User talk:Flewis

Welcome

Flewis, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here are some pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Style guide - how articles should look before publishing
• Wikinews:Reviewing articles - how articles pass through editorial review
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• Audio Wikinews could always use more contributors
• And of course, stories need writing!

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Flewis/reftools.js

Hey, this looks interesting - I am curious what it does and how does it work? Cirt (talk) 12:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This ads a "Inline citation/references" button. I just realized that wikinews doesn't use the same system of inline citations as 'pedia, so that basically renders the tool useless. --Flewis (talk) 18:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Could it be adapted? That would be really useful if so. Cirt (talk) 18:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It sure could, I just don't have the time to work on it now. Feel free to try though :) --Flewis (talk) 18:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think they do at the moment, though it would definitely be something worth looking into. I suppose you could ask over at w:Wikipedia talk:Twinkle if that is possible. Cirt (talk) 19:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

Howdy. Here on Wikinews you cannot copy & paste news from other sources and call it your own. I checked Movie studios sue, hoping to bar a DVD copying program from market, and found that every single sentence in that article was copyied from one source or another. I've yanked the article and marked it with {{Copyvio}}. Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to give you a friendly warning since repeated copyright violation is very frowned upon. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 16:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, Surely a couple of identical sentences still abide by the 'Fair-use' rationale'? I used multiple snippets of as many different news outlets as possible, so that at most, identical re-transmission of the text on wikinews would be no longer than 2 sentences.

Here is the text that 'constitutes' copyvio according to you (the lead sentence):

Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs.

-To be blunt, I don't think the NY times have have enough evidence here to file a lawsuit against wikimedia on this alone. I would be willing to paraphrase the article or re-write it if there are any further problems --Flewis (talk) 18:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

If you followed news you would realise that major news sources have attempted to sue bloggers for copying their article lede - this is exactly what you did, and potentially put us in the crossfire. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

End result. Fair use images, OK. Fair use text, Not Ok. Fair use is _only_ acceptable when there is no other alternative. There is always an alternative for text. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:53, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

twinkle

Its come to my attention that twinkle could cause problems if used on wikinews as it is not designed to work on other wiki projects. Well I personally have not looked at the code, so can't really assess any potential damages, the people who left a message on my talk page seem to be pretty well convinced. Anyways this is just a heads up that as a result your monobook.js has been cleared, and we would like to ask that any js imported from 'pedia that deals with automated editing be given a very tough once over before being used (as broken tools that do automated non-readonly thingies can potentially be a very large head ache). Thanks for your understanding. (feel free to ask me any comments/questions/hate-mail etc). Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand, but are there any projects/proposals underway to import javascript functions into wikinews? It would sure make life a hell of a lot easier. --Flewis (talk) 03:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

For whom? JS imports need to be maintained, and everyone has them downloaded whether or not they personally use the system. Wikinews has a relatively limited supply of expert help for things like js maintenance, so we try to take it easy on the number and complexity of things we ask them to do for us. - Amgine | ^t 03:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit conflict]Not really [any major js imports], there is simply not a whole lot of demand. There is a couple people who have there own little stash of javascript. I imported some of the more notable things (the syntax highlighter editor box thingy, and Lupin's famous popups) a while back as gadgets. There is probably several tools that would make life easier, but bear in mind that wikinews is operated significantly differently, and has different needs from wikipedia. I think you've already saw how the reference system is different, we don't really receive enough vandalism to make specialized tools all that neccesary (imho - i might be wrong though as i've never really used said specialized tools). Most of our javascript is really stuff to change mediawiki interface slightly (Look for opinion pages [although personally i think the opinion pages javascript could have been much better done, or really should be done in php...], and {{ticker}} for prime examples where javascript is used). Bawolff ☺☻ 03:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)