User talk:Kamnet

Kevin at his brother-in-law's wedding. Some of Kevin's work on Wikinews Kamnet's Wikinews Audio Archives Kamnet's Wikinews Article Archives Templates to Edit

The Audio Barnstar I hereby declare Kamnet most awesome for audio'ing tons of articles and ya know... generally making audio news possible. Since this is a wiki, all I can give you is this barnstar! Spend it wisely. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 17:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, welcome to my talk page!

Please feel free to provide any and all comments, feedback, praises, accolades, awards, criticisms, bitching, whining and moaning here! Please be sure that you include your signature (~~~~) so that I know who made a comment and so that you can automatically receive a reply back.

Great Work

on the audio. Anonymous101^talk 20:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Great work! It's always interesting to hear your written work spoken. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 23:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Glad to see someone doing audio, but aren't these under a license that would allow upload to Commons? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I wasn't aware of Commons (I'm still a n00b!), how do you link the audio file from Commons? Kamnet (talk) 11:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's the same as linking to any other file, just use [[image:filename]]. The software guess that if it can't find a file on wikinews, then it's probably over at commons. Also, you might want to set up an account soon since it will take about 10 days or 10 edits before you can start uploading files to commons. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 12:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic, everything is good to go. Thank you again! Kamnet (talk) 15:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you have a pretty decent news voice;). I really hope that someone fixes that audio template soon. It messes up the page formats something fierce. I tried, but I couldn't make it work. Gopher65_talk 03:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the complement! As for the template, personally I'd prefer to see the sound icon included near the top of the headline, the info box for it doesn't have to be nearly as big since it would be in a more prominent place, but just thinking "Oh! I didn't have to read it all when I could have just listened to it!" Perhaps I'll bring that up in the future. Kamnet (talk) 03:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Kevin Fields

Hey, I notice that on the Audio Wikinews page (likewise, thanks for reviving it) your username is linking to User:Kevin Fields. Generally, it's not a good idea to have user pages for non-existent users, in case someone actually does come along to register that name. Do you think you could either change those links to point to User:Kamnet, or otherwise register the other name and redirect one of the user pages to the other? (Note that I use that tactic - my alternate nickname that I use on other projects here redirects to my "real name" account.) Thanks, Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 06:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I've just realised that in the "News in brief" you do it the other way around. It would also be an idea to stick to one consistent style. Pick whichever you prefer! Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 06:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for catching this, fixed! By the way, are you able to either look into Problem with News in Brief, or tell me who I can talk to about it? Kamnet (talk) 06:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

• Some of us have been really sneaky and created pages like Brian McNeil. ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Editor status

I think you've probably established enough of a reputation with the audio now that you should apply for Editor status. What this would mean is that when you add the audio to an already reviewed and sighted article it would be auto-sighted and immediately available to users who are not logged in. At the moment people have to sight your edits to make the audio available. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:12, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Creative Commons audio

You might want to subscribe to the JustFM mailing list on open-mesh.se. Mirko Lindner [mirko at creativecommons.se] is the contact for this. They're running an Internet radio station of freely licensed material and if you can do news briefs they would be very interested in carrying them.

I can probably also arrange some easy to integrate music clips for you from a musician friend in Scotland. If you want something fresh for the music, give me a prod and I'll pass you his email address. You can send him a link to a raw brief on Commons and he'll jazz it up. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you think the audio transcripts should have music in them? << Kamnet (talk) 14:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Location of the Audio Box

Kamnet, first off I want to congratualte you on your contributions to Audio Wikinews. Your recordings are fantastic and I listen to them everyday. Keep up the good work.

However, I really don't think that the Audio Box should go at the top of the article page. It's distracting and somewhat out of place. I think a much better place would be at the bottom, by the Comment Box. You might want to consider doing this. --WNewsReporter (talk) 01:22, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

This has been a topic of discussion for the last several days on the IRC channel, the consensus was that having the audio at the bottom was pointless, by the time visitor has read the article, why would they need or want to listen to the audio. Combined with issues regarding layout of the Audio template itself, several of us looked at re-designing the template so it was in a more prominent place, but not obtrusive. This was eventually taken to the water cooler where several editors worked on developing a new template and optimizing its position for either the top-left or top-right.

