doesn't make much difference otherwise and 3) telling people their preferred variety is dispreferred here just alienates them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed (for Wikinews purposes), on those two points (variety, serial comma); other considerations often overwhelm on those. Though the specific issue atm was use of single-quotes versus double-quotes for direct quotation in the body of an article. I'm interested that I hadn't consciously registered the single-quote variant as a coherent style. As a matter of curiosity, do you know if it's recommended in any major news style guides? --Pi zero (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

News? I don't know. I might be able to check The Economist's guide later. But I've seen the single-first in other forms of British writing. I think it might be considered old-fashioned but it hasn't fallen out of correct practice yet.

Single quotes are one of the few correct options within English for which there's any provable difference in functionality. Under some circumstances, they mess up search functions. There's also the idea that the reader's going to "trip" over quotes-vs-apostrophes, but that's anecdotal. Even so, I don't think it's a big enough deal to make a rule against them. Almost no one uses them anyway. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:57, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

U.S. judge blocks second Trump travel ban as religious discrimination

Oops. Glitch. --Pi zero (talk) 19:53, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Was there a software malfunction somewhere? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:56, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

London attack

If you have some time ... this is a story we should cover, but I won't be able to, because of internal exams. Going to write about?
acagastya 00:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I think there are two articles already on the queue about it. One of them has a neutrality problem, which I noted on its talk page. The other... well, I suspect it's lost freshness due to later developments. --Pi zero (talk) 00:46, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

(On second thought, that article may be getting updated.) --Pi zero (talk) 00:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like the kids gave us plenty of starting material. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Travel ban

Another one for you. Virginia judge backs Trump on travel ban.
acagastya 17:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Sacking

I tend to assume any reader who isn't entirely familiar with the term will pick it up fast enough. Though I've reviewed thousands of articles by English writers of many different stripes, so my idiolect is likely somewhat international. --Pi zero (talk) 21:42, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh sure, but there are cross-variety terms that would work just as well, and it's such a simple fix. I say teachable moment.

(Conversation in reference to this article submitted by student.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Non-neutrality

Some of my reviews lately have been, imho, really interesting case studies. There was one about alien moon bases that gave me an opportunity to discuss even-handed treatment of fringe claims; another that looked like it was fake news trying to infiltrate into mainstream media, affording a discussion of warning signs that stronger sourcing is needed; and then this morning a formidable example of non-neutrality. Talk:Trump revokes climate change policies. Despite the effort I put into the review comments, I couldn't quite see how to work into those comments — without sounding non-neutral myself — the observation that in this case, any non-neutral presentation of the pro-environmentalist position plays into the hands of the anti-environmentalists. --Pi zero (talk) 13:13, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Chimed in. I can try to give it a closer look later. Work's picked up in the past few weeks so I don't have as much time for this as I did. The influx of student articles was opportune. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:28, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I added another comment myself. Honestly, I've got a very solid intuitive sense of the whole news-neutrality thing but find much of it — beyond attribution — rather challenging to articulate at a moment's notice, which is a big part of why I've been wanting to write an essay on it. (The WN:NPOV policy page, although I did learn from it, does imho such a poor job of explanation that I think of it as kind of an embarrassment, and, unlike things like WN:Newsworthiness or even WN:Inverted pyramid, I don't link to it when writing review comments.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:17, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk page?

didn't you mean to contact those students on their talk pages, rather than their user pages? Btw, I should have set up a semester category for this class (which involves figuring out which semester it is... I'd guess it's Autumn 2017) and been putting {{UoW student}} on their user pages, but I've not found time for it. --Pi zero (talk) 12:10, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Well yes. I wanted to talk to them, so I posted on their talk pages ...you don't actually mean that I did post on their talk pages do you? You mean that I posted on their user pages. Hoo-kay. I'll go fix it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:13, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Stuff happens. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 12:49, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of stuff, I've sent in the request for unblock-for-appeal on Wikipedia. I was eligible March 1 but it's taking a long time. If I seem to drop off the face of Wikinews for a week or two, it's because I'm trying to keep the appeal contained. Regardless of the result, I'll be back as soon as the screaming stops. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:42, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

International organizations ask Russian government to stop persecution of homosexuals in Chechnya

I had some freshness concerns. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 18:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

That's all to beexpected. I checked the feeds this morning to see if there was anything new to add. Will check your specific comments later.

British minister claims Chechnyan government plans to eliminate gay community by late May

We need another source to verify the news for the recent events. There is only on source which was published within the time period of 72 hours.
acagastya 19:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Metro okay? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Must be on or after April 22. April 22's story loses its freshness in a couple of hours.
acagastya 22:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that a little later. I was wondering why the Independent didn't include any dates. Still, why post this here and not on the collaboration page? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Better to post stuff on the article's collaboration page, with ping of relevant party.

@Darkfrog24: I admire how you're keeping after this story; I really hope we finally pin it down. (News meandering out of Chechnya in dribs and drabs, I take it, making it hard to bring an article to bear on it while it's still fresh. And mainstream news outlets that really seem to have forgotten that "when" is one of the Ws.) Yes, by all means, "day" word in the lede and two recent sources, so it can't wriggle away from us! --Pi zero (talk) 00:21, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Shallow hope: Study suggests some corals are adapting to climate change

Hi. Relevant; but, sourcing and freshness issues. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 03:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Erk

You'd think I'd learn by now to check the diff before saving a comment on a discussion such as your RFP. I'm really annoyed with myself; although, if it helps to move the conversation forward, that at least may be a net positive. --Pi zero (talk) 14:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

<sigh> I wanted to say something immediately, hence the preceding. I'm really quite disappointed in the comments I wrote on my !vote; despite the long time I spent struggling with it, the comment came out imho quite ineptly. For that, I really feel I own you an apology. --Pi zero (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@Pi zero: If it would make you feel better, I accept your apology in advance but before you feel the need for one more second, let me tell you why I had such a long night: I'm just coming out of my appeal with ArbCom. I've just spent a year and a half being punished because asking someone "Are you okay?" is gaslighting if I'm the one who does it, for personally faking the idea that American and British English differ in the treatment of quotation marks, pushing POV by saying "we should follow the sources even when they say things I don't like," biting the new guys (yes that one over there who thanked me for defending him), ignoring other people's sources (by looking them up, reading them, and discussing what they say), and the ultimate, ultimate disruption, saying that none of the above actually happened and asking if there's any thing that did happen or that I might have done that I need to work on, as in "I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong. Was it this?" And that's nothing to last year when I said "yes" to their demands like six times and they acted like I said no.

You think I should be stricter about Wikinews' rules. Maybe you think we shouldn't make exceptions for science and professional news that work on different schedules. You have an opinion that differs from mine. How fucking dare you? You've poured a lot of energy into Wikinews and you're picky about who gets to be a reviewer is how. Go ahead. I'm pretty picky about a few things myself. At no point did you maintain that my disagreeing with you made me some subhuman monster from whose mouth came only lies. You worked from an alternative opinion, not an alternative fact. It's Wikinews, not opposite land. Reading your comment wasn't fun but it was within the bell curve of reasonable discourse. We're Wikinews not the goddamned Buddy Bears.

What you've exercised here is compunction, the desire to do better even though what you did wasn't actually wrong. I'm in no mood to jump down your or anyone's throat for that.

And in case you were wondering, yes you'd still have a coral bleaching article to review even if I'd been unblocked. It's a small crowd here but it's a good one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:16, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. A long night because, dealing with Wikipedian culture as it has become. I realized later, I had joined Wikipedia in its heyday, around 2006 or 7 (which was about the time the WMF finished the paper-shuffling of assembling itself and shifted into high gear), and it was a wonderful, friendly, idealistic place. Even though I moved on, to Wikibooks and then to Wikinews, I still have fond memories, and I still care about Wikipedia. I could weep for how the atmosphere there has soured, and would help it if I knew how I could. --Pi zero (talk) 16:23, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's around the time I joined. I didn't find it friendly, though. As I recall, the first time I went to WT:MOS there was a knock-down-drag-out about WP:LQ going on. And a now-retired Wikipedian blamed me for starting it. The fight that was well under way before I got there. But that's WT:MoS. People say stuff like that and you just go with it and move on because no one means anything by it and it's not going to go any further than that. If that was as far as any of this had gone, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Right now I feel like I got held down and a plaque reading "Gaslighting, lying piece of absolute filth" got hammered into my head, and they don't get why I'm not okay with that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Chechnya

When marking four-day-inactive developing articles as abandoned, I've been simply skipping over the gay-purge-in-Chechnya one. Do you have thoughts on that article's future? --Pi zero (talk) 11:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I was thinking about it the other day. Yeah, it's time to go. I'll do it myself. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:45, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

About your reviewer nom

Um. Hi.

I've been wracking my brains over how this situation can work out well; it's got me deeply worried. Eventually I decided I've been treating this like a "political" situation, when what I really should be doing is talking with you about it; more communication, rather than less. Person to person. So I'm going to try to explain to you how I see the situation. Some of this could be appropriately said at the nomination discussion (and a little of it has been), but much of it seems to me too person-to-person to belong there. (This has gotten rather long; but I fear that when this conversation goes wrong it'll because I didn't say enough.)

You asked me a while back whether I thought you were ready for reviewer. That's one of those moments one can think back on and wish to have done differently. If I had said at the time, no, I don't think you're ready yet — accompanied, we might as well imagine while we're at it, by an eloquent explanation of why I thought that — we would... perhaps... now be in a somehow much better situation. The trouble with that what-if scenario is that I didn't know then how I felt about it, though in retrospect there was something niggling at me. Then, when you applied, it was in the midst of the distracting influx of student articles. And maybe on this occasion I was overly hesitant about voicing my concerns (hesitance while sorting between the living Wikinews tradition I'm trying to preserve, and my personal quirks that I strive to keep carefully separate from the tradition). It was only last week, more than a month into the nomination, that I understood clearly that I didn't think you were ready.

The particular issue that came up — freshness as applied to covering scientific papers — is of concern to me in its own right but also seems to me a symptom of a larger difficulty. Some perspective on both halves of that concern: Several years ago, I wondered about the same issue. Mainstream news orgs publish some kinds of articles that we do not. Some of that difference is our neutrality policy (there's a whole complex mix of wiki and journalism issues there). There's some impact of our neutrality policy on our freshness policy. And then there's also a wiki-political consideration: we do not poach on our sister Wikipedia's territory (even though they routinely try, unsuccessfully, to poach on ours). So I clearly understood good reasons for sticking to our guns on freshness regardless of whether the subject happens to be a science paper. Nevertheless, I wondered, so I asked around, consulting folks whom I think of as "senior editors". I got a resounding no.

But, you perceived this as something that it would be fine to just do differently. Which (by contrast with the above) seems to suggest problems both with awareness of which policies carry most weight within the overall structure, and with attitude toward consulting before acting (if I did really want to do something differently, and there weren't senior colleagues around for ready consultation, my natural reflex would be to hold off on changing anything however long it took to consult).

I don't see that consulting with you after you've done something out of step would work; we both know you're apt to be set in your ways, and even if you were persuadable in each case, review should stop stuff before it happens. And, I'm worried you could cross the line simply by not seeing it.

I'm tempted — and yet uncomfortable about the idea, worrying it might be taken badly — to ask if you would be willing to simply withdraw-without-prejudice for now from your request for reviewer.

Do you have any thoughts/suggestions on this? --Pi zero (talk) 14:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I just came off a long drive and my brain is still on the highway. I got a resounding no. To which question? "No we shouldn't stick to our guns?" or "No we shouldn't make exceptions on freshness?" EDIT: Either way, I would like to read that conversation. Got a link?

Are those senior editors still here or has the composition of the Wikinews community changed since then?

we both know you're apt to be set in your ways Given recent events I'd like to point out that I change my ways now and then but no one notices because there's no fuss.

Pi zero I'm getting the impression that what you're actually afraid of here is offending me/being a dick/etc. Is that the cause of your hesitancy? Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

If you're worried that I'm mad at you for even asking me to WwP, I'm not. I thought about it myself once the Australians died down but at that time decided against it. One of the reasons was that the others expressed such confidence in me. I've got some stuff going on this week that demands my focus and I'm pretty emotionally drained from Wikipedia business, so I'm going to let your suggestion settle for a while. If the motion to grant reviewer status carries in the meantime, fine with me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

It's true I really hate to offend anyone who doesn't deserve it; being too soft on people has often caused me trouble. But I was referring to a different cause of hesitance. When I stepped in to fill the review gap sufficiently to keep things moving while I worked on a longer-term solution, I had a list of hazards to beware of. One of the points of the exercise being to preserve the living tradition of Wikinews, that would require projecting the tradition I'd inherited from others; but one of the hazards on my list was to avoid letting my personal idiosyncrasies get mixed in with the tradition. I'm not about to suppress my opinions, but need to make clear when I'm talking about site policy versus when I'm talking about personal preference. In the particular case of dealing with you, I may have spent some extra time trying to sort things through.

Consensus does not work here the way it works on Wikipedia. Part of it is that on a spectrum between democracy and meritocracy, Wikipedia is way over toward the first while Wikinews is more toward the second. (Amongst other things, on important votes — such as reviewer — while everyone gets to voice their opinion, outsiders' !votes carry no weight; I don't know for sure as I wasn't here when that was set up, afaik at basically the inception of the project, but I suspect the point was to make it impossible for a gang of Wikipedians to come over and rewrite Wikinews policies to fit their encylcopedia-shaped notions.) Another part of it is that, how to put this, site policies here have vastly more momentum. I've found something similar at Wikibooks, which is a smallish wiki but, moreover, is essentially a confederation of thousands of microprojects, called "books", even smaller than Wikinews (some several orders of magnitude smaller). Small projects have necessarily more respect for the way way things have been done in the past; they have to, for project coherence. Since you arrived at Wikinews I have perceived vibes from you of supposing that changing the rules is a matter of consensus by the small number of people actually visible at a given moment. But even membership in the community has much more longevity here than on Wikipedia. A veteran Wikinewsie who comes by once or twice a year to write an article is, pretty much, active; below that they may still be semi-active; and they're likely still "in the community" well below.

No to extending freshness for certain kinds of articles. One of our most basic slogans, penned years ago by brianmc, is "Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."

(Btw, my impression of you fwiw is of someone very honest with a great deal of personal integrity, a good colleague to work with, who can sometimes be an intransigent pain. Granted, I like to believe in people, which is presumably why AGF, over at Wikipedia, appealed to me so much at first, and it took me years to conclude that AGF not only doesn't work for Wikinews, but in the long term damages Wikipedia as well.) --Pi zero (talk) 04:13, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

need to make clear when I'm talking about site policy versus when I'm talking about personal preference.

Yes, I've noticed some trouble distinguishing between the two in your posts. Well you always give me plenty to think about, Pi zero. Know that I respect your opinion even though I don't take it as a given that you're right like I used to.

I know it's late at night for both of us, but I do want to read that conversation you reffed just now. No hurry but it sounds important. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

"[...] even though I don't take it as a given that you're right like I used to."

Heh. I don't remember that. (Am I getting old? No, don't answer that. We all are, steadily.) Anyway, how knowledgeable I am is context-dependent. On Wikinews, one of my sometime hats is de facto lore-master. I keep mentioning the "living tradition"? Yeah. Per the water cooler (wasn't it?) just recently, lots of important stuff doesn't get written down reliably on a small news project. The only way to learn it is directly from someone who knows. (There's a reason much is made of "academic lineage", like en.wp emphasizing Peter Ladefoged's descent from Henry Sweet. Loss of in-person teacher-student connections killed ancient Greek science after the Hellenistic period and made it hard to reboot things in the Renaissance...) So there has to be somebody around to learn from directly. For me to serve as an effective conduit for passing on all this stuff, whilst minimizing attenuation of signal due to passing through the bottleneck of a single mind, means for me a lot of introspection plus consultation with other veteran Wikinewsies.

I honestly forget what I've remarked to you about my history on Wikinews. I wasn't present for the pre-review age; I was around for <coughs> the tectonic events of 2010 and after. An increment in my familiarity with the documentation (for its part in the tapestry) was when, in researching for WN:Tips on reviewing articles, I surveyed most of what is written down on the project outside article talkspace and discussion archives. I later tried to study the early archives, both here and at meta, when I was first nominated for en.wn ArbCom; there was too much of it to get through, but I did pick up some more historical awareness there. I've surely done some thousands of reviews by now —I've specialized, honestly I'm the review guru (and yes, the phonetics of that phrase are odd)— and was startled when someone, brianmc maybe, pointed out my edit count here had passed 100,000; obviously I've contributed to precedent as well as being a diligent student of the living tradition. If it's policy evolution within the past seven years, I'm party as well as witness, which is way more nuanced than just "mine" versus "somebody else's". Perhaps it'd help to think of the policies as a Platonic structure, with naturally coherent patterns that the community, including me, explore.

A great deal of it all doesn't even happen on-wiki; we use IRC a lot, including some limited-access channels. --Pi zero (talk) 14:24, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about it, the more likely it seems I would use IRC in this case for an informal exchange of thoughts. Doing things on-wiki can give them weight (not to mention momentum and persistence), and I'd have no reason to want to tediously create an on-wiki fuss and bother about this idea, which I myself could conjure plenty of good reasons against but was curious what others thought. The most likely reason for it not to have been on IRC would be if the conversation predated my acclimation to IRC, which was probably in 2011. --Pi zero (talk) 18:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh it had to do with WP:LQ. I think it was whether "logical" and "British" were the same style or not. At first I thought they were the same, then you said they were different and made your case (but didn't cite any sources) and won me over. Then I read a bunch of sources that contradicted what you said and changed my mind, but it did take seeing all those sources for me to change my mind. You really sounded like you knew what you were talking about and to this day while I think your opinion was wrong, you clearly didn't pull it out of thin air.