Good answer, but I have a suggestion. For a well put together article there will be a lede with the who, what, where, when, why, and how that is 3-4 lines long. For a lengthy article it may be an idea to have this lede and then the audio box immediately after it. This is the point where someone has more of a clue than what the headline suggests and decides if they want more - possibly an ideal point to offer the audio option. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:06, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem that I see with this is that a) the audio box is not put into a consistent place, and b) it pushes other content even further down the page, which is going to cause conficts with things like photos, HYS and information tables. Perhaps it would be better to put it in the top-right corner instead? Kamnet (talk) 11:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay I went back to my test page and I think it would be better to align the audio box to the right of the page, level with the date, above infoboxes and photos and set to a width equal to that of the vertical infoboxes. If the audio box is going to push any content down, at least all it should push down is the stuff that is also floating to the right. Kamnet (talk) 12:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Peer Reviewed Template

When using the {{peer_reviewed}} template, please use just the number after oldid in the URL, for instance 123456. —Calebrw (talk) 18:09, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any "oldid" in the URLs. I just checked now on an article, didn't see it show up-- http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:D.C._Superior_Court_Judge_Satterfield_elevated_to_position_of_Chief_Judge&action=edit Am I supposed to be looking somehwere else for this? Kamnet (talk) 23:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

You can go to the history tag and click on the link with the time and dates and it should show up with something like this http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=D.C._Superior_Court_Judge_Satterfield_elevated_to_position_of_Chief_Judge&oldid=698856

--PatrickFlaherty (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

DOH! I get it now. Thank you for the heads-up! Kamnet (talk) 00:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Glad you figured it out. I was at work when I typed that, and my original response got deleted (because IE is stupid). That one was more detailed and correct. —Calebrw (talk) 17:22, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar!!!

		The Audio Barnstar
		I hereby declare Kamnet most awesome for audio'ing tons of articles and ya know... generally making audio news possible. Since this is a wiki, all I can give you is this barnstar! Spend it wisely. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 17:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back! It's great to hear the news again. Keep up the great work. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 18:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

TUSC token 037101dfcdaa8247b1a585357e0b1bac

I am now proud owner of a TUSC account!

Wikinews interviews Mike Lebowitz, Chairman of The Modern Whig Party

Could you do a peer review for the article above? Thanks. --WNewsReporter (talk) 23:28, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

PSN interview.

Great work on getting the interview. I haven't yet had a chance to read it, but kudos for just getting it. —Calebrw (talk) 02:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, comments are very much appreciated! Kamnet (talk) 02:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kamnet

I am Clpro, a former Cantonese web news anchor from HK. I clicked to you user page and found it was interesting.If you need help of China and HK stories, please do not hesitate to find me.

• MSN and Email: shinotenhane<at>gmail.com

Clpro2 (talk) 08:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Campus Radio audio stream

Thanks for your note. If you have no objection I will try including some Audio Wikinews Briefs in the WCR audio stream. --JWSchmidt (talk) 18:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC) None from me. The whole point of Wikinews Audio Edition is for free distribution of news content. :-) <<<< kamnet (talk) 05:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

WikiBureau Economics and business

Hiya Kamnet,

I saw that you expressed an interest in the proposal for an economics and business bureau. It has been created at Wikinews:WikiBureau Economics and business.

Thanks,

Anonymous101^talk 18:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Moon Impact Probe to land tonight

I have taken the liberty of using some of your material to start Wikinews:Story preparation/India's flag planted on Moon. Please help. --InfantGorilla (talk) 07:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Audio Wikinews Relaunch