I've never used IRC.

I think what you seem to be getting at with respect to science articles is that you think that's more Wikipedia's purview. Not sure I agree but I'll give it some more thought.

Let me know when you come across that link. Sounds like something I should read. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Since I have no memory of whatever specific instance you're talking about in the quotation discussions, I have no idea whether I was wrong outright, saying it wrong, being misunderstood, or what. (I'd guess it was one of the first three, rather than "or what", but even that is only a guess.)

To be clear (in case), the Wikipedia aspect of what I'm saying is that covering things later on belongs to Wikipedia's purview rather than to ours. Nothing to do with whether the subject is science. A way it's put somewhere about the site (and repeated, no doubt, in other places) is that a Wikinews article is a "snapshot in time". Our archives are a photo album, each picture clearly labeled as to just when it's from and carefully covered by a transparent protective cover to preserve it so people ever after can see what it looked like at that moment.

As a practical matter, freshness is how we operate, and there are ways to accomplish one's goals within it. As I may have remarked to you somewhere earlier, and have certainly remarked to others, we usually deal with this sort of problem by interviewing one of the scientists involved. Or sometimes several of them. Like so much of our way of doing things, it's pretty close to the way the msm at its best does things too. (Not I think a coincidence; it looks like a lot of know-how went into our policies-and-practices. I tend to think such a high-quality coherent infrastructure could not have happened if Wikinews had not started out with a much larger day-to-day-active population — we can still function with so few people now because there were more then.) When the msm decides to cover one of those scientific paper publications well after the paper came out, although they aren't as overt about it as we are they generally go out and collect some fresh quotes. We generally do more than a few little quotes if we're going to interview someone, of course; and with full interviews especially, our freshness rules work differently, as discussed at WN:Fresh.

A particular favorite of mine in this vein — which I had to hunt for because it's not technically categorized as an "interview" — is BRS's classic

• "'Fascinating' and 'provocative' research examines genetic elements of bipolar, schizophrenia" — Wikinews, October 1, 2011

(Easy to miss in the massive reporter's notes, down at the bottom of the transcript of the phone interview with the guy in Argentina:

Not directly related to any posed question

Something I thought was very cool: “these are very important questions… are you a geneticist?” With thanks to George Watson (dendodge) who helped me out on question-writing.

We were still getting big numbers of hits on that article many months after it was published; apparently it was some of the best information available on its topic anywhere on the web.) --Pi zero (talk) 23:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh I gathered later that it was just your opinion. As valid as any other, sure, but I prefer a more direct interpretation of what I can see in sources.

Which MSM do you mean? Mainstream media?

I'd just been about to ask you for a link to an interview. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────┘
If unsure how individual-quirky something is that I've popped out with, ask and I'll try to clarify.

"msm"="mainstream media".

We mostly do interviews presented directly as transcripts.

featured interviewsWikinews:Dialog/do

other featured ORWikinews:Dialog/do

--Pi zero (talk) 00:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually, on further reflection I'm not sure what you just said. You gathered what was was just my opinion? --Pi zero (talk) 01:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

The idea that British and logical punctuation styles were two different things rather than two names for the same thing. I figured you might also have had some personal experiences that led you to draw this conclusion, but what's firsthand for you is secondhand for me, so I ended up giving more credence to the published sources. So perhaps "your conclusion" is more accurate but it's a little clunky for the conversation we were having. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah. --Pi zero (talk) 01:32, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Hackers hit 99 countries with 'cyberweapons' stolen from U.S. National Security Agency‎

Financial Times is paywalled.
acagastya 14:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Weird. It let me click right in. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:18, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Anyway, it's paywalled now. I replaced it with two other sources. Thanks for the heads-up. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:46, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

But next time could you use the article collaboration page? Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:14, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Why did I leave a message here even though you and Pi zero said about the article's talk: You had edited recently, implying there is a probability that you are online. Sometimes, the Echo notifications would not load, so considering a possibility of that (happened with me, couldn't see the notifications for two months), I should leave a message here. Besides, you are the author, so nobody else can substitute a source for you until you ask them to.
acagastya 21:37, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

you are the author, so nobody else can substitute a source for you until you ask them to

While it would certainly be easiest for me to be the one to do the substitution, I have no objection whatsoever to someone else performing this task. It's part of what I mean by "collaboration welcome." If you need my verbal permission, that's it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:45, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Do not mix collaboration with the principles and guidelines of Wikinews. One must not cite any source which was not referred by the author and information was not extracted from it. Anyone else doing it is wrong, and I don't think that is acceptable.
acagastya 21:49, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Well of course the person replacing one source with another would have to read them both themselves to determine what lines in the Wikinews article came from where and so need to be re-sourced or removed. That's what I mean when I say it would be easiest for me to do it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

U.S. President Trump defends decision to share classified information with Russians

I wasn't comfortable with some aspects of the article. We really want to offer a clean exposition of the story, imho, since we're covering something that's being really intensively covered by the US msm (I have no idea what sort of play it's getting elsewhere). Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not offended if that's what you're worried about. This is why we have at least two people work on every article before it's approved. I already fixed one of the problems you cited and will get to the others later. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Personalized messages, and more explanation of one's thinking rather than less, I've found are generally desirable for review. Granted, those things do make it less likely someone will be offended, and generally improve the psychological/social atmosphere. They're also just plain good for communication and thus quality of produced news articles. Since those are all good motives, there's no need to prioritize them. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 20:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Almost like you're trying to be a community. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I actually don't know how to interpret that, owing to the awkward reality that I've doubts about your grokking of the Wikinews community. --Pi zero (talk) 23:15, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

It is meant to be grokked as mild sarcasm indicating recognition and approval of conscientiousness on your part. Consider: "It is almost as if you are acting as a responsible adult with a concept of basic manners and courtesy." Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:01, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, that. :p --Pi zero (talk) 03:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Simulations show planet orbiting Proxima Centauri could have liquid water

Nice. (What can I say? I like science. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 01:29, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Just remember it only might be able to support intelligent life and it would take so long to get there that the current presidential administration would be over by then anyway. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:46, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I recall seeing someone suggest (probably on PBS) some years back that there would be no point in a manned mission to another start until one could get up to... I think it was half the speed of light, because at any speed less than that, before you got there people would be whizzing past you in later technology. I'm not sure I entirely buy the evident assumption about how fast future technology will advance in this area, but it's certainly something to keep in mind. --Pi zero (talk) 02:09, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Depends on the goal. If the point is to place humans anywhere but Earth so that we don't have all our eggs in one basket, then it doesn't matter when they arrive so much as when they leave. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Aye, there's the rub. --Pi zero (talk) 03:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Bill Cosby sexual assault trial enters jury selection

Hi. Hopefully not difficult (for someone other than the reviewer) to fix, but, review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 11:07, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Published. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 22:50, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. And don't worry about the dimming star article. It would be great if we published it but I still think Robert's had an okay first experience on Wikinews, and he's had the idea of holding on to the draft until the next event with this star. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:23, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

That's helpful perspective on the star article. Thanks. --Pi zero (talk) 23:38, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a shame. All the astronomy nerds are really riled up. It would be a great niche piece. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

darn you, green underlining program

Does that rhyme with "Curse you, Red Baron!"? --Pi zero (talk) 00:36, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The Red Baron was a warrior of such consummate style and valor that even his enemies were eager to shake his hand. The green underlying simply annoys me ...into creating more specific links. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:40, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

And yet, it's one of the simplest and most awesome devices I know, changing the shape of the project like a glacier cutting through solid rock. Granted, it doesn't get congratulated much. --Pi zero (talk) 00:56, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

No, it gets darned, darned to the deepest vats of heck. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, {{w}} checks for the local link, and if the target page does not exists, it will be linked to the Wikipedia page​.
acagastya 12:50, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it makes a stop there on its way to heck. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:55, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

lol. --Pi zero (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Truck bomb kills at least 80 in Afghan capital city center

That was my first review which was published. It is scary: what if I make a big mistake. I could not leave a message yesterday, I am home, and it was time I should be in my bed. Please see the review comments. I had to re-word some sentences, and remove (It was: "As of today, no other organization has claimed credit." because we don't know if hours after submitting the article anyone claimed the responsibility). Have a look at the article, let me know if something is wrong.

Thanks for writing this article. I was planning to write it, but you were quicker.
acagastya 06:43, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

what if I make a big mistake Well thanks for the vote of confidence. If there was a big mistake, we'd take the article down. We can do that. I'll give it a look if it makes you feel better but I think it's just the first-timer jitters. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:31, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, there is almost no mistake that would justify de-publishing the article. I think I've done that about three times; one of those times still haunts me because I'm not sure it was the right thing to do, and I'm not sure whether I'd handle the others the same way now that I did then (though they don't bother me the way the one does). It's been suggested that even for a really huge mistake, the thing to do is replace the content with a notice instead of de-publishing; template {{correction}} includes Category:Published. Earlier revisions can be hidden if it comes to it. --Pi zero (talk) 11:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Btw, I didn't take that as a concern about you-as-reporter making a big mistake, rather about acagastya-as-reviewer making a big mistake. I've talked about this with some other veteran reviewers, and I know I'm not alone in finding review a disconcerting experience; if one really understands how much responsibility it carries, the moment of clicking "submit" on a passing review is scary (as I remarked in my essay on the review process). --Pi zero (talk) 12:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

you-as-reporter making a big mistake Two votes of confidence in one day! Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:22, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Mistakes are so easy to come by, though. There's the business about JFK telling the people of Berlin "I am a jelly donut" (which I gather didn't happen, that's an example of a mistake by the "reviewer") and Jimmy Carter saying he wanted to have sex with the men of Poland (which afaict pretty much did happen, and is an example of a mistake by the "writer"). --Pi zero (talk) 13:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Curiosity Rover analysis suggests chemically complex lake once graced Mars's Gale crater

Published. I'm slightly paranoid about subtleties of meaning in this sort of article, so, here's hoping I didn't muff anything.

I thought for a moment we might have two articles about Curiosity, so that one more would give us enough for a category, but alas the other article was merely a reference by an interviewer during an interview. --Pi zero (talk) 16:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Well then we shall have to make more. I'm glad this one didn't age out. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Theresa May's Conservative Party wins UK election but loses majority, leaving Brexit plan in question

Argh. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 03:53, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I was wondering what kind of Argh that was and now I see we're dealing with another "updated" source issue. Argh. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:34, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

User Babel matrix

The languages you know: en-N, es-2, fr-1. Is the list correct?
acagastya 09:21, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Close. I don't speak French. Yes, I'm a native English speaker and a level-two Spanish speaker. Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:41, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

fr-0?
acagastya 10:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

fr-learned a couple words many years ago but never took lessons. I know more Latin than French. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:00, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't be surprised. You mentioned about zoology, iIrc.
acagastya 11:07, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Third Trump travel ban takes effect

Doesn't have a lede. Review comment. --Pi zero (talk) 15:06, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, published. I'm not sure I should have published it without further work on the lede; there's a danger that needs careful consideration, of biasing impressions, either for a "left" or "right" interpretation of events.

I'm quite concerned — I don't wish to offend, but I also don't wish to fail to convey this — that you aren't improving; if anything, you're slipping some. You're not at the level where you should be applying for the review bit. (You asked me months ago whether I thought you were ready yet for reviewer, and I punted on the question by encouraging you to ask yourself, but I don't think that was wise advice and I now have answer: no, you're not ready yet.)

That conversation a while ago has been gnawing at me, where you objected to the tone you perceived in a remark I made, and eventually you concluded that you felt I was addressing you like a teacher to a student and it made you uncomfortable. At the time I almost asked, but was swept up by other things and never got back to it, whether you were uncomfortable with the idea of me taking a teaching role toward you, or with the idea of anyone taking a teaching role toward you, or with the idea of you being in the role of a student. --Pi zero (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

On Wikipedia and Wikinews, we are all equals and colleagues, not teachers and students. We have things to offer each other. "Obey me because I have this T label and you have that S one" isn't our thing. I listen carefully to what you say because you've been here longer than I have, but you could be wrong, and I have to remember that.

When you tell me something, I think, "Now I know what one Wikinewsie of good reputation who currently makes up a third/half the reviewer population thinks about this," but that's not itself a source or a longstanding guideline or a consensus of many Wikinewsies. So I ask which previous conversation from years back you mean and if you have a link.

That might be what you're seeing. It's annoying to be second-guessed, but the alternative is to assume, and never assume.

If this weren't Wikinews, if this were a news website of which you were the founder, editor or both, our interactions would be very different. You did something that bothered me, so I told you about it before it could become a big deal.

"Improvement" suggests some kind of schedule (again, like a classroom) or an arbitrary good/bad dichotomy. It seems kind of vague but it looks like there's something here worth exploring. I'm going to guess that you mean "Increasing level of familiarity with Wikinews's various policies, such as but not limited to WP:FUTURE." Is it that or something else?

"you being in the role of a student" suggests that you think I've been in the role of a teacher here on Wikinews. Do you mean when I corrected the English in this article and provided an explanation of changes? I provided information; I didn't issue anyone a report card. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:40, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Addendum. You told me that you're not always good at expressing yourself and the "Is it this or something else?" trick is something that has worked before. Are you okay with me using it or does it bother you? Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:04, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

No, Wikinews is not like Wikipedia. I have sensed for some time, and your remarks support this, that you are stagnating — failing to improve as a Wikinewsie — because you're unwilling to recognize the expertise-driven nature of Wikinews. Experience is at a premium here, and the entire project infrastructure is tuned to recognize and exploit it, in a very un-Wikipedian way. It's not the sort of elitism promoted by the Foundation, which exploits expertise that some users have from elsewhere; here it's expected a user will continually learn, gradually advancing to become more part of the elite themselves. If you're unable to admit that you have a lot still to learn, you prevent yourself from learning. --Pi zero (talk) 06:30, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Pi zero, I never said I didn't have a lot to learn. There is always more to learn. I said the way you act toward me about it bothers me. I'm trying very hard not to take what you're saying here personally, but you're making some assumptions of your own.

There is a difference between "unwilling to recognize" something and simply not having seen evidence of it. Unless what you mean by "expertise-driven nature" refers to familiarity with Wikinews' specific rules and processes, in which case well then I'm not sure why you think I haven't recognized it. You talk about Wikinews being different from Wikipedia, but my learning experience has been more involved with the Wikinews' differences from regular newspapers.

You're coming off as "I told you something, so why aren't you accepting it without question?" What you say does matter to me but not in that way. So far you also happen to be only person here whom I've seen talk like this. I don't spend much time at the water cooler or anywhere but the newsroom, so perhaps there are people talking about it and I haven't run into them. Is there some previous conversation, perhaps from years back, that you see as establishing this model? I'd certainly give it a look. Submitting to the will of the community is different from submitting to the will of another single individual.

Your "it's expected..." comment again suggests some kind of specific sequential process. I'm going to get a little speculative now and imagine a time a few years ago when Wikinews had a much larger population and you specifically saw cohort after cohort of new-to-Wikinews contributors coming in and observing that they mostly went through the same stages and followed the same pattern. But now Wikinews has fewer people, not enough to be a cohort. If this is what's going on, then I have not observed this pattern because, if it is still there, there are not enough people to make it visible as a pattern. Do you think this might be it?

I'm going to give what you said a lot of thought regardless. Again, I'll try not to take it personally. Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:23, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I did not want to interrupt, but I need to point out that Darkfrog24, you aren't reflecting what you have learnt. About the teacher student thing, you got to learn from experience. Pi zero learnt from experience, if I am not wrong. But after writing so many articles, 60 of them published, you are still there are certain things and policies anyone would expect from you. I have to agree, you add opinions (and thus, violate NPOV policy) in the articles you write. Either you are doing it deliberately, trying to get those things published by mistake (hoping a reviewer miss it) — and that is really not good. But if you are not doing it purposefully, if you are not aware that you are doing this, that is worse. That consumes reviewer's time, and I wonder if you do this as the author of the article, what would you do if you become a reviewer! WN:Headlines and WN:Future are other things you need to brush up. Like the way you submitted the article with a headlines that did not explain a lot of things (Shooter targets Congressional baseball practice in Virginia, six hospitalized).

Not to forget your argument about the choice of English. I don't want to bring up that American English is spoken only in a small fraction of the world, and not even everyone in the US prefers English (US). I listened to you, and agreed that it is okay to have diversity. But when I want to use the word "thrice", you always have a problem. Why is that you have to change it every time? Just look above, I respected the choice of your English, and spelled "hospitalised" in the way you prefer.

Or the time when you did not care to source check about this article and instead of a comma, you thought it had to do something with where the parade was.

When someone says "you are expected", you are expected to stick to the policy, remove bias and opinions and respect the difference.
acagastya 12:18, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Learning from experience, as opposed to an individual person, is fine with me.

I didn't source-check that article because I wasn't source-checking that article. I was checking it for English usage. (They used to call that Wikignoming.) I made a point of going over the article about the pride parade without first looking at who drafted it because who drafted it is not important. I would have made a note of "thrice" regardless of who used the word. Frankly, I didn't remember that you and I had talked about it before.

"Hospitalized"/"hospitalised" isn't a personal preference of mine. Specific varieties of English require certain spellings. It's more than fair if you don't want to take my word for it, though, and perhaps better if you don't. If you need a source, Oxford Dictionaries is one good one.