Heyla! - Amgine | ^t 04:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you try e-mailing Turtlestack, or shall I? - Amgine | ^t 20:07, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I didn't try. I was just curious as to who currently controls it. -- kamnet (talk) 22:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hiya. I haven't been doing the AWN since mid August so the project is currently looking for new life. Most of the guides and templates are updated to reflect the direction I took the show in but there was some unfinished work I left behind too (mostly the style guides). The main thing I did with the show was make it less of an amateur hobby project and a much more polished, professional and of iTunes quality (especially the This Day In History segments at the end of every show). The iTunes feed is from a personal podbean.com account I set up but it's a free account with serious bandwidth and file size restrictions; in other words, not worth it at all. Setting up another (and more reliable) hosting service isn't difficult (though it would cost money). However, whatever you decide to do with the show is up to you. I'll admit that I'd love to revive the project (we recently discussed making it a weekly show), but the show, at least as I ran it, requires more than 1 or 2 people and so I don't see myself getting involved again at the moment. So, in other words, feel free to take over AWN. I'd love to see someone else have some fun with it and maybe take it in a direction I never thought and I'd love to see it become successful. I hereby pass the torch onto you and I wish you the very best success with the project. Wikinews is a great project and everyone who contributes is a pleasure to work with and I enjoyed every moment of being part of the team. There are some incredibly talented and dedicated people who are part of wikinews and they deserve a AWN project that's every bit as professional, talented and dedicated as they are. Of course, I'll be more than glad to assist you in the transition in whatever way you need anytime you need it, so please feel free to contact me for anything. Best of luck, Turtlestack (talk) 04:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Dan, thank you for responding! I absolutely love with what you did for AWNB, it absolutely does sound more polished and put together, and I agree that it certainly needs a few more people to make it work right. Considering there's just you and me right now, I'm not even sure that's enough to do it justice. I think I'd like to hold off on bringing it, wait until we have some more contributors who can put in a little time and split all of the tasks up into smaller pieces. Do you have time to contribute one or two news stories a day, as they trickle in? If not, that's okay, I just didn't want to be the only voice that dominated the articles.

As for the iTunes feed and hosting, was there a reason for switching from the feed that was set up on Wikimedia Commons to Podbean? We should be able to just provide that link to iTunes and not have to worry about any bandwidth or file restrictions. If for some reason we can't do that, then I do have a dedicated server that has no restrictions that we can host everything on, it's been around for 8 years and isn't going anyplace. -- kamnet (talk) 06:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Apple only allows .mp3 files for podcasts and wikimedia only uses .ogg files. We can't host an .mp3 file on a wikimedia site because .mp3 is not free and open source. It's a major sticking point for a lot of podcasters (ogg is a superior format and is native to Audacity, which is also free and used by most non professional podcasters) so it means we have to go outside the foundation to host an mp3 file.

As for contributing again I'm still a bit leery of jumping back in. The time commitment can be pretty large even for just a couple of stories. In my time doing the show there were a few issues that cropped up pretty regularly (and one that cropped up with every story). First of all it's not uncommon for two stories to go live that are about pretty much the same topic. IIRC, there were quite a few "double" stories dealing with slightly different issues concerning the BP oil spill. What this meant was that the stories had to be stitched together (pretty much a full re-write) as it would have been silly to read them both as they had about 75% the same content.

The other issue, and the one that every story has to one degree or another, is narrative flow. See a printed article reads like an inverted pyramid - meaning that the lead (the most important information) is at the top in the first paragraph and sentence. This doesn't always work for broadcasting as well as it does in print. There needs to be a bit of a tease to every story to keep the listener listening by not giving all the best information right at the very beginning of each story - stories should lead to a sort of "climax" no more than about 1/3 of the way in. Think of when you listen to, say, NPR news and they say something like "And here's John Broadcaster with an interesting story from China". The broadcaster then begins their story, not with the lead, but an introduction that leads to the main headline.

Now what I described above isn't necessary for every story. Major headlines (bombings, plane crashes, major disasters - pretty much anything with a death toll) gets the headline out of the way right at the top just like a printed article. The trick with those is that you have to keep feeding out the information in a good narrative to maintain that level of listener interest all the way through.

So, why I do I bring all this up? Well written stories do not read well out loud. I listened to a few of your spoken wikinews articles (great job, by the way) and I'm sure you also noticed that they just don't read well (they flow badly). There is often awkward wording, interview quotes don't have a good segue in or out of them, paragraphs don't flow well into each other and a myriad of other things I'm sure you were aware of when you read them. Now this is not a fault of the writer (or the reader), in fact, just the opposite because the writers are doing exactly what they need to do with a printed article. However, we, as broadcasters, have to rewrite every single article (some more than others) so that they sound right and read well. And this is very tricky to do because you have to maintain a NPOV, you can't change "facts" and you can't add in additional reporting (usually, though if an article has a wikipedia link in it, I would add the definition of the word or noun into the broadcast since listeners can't follow a verbal hyperlink). All that work takes a lot of time. If you go through all my scripts and compare what I broadcast against the actual story, you'll see that 9 times out of 10 major adjustments were made to the stories to make them work as spoken pieces.