I wanted to hear from more than one person. You have obliged me. If you have the time, can you give an example of when you feel I added an opinion or bias to an article? I mean recently. I remember doing something similar to that early on in Wikinews but I stopped when I realized we don't do editorializing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:35, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

You need to show that you have learnt from your mistakes. When a reviewer has mentioned that you need to fix certain things, you should make sure that it won't happen again. I don't think you see the edit history, do you? Else your efforts to improve on those weak spots would have reflected in the articles you submit. And clearly, you would have missed this. I had inserted the word "thrice" again in the article. (You might have noticed if you had read the triple talaq article after it was published and not changed it in the Istanbul Pride article.) Not checking the sources for what the user said is not a good excuse. Do not give me those links. Instead of changing thrice to three times, you could have searched for "thrice".
acagastya 14:18, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Darkfrog24, in this context early experience comes from what experienced reviews have to say about your articles. Other vectors for experience can't come into play until you've grasped the basic principles.

Here are three obstacles I suspect are holding you back in your growth as a Wikinewsie (obviously this is a simplication; "it's more complicated" is almost as universally unassailable as "things could be worse"):

• You reflexively want to disbelieve things if I say them. (Perhaps it's a liability for you that you know me from another time and place?)
• You think of the core principles of Wikinews as if they were arbitrary positions, rather than a coherent natural resonance point in policy space. (There's also a danger the Wikinews policy resonance point could be one that just doens't come naturally to you; at any rate, the point where you can start learning on your own is the one where you have an instinctive sense for that resonance, so you can always ground yourself to it, and if you can't accept help from veteran Wikinewsies to learn where the resonance is, that's a problem.)
• You don't want to believe that Wikinews social dynamics are in any profound way different from Wikipedia's. (You seem to be treating experience on Wikinews as a shallower thing than it is.)

--Pi zero (talk) 16:39, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

You reflexively want to disbelieve things if I say them

Wow. I can understand how that can be upsetting. I was on the receiving end of something similar and I have an idea of how mindbending it can be. No, that is absolutely not what I meant (and if it had been, you'd be right to be pissed off). It is only that the things you're saying a very subjective and difficult to independently verify and that you are one person and not a many. I am accepting that you could be wrong, not assuming that you must be wrong. What I remember of you from WT:MoS is that your views were based on reason and your own experiences, not pulled from thin air, and presented in a civil manner. A given idea coming from you has a credential, not a detriment.

I was thinking about this earlier and I put my finger on a big part of what's bothering me about your first post before I got back and read this one. It's not that you made complaints about the ways in which the articles I draft do and don't match policy—you're supposed to do that, and if it makes me uncomfortable, too bad for me. It's that you're using those observations to draw inferences and assumptions about what I'm thinking and feeling and what my attitude is and what kind of person I am. "Darkfrog24 didn't list the day in these two articles, so he/she must have no respect for rules." (Comment not drawn to scale; no this is not exactly what you said.) "Darkfrog24 said he/she remembers that I could be wrong, so Darkfrog24 must reflexively want to disbelieve what I say." "Darkfrog24 did this, so Darkfrog24 must not want to believe that." What could be a discussion of articles and policy and performance becomes unnecessarily personal.

Getting back to articles and performance. I think it might be an issue with the model of a division of labor. Like I said, I've put a lot of thought into this since last night. Is it that you and Acagastya feel that, in order to become a reviewer, one should produce articles that need little to no review? 'Cause I can get on that. To volunteer something about my thoughts and attitude, I've been thinking of "drafter," "proofreader/editor" and "reviewer" as three different hats. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:26, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

There are some deep things there I'd like to address. To address them properly — so that it's worth doing — should not be rushed. I clearly don't have time to do it properly atm. --Pi zero (talk) 19:02, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

??

It appears this has gone pretty stale: Lawyer, lawmaker parse President Trump's Tweets on obstruction of justice. Any chance you could spin it off into something more fresh?? -Bddpaux (talk) 21:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Bddpaux: At this point, it would probably be better to start from scratch the next time one of them says something newsworthy on that issue. That is why I removed it from the "development" hopper. What are the mechanics for deleting it myself? Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Simplest is to let it slide into oblivion through the abandonment process. --Pi zero (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

After G20 meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, ceasefire in Syria but no firm plans for cybersecurity team

Difficult review to write. It was clear to me there was a problem, but not an easy one to articulate (well, I tried). The article topic itself is a tricky one, since the information being provided is all suspect. Even though a very large part of Wikinews neutrality is about attributing, there is more to it, and occasionally we do hit on stories that are especially easy to get in trouble with despite attribution. --Pi zero (talk) 21:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm having great difficulty with review on this story, and I realize the reporting is no cakewalk either. At any rate, after a struggle, I wrote up a set of review comments. The whole carry-along-and-update thing may be just getting in the way, here, since the original event was one that was dreadfully difficult to start with and I don't think we ever got clear of those difficulties. --Pi zero (talk) 23:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Donald Trump Jr. emails

This felt like "old news" to me. You submitted it more than a day and a half ago, of course, which coincided with the start of a period during which I got no review done. I've checked my schedule and the next specifically scheduled events I see on it are Monday morning and Tuesday morning (US east-coast time, UTC-4); I'm not doing well in the afternoons and evenings these days, but I hope that Saturday or Sunday morning I would be able to review an article of this sort (supposing it were already on the queue when I got up and started planning for the day). --Pi zero (talk) 21:02, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Nature of the beast, Pi Zero, nature of the beast. As always, your compunction does you credit. I have a few things scheduled I'll see if I can spruce it up with some new developments. What I saw in passing on the news today was that more information about the meeting has come out, but it remains to be seen (by me) whether this counts as a new event. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Robotics

In retrospect, the reason "robotics" didn't redirect to the category was that the category wasn't ready yet (I'm not sure it is now, either). It didn't use {{topic cat}}, and was... probably not fully populated. {{topic cat}} was the easy part. There are over 2000 articles that match keyword "robot", and it looks as if most of them don't belong in the category. The general principle is to add an article to a category if, when researching our archives for articles on the topic of that category, one would like that article to be included on the list. I'm still searching for a well-formulated principle on when an article about use of a robot does, versus when it does not, belong in the category. Robots are used for a lot of things nowadays, and it wouldn't be useful to categorize every article that mentions the bomb squad used a robot, or the deep sea submersible was a robot, or the interplanetary probe was a robot. If you've any thoughts on where to draw the line on this sort of thing, I'd be interested to hear. --Pi zero (talk) 01:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

That is weird as heck because the [[CAT:Robotics]] showed up fine right away.

Well articles about Commander Data definitely shouldn't be in that category. He was clearly an android. I would cat an article about a Mars robot if the fact that it was a new kind of robot specially designed for the mission (or adapted in some significant way). Your concern seems to be that as robots become increasingly common just the fact that a robot is there is slowly ceasing to be enough reason to cat. So let's use the same criteria we use for cars and airplanes. Let's say we're writing an article that's not specifically about a car or plane, say about how an important person, say the President of Mexico, goes on a visit to say Ottowa. We would mention the kind of car or plane he took if 1) it was a new kind of car or plane especially designed for this trip or 2) if something about the way that car or plane is different from other planes affected the core idea of the journey. If President Peña was only able to outrun those pesky Omaha Barrier Bandits because he was in an expertly restored Mustang and all twelve of them were riding in a single Prius, that'd be worth a "cars" cat. If his plane were struck by lightning because Embraer forgot to take sprites into account when designing its new Madeup 202, we'd cat it "planes." But if his choice of mode of transportation had no effect on the rest of his trip, then no.

So "Is the robot there?" is not enough. "Did the robot do something newsworthy or newsworthy-adjacent?" is. Here, it was a robotics contest, so pretty much core concept. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

After visa snags, all-girl Afghan team honored for corageous achivement at international robotics competition

I feel I shouldn't let myself get sloppy about redundant sourcing when it's "convenient"; I repeat the point endlessly with the students, after all.

I did do a preliminary check for similarities with sources, and tweaked the few smallish bits I noticed before submitting my review, thus discharging the notes I'd taken on that point. --Pi zero (talk) 22:04, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, everyone was saying Trump "intervened" so I figured overusing that one was out.

What do you teach? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Heh. I meant the students who are sent Wikinews way by their university journalism professors. (Since you've been here, there was that UoW class who came through; there used to be a professor at Southern Indiana who had his students do various projects on Wikinews, but we haven't heard from him in several years that I recall.) I've never taught a class, although I did spend quite a lot of years in graduate school as a Teaching Assistant. --Pi zero (talk) 22:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Opinions (aka Comments) pages

I guess maybe this hadn't come up in our discussions before (well, if it had, I've forgotten).

We don't create the opinions page of an article until the moment of publication. There are technical problems — it needs to be set up correctly, for the somewhat bubble-gum-and-duct-tape LQT extension to work right — but the deeper principle is that the opinions page is to discuss the topic addressed by the content of the published article, and that isn't known until the article is published so we don't let that discussion start with a moving target before publication (the content might not even be neutral yet if one starts earlier, after all). --Pi zero (talk) 22:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I noticed that things tended to happen in that order but I didn't know there was any particular reason for it. Thanks. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:20, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I've copied the remark to the opinions page. --Pi zero (talk) 19:34, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoes law placing Supreme Court under power of ruling party

Snag. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 19:53, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Translated your article

into Dutch n:nl:Meer balans bij spreken in de derde persoon, (not by me, but a colleague on NL Wikinews) --Livenws (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Wow! What great news. Thanks for telling me. I was a little disappointed because en.Wikinews' corroboration rules haven't been met for this article yet, but I guess some good came of it after all. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:01, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Israel moves to ban on Al Jazeera news network, accusing it of sponsoring terrorism

Looks like be both were editing at the same time, without causing edit conflicts. I was planning to review it, but now I feel I would do it after dinner. I am removing it from {{under review}}. You may carry on copyediting work.
acagastya PING ME! 13:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

You might have noticed...

...that I have corrected the way you add external links, multiple times. Could you please use {{source}} template from the next time? Thank you!
acagastya PING ME! 15:48, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: I see the disconnect here. I did notice that you changed the external link format, but I don't view that as a correction per se. The Wikinews style guide does not stipulate a preferred format for external links, and I've seen other articles that posted the external links this way, though I don't remember which ones right now, so I figured you were making a neutral change among correct options. If you feel this is a correct vs incorrect issue, it would be appropriate to propose adding some text the style guide. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:00, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Not everything has to be mentioned in the rules. And it wouldn't take a genius to notice that it would be better if we want to maintain uniformity, let's say the template was changed in the future.
acagastya PING ME! 17:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

No, not everything, just the things you want people to treat like rules and already know about before you talk to them. Of the active reviewer population, 50% (one out of two people) just expressed a preference for using the source format for external links. Yes, you cited a good reason for this preference, but there's a point at which remembering every reviewer's take on what makes an ideal article becomes burdensome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Let's not divulge the discussion in the amount of active editors. The thing is, there is not good reason not to use the template, while there is a good reason to use it. This is not a rule, you could substitute the whole code of {{source}} there. But at the end, that is not going to help. Portability is an issue, and we should try to improve it.
acagastya PING ME! 17:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

(I think the word you're looking for is diverge. :-)

Fwiw, I've never worried too terribly much about whether external links use {{source}}. It does make sense to me that if the link is amendable to specifying the sorts of information provided by the template — especially, if it has a date of publication — it'd be nice to use the template and thus provide information in a familiar format. But the fields of {{source}} provide information that are important to know about when assessing a source for the article, whereas an external link doesn't have the content of the article riding on it. --Pi zero (talk) 21:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I meant that because there are so few reviewers, individual preferences have greater relative importance. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:21, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Some things are a matter of individual preference, some really are not. It is harder to tell the difference between the two by looking at reviewers' behavior when the sample size is so small. --Pi zero (talk) 21:29, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

That's it exactly. If something is written down, then it's a rule or at least it was at one point. If something is merely talked about, it might just be what that individual person thinks is best. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:41, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Not everything written down has equal status as a rule; and not everything unwritten (or poorly articulated) is unimportant. I guess I'm not disagreeing with you, but perhaps clarifying. --Pi zero (talk) 22:07, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

You're just telling me how you see things in the subject that we are discussing. This is called "conversation." If we keep it up, the earthlings will never suspect a thing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:54, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

WN:Never assume vs NPOV

We are advised not to assume things on-wiki. But the "never assume" clause could be problematic. Your articles generally focus on US politics (or anything that mentions Trump) In some way or the another, those articles highlight that Trump did something which is not acceptable. Fine, not a problem. But then, I have (as well as the other reviewer has) noted you often break NPOV. Now it could be a pure coincidence that I think this article about firing someone, in headlines, indicates Trump, who is US president, fired someone. Whom did he fire, or why did he fire? There is no explanation! So as a reader, I assume Trump took advantage of his position and fired someone (who probably had nothing to do with Trump, else it would be mentioned) For the reviewers and editors, you can ask them not to assume these things, but how would you convince a reader? There are ways one can troll someone/ provide incorrect or misleading information in headlines. In any case, NPOV is one of the pillars, not "never assume". Looking at this, as a reviewer, we have to try hard to find whether there is a hidden troll is hidden somewhere in the article, if something cleverly violates NPOV et cetera. If an experienced writer does this, there is something wrong with them to follow the pillars and/or conflict of interest—and in that case, things get difficult for a reviewer. If a n00b does it, that is a different story. But you are making things difficult for reviewers. One can shield from COIs and NPOVs via never assume, if we don't pay proper attention. And it makes reviews more challenging. You don't want us to waste time looking for possible bias. (But the current image of yours is that bias is present in some of your articles.)
106.216.161.125 (talk) 09:01, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

" other reviewer "

So you're a reviewer. Log in.

Within twenty-four-hours, you've called other people's suggestions "ridiculous" and complained both about a problem and our efforts to solve it. Log in so that I know you're not just messing with me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:58, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do you want me to log in? How would it solve your problems with Npov? Did it solve when I was logged in? And for the one last time, I did not say Gryllida's comments were ridiculous. The approach to clarify the country by saying "White House of the United States" sounds unnatural, and that is ridiculous. Address the problems about npov. If you think I am messing around, ask the reviewer who reviewed most of your articles.
103.254.128.118 (talk) 13:57, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Either you are who you pretend to be, or you're not. If you're not, you're messing around. If you are, refusing to log in at this point could reasonably be construed as messing around. --Pi zero (talk) 14:11, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Bias is best resolved on a specific article talk page, in a collaborative fashion, aiming to present the material neutrally. (Coverage of one topic is a good thing; we get an audience of people who know this topic well, and may add another story.) --Gryllida (talk) 00:23, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I've left you a new message

--Gryllida (talk) 00:20, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Followed up. --Gryllida (talk) 01:26, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I've left you a message at Breitbart dismissal story talk page

--Gryllida (talk) 02:46, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

What to expect re. "FOIA attack on 'Restoring Internet freedom'"?

May I ask what I should expect and what, if anything, I should be doing re. FOIA attack on 'Restoring Internet freedom'?

I ask, because it's been over 49 hours since I first posted the article and over 22 hours since the last edit (apart from Pi zero adding my name to a "Collaboration" comment I made, then forgot to add ~~~~). I ask you, because you seem to have spent the most time with that article, other than me.

I lost the third story I wrote for Wikinews, because I misread what someone had written and waited two or three days for a reviewer to take the next step while the reviewers were waiting for me to respond. :-(

Should I change the name of the article to "'Restoring Internet Freedom' bill challenged under United States Freedom of Information Act", which you suggested? It's fine with me if someone else does that. Pi zero earlier changed the title from <<FOIA attack on "Restoring Internet freedom">> to <<FOIA attack on 'Restoring Internet freedom'>> (replacing double quotes with single quotes).

Do you want me to pick a photo of Pai to add? I've seen his picture enough places, I'm happy not having it here. However, its fine with me if someone else does that -- using that either in place of or in addition to the graphic I created for it.

Should I change the description of Pai to his official title, as suggested by Gryllida? Again, it's fine with me if someone else does that.

I just didn't want to take the lead in making any of these changes, especially since they were posed in terms of modest suggestions, but I don't see any as superior to what I wrote -- though I would not object if someone else just made the change.

This story is not changing as fast as events in Egypt was when Mubarak was overthrown, as you and Pi zero discussed above. And the timeliness issue got a reboot when I learned yesterday that Pai had done something that morning: Without that, the story was already two days old when I discovered it and posted the first draft.

Thanks for your interest and support on this story. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:13, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

<dropping in> @DavidMCEddy: I think the ball is in my court. To state the obvious, I've been having trouble getting to review for the past few days. I got up this morning really really determined to review that article immediately, that morning, and... more the fool I, for all that determination. I started to plan out a not-ready review of that article, and then, it just hasn't happened yet. Even now I'm hoping to get it done before I get to bed tonight, though in recent years I've had mostly bad luck when attempting late-in-the-day review. This, of course, is part of a known difficulty of the Wikinews review process, and is part of what I have targeted with my long-range plans, which makes no difference at all to the immediate situation. But for whatever clarity it may provide to the situation, that's how I see it. --Pi zero (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT: I think I see the core problem here. You want to know why your article hasn't been reviewed yet. It's 1) because the review team's small and they have to budget their time (as Pi Zero says) and 2) because the talk page discussions are still ongoing. Most of the time, the reviewers won't start work on an article if there are any active collaboration page discussions. That's one of the rules they have to follow: address any issues brought up on the talk page. If it looks like those things haven't settled out yet, they will wait.

Basically, the reviewers are waiting for the rest of us to do our jobs before they start theirs. You flattered me by asking a bunch of other questions, so I'll answer them:

1. ) Yes, you should follow Gryllida's suggestion. Pai's full, official title should be in the article at least once. It's usually best to put it at the first mention. This is more or less required by Wikinews' rules.
2. ) Yes, you should change the title to something that reflects the article's new focal event. That can be my suggestion or something else. A title targeting the focal event is required.
3. ) You do not have to add the picture of Pai.
4. ) I'm not sure if we're allowed to use your graphic, since anything you make is technically your copyright, unless you have officially released it for re-use for any purpose. The guys on Wikimedia Commons would know more about this.
5. ) In general, you should not wait to do anything that needs to be done before the article can be reviewed, anything non-optional. That would mean compliance with the pillars, style guide, and sourcing rules.
6. ) Sometimes you will write a perfect article and it will still time out for lack of review. It's just the nature of the beast and we all have to accept it.

Here on Wikinews, the drafter of the article (that's you) plays a much bigger role than the first major contributor does in a Wikipedia article. Technically no one has to ask your permission to make changes, but many Wikinewsies will be shy about making big ones (other than fixing spelling, etc.). We're still a team and we all have to follow rules, but you're team leader. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:10, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

News

Let me make this short and simple. Just like how a Muslim is expected to follow basic pillars of Islam, a Wikinewsie is supposed to do the same with Wikinews's pillars. See the word "news". Whatever we say, it has to be new. There can not be any exceptions. If you can not tell the "new" thing, either the story is not new, or you need to learn how to say it. In this case, purple frog, the only new thing is the sources. Since they announced last month, it is pointless attempt getting it through review. Two things you should be really careful about. "New" focal event. And unbiased reporting. That is the mission of this project. If it were an obituary, where the family broke the information after x days, I could have considered it. Because the focus becomes family announcing death. In this case it was reported a month ago, and nothing can be done about the synthesis.
103.254.128.118 (talk) 17:58, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: do you mean that this is you posting? Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:00, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Can you stop testing my patience and use your common sense? Do you understand priorities? Do you even take it seriously? What is more important—complying with the project mission, and actually trying to see what the IP is trying to say, or trying to shield yourself from it just by saying, "oh you are a troll, I don't answer trolls".
acagastya PING ME! 05:15, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

What I think you're getting at is "even if the IP was a troll, you shouldn't ignore their post!" I didn't. I read it, actually. I just kept the response to myself so as not to encourage someone who was clearly not here for a serious discussion. Claiming I "went berserk" by saying "log in so I know you're not a troll"? That's what people do when they want to start a fight.

Getting back to the purple frog article, we are agreed that all articles on Wiknews must be new. They must be fresh. The issue is that this doesn't mean the same thing for all types of content. Science publishing is inherently different from the reporting of current events, politics, weather and sports because of the secrecy involved and the lag time from peer review.

The research itself is almost always the real story. Using the publication date as a focal point sometimes appeases the two-day limit, but surely we can come up with a better guideline for whether research findings are fresh or not. There's nothing magical about the number two.

So I have a question for you: According to Acagastya, what does it mean to be fresh? What does a fresh article do to or for the reader that a stale one does not? You want me to learn from you. This is where I can learn from you. This is the kind of question where hearing what you think might change what I think. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:45, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

You know: all of these things, let it be discovery of some ancient animal, death of some chancellor, finding a new exoplanet …out of seven billion people in the world, these things affect lot of people when it happens, but after some time, nobody cares. Now don't get disturbed because I said nobody. Who really cares: fanboys, haters and stat lovers. That is the sad part of news media. Latest things affect people. Nobody buys old news. Report something when it happened. That is new, and might qualify for news. Something that is news would eventually become archive. But to become an archive, it should be said when it happened. Our policy allows three days, Spanish Wikinews allows a week, and if you ask me, two days. Do you know when I wrote Trudeau's article, and it wasn't even the third day, it was marked stale because most of the people knew about it by the time it could be under review. In this case, the purple frog might find a spot on the archive, that is Wikipedia. Current events in every field affects individuals. But after passage of time, we are too busy with newer things that we hardly care what happened sometime ago. Now things like demonetisation in India or LGBT rights in Germany would still affect the people, reporting it now is pointless. Report the incidents when it affects the most number of people the most—that is when it happened. We are preoccupied. And by we, I mean any reader. How current things affect market, economy, income, lifestyle, comfort, peace, tension — these things work under the hood. After a point in time, new things replace those who affected those things. And this cycle continues. We should work with this cycle. It is not that you never experienced the sad part of news media, but that is the truth. Other news websites work so people read, and they get money, or have some stock value, or something that would help them eat two square meals, at least, and help them fulfill their needs. Money guides a lot of things, and it can be clearly observed if you compare a local daily and an international news website. Why news companies like the BBC would not report about a local motorcycle theft in a small town in Bangladesh, but would cover their political elections. While Wikinews is not guided by the money, readers are. Not actually money, but how would their lives be affected by those events. Like for example Jeff Bezos becoming the richest man might have something to do with stock holders of AMZN, but it is a long forgotten thing, and it hardly affects anyone to care about it. Since Wikinews deals with anything that affects few hundreds or thousands of people, a car crash might be newsworthy. But in the end, if it is not current, it is not newsworthy. You want to know how things affect people of various age group and sex: I would have told you, but read that poem by Shakespeare about seven stages in life, and try to connect it with what affects people in that age the most.
acagastya PING ME! 06:57, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Report something when it happened

By that standard, we would report almost no scientific discoveries, because they are almost always made weeks and months before they are published in any forum.

Next question: National Geographic and The Hindu and the other sources that covered this discovery clearly didn't think it was too stale to cover. Why do you think that is and why do you think Wikinews should not share their standards? Do you think there's money involved?

You have stimulated my thinking in this way: Most discoveries are of things that are ongoing or longstanding, like "this protein affects cancer in this way (and has been doing so the whole time; we just didn't know about it)." Like this frog has been in the Western Ghats for millions of years. It's only that people just found out about it. The criterion for science news should be the degree to which people have already found out about the discovery.

Say it was something like the identity of Deep Throat. Mr. F. really was Deep Throat the whole time; he just kept it a secret for decades. But the release of that information to the public was news. I don't think we'd reject that story just because he told a small number of people the month before the public found out. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:41, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

This is where you are wrong. For scientific discoveries, the focal point is "them disclosing what they have found".

Next question: National Geographic and The Hindu and the other sources that covered this discovery clearly didn't think it was too stale to cover. Why do you think that is and why do you think Wikinews should not share their standards? Do you think there's money involved?

Why we should not share their standards? Because we are not them. NatGeo is not a news website, at the first place (Don't point towards the BBC and BBC News — NatGeo never dedicated itself for news). And Wikinews is different from other news websites. Other sources provides opinion (The Hindu does that, yes). They publish wardrobe malfunction (all bow before ToI). Taking the example of The Independent, they even write what the Queen of England eats, which is not even news. Others are free to downgrade their quality, break the laws of journalism. Wikinews is not going to be a part of it.

No matter how important the stories are — let it be killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 or the Japan tsunami in the same year — people stop giving a damn, after a point in time. Surely it affected millions of people when it happened, but as I said, new things would replace the old "news". I met someone from Manchester a week ago. When they said Manchester, the first thing that came to my mind was Manchester bombing (not Man Utd or Man City, despite being a football fan, and him talking about Man Utd). If they would have said Madrid, I would not think of 2004 Madrid bombing. Sooner or later, things go out of fashion. Wikinews should publish news which becomes archive, not directly jumping to archive — leave that for Wikipedia. For the part where money is involved — The Hindu is not a good news source. But it is better than other mediocre news websites in India (yes, ToI, I am talking about you). Did you read the headline of that article? "'N.bhupathi', a frog with the face of a pig" Who would even want to click it? Read the first para and tell we why should I read the next one?
acagastya PING ME! 13:20, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

It seems you're also reacting to whether the N. bhupathi article would have been suitable even if it had been dated August 26. From my perspective, the N. bhupathi article is over. It was rejected once, I addressed the problem as I saw fit and re-submitted it. It was rejected a second time. From my perspective that's "asked and answered."

But I will be writing more science articles. I think the core difference between the two of us is what the article is really about. If the meat of announcement is when did it become knowable to the public, what do we do when that's not the literal publication date? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Just dropping in for a few miscellaneous thoughts. (Clearly I oughtn't spend a lot of time here, with things piling up appallingly on the review queue.) I'm not even going to try to get into the issue of similarities and differences of Wikinews standards to those of mainstream media (way too big).

• We don't write surveys of scientific developments, retrospectives with nothing new in them. But I think you'd find most mainstream news sites don't, either; they'd go out and at least talk to folks and get some new quotes and such. Perhaps our standards for just how much OR is needed might be faintly different, but, really, if one is reaching out to these people, why not get a bit more? We've had a bunch of imho nifty science OR of this sort, a solution that makes it irrelevant that the intial public announcement of the research is no longer fresh (and of course freshness of OR works differently). A large fraction of our OR gets published in the form of transcribed interviews, and in a recent IRC discussion that form was criticized; I'm inclined to defend it as a straightforward way to produce a viable publication, with the proviso that a good interview has a synthetic introduction, but I'm quite willing to agree that much of our very best OR incorporates interview material without being a mere transcript; as exemplars of the two forms I might cite

"Cold as ice: Wikinews interviews Marymegan Daly on unusual new sea anemone" — Wikinews, January 21, 2014

"'Fascinating' and 'provocative' research examines genetic elements of bipolar, schizophrenia" — Wikinews, October 1, 2011

• I don't think the Deep Throat revelation thing is really analogous to a scientific paper that's been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Just saying.
• Tbh, it seems pretty clear to me that the difference here is not what the article is about. I keep trying to treat this as a discussion of a (radical) opinion on policy, but then, from time to time in the discussion, there are these moments where it becomes particularly clear (kind of like the sun coming out from behind a cloud) that you really are misunderstanding a basic concept about news. One of the most basic slogans of Wikinews is brianmc's classic Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news.

--Pi zero (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

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I am not reacting to that article, okay. I was talking about how The Hindu presented the article. What shit they are spreading about Prince Charming? The next thing you would demand is that bullshit in the beginning of Wikinews articles. It looks like The Hindu's author wanted to write a blog.
acagastya PING ME! 14:09, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

For reasons that have nothing to do with our disparate interpretations of WN:FRESH, I don't want to do original reporting right now. You're saying "if you want to post that article, do this extra thing; then our other issue will be moot." That's extremely constructive. But if we can deal with the other issue head on so we don't have to make it moot, that would be even better.

news ceases to be news The fundamental issue seems to be "what makes it news?" Is it whether people have already heard about it? Is it whether people have only begun to be affected by it? Is it whether it actually didn't exist before? The other question is "How do we deliver science news that is as fresh as our other news, given that peer review and the weird science publishing schedule produces a lag?" When you're dealing with different materials, sometimes you have to process them with different techniques to produce results of the same quality. Don't cook broccoli for as long as you'd cook a pot roast. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:51, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

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I bet there are lot of people who are unaware of "Murderous Mary". That does not make her execution newsworthy. Many would find that story interesting and most of them would have no idea about it does not mean it is good enough to be news.
acagastya PING ME! 16:25, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like the issue with Murderous Mary is significance rather than timing. Like I said above, in addition to your concerns about the July 31 Alytes publication date, it sounds like you also think that the description of Bhupathy's purple frog just isn't big enough news by itself, that you rejected the article for at least two separate reasons.

It also sounds like you believe that what makes an article newsworthy is not exclusively whether people have heard about it yet. I can certainly use this to refine my idea. This is helpful. So perhaps it's more "people have not yet heard about it but would" or something like that. It can't just be whether they'll be affected because people in Indonesia aren't that affected by a hurricane in Texas but we still call that news. I will ponder this further. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:13, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

The article failed to identify what is so important about this discovery. Is it a missing link? Does his poop yield gold? Can they regenerate? What? The only thing that was sort of important was how they adapted themselves to live, and the way you presented it–even with biology as my background, I did not find it newsworthy. You know very well that trying to sound like my advise is "not to write about certain things" is pointless. A. I really don't care what you try to do about it (incidentally, looking at your records, you don't care to write about events which did not happen in U.K. Or US.) let me remind you what is newsworthy: something that affects a few hundreds or thousands of people is newsworthy. One Wikinewsie once said (I can't remember who) "before starting an article, think will this affect a school teacher in Manila? If not, you are wasting your time". While opinions of Wikinewsies differ about it, the article must be written in a news standard. That article was written so poorly, that I was wondering what to say! "Green cousins" — what do you think of Wikinews? Is this some kind of blog website that you present things in such an ambiguous and confusing way? News got to have something unique, interesting thing. Which you could not, for that article. I must say, you have cultivated a habit to deflect the underlying problem like a naïve newbie. Alas, I don't feed those frogs.
acagastya PING ME! 17:31, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

See on that point, I don't happen to agree with you but I don't see that as a problem. Our differences of opinion about what makes an article fresh vis a vis "is it recent enough?" are maybe not a problem per se, but it's likely to come up again and Pi zero's said he wants it resolved before he'd change his mind about my bid for reviewership. As to whether "is this important enough?" that's just going to happen once in the while and I don't see that as a big deal.

As to events that didn't happen in the U.K. or U.S., you know this frog was found in India, right? And I did that whole string of articles about the murder if Kim Jong Nam.

Back to developing a working definition of freshness: "The readers won't have heard about it yet and it's a sufficiently big deal." Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:03, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

(don't start squeaking because I didn't log in) by your last statement, even the execution of Mary would qualify for news. What do you have to say about it?
103.254.128.118 (talk) 18:41, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Acagastya, if this is you, say "yes this IP user is me." Anon103: If you're not Acagastya, then log in. I am willing to tolerate some rudeness from an editor who's proven himself to have other good qualities but not from an anonymous user who hasn't. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of who posted it, tell me, what do you say about execution of Mary? Since you said: "The readers won't have heard about it yet and it's a sufficiently big deal."
acagastya PING ME! 06:20, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Acagastya, I want to know if I am talking to one person or two people. If you say this IP user is you, then I will answer the posts. If you don't, I'll delete them.

To answer you, I've never heard of "Murderous Mary" before just now. Whether or not her execution is news depends on why I haven't heard about it. If it's because it was so recent, then it's probably news. If it's because it was long ago or unimportant, then probably not. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:23, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Got another one. The thing about science news is the lag between the actual event and public access to it. We had another article about a political prisoner who'd been executed, but the public only found out about it recently. I'm blanking on exactly who it was right now. But I'd say the difference is that in that case the fact that the government had kept the execution secret and not told the man's spouse was news because such things are notable and unusual. Whereas in science publishing the lag for peer review is normal, standard, deliberate and expected. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:28, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

It really matters how you respond to messages by IPs. (Don't you rename the subheading•remember you complained when I changed your message to bullet points, and you didn't like it, I expect you to reflect the same.) Let's not talk in the air. Tell me which article are you talking about? Bassel Khartabil? Cite what you are saying. Your definition of freshness didn't mention "sufficiently recent". So, according to your definition, Mary's execution is news. Which is not possible. Since you do not choose to answer about all of the points, let me remind you: focal point/newsworthy thing about a scientific discovery is its announcement. Go and check the articles: they always say when the study was published.
acagastya PING ME! 13:11, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

There is a difference between changing headers and changing someone's posts. Your posts have your name on them. It is perfectly natural to provide more specific headers as the conversation changes.

It does matter how we respond to IPs. Most IPs are just regular people who want to help, comment or ask questions. But this IP has acted like a troll and I don't have to encourage that. Even if the IP had been perfectly constructive, it matters whether I'm talking to one person or two people.

I don't happen to remember which article it was, and I didn't see it when I checked. So who's Murderous Mary?

"They always say when the study was published" does not mean that the date of publication is really the important part. That's what I'm trying to do here. Once we work out what really makes a story fresh for the reader, we can come up with a rule of thumb that works better for science news than this arbitrary two-day business. So what do you think of different kinds of lag? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:24, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

The thing about science articles, or obituaries is: we say when did they die/discover, or announce it -- give a couple of quotes, and then speak what they did in their life/studied for years.
acagastya PING ME! 13:53, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

So you think science articles are more like obituaries. Right now my knee-jerk is to disagree. Death itself is an event.

You think we should slow this down and come back tomorrow or something? Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:49, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Now, my limit has reached and I literally mean it: use your common sense. What I am trying to say is both "obituary" and "discovery" articles start when when "a person died" and "when and who discovered something". After the lede, the only "current" or "new" thing about it is the "quotes" about the discovery, or "tribute" to the dead -- may it be in any form. Apart from it the whole article says 0% "new" or "current" thing. Do not include X is survived by Y" because that would not help it cover the minimal length. So for obituary, one writes about what they did in life. After all, if they did do something notable enough, one would write a newsworthy obituary. In case of a discovery or a study -- one would cover up the things they (scientists) found out months, or years ago. Are we clear now? Though one wants to say about the "death", or a "study", one can't cross the minimal length.
acagastya PING ME! 16:40, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Now, my limit has reached Yes, you're being rude. Discerning fine distinctions and working out definitions is fun for me, but it seems you're tired of it. I have a response to the substance of your post ready, but I will post it tomorrow after we've both had a break. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:11, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

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this may seem a game for you, but for me, when someone who understands English, concludes that what they could understand is acagastya is trying to say is an obituary and a discovery article is same, this is not a game. Nobody needs any experience in journalism to understand that. You want to deviate from the primary topic, fine. I am not going to. Do whatever you like. But don't expect me to cross paths with pillars like how you do.
acagastya PING ME! 17:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I didn't say it was a game (thing done solely for fun that doesn't really matter). I said it was fun. I enjoy working out definitions and fine distinctions the way some people might enjoy organizing a supply closet or building a deck. To some people these things are just chores. To others they're enjoyable chores. I just don't want you to mistake response for argument or hostility. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:47, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Nuclear fusion example

Okay new scenario. I saw this today, from Popular Mechanics. That's nuclear fusion. This stuff could change the world and because it's only now hitting the science-for-laypeople publications, it's possible to write an article such that people could read about it on Wikinews before general pubs like The New York Times publish on it. That's the pattern for science news: first the journals, then Eurekalert and popular science mags, then the newspapers. But because the study itself came out more than a few days ago, it's uncoverable on Wikinews if we interpret the freshness rule the same way we would for politics or sports. That's where all this "what gives?" is coming from. Professional news outlets are either not evaluating freshness in science news using the same criteria they use for other types of news or they are evaluating all of them using criteria different from Wikinews'. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

There are so many things that changes how the people live. Let it be the same-sex marriage legalised in the US two years ago, or send to be discussed in Chile, two days ago. But after some time, it is not "new" to be news. You could make a bot which would notify you whenever a study is published in a journal so you can work on it as soon as possible. I remember I could not find any sources for Debian related article. It was losing freshness, and it didn't receive main stream attention, similarly with Stielike's article. Wikinews published the article even before it hit the MSM. You should aim to share things as fast as possible, not push it back.
103.254.128.118 (talk) 02:36, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

1) Log in.

2) The problem with using bots is a) it only works if you already know that a particular study is about to be completed, and like I said scientists tend to keep their work under wraps (kind of like how I'm expecting the Turtle Survival Alliance to report the results of their attempt to breed Rafetus swinehoei and have subscribed the their mailing list accordingly) and b) Wikinews cannot publish unless there are at least two independent sources. The journal article on cold fusion came out months ago, but other sources are only picking it up now. That's why holding science news to the two-day rule doesn't work. The study itself and the works discussing it are often published much more than two days apart. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Make use of RSS. Or something like gpy. If you have a problem with how English Wikinews works, in this case, two independent sources, I can't help you. There are sources who write about those studies quickly, but those are not big websites. It is hard to find them, but not impossible.
acagastya PING ME! 03:39, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I tried to keep my cool, and tell you what you can do. But all you want to do is revert those edits, and not looking at the things listed, I wouldn't regret to say, do what you want to do -- but this is never going to work. You would end up wasting your time, and some time of reviewers to not-ready it. I would not be entertaining any talk page messages if I find any article with the similar problem. While I try to make things available faster, so the things that go out are "new", you try to push "old" archived things.
acagastya PING ME! 12:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Acagastya, I already told you that I'm reading every post that whoever-it-is leaves here. I just don't want to reward possible trolling with a response. If this IP user is you, say "yes, that's me" or "this is Acagastya" and I'll treat those posts as if they are signed. If these are your posts but for some reason you don't feel like saying, then I will delete anything that seems even a little trollish or rude to me. Acagastya the Wikinewsie has earned some consideration for his brash manner and time has shown that you don't mean any trouble by it. It's just your shtick. I can't say the same for an anonymous poster.

I do not have a problem with the two-sources rule. The project in this thread is to work out exactly what "freshness" is so that it can be applied to science news articles in a way that will bring the readers fresh news without excluding newsworthy subject matter on a technicality.

So whether it's you or not, you've taken responsibility for the content of that post. You got me: I don't know how to work RSS. It sounds like what you're saying is "the objection that no two sources occur close enough together does not hold up because RSS sources are published very soon after the original paper." Let's explore that. So let's use this nuclear fusion article as an example. Are there any reliable RSS-accessible sources that would have covered this shortly after the scientists published their work in Nature Physics? I'll do the legwork if you can get me started on how RSS works. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:21, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

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Subscribe to the RSS feed. [3]
acagastya PING ME! 13:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Hm this still has the problem of 1) you'd already need to know that the study was there. 2) There's nothing here from June or July at all. 3) These looks like they're just links to the scientific studies themselves. Am I missing something? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:46, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Why don't you read what an "RSS" is? Also, since I use Telegram, I can get a bot deal with the RSS and the technical stuff, giving me the news, out of it.
acagastya PING ME! 14:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. I just looked up how RSS works. It sounds like it just proactively tells me what's going on on all the websites that I would be checking anyway. It does not sound like it would provide access to publications that I didn't know about before that might have been covering the science news before the general sites like National Geographic and newspapers. If that's correct, then the problem "We're missing out on a lot of science news because of the lag between professional journals and mainstream corroboration" still stands.

I'm going to think about this for another day and then bring a more organized poser to the water cooler. You were kind enough to answer my questions but I think hearing some more voices might help too. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:21, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Trump.....

Tell you what....if you can get some more 'meat' worked into that article, I'll put the finishing touches on it. How's that sound?? --Bddpaux (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Bddpaux: I wanted to give the news a good read before responding. I decided to update this one instead. I think it could use another set of eyes, though. Repeated updates are prone to error. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

'Sunken city' discovered off Tunisian coast

Reviewed. Please check the article talk page. Thank you. --Gryllida (talk, chat) 04:22, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Computer trouble

Hi everyone. I am experiencing severe technical difficulty and may not respond to pings promptly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 09:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

For example, I can tell I got pinged for something but can't read the ping notices. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:34, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Travel ban; destroying North Korea

Just came to know Notth Korea and Venezuela are now in the list of travel ban. Sudan is not. Act fast, before it hits MSM. Maybe we can also freshen up “totally destroying North Korea” article too. (CC @Quinton Feldberg:)
acagastya PING ME! 00:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

okay... Quinton Feldberg (talk) 00:29, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: is this an article request or something? And you're posting on my talk page because I've written articles on Korean before? Why not just start the article and invite us to collaborate? (Hm, but I keep doing that and no one steps in...) Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Not a request as such. I generally ping editors whenever I hear about a story which I think would interest them. That is not my type of article, and you are better at it, so I asked on talk. Also, it would help freshen up the article about his speech.
acagastya PING ME! 02:44, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Dyslexia: scientists claim cause of condition may lie in the eyes

I haven’t subscribed to scientific journals, but The Guardian published this story. If you wish to write it, you need to it as soon as possible.
acagastya PING ME! 04:59, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

When you make posts like this on my talk page, I feel that you think you're doing me a favor but you're actually asking me to do you one.

I looked at the article request page. I've actually never seen it before. Maybe it's time to bring the "proposed article" category back to the newsroom so you can post things like this where people will actually SEE them. Darkfrog24 (talk)

Neither I am doing a favour, or asking for it. Having or not having this article is not going to affect me in any way. But, I am telling for the greater good, for having the article on Wikinews. I hate it when I come to know about a story after it is no longer fresh. And I thought this might interest you. This is not a "request" as such, but article suggestions from the pool. That is what I wish we [various Wikinews editors from different languages] could do off-wiki.
acagastya PING ME! 13:03, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Then these messages are not coming off the way you intend them to. I think we should bring back the proposed article space in the newsroom so you could pitch stories like this to the whole field. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:12, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. I suggest articles to many editors. Some work on it, some don't. It is their decision, and my task is just to suggest them the articles.
acagastya PING ME! 14:03, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Please don't make suggestions to me any more. It's not something that's inherently bad, but it bothers me. It is not coming off as just a suggestion. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:19, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Sure.
acagastya PING ME! 14:41, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:45, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Requested articles?

I see that you started Mirror patterns in the eye may cause dyslexia, scientists say with this comment (Beginning requested article), and was wondering where I can find the list (category?) of requested articles. I have an idea I would like to post for someone else who may be interested in developing it (i don't have the time myself). Would you please share this information with me? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 00:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: The correct way to request articles is actually an issue right now. I started the dyslexia article because Acagastya came to my talk page and suggested it (see above). I personally don't like it when he does this, but that's probably just me, and there's no rule against it.

There is an official Requested Articles Page, but I'm not sure many people know about it. I didn't know it was there until this week, and there's a link to it in the Newsroom.

I recommend that you just start the article. Give it a title, list any source that you may already know about, and leave it in development. Where it says "delete this line," write clearly "I don't have time to write this article myself and I invite anyone in the Wikinews community to do so" or something to that effect in your own words. Do the same in the edit summary. Put a line on the collaboration page. I've expanded plenty of articles that had nothing but a title and one source.

So that's it 1) you're allowed to post requests on other Wikinewsies' talk pages; 2) there's an official Requested Articles Page; 3) you can start the article and indicate that you want someone else to finish it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:41, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: No, that is a wrong way to do. Newbies do not necessarily write "news" style headline. It is often encyclopedic like, (for example 2017 Las Vegas Mass Shooting) In that case, saying "I don't have time to write this article myself and I invite anyone in the Wikinews community to do so" is incorrect, could be confused for WN:SD#A12. The article should not say that, it would be better to leave a note on talk page.
acagastya PING ME! 08:28, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Again, Acagastya, it says on the newsroom page "Note: Instead of requesting articles, Write a quick brief." If that's out of date, we could change it, but that is exactly what it says right now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:04, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

“news briefs” are no longer written. But a brief is different from, “I don’t have time to…”. Notes of that kind should be on the talk.
acagastya PING ME! 11:30, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

But in general you're fine with Ottawahitech just starting an article so long as the title's okay and the note describing his or her intentions is in the right place? Great. Ottawa, do that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:31, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Done. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:08, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
That user has created almost a dozen articles, and only one was published -- I remember when I joined, and faced a similar situation. So I can related. Really. So I am fine. But that does not guarantee other admins/reviewers/users doing it. At the same time, I advice newbiews to see observe and learn from what others are doing. If someone else does it, and if they don't do it properly, it would be marked with A12.
acagastya PING ME! 15:19, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Request for help not working

I posted a new article in development at Rental unit overrun by maggots, mould and feces after city program fails landlord and to my surprise and pleasure has User: Gryllida come to the rescue and start a story. However this has now run into the usual difficulty: obtaining a second source (the CBC has at least four articles published in connection, anf the Ottawa Citizen has included this topic with some other tidbits, obviously trying to come up with a new angle), and not enough wikinews participants are interested or even aware. Of course this story will soon be doomed to staleness. I am starting to wonder if this type of story is not of interest to this community?Ottawahitech (talk) 15:38, 26 October 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

I took a look and I think I see the problem: The way the article's written, it looks like you're saying "An Ottawa landlord kicked a guy out for being a slob." Eh. That's not news news but we can do an article on things like that once in the while. But I checked the sources and the real story seems to be "The Salvation Army promised a landlord that if he let a homeless guy stay in one of his units, they'd make sure he kept it clean and THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT HAPPENED!" The issue is that the SA didn't keep their promises (OR the landlord is lying, ooooooo!) It's got a good chunk of intrigue and it ties into a bigger social issue--Canada's homeless. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:35, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: When I need another source, I find a rare word in the story and run a search for that. "Nitin Mehra" got me some results, but they don't seem to be independent. Ottawa Citizen sounds like it would be a good source. Is it not available online or something? Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:57, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

You have done wonders with this story, thank you so much. I am still crossing my fingers that different sources will turn up tomorrow. The CBC obviously threw a lot of resources into this story, maybe others just don't think they can compete? Anyway I am off for now. 02:03, 27 October 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

Well it is very small and very local, and it criticizes a charitable organization. I can see why it wouldn't be most news outlets' first pick. I hope you're right but we should prepare ourselves to be satisfied with a job well done and no more.

Thank you very much for your kind words. I kind of needed that today. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:17, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, you desrerve much more in my insignificant opinion. You are the main reason I am still sticking around wikinews. I admire your tenacity, continuing to plug in day after day, dealing so eloquently with ( sometimes unjustified imio)) rejection. I hope I am not the only one around who has noticed how much you do around wiki-news, and that your behavior encourages other good faith editors to persist.

As far as a small local story - I tried to address this on the talkpage of the article Ottawahitech (talk) 12:58, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Puerto Rico power company cancels $300 million Whitefish contract

I thought you succeeded in getting the previous version of this story (American citizenship of Puerto Ricans IIRC?) published. Too bad I really liked the original which I guess is still hidden in one of the revisions.

Anyway, just wanted to alert you to the fact that the date of the article says Oct 30 and is reffered to as today in the lede , while the sources are dated Oct 29. Yes, I know first hand now how difficult it is to change direction in an existing article, sigh... Another good story imo BTW. Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 03:45, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I did copy one paragraph from another, previous article, the paragraph describing what kind of Americans Puerto Ricans are, because unfortunately even a lot of Americans don't know. But that's just background. I wrote the rest of the article from scratch.

The date issue that you mentioned happens all the time isn't really a problem. It was still October 29 where I am when I was writing it. Things like this get ironed out in and around review. It's possible that the reviewers won't be able to article until after I've had to update it for other reasons. If it's bothering you, though, go ahead and change the date. You won't be stepping on anyone's toes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:02, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Oops

Sorry about that. I'd moved the article, apparently while you were writing a comment on the talk page. --Pi zero (talk) 19:52, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

No problem. I didn't even notice.

(sigh) It's a one-word issue with a title. Molehills shouldn't become mountains, but I'm not sure what else I can do about this short of asking Acagastya to just stay away from me for a couple of months. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:57, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I realize you didn't notice; that's why I apologized. I should have left a redirect behind when I moved the article, which would I think have caused an edit conflict when you tried to save your edit, but because I didn't, we now have two divergent evolutions of the talk page under different names.

I noticed you were getting cross with acagastya about the matter; evidently acagastya's way of expressing xyrself has grated with you. Tbh, though, it's not that small an issue. Whatever you may think of xyr form of expression (I too have gotten tangled up in how I put things myself), xe is correct that there is a problem with the word, and that you should be striving to avoid that sort of difficulty. It's also true the article would have been much better off if the problem had been dealt with before I attempted to review it. --Pi zero (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The problem is not that Acagastya thinks there's a problem with the word "uncensored." The problem is that Acagastya used it as an excuse to give a rant and accuse me of a not doing a bunch of things that aren't really my job. It feels like he had a bad day at school and felt like taking a slug at someone, and I'm not okay with it being me. If a constructive comment is indistinguishable from a rant, then I can't use that comment without tacitly consenting to being a punching bag, and I'm not okay with that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:31, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I don’t know how to dumb it down further than this: are we cent percent sure the report is not censored, or is it someone else saying it is not censored? You would not have checked the link I had posted on the talk page, but when NSA could get a “back door” to encryption algorithm for US$ 10 million, how can we be so sure they are not lying. If tomorrow, it turns out to be that they actually mingled with the report, and the facts, think how embarrassing it would be for Wikinews. Attribute, give credit and do not opinionate the article. It sounds simple. Let’s see if you do this. Here is the difference. I have told you before. Pi zero has said this before. But you end up doing it. If you do not think it is wrong, it is possible you did not understand the underlying problem yet. Maybe I am expecting too much. But you know, I have noticed no matter how bad my day is, I don’t end up reflecting opinions until and unless I have a serious sleep backlog. I am not sure how it works for you.
acagastya PING ME! 01:26, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I did check the link you posted.

Acagastya, none of this is the issue.

The issue is that when you claim that a given word, "uncensored" or anything else, is unjustified by the source material, but you don't read the source material first OR after I ask you to, it means I can't and shouldn't trust your judgement. It looks like you just feel like slapping me in the face because you're getting off on it. When you claim the word is unjustified and don't read the source material and go on a rant about how I'm wasting your time and making more work for you (and I'm not), it means you just feel like ranting at someone. I'm not your punching bag. I'm not your employee. I'm not your student. I'm not your little brother. I'm not your mom. I'm not your dog. I'm not okay with it.

The issue is that when you rant at me to do something that you could easily do yourself it looks like you care more about ranting than about producing a good article. Don't ask me to walk half a mile to come pick up a piece of litter that's next to your shoe. You're already there and I'm not the janitor. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:35, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

'Paradise Papers' reveal tax shelters for companies, politicians, royalty

I am not sure Pi zero will publish your 'Paradise Papers' reveal tax shelters for companies, politicians, royalty story, so I will pretend your talkpage is the public comments section:

I don’t believe these 387 reporters are serving the public good by whipping up hysteria about rich people gaming the system. This is not a calm, rational discussion meant to inform. It is more of a lynch mob attacking the rich.

Why am I saying this?

Well, first, there is the implication that the reason people invest globally is that they are thereby cheating on paying taxes. Take the Queen of England, who admitted publicly to investing overseas, but she also says she pays the taxes due.

Second, in the United States and in Canada (possibly in other countries too, don’t know?) Corporate income tax is different than personal income tax. The lumping of those two groups together, is again whipping up hysteria of massive tax evasion.

As far as personal income tax is concerned, I really don’t understand this hysteria. If individuals, rich or less rich, do not pay their taxes, their income tax should be audited, and if they didn't pay they should be punished. Why attack all rich people with the assumption that because they invest in other countries, they are automatically corrupt?

As an aside, the United States has a almost-unique (other than Eritrea) personal tax system that tries to collect taxes from people who do not reside in the United States. For example Canadians (and other nationalities) who happened to be born in the United States, but have had no other connection to America, are expected by the IRS to file an American tax return every year. That means those unlucky Canadians must file and pay taxes to both Canada and the United States (I won’t bore you with the details of foreign tax credits). This affects every Canadian "US-person" , rich, not so rich and those in abject poverty.

On top of this, these ordinary citizens are lumbered with much more complex filing requirements due to FATCA legislation introduced during the Obama years, not to talk about the fact that the US arm-wrestled other countries to pick up the tab for implementing this legislation.

Am I making sense? If so I will continue when I get a chance. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:22, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

I love a good rant! You go ahead! But on a Wikinews note, if you can find an expert saying that this is blown out of proportion, that would make a good addition to the article. Try searching for "moral panic."

There's another word for "Canadians born in the U.S." It's "Americans." Anyone born on U.S. soil is legally a U.S. citizen. People who don't want to pay U.S. taxes can move abroad (or stay in Canada) and repudiate their citizenship. Only if the IRS thinks the only reason a person repudiated was to avoid taxes do they continue to expect payment, and then only for a set number of years.

Someone born with dual Canadian-American citizenship but grew up in Canada would have all the years of their childhood to let that clock run out. But maybe they or their parents thought that the legal right to move to New York and stay as long as you want was worth it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:23, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

So yeah, they can go, "I am no nephew of yours, Uncle Sam! I am but your northern neighbor dude, Bob of Manitoba." Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:29, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I also think the article won't be published because it's almost stale. Sad because it's the first article I felt I contributed on... But there will be others. I see Ottawahitech's point that much of the issue is whipped up hysteria. An argument to the contrary is that the money not being taxed is a huge part of the GDP of some countries, which shifts the tax burden onto people and companies who can afford it less. From the ICIJ source, "They do so at the expense of the many – shifting the burden of taxation to middle-income taxpayers and giving multinational corporations an advantage over smaller competitors. Where it hurts most is in nations struggling to provide the basics for their populations." That's a huge issue, really. Ca2james (talk) 01:21, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Perfectly good articles aging out is just nature of the beast here on Wikinews, at least when the review team is so small. It's like how, on Wikipedia, other people will come in and change your work. It's just how the project works and there's nothing personal about it. If this one ages out, it's reasonably possible that some new development will allow us to retread this one and get it up there in some form. That way, Wikinews' archive will show that it covered this great event of 2017. Let's say that next week, Appleby issues another statement about this whole mess. An article on that would need a different lead but could use most of the same background information. Write a new title, a new lede and update the rest where necessary and boom. We would use the same article page, and all the old versions would be preserved in the page history.

I'd have to agree on your other point. The whole thing that makes the Paradise Papers news is not that rich people and corporations dodge their taxes. We always knew that. It's that they're doing it a lot more than we thought they were. It's like knowing that a certain number of people convicted of crimes were actually innocent and you imagine it's about 0.5%. So the system isn't perfect. Oh well. But what if you suddenly find out it's actually 40% of all convicts who are really innocent? That means the system isn't just imperfect; it has a serious problem and needs to be fixed right now. 01:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll suppress my reflex to go on a rant about my plan to take over the world overhaul the tool infrastructure of Wikinews, but I note that, by my understanding of the project's dynamic equation, the most critical figure is not the size of the review team, but how many active reporters can be supported by a given amount of review effort. The review team comes from the pool of active reporters, but not every reporter is suited to become a reviewer, and even if they are suited for it, they will typically require quite a lot of experience before they're actually ready to review, experience that can't happen unless articles get reviewed — so that the next generation of reviewers is a small fraction of the current generation of reporters. Basically, if an average reviewer lasts N years and supports M reporters, it had better take on average less than N*M reporter-years to generate one reviewer. --Pi zero (talk) 02:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

That's interesting. I feel like we're talking about whether the unit of evolution is the gene, the individual or the population.

Right now, the reviewer/reporter ratio is low (and we should remember that reviewers are also reporters, as Acagastya demonstrates). What that means for the process is that the reporter should assume that the article is going to sit and wait in the review hopper for a non-negligible period. That means that it's worth it to get the draft done right away, get it from the development hopper to the review hopper ASAP so as not to miss any reviewer with time on their hands who might flit by. That means that the draft should go into review even if it isn't perfect and polished but rather when it's merely presentable. There may be time for polishing later and there may not be time for review now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:56, 9 November 2017 (UTC) If the ratio were higher and the reporter could assume that it would be reviewed either right away or might-as-well-be-right-away, then it would be worth it to spend that extra time in the development hopper, especially if that drew contributions from other sets of eyes (though in practice, other editors are going to work on it no matter which pile it's in). Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Darkfrog24, thank you for your explanation about reworking the article. I've been lurking on Wikinews for quite a while, reading articles and following them through review to see what's being changed and why and to understand the process. It's what I do; I don't like making huge mistakes and I like to have a sense of how things work before I try my hand at them.

The number of reporters a reviewer can support and the reviewer/reporter ratio are both describing the same thing. I don't know whether more reviewers are needed or whether the current number can support the number of reporters. Obviously over time new reviewers will be needed as reviewers burn out drift away and (hopefully!) as more reporters arrive. But adding new reporters means more work for reviewers, possibly forcing them to attempt to support too many reporters, which in turn slows down reviewing, which in turn means reporters don't gain the necessary experience to review quickly enough.

In the meantime, I guess it makes sense to put articles into the review hopper once they're developed even though they're being tweaked. What I don't know is whether a reviewer might choose to not review an article that is being tweaked. Ca2james (talk) 03:37, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

But there was such a natural experiment! If you want to see a case of a much MUCH higher reporter to reviewer ratio, we get a class full of Australian journalism students blowing through here every so often. There have been more than twenty stories in the hopper all at once. You could just ask Pi zero and Bloodredsandman I wanna say how they dealt with it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:57, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ca2james: A few thoughts.

• Some years ago we had many more active reviewers — and articles still sometimes went stale waiting for review. How frequently it happens depends in part, presumably, on how much upward pressure there is on our output level; but my sense is that there's a really vast pool of latent demand for review out there, so I think we can never eliminate this effect entirely.
• Just to connect the dots, my intent is to bring tooling within the purview of the wiki community (so it grows tools much as it grows content), and use those tools to massively increase reviewer productivity; a reviewer ought to be able to review a moderate-sized article by a veteran Wikinewsie in half an hour (and I'd love to eventually get that down to 15 minutes). So the technology for growing tools becomes the means for increasing the reporter/reviewer ratio.
• There can sometimes be a problem with tweaking an article after it goes on the review queue. As a reviewer I've been known to eye an article, trying to brace myself to attempt a review, then it gets edited and I think, I'd better leave it alone for a while until it becomes stable again, rather than risk trying to review an article that's halfway through a change. A possible preventative (just a suggestion) is to put {{editing}} at the top of the article while working on it, perhaps with an edit summary indicating how much you expect to do.

--Pi zero (talk) 04:55, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24, re: if you can find an expert saying that this is blown out of proportion...:

To be honest if I could find an expert who can attack the myth (IMIO) surrounding properties of Japanese Knotweed, I would be a hero to many, I believe. Japanese Knotweed was brought to my attention years ago by a terrified friend. I have since seen it growing in many places, without the terrifying effects attributed to it. I may be wrong, but I believe this is one of the most damaging myths circulating on the web (I guess I should check Snopes about it, if I ever get a-round-tuit). Ottawahitech (talk) 20:02, 9 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Pi zero: thank you for your thoughts. Those tools sound great! Reducing reviewing time would definitely help reviewers support more reporters. Of course developing tools takes precious time and energy away from reviewing making it difficult to do. Thank you also for the tip regarding the editing template. I expect this article won't be the last I contribute to here so this tip will come in handy.

Darkfrog24, the Australian students would have put quite a load on the system! In this situation I'm not sure how much energy the reviewer would expend on showing the student how things work since the students aren't committed to becoming Wikinewsies. Or were you thinking of another experiment? Ca2james (talk) 05:56, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Now I know why the paucity of discussion at the wikinews-water-coolers: Looks like Darkfrog’s is the place to be :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 06:27, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: Re your message at Talk:'Paradise Papers' reveal tax shelters for companies, politicians, royalty#Updates: Sorry, can't get myself in the mood to talk shop today. I am watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyddc4KxW08. Ottawahitech (talk) 23:54, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Hey, I was looking for something else , but happened to net this from google: http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/paradise-papers-another-cheap-shot-at-the-wealthy which refers to our English cousin wikipedia and how they treat news. Thought you may be interested? Ottawahitech (talk) 01:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me}}

Yeah, it doesn't describe an event, so it couldn't be used to update the article...

The deal is that, if this guy is an expert at something other than journalism, if he's a professor of financial law at a university, for example, then we can quote the editorial and attribute the words to him. Otherwise, it's just a perspective read. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:07, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually I am starting to formulate in my head this half-baked idea: How about you write an article about the Paradise papers from the +perspective and others can help me, I hope, write an article from the -perspective. That way wikinews can maintain the unbiased reputation without faking it. Actually I am not sure I can take this challenge on right now, but thought I would run the idea by you, just to see how you and others reading this feel about this aproach. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:55, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

You can stop blaming the rich, since you're a tax avoider, too is fresh! "Excerpted and edited from a speech by Jack M. Mintz, President’s Fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, presented to Symposium 2017, held in Toronto on Nov. 14, 2017."

Article opening:"We have been hearing a lot about taxes these days: U.S. tax reform, the Paradise Papers and tax avoidance by the rich…" Hope you can use this, I'd love to see this published. Ottawahitech (talk) 02:24, 16 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

• I was reading about this lawyer in BC who claims that the firm’s trust account was emptied, and $7.5 million laundered through a casino and disappeared in China (pbably a stale story, but I couldn’t be bothered to check for sure). In any event it reminded me of 'Paradise Papers' reveal tax shelters for companies, politicians, royalty and I came here to see what its status was.

I am glad I did because otherwise I would have found out that you (Darkfrog24) were blocked from editing wikipedia, let alone unblocked (congrats btw). I guess I will have to rush over there to find out what happened. I hope this does not mean you will have less time to work on Paradise? one of your admirers Ottawahitech (talk) 21:30, 6 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

Thanks, Ottawa. Paradise Papers has been on the back burner for reasons that have nothing to do with my block status on the 'pedia.

Heh, my plan was for my first act to be to write an article on Bhupathy's purple frog, but someone beat me to it! Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:34, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Writers and reviewers

I owe you a good post on the big picture of how the learning curve of writers learning to contribute at Wikinews relates to the reviewer-to-writer ratio (which I mentioned above). I've had in mind to write such a thing for several months, or so. Like so many things, I've had trouble scraping up the time; just leaving this note as a sort of IOU/general reminder. --Pi zero (talk) 12:55, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I realize you probably didn't mean it literally, but you do not owe anyone that. It's extra.

Also, no need to direct it at me specifically. An essay might be the most appropriate forum. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:07, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

An essay might eventually build on the things I say in such a post, but working out the ideas is more likely to happen in individual posts addressing specific situations. (An example springs to mind: after doing thousands of reviews —I'm pretty sure that's an accurate figure— I found I'd developed a large repertory of comments that I'd polished smooth, and I took all of them and put them together in one place, producing WN:PILLARS after filling in only a few remaining gaps in the whole. But I couldn't have produced the whole if I'd tried, cold, even though I'd had in mind particularly to provide something compact that could be a target for shortcut "<project>:PILLARS".) --Pi zero (talk) 14:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I might add, explaining this stuff isn't a purely selfless act. Wikipedia is set up as a vast free-for-all of users who appear and disappear at any given point in the project, and need to be able to work instantly with whoever they happen to encounter there, whom they may never have met before nor meet again. There should be practically no learning curve for getting along with others, while technical stuff can be allowed to take arbitrarily longer. Individual users end up being treated as interchangeable parts (with various dehumanizing and devaluing effects that come with that, alas). Wikinews is different right down the line. We don't have time for free-for-alls. We're likely to run into the same users, especially when we're this small but I suspect it's in the nature of news even if we succeed in scaling up vastly. People need to know the technical stuff immediately, and the social stuff is necessarily allowed to take longer. Not that the social aspect isn't important; quite the contrary, Wikipedia's AFG is like training wheels for teamwork, and Wikinews social interaction is advanced, scary teamwork. Individual users are really human individuals, they have individual accumulated reputations that matter to day-to-day operation of the project, rather than interchangeable parts. While we operate with a great deal of autonomy we are a team (you've heard the expression "news team"? well...), and are all collectively affected by what individuals do and how particular combinations of individuals interact. --Pi zero (talk) 14:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

(Btw, a passing observation re AGF as training wheels: I once used training wheels on a bike. They didn't work for any purpose that I could see; they made it impossible to do anything with the bike and prevented actually learning how to ride it.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:42, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Choice of reviewers

I point out, it is well-established on en.wn that writers don't get to choose who reviews their article. If you think about it, since review enforces project standards, it would be untenable to allow a writer to decide who will review their article. My own advice (though I realize you may not like to hear it) is to take advantage of the opportunity to study feedback on your article from a different reviewer than usual. --Pi zero (talk) 01:06, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

If you're referring to Acagastya (and the "if" is because it's not unusual for Acagastya to review one of my articles, so it would make more sense for you to mean someone else), then no. Acagastya is not supposed to be giving me feedback. Acagastya is supposed to be leaving me alone. It would be countereffective for me to go looking for interactions with him.

More generally, Acagastya's decisions over the past few months have left me with a low opinion of his judgement. His credibility isn't good. You say that Wikinews is based on reputation, well, the person who says things like "they won't know which White House you mean" in an article explicitly about the U.S. but becomes hostile when told that "Ganga"/"Ganges" needs clarification has to be taken with a lot of salt. I should probably stop before this devolves into speculation about Acagastya's mindset, which, you've commented, tends to just make things worse. Anywho, if you meant someone else, let me know. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:00, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Have I underestimated how often acagastya reviews your articles? As may be; that's a peripheral trivium to the main issues here, really.

I see you getting yourself into deeper and deeper difficulties through misreading of acagastya. I fear I'll give offence by saying this clumsily (which I wouldn't care about if it only meant you getting mad at me, but it's counterproductive if it prevents the message from getting across); but leaving things you just said unchallenged seems even worse, so, here goes.

• You moved along the Wikinews learning curve up to a point and then stopped, and it seems pretty clear you are't aware of how much you've stopped short of. Acagastya didn't stop, but has become deeply knowledgeable about the project, achieving reviewer status. When I disagree with acagastya, I know better than to think it's due to acagastya not grasping the fundamentals. I see you —frankly— routinely rejecting sound advice from acagastya, to the detriment of your understanding, and to the detriment of the project.
• I'm having trouble figuring, from your above comment, whether you could really believe that reviewing an article could possibly not involve intensive feedback to the article's author.

--Pi zero (talk) 14:12, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Acagastya can write whatever he wants but don't expect me to read it for a while. I've asked for some space and some cool-down time and I don't think that's in any way unreasonable. My I'm-angry-at-him tank is full and needs time to drain. The point of the review is to give readers a good article, and nothing is getting in the way of that.

Regarding "sound advice," if a good point is embedded in a rude and degrading comment, then by acting on it I would be encouraging Acagastya to continue to treat me like an emotional punching bag, and I'm not up for that. What really bothers me about that last article is if I say "Take a look at the source material and tell me if you still think the title I chose is unjustified," and the reviewer says, "NO!!" well, that makes me feel like the reviewer doesn't actually care about the article and is just making a scene because he gets off on giving people orders. Sure, maybe something else is going on in Acagastya's head, but I'm angry and kind of grossed out and I need those feelings to dissipate before I take another look at him.

Also—and I am asking your WikiN opinion on this—do you see anything objectionable in the phrase "both major United States political parties" in the Paradise Papers article?[4] If I'd written "Democrats and Republicans," sure that might have been too U.S.-centric because more than one country has a party called "Republican." That's why I chose something else. (The word "both" also tells the reader how many there are.) As far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that phrase. Acagastya's calling me closed-minded over this one makes me feel that Acagastya is not just looking for things to complain about but willing to invent them because he's getting off on ranting. Again, gross.

It looks as though Acagastya might be interested in changing his behavior, in which case his efforts will be best received if I look at them with clear eyes. That'll be in a couple weeks.

There's another matter. I'm quite concerned that Acagastya has flat-out refused to respect my wishes, and I don't mean by just doing his regular job as a reviewer and Wikinewsie. He has been going out of his way to make more contact with me than he did before I asked him to leave me alone, pinging me in his response to someone else's question and posting on this talk page even though I've repeatedly asked him to stop. That's not good. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

If you think answering my question "Do you see anything wrong with 'both major U.S. political parties' in the Paradise Papers article" would just provoke Acagastya, then don't answer it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll have to try to clear some time/attention to study your specific question properly.

When you say "The point of the review is to give readers a good article", I'd have to say, no, that's not the point. My perception is that you're talking about making improvements to the article, which is the way Wikipedian tradition conceptualizes a second editor working on an article written by a first editor. Making improvements to the article, in this sense, ought usually to be a consequence of the review process, but it's not the point; that would be leaving out some really hugely important aspects of the situation. I don't have a lot of practice at articulating this part of the big picture; it doesn't come up much in review comments; but, a couple of considerations, at least to start with. If a veteran Wikinewsie writes an article and submits it for review, and a reviewer does a full review and, after great striving, publishes it with not a single change from the submitted version, the article has been utterly transformed, from what amounts to a blog post into a news article. And then there's feedback to the reporter, which is a massive and crucial aspect of review. Notice that both of those things are clearly distinct from visible improvements to the quality of the actual product that gets delivered to readers in the particular case. --Pi zero (talk) 17:00, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I'll have to try to clear some time/attention to study your specific question properly. Thanks, I appreciate it. And feel free to skip for any reason. You don't owe me this.

making improvements to the article, which is the way Wikipedian tradition conceptualizes a second editor working on an article written by a first editor. No that is not what I mean when I say "Wikinews review."

If a veteran Wikinewsie writes an article and submits it for review, and a reviewer does a full review and, after great striving, publishes it with not a single change from the submitted version, the article has been utterly transformed, from what amounts to a blog post into a news article. Yes that is what I mean when I say "Wikinews review." The reader gets a good article—one that has been checked for facts and legal issues and endorsed by more than one set of eyes.

Over the past week, I have made a conscious effort to avoid putting you in the middle of this matter between Acagastya and me. It seems you have placed yourself there anyway, by your own decision. I'm going to treat you accordingly. Give me a heads up if you need to leave the middle. It's not a fun place to be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:52, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Appreciated. But, really, Wikinews is a very small place, and at least within the realm of news production proper, nobody can do anything alone; so the furthest I could get from the middle would not be too very far. --Pi zero (talk) 18:26, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

It's worth the effort to at least to try not to make people feel uncomfortable. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Cyclone Ophelia batters Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the UK, and Norway

This article which you worked on with @EzekielT: has been declared Abandoned and may soon be deleted, unless it is userified. I see no reason why this article should be deleted together with the comments on the talk-page, but this in your hands. Just to let you know. Ottawahitech (talk) 01:19, 15 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

Articles getting deleted is just the nature of the beast here on Wikinews. I save the userspace for the articles of which I am particularly fond or for which I have future plans. I expect the article I did on a newly discovered purple frog will, with some restructuring, make a great Wikipedia article someday. Heck, if someone's beaten me to it it might be a great Wikipedia article right now. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:48, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Limited interaction: November 2017

I'm going to be limiting my involvement with Project Wiki for at least the next couple of days. This was a pre-scheduled event arranged months ago that has nothing directly to do with anything that did or did not happen here. I expect to check in around once per day, which may include posting some drafts. Wish me luck! Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:49, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Good luck! Ca2james (talk) 01:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Qapla'. --Pi zero (talk) 01:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. When it is done, we shall all share a barrel of bloodwine! Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:05, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Ugh. My thing is taking a lot longer than I thought it was going to. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Things do that. --Pi zero (talk) 23:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Does bloodwine improve with age or is that just puny Earth vintages? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:18, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Bloodwine is fermented, so presumably would improve with age up to a point as other such beverages do. (The oldest human alcoholic beverage, so I hear, is mead, which is fermented from honey, predating human agriculture.) --Pi zero (talk) 23:31, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Qapla'

@Pi zero, Blood Red Sandman, Ca2james, Ottawahitech, Robertinventor: I just got unblocked from Wikipedia. It's a long story with a lot of twists and turns but the short version is that it got very very personal. Thank you for giving me a place where I could prove that the things that were said about me were never true. Thank you for being my community, my mysterious, aggravating, funny, productive community.

Enough Federation-style talking about my emotions! Come taste the bloodwine!

Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations. (Blood Red Sandman. :-) --Pi zero (talk) 19:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. And now I can check in here more than once a day without that "you've got new messages" heart attack. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations!! Ca2james (talk) 23:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Some people already started the article about Bhupathy's purple frog with which I'd planned to make my glorious return. I settled for adding a glorious evolutionary implications section. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Older Adults' Forgetfulness Tied To Faulty Brain Rhythms In Sleep

Hi Darkfrog24 is this something of interest to you? Ottawahitech (talk) 19:35, 18 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

Honestly, not really. This is a legit scientific discovery but it's also kind of obvious. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:38, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Guatemalan president announces move of Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Was about to work on this one -- but since I did not start, I might not have disqualified myself to review it.
•–• 06:32, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I understand that's how it works yes. I see that article as a bit bare-bones, but better simple and on time than elaborate and timed out. (Elaborate and on time being best of all, of course.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, I was shocked to see the length maybe because I was about to "marry the article" when my bot told me "Darkfrog24 has created Gua..." and I was like, "Oh dear, I was about to start writing again, but I lost the chance!" and then I saw the time, and I was the only active reviewer -- so best "break the engagement" with the article. You can make substantial changes to the article, I hope you do.
•–• 14:59, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Was wondering if you could set us the Rss/Atom feed for science related news?
•–• 14:59, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't know much about RSS feeds, and this is the first I've ever heard of Atom feeds. I just click into Eurekalert when I want something first-cut. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:21, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Science news and bots

@Acagastya: [Here Darkfrog copypasted the email sent by Acagasta in which, among other things, Acagastya asks Darkfrog to set up a feed/bot for science news and suggests responding by talk.] (email from Acagastya to Darkfrog)

Short answer, because I don't know how to set up a feed. Longer answer, there are hundreds of professional science publications, and they tend to be highly specialized. There's one that only does new chemistry technology. There's one that only does frogs. There's one that only does underwater basket weaving, and so on. The kind of news story that would of interest to the general audience whom we serve could appear first in any one of them. There are two really big ones, Science in the U.S. and Nature in England, that are considered the biggest and best and cover any kind of science, but for the most part it's decentralized. Eurekalert is so useful to me because it covers many fields and provides the plain-English press releases written or at least approved by the research teams. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

It would not be a good idea to flood one’s inbox with hundreds of science news emails. But a channel seems to be a good idea. I have the bot configured in such a way that it pings me on Telegram, notifies me about breaking news (I used RSS for some twenty news websites). I also have for Wikinews Recent Changes…but it is because I use Telegram a lot. (Not important, but I set up Garfield comics to be emailed to me each day) Few alternatives I can think of: Feedly (the best one), Twitter PM, Facebook PM, iOS reading list, line IM, Trello card. Compile a list of websites, and I would do it. (I am not sure if you use those services) but there is no harm trying.

Just a side note, that email was not licensed under CC BY-2.5, or a compatible license, and accounts for copyvio.
•–• 07:28, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure you'll find that copypasting your email into talk amounts to fair use. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Not really. "You must have written your work yourself or copied it from a compatibly licensed resource or public domain resource." -- fair use is not for text. It is for other forms of media. Else what is the reason to have a CC/free licenses. [Sorry, kind of busy reviewing an article...]
•–• 13:01, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Here's the U.S. Copyright Office's webpage on fair use. Don't worry. We're in the clear. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:06, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean instead that you just don't want me to copypaste your emails? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:06, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

In my experience, the wikimedia sisterhood extended-community as a whole treats emails and IRC discussions as non-public communications (by default), and it's at-least a breach of etiquette to publicize detailed contents thereof without permission. --Pi zero (talk) 13:53, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

My content is not governed by the US federal court. And project's TnC determines what is permitted, and what is not -- the ethics that kicks in is another case [reminds me of public logging issue with the IRC]
•–• 14:13, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Let's dial this back a little bit. No it's not unethical for me to copypaste an email that contains no private information into talk, especially considering that's one of the ways of contacting you that you requested and considering that I can't reply by email without disclosing my own contact information. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:24, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
The main point of the email was to set up some medium to get notifications for the news articles, and copyright is not the primary focus -- but we can not ignore it. It is not correct to copy someone else's work and submit it even though there is a note about it above the Save changes button. As my email says, you can ping me on talk page, but that does not mean the content can be freely used with the license Wikinews uses. I did not say, paste my email on the talk. "considering that I can't reply by email without disclosing my own contact information" -- first of all, the only information that is disclosed is the sender's username, and gender [if the sender has specified]. Secondly, you sent me an email few weeks ago.
•–• 14:36, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I didn't "copy and submit" your work. I moved a conversation. And yes, replying to you would have given you my email address. This is getting out of hand. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:39, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

In this sort of situation I could easily imagine myself addressing the concern on-wiki, but I would carefully not quote the exact contents of the private communication. That's a line I've walked many times. (Note, so far I'm only addressing the question of what-ought-to-be-done, not questions of what engages copyright versus ethics versus etiquette.)

Darkfrog24, would you be willing for me to excise the direct quotation from this page and hide it in the revision log? That would defuse the immediate problem. --Pi zero (talk) 15:06, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Done, but it's not good not to have the details of the request on record. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:48, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Guatemala says Jerusalem embassy move is final

You want to work on the update story?
•–• 12:15, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I've got a family event today, but I'll see if I can check in. If you mean you don't want to get swooped and work on it yourself, fear not! Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:36, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Have other articles that I am stalling since there isn't enough coverage for "Egypt sentences ex-President Mursi, 19 others to three years in jail". There is Israel filing to pull out of UNESCO, but that is not what I am currently eyeing.
•–• 12:43, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

It's a holiday and I'm a bit busy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:28, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

This photo

I don’t know if you have written Economy and business articles, but do you recognise the photo?
•–• 10:04, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

"A man skipped work for six years and was still getting paid"? No, I haven't seen it before. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:17, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Apple, Inc. confirms acquisition of Shazam see the photo.
•–• 12:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. That six-year guy was amusing but I was a bit confused about why you would mention it. No I haven't see the Un Poco Loco screenshot picture before. The song itself is quite charming, however. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:48, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

the photo used in the infobox, not the screenshot.
223.237.253.44 (talk) 12:54, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

With the coins and paper bills? I don't really remember. It looks familiar, so I've probably seen it before. Is something wrong? If it's on Wikimedia Commons then anyone may use it for any reason, and that includes six-year-still-paid guy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:56, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Regarding your articles about the first word countries

There was a time when I complained about it, but your articles in the category Crime and law UNION (mathematical one) Politics and conflicts actually made me enjoy CIPE (Constitution of India and Professional Ethics) class. And it is something majority of the students dislike it. I was (and expect to be ) active in the class. You have done a good job. (And I hope you would write many good articles). After today’s class, I thought “thanks to Darkfrog24’s articles, I knew so many things that I would survive the course”. You deserve a barnstar. (But I couldn’t find one for Crime and law, so…)

•–• 10:28, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Acagastya. That is very nice of you and I am glad you did well in your class. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:18, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Net neutrality

Sadly, things got away from me today and I didn't get to the article until there was much less time left on the clock than the review needed. (A potential weakness, I suppose, of the technique of repeatedly refocusing such an article is that the article gets longer and longer, which is good for article quality but bad for ease of review: the standard technique is to start by publishing a small article, and then reuse previous material as one publishes later articles so that each article only requires a relatively small amount of entirely new material to be vetted while the articles get more and more comprehensive.) --Pi zero (talk) 00:20, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I was expecting it would age out again. It'll come around on the guitar. I was careful to remove all content and sources from the previous, now irrelevant retread. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:07, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

The scammers gaming India's overcrowded job market

Not sure how I ended up on this interesting article. I think it was when I clicked on one of your sources? (see: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/02/the-scammers-gaming-indias-overcrowded-job-market). Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 19:28, 13 January 2018 (UTC) Please ping me

@Ottawahitech: I use the Guardian a lot but I don't remember seeing this specific article before. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:46, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

SpaceX launch

Please write this up; that was so much fun to watch. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I've got some stuff to do right now, but if you want to work on it yourself @Yngvadottir:, I certainly don't mind. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't have the science background, I'm afraid. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Well could you check for typos, then? I gotta clock back into work. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:24, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: Hey, could you add the pictures? It's so dull right now visually. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Done and done. I note that the center rocket was supposed to land on a floating platform. Since I don't have sound, I was unable to tell what had happened with that when the feed cut to talking heads. I'm told by a friend that they lost comms with the drone platform and have sent out a watercraft to determine what happened. You're just saying "elsewhere"; sources presumably will be publishing more on that. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:45, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It missed and shrapnel destroyed part of the platform equipment, including possibly the video. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:39, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: I need to work on something else right now. You up to updating the part of the article that deals with this? Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:59, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Acagastya may be intending to review the article, and has just asked me to flip the "review" back to "develop" - I'll leave you to decide on that. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:17, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Acagastya likes to do that. No you do not have to replace "review" with "develop" when you edit the article, but it is polite to put up "editing." However, you only made one edit and not a series of edits, and technically "editing" is for major rewrites, so you didn't do anything wrong by just going in and making the update.

I used to change "develop" to "review" whenever I updated an article for a new day, but when you change it back to "review," it's bumped to the end of the line. I had too many articles age out that way, so now I just leave them in the review hopper and use "editing" if I'm going to be doing anything major. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:41, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

If you think I enjoy doing that, wait until you become a reviewer. I learned it before becoming a reviewer because it was one of ther first things I had asked when I started editing. Number of edits does not matter — when an article with review tag is edited hours after it was submitted for review, that causes the problem. (If the duration is just a few seconds to minutes-I will either remove the article from requesting review to develop or inform reviewer off-wiki about it)
223.237.210.97 (talk) 03:58, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

article suggestion

I don't know if Youth STEM Program is same as the scouts programme article you wrote few months ago, but are you interested to write about "Disney Donates $1 Million to Youth STEM Program in Celebration of 'Black Panther'"? Just in case you need some sources:

1. The Walt Disney Company
2. CNN
3. ABC
4. Mail Online

•–• 00:17, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Re: Satellites show Adelie penguin megacolony in Antarctica's Danger Islands

Tips:

• Wikinews articles are in past tense.
• Information that happened prior to the event being reported may be in past perfect or present perfect ('has done', 'had appeared').
• It is required to expose the 'why' in the lede, but background should go to the end. (Inverted pyramid)

Questions that I think would be nice to include:

• What is the total population size of the species?
• What is their normal habitat?
• You can add a map showing their previously thought habitat as well as the new discovery location. (Help:Kartographer).

--Gryllida (talk) 23:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Please address such comments to the article collaboration page where anyone who wants to work on the article will see them and not to me as an individual. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:26, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Copied. --Gryllida (talk) 03:09, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Appreciated. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:16, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I personally prefer to pass these questions to user's talk pages, because they have a better (more timely) notifications system. I don't think the way Echo works is efficient. To think of it, now I realize why: because it does not keep track of which comments I already read and which comments I did not read. (I now filed this as a task). --Gryllida (talk) 03:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

More tips:

• Including essential and relevant information is required for publication. (Just like one can't speak of a plane crash in 'Domodedovo (town)' without specifying that this is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, one also can't speak of a new population discovery without mentioning the existing population size. It sounds obscure and unspecific.)
• For a contributor unfamiliar with the background, it may take them more effort (and time) to work out what the answers are.
• Leaving questions to other contributors to answer makes the article development depend on the availability of these contributors, which may also slow it down.
• Incomplete articles may be classified as 'not ready' which may delay publication.

--Gryllida (talk) 03:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Addressing these comments solely to me renders the article dependent on my availability, which may slow it down. If you think something is important or necessary, feel free to jump in and do it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

You are right, it is both effort from you and from me. Not mine exclusively and not yours exclusively. Updated article talk page. --Gryllida (talk) 04:48, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Added original reporting questions on the talk page. --Gryllida (talk) 23:28, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Followed up. --Gryllida (talk) 01:34, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Followed up (V3). Gryllida (talk) 01:53, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Re: Former United States television star Bill Cosby seeks to replace judge in sexual assault trial

Tips:

• Leading paragraph needs to say the country.
• Writing a story and then leaving it to others to develop instead of continuing to be engaged into its development is a poor practice which results in waste of reviewers time. Repeatedly practicing this may result in your articles being given lower priority in the review queue.

--Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Gryllida, when I say the article is "presentable," I mean I consider it fit for the main page, even if it could still be improved upon. The freshness requirements here on Wikinews make it impractical to make a habit of waiting for an even-better version. No I do not hit "review" on anything half done. Wikinews is a collaborative project and I don't want anyone to feel discouraged from altering my work, even when it's good enough in its existing form, so I reiterate what is said below the editing window: "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."

I have repeatedly developed articles that were started by other writers, sometimes with just a title and one source, and I have no problem allowing others to reciprocate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Replied

--Gryllida (talk) 10:37, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

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Smooth project function

Wikinews does not work the same way Wikipedia does. Standing back to look at the two projects objectively, of course they would have different dynamics; the fundamental principle that Wikipedia applies, ultimately, to every big problem is that there is always an infinite amount of time in which to discuss and revise. With that principle underlying everything, and that principle being manifestly, spectacularly false for news, it follows that the fundamental dynamics of Wikinews would be different.

I've remarked on the value, to any wiki project, of someone like you who — simply put — is scrupulously honest and continues to contribute. I feel I need to point out, though, that in an important respect you are at cross-purposes with the optimal functioning of Wikinews. Sure, acagastya could be less harsh in their phrasing; but while the reporter-reviewer relationship shouldn't be what you accuse acagastya of trying to make of it, it shouldn't be what you're trying to make of it, either. The functional roles of reporter and reviewer are fundamentally different. When this project works successfully, reporters continually strive to improve the quality of their writing so that reviewing their writing will get ever-easier, using the feedback they get from reviewers. When a reporter doesn't continue trying to improve in this way, their work becomes a heavier burden for review (both in amount of labor, and psychologically). A symptom of this is when a reporter commonly responds to concerns in review comments not by attempting to fix the problem but by arguing that it doesn't need fixing or by saying somebody else should fix it. After a while, that can have a significant negative impact on total project output. --Pi zero (talk) 13:50, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Please take it as a sign of my respect for you that I am replying to your post instead of deleting it.

Consciously or otherwise, Acagastya showed up looking for a fight. "How many times have you been told to minimize parentheses"? Try NEVER. Acagastya is inventing things to complain about and daring me to respond. I could pick through the rest of the post and show you each time he does this if you think it's necessary. But the bottom line is that when he gets in my face and goes "OBEY ME! OBEY MEEEEEE! I'M YOUR BOSS!" the only thing I know to do is refuse to engage. Anything else is "Yes, master, I accept your right to speak to me this way. Please do it again." If you can think of another way to shut his creepy behavior down, I'm all ears.

Pi zero, you need to accept that there is a difference between "improve" and "replace your way of doing things and your personal tastes with MINE." As always, whenever you think you are right, I will listen and look at any source you want to show me, but that's all I can do. I'm not a mind reader.