This is why I am hesitant; these stories take a lot of time each and I really would only want to get back into being active again if there was a real, honest to goodness team of at least around 5 people. If you see on the AWN homepage, you'll notice I outlined my ideas for how a team should be structured - Producer, Readers and Writers (as well as alternates). This frees everyone up to focus on what they do best and spreads the pain around so no one person is getting the full brunt of the workload. In my opinion, the writing (re-writing and re-writing) takes the longest, followed by the reading (and re-reading and more re-reading) and finally the producer puts the show together and does all the housekeeping. But even with 2 people, it's still a ton of work.

I hope I don't sound too discouraging and I apologize for the huge encyclopedia I wrote here, but it's all relevant to putting on a first rate show. To make it sound effortless, there is a TON of work that goes on for every story and it can take one person 3-4 hours per day (add in another 4 for those extra history segments (6-8 hours every day total) and you can see why I stopped). However, I am interested in possibly jumping back in if we can get a team together and are desiring to abide by a certain structure and format and especially level of quality. Personally, I feel a weekly format is best and I think each person should also bring to the table an additional element to the show - I did the history thing and someone else can do a segment about something they want to do as well (you are into MMA, so maybe something along those lines?). This gives the listeners something more than just the dry, boring news. We live in a media saturated world and everyone (especially podcast listeners) already knows what the headlines are - OUR listeners want those out of the way stories (such as the Chile stories) but just like any other audience, they want something unique too. The show needs its own identity, a hook, something to draw an audience in and keep them coming back every episode. Maybe that's a place where we can start and maybe brainstorm some ideas? Turtlestack (talk) 21:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding iTunes: I wasn't aware that they couldn't serve .ogg files. How unfortunate for them. Did the iTunes feed get a lot of activity? if it did then I can see it being worth reviving, but if it does not then I think it would be better to promote subscribing to the podcast feed from outside it. If we do want to go that route again, it would be trivial for anybody using audacity to save as both .ogg and .mp3, and to upload the .mp3 files to a separate server. -- kamnet (talk) 12:24, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Oddly enough, this month will be the second month in a row where the feel will have exceeded its bandwidth. I have no idea who is downloading the 4 shows that are still up (the space limitations only allow up to 100MB so that's usually just 4-5 shows) and I have no idea why they are even being downloaded - there are no comments, I've never received a comment on the blog, my twitter, on the internet archive page or anything - it's just ... weird. Someone (a lot of someone's actually) is listening, but I have no idea who. The feed could, of course, be updated, but it would require me probably having to pay for it. In fact the best way to go would be to move the hosting to http://libsyn.com/, pay the $20/mo (and maybe register a domain name). That would allow for infinite archive space and bandwidth as well as 400MB per month of new uploads (enough for a 5 day per week schedule). Turtlestack (talk) 16:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

If you'd like, then, I can set up an account on my dedicated server, no cost and no bandwidth restrictions (well, almost none. Currently we use about 450GB of a 1500GB limit). If you're comfortable with editing a basic RSS feed file (very easy to do, I edit by hand these days, but I used to use a program called FeedForAll) and uploading via FTP, then very quick and easy to do. If not, then I can look for a podcast management system to help with it all. -- kamnet (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That could be a very good option. I think we still need to think about what sort of show to do. I'm very much in favor of a once a week format for the time being (but that could be expanded with more volunteers). I've racked my brains about what would make for the best show and I've always come back to the idea that it should be more than a wikinews show but instead a wikimedia show which highlights everything wikimedia. For example items could include information from the wimikedia blog, goings on at wikipedia, and even a lead in at the very top of every episode reading a quote of the day from wikiquote. News from wikinews would of course be included and all original content would be made from all things wiki (news, TDiH, quotes, music, etc) and CC compliant sources (such as where I always got my music from - internet archive, royalty free music, freesounds, etc.). Highlighting the benefits of all things open source, user collaborative and free as the focus of a show is, in my opinion, much more interesting than just another news show. What do you think? Turtlestack (talk) 06:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't have any interest in any other WMF projects other than Wikinews. I occasionally make an edit to Wikipedia (and have had more things reverted and deleted