What has happened on Wikinews is not that I have refused to improve but that you spot something that you think is a problem and I don't think is a problem and you can't communicate why you think it's a problem or you say something that contradicts what I can see elsewhere. That's where we're getting stuck.

I 100% accept that "I understand it in my head even though I can't explain it" and conclusions are good enough motivations for you. You do something, I'm fine with assuming that you have a reason that makes sense to you even if I don't understand. You need to accept that "Pi zero understands it but can't explain it" is not a good enough motivation for me to do something. Frankly, it feels like "What are you going to believe? What you see or what I tell you?" Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:40, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

This is getting very close to the nature of things you're missing about Wikinews. There are some really crucial points you're brushing very close to... and I (argh!) clearly can't afford to spend the time right now to try to articulate the points that want articulating at this point (compounded by awareness that my past efforts have fallen flat, and thus a need to proceed with great care and patience). :-S  --Pi zero (talk) 14:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

PLEASE REMOVE THE POST THAT YOU JUST MADE ON THE COLLAB PAGE. You are encouraging him. Aca's behavior is not merely "harsh." It's creepy. He's acting out a weird power dynamic and that has to stop. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

• breath* Acagastya's not stupid. Sooner or later, even if it takes years, he will see that acting like other Wikinewsies are his little bitches and calling their comments crap doesn't work. He'll settle down. But don't undermine that.

As for "what I'm missing about Wikinews," sure. Take your time. Whenever you feel like writing, I'll read, but I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt for a long time now. We're hitting Emperor's New Clothes territory. I have to entertain the idea that there's nothing there, not that there couldn't be anything there, just that there might be nothing there. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:08, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I too have come to something of an emperor's-new-clothes conclusion, reluctantly. I rather like you, actually, and I'm inclined to approach things patiently, so I've been extremely patient with you; but gradually, over a long time, I've come to the conclusion that you don't just not understand, you are probably unable to understand. At least, unable to understand some aspects of the situation. Not that you don't have some genuine misconceptions, but that the primary thing I'd really like to be sharing with you is something you can't share. So I have to find work-arounds. --Pi zero (talk) 15:43, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Is it that I don't understand or is it that there's something you've decided not to say, maybe because if you said it out loud you'd realize it's ugly?

You get offended whenever I say "I am your equal," to anyone. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:52, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Edit summary

I know there's some beef going around, but did you really need "quit your bitching and just write another one" in your edit summary? Let's all try to cool the jets. And please don't automatically say, Yes, you needed it. If anyone is supposed to be the cantankerous old man, it's me. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: Actually, that comment was an attempt to cool those very jets. I'm trying to show that I can be a good sport about this. At least now I know it had the opposite of the desired effect on at least one person. In case there is ANY confusion, I was telling myself to quit bitching. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. We all need to let out some steam from time-to-time. --SVTCobra 03:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

I concur. So long as that steam isn't direct into someone else's face. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Curiously enough, despite the severe communication failures Darkfrog24 and I have experienced, I had not difficulty following the positive intent of that edit summary. --Pi zero (talk) 15:00, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I will add it to the pile. I am confident I can find another iteration of positive snark. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:07, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Korean leaders Moon and Kim meet days after NK-US summit cancellation

This article has been published. Unfortunately, I did some 'trimming' in the review process. If you read my review comments, I hope you will understand what I did and why. It is important to not assign motives to anyone unless they explicitly state them. It may look obvious, but that is not our job. Cheers, --SVTCobra 22:32, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I have no problem with you removing content from the article that you consider suitable for removal. It's a team project. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:34, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but there's a little more. It's general advice not to interpret the meanings or goals of events. So, I do hope you read my comments on that article. --SVTCobra 22:40, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I did. This one's more of a team effort than usual, so I've been going back to check whether people are talking about parts of the article that I did or that AZ did. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:51, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

OK, yes, I must admit, I didn't try to decipher the edit history entirely. It was more about getting it published before we lost another one to stale. --SVTCobra 23:08, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

In other words, it was about the article itself and not about any one person, except perhaps the reader. That is exactly as it should be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:48, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

In the interests of clarity, I point out some bounds on this. In a reviewer dealing with a particular article, the only thing they can do is to deal with the article as it sits, and when the article has been extensively worked on by multiple authors, there is pretty much zero correlation between the nature of problems in different passages of the same article. One has to review it as if it was composed by an anonymous crowd (like a Wikipedia article). One ought to keep in mind, though,

• That sort of review is extremely burdensome. It's far easier to review an article by a single author of known high competency in Wikinews writing; knowing that the writer knows various project principles and is good at eliminating problems of those sorts from articles prior to submission, a reviewer can much more rapidly and easily assure that such problems do not occur or pinpoint those rare instances that do, and give more and higher-quality attention to each of those instances. This is key to high productivity and high quality, that Wikinews writers who are good at it can produce articles that are vastly easier to review; quality follows because when the submitted article has almost nothing wrong with it, the reviewer can concentrate on what's level rather than blunting their edge clearing the underbrush of more superficial difficulties. And the reviewer is left with not only more time remaining for additional review, but more energy for it.
• What a reviewer might do, of necessity, in reviewing a single article does not absolve each individual writer of responsibility for striving continuously to improve their Wikinews writing skills, which ultimately translates into vast increases (or, in its absence, decreases) in project productivity because of the many-times-magnified effect on how much review labor is needed to process what they write.

--Pi zero (talk) 13:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily say the review was harder in this case, just that my comments/criticisms were perhaps not all to be directed at Darkfrog as other editors were perhaps responsible for the bits I had to remove. I have acknowledged that above, and have neither the time nor inclination to figure out who actually added what to the article. --SVTCobra 14:53, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

You did as you ought. It doesn't matter who wrote what part of the article. When a reviewer says "this part of the article is NPOV," I will go back and see if I wrote that sentence and assess whether or not they're right if I feel like it.

Pi zero, I really don't see how a given sentence magically becomes more or less problematic depending on who wrote it or how two authors could compose the same article but one would be more work or take longer than the other or how an article composed by two or more people would be any more work for a reviewer than an article composed by one. The facts are interpreted correctly or they are not. Words are too flowery or they aren't. These things are subjective but not affected by the number of drafters. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:08, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

I mean, if what you're saying is that it's somehow harder for you, then I believe you and I don't have to understand exactly how it works, just chalk it up to individual differences among people, but I enjoy collaborating on articles and I don't plan to stop doing it unless you or anyone can show me a concrete reason why I should. [/quintessential] Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:27, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

No, I'm not talking about an idiosyncrasy of mine. Great depth of review experience does lead to deep insight into the review process.

I'll think on how best to explain the phenomenon. One caveat that immediately leaps out: it's not about a single sentence. The effect can't be seen by considering a single sentence, any more than one can learn about the dynamics any complex system by studying a single small element in isolation.

(Btw, enjoying collaborating is not the point I'm most concerned about here, although it's certainly a multi-faceted issue that could be discussed. My greatest concern is that there is an essential social contract on Wikinews, wherein reviewers go to great lengths to help individual writers improve, and writers perpetually strive to improve and thereby increase the project's effective review capacity and quality over time, yet you tend to respond to feedback by giving reasons why you needn't try to do better next time. Which can undermine this essential social contract.) --Pi zero (talk) 16:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Pi zero, you keep saying "do better" when it looks like you really mean "submit; the sun is a reed candle if the reviewer says so."

In order to help me improve, the reviewer would have to know better than I do, and I've found that I'm about as likely to know best as the reviewer is, more likely if I'm dealing with a specialized topic. Overall, Wikinews is a place where we can learn from each other on footing that averages out to be equal.

If someone says, "You violated WN:FUTURE" or "that word is misused here," I can and should say "I reviewed WN:FUTURE, and you will see was not writing in the future tense as described" or link them to a dictionary showing that the word is not misused. Then they can learn. I cannot defer to expertise that the reviewer doesn't have.

Why should the reader get an inferior article because the drafter was required to stroke the reviewer's ego? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:09, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

You say "social contract," but when I came here I did not agree to do anything but write news articles and maintain basic civility. If there is some rule saying, "Drafters must always obey reviewers, even when they are wrong" or "For our purposes, reviewers must be treated as if they are never wrong, like the umpire in a sports match," then that rule must be written down and endorsed by the community. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:12, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

No, Darkfrog24. Unfortunately. You don't know as well. You aren't aware of not knowing as well. And the usual means, by which newcomers here recognize that they don't know as well as the experienced reviewers, are not going to work. Problems propagating outward from your misunderstanding are dragging down the entire project, and danged if I know what to do about it. --Pi zero (talk) 17:51, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) danged if I know what to do about it. 1) Stop expecting me to take "because I say so" for an answer. 2) WRITE IT DOWN AND DISCLOSE IT ALL PUBLICLY. You want me to obey rules that exist only in your head where I can't see them. Get them outside your head where I can. And if you write them down, look at the page and find that it reads "Wikinewsies must obey me, treat me like I'm better than they are, and do everything the way I like and think best," then throw it away. Otherwise, submit it to the community for formal recognition. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

You have been told these things, along with reasons why. The explanations just slid off you. It's patently false that we haven't explained things to you, but very true that the explanations have been demonstrated to not get through to you. Naturally, you've devised alternative explanations since you couldn't see the things we presented to you (which I suspect was, from your perspective, rather like having people show you a picture of an empty field and say, "see, that's the castle, right there"). The fact that your explanations insult me is just one more unpleasantness in an all-around unpleasant situation. --Pi zero (talk) 18:39, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

There is a difference between you telling me something as an individual—so it's "I," not "we"—and a formal, endorsed policy. Your opinion is valuable to me as that of a respected colleague, but you should not expect me to treat it with the same obedience as something formally endorsed by the community.

Pi zero, you have to admit that there's an ulterior motive here, whether you really have it or not. You're trying to get me to do what you want, and yes, that's one of those times when people tell lies. Emperor's new clothes. I have to entertain the idea that the Emperor's about to walk out the door in his underpants. The no-castle-in-the-empty field metaphor is spot on: I don't seen any castle, and you tell me that's because I'm too stupid to see it. Of course I'm not going to go "Oh no! I didn't know I was stupid! Would you please let me be your slave?" I can give you the benefit of the doubt and ask if you've maybe got a better picture, but that is me being extra nice.

Your word alone is not my law. If you want me to think that you're right and I'm wrong, you need to show me proof. There's nothing unreasonable about that. Accept it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:12, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Sadly, I have trouble sitting by for some of that.

• "you have to admit that there's an ulterior motive here, whether you really have it or not." At first I thought you'd just said I had an ulterior motive. The last qualification on that leaves me having no idea, really, what the sentence means.
• "You're trying to get me to do what you want". Depending on how you mean that, it may be false. Ultimately, I do want you to act in the best interests of Wikinews. I'm of the opinion that if you realized you were doing something harmful to Wikinews, you would try to fix it. And so I'm looking for ways to help you understand better. (Though I'm having no luck, which seems to be partly because you've surrounded yourself with ways of deflecting any suggestion that you might be missing some important things.)
• Something stunningly false: "you tell me that's because I'm too stupid to see it." I most certainly did not say any such thing. This stuff is way too complicated/subtle to admit such a crude (and insulting) description. The portrayal as if I was asking for slavish obedience is also astray. I'm guessing a significant contributing factor there is that you haven't realized the nature of the dynamics of the writer–reviewer relationship, which is... argh. No analogy is going to be quite right (I'm reminded of an xkcd cartoon, "Teaching Physics", with mouseover "Space-time is like some simple and familiar system which is both intuitively understandable and precisely analogous, and if I were Richard Feynman I'd be able to come up with it"); maybe, up to a point, think of the reviewer as the presiding judge in a court case? Another flawed analogy. It's definitely not at all a symmetric sort of situation, though.
• You want "proof". But it's inherent in the situation that the kinds of proof you are asking for cannot exist, and I recall having pointed out in the past why that was so. In order to see anything significant in the absence of those kinds of proof, you have to start by first assuming that what I'm saying is false. There are several reasons that state of things could come about, and I suspect more than one of them applies here. Seems like you came here assuming Wikinews worked the same way as Wikipedia; came here already biased against believing things heard from me; and, not having (I know you'll hate hearing this; again it's not "stupid") the right sort of cognitive gift to see the abstract dynamics at play here, you literally didn't see evidence where it was presented to you. All those things wrapped up together.

--Pi zero (talk) 20:48, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

you literally didn't see evidence where it was presented to you

Show me. Link to a time when you did that. Maybe we're defining "evidence" differently and I have to use another word with you. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:59, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

United States delegation travels to North Korea to plan Trump-Kim summit

I have issues with the fourth paragraph. Both NPOV concerns and stylistic concerns. I'd love to rewrite it myself. But it would go far beyond a "tweak" or other reasonable edits a reviewer can make independently. --SVTCobra 20:06, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

I'll take a look if I get the time. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Baker doesn't even comment on the demolition of Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site, so how can he summarize what other people think? --SVTCobra 20:35, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

These comments are better placed on the article's collaboration page (I'd assumed you were posting to both), where anyone who wants to act on your suggestions may see them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:05, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Small snake's fossil found in amber

I read about it the day before -- from what I read, it was the oldest known snake fossil, discovered in amber in Malaysia. I don't have any articles in my mind to write, but that type of scientific discovery is your territory. Any chance you could write about it? I can share the links if that helps.
•–• 15:47, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

This is indeed interesting Acagastya, but I have a lot of stuff going on right now and can't promise I'll be able to get to it. I'm still on Wikibreak for something that I thought would take a week, but it's taking months. I just like to jump back in with a draft once in the while to show you guys I haven't bailed for good. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:00, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

I am planning for a five-day wikibreak, but have a darned goal to complete, which I am not so close. I will start the article, if you cannot get to it, I will start it. Currently eyeing at the German bus attack. I hope you can cover up for my absence in the last week of this month, I need some time to regain the energy and confidence.
•–• 16:14, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

A goal, you say? Drop me the links and I'll see what I can do. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Okay, draft is up. I've hit review on it because the findings were published two days ago, but I don't mind if you've got changes to make. I had some fun with the title. Now tell me more about this goal of yours. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:38, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Half hour and it's still not showing up in the newsroom. Here's the direct link: [5]Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:19, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I don't know if you are using the UTC live clock gadget. If you are using it, click it and it will purge the cache. Otherwise, you can clear the cache by pressing Ctrl+Shift+R. Or the easiest way is to click the blue button on this page. Just in case you didn't understand what I was saying, cached data is the data your browser would save, often preventing the new information from showing up on the client-side. Others can still see it. I don't know how to link the gadget here, on talk page. Maybe @Pi zero: can tell you. But it is in the preference section. If you search for this substring: "UTC" you would find it.
117.198.176.250 (talk) 04:00, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Certain pages have a "refresh" button; the newsroom and the main page are amongst them. --Pi zero (talk) 11:59, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Remember a couple of months back when I started an article and said "Acagastya's version wasn't visible when I started this"?

No, I'm not using any gizmos, just the refresh on my browser. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:10, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes just using refresh isn't enough because the browser just refreshes its local copy (aka the cached copy) of the page you're viewing. This is done to increase browser performance by decreasing the number of times the page has to be retrieved from the server. If there's a "purge this page" or similar link on a page, clicking it will clear out your local copy and show you the actual updated page. (I know I haven't been around lately... I lurk, mostly. Bad habit, I know). Ca2james (talk) 03:50, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

For that, instead of "Ctrl + R" for normal refresh, try "Ctrl+Shift+R" to bypass the cache.
•–• 08:57, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Just in case there were any confusion, there are two kinds of "refresh" involved. Control-Shift-R, or the like, is about clearing browser cache. However, the wiki software keeps its own cache of a page, which contains its version of dynamic page lists, which are what we're talking about here, and even if your browser doesn't cache the page, what it gets from wiki server will still be whatever is in the server's cache. To request that the server clear its cache of a page, you do a "purge" action, and the simplest way to do that for the newsroom is to use the "refresh" button on the newsroom page. You'll find it on the right side of the big header at the top of the newsroom; it looks like this:

Refresh

Click "refresh" on the newsroom page when you want the server to update the DPLs on the newsroom. --Pi zero (talk) 10:56, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Re the green underline gadget

Would you mind trying an alternative for that? I just want to know how the new style could be improved. If you would like to try, I will tell you what you would have to do to try it.
•–• 08:53, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you mean the green underlining thing that underlines Wikipedia links that are also Wikinews categories? Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:42, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Not exactly. Let me explain with an example. if you use {{w}} for those who have a local target, say {{w|Snakes}}, well, technically, it should be [[Snakes]]. It is about those {{w}} templates which can be changed to hard local links.
•–• 11:49, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was talking about. What's going on? You invented a better gadget and want me to test it? Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:50, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Boy Scouts of America to begin accepting girls, which raises issues with Girl Scouts

Technically, because this is marked as prepared, it isn't subject to being "abandoned" as such; but we do have recognized grounds to delete a prepared article about an event that's already happened, on which point this article is more ambiguous. It's been marked as abandoned for about four days. Your thoughts? --Pi zero (talk) 22:09, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

My thoughts are that I was saving it for refresh when the first girl dens get started, which should be September. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Pi zero (talk) 22:22, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Er. This didn't reach publication last month (talk). GG tagged it for abandonment. Should this be held for another round, or is it safe to let it go (keeping in mind, it can be undeleted at neede)? --Pi zero (talk) 04:37, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for being so extra-mile, but this is an "Oh well, we fought bravely" case. I kicked it to "prepared" the first time because I could see a new focal event coming up, but I don't see one this time. I expected it would be deleted in due course, like other articles that time out unpublished.

Those Scouts are feisty ones. They'll get in the news again sooner or later. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:25, 2 October 2018 (UTC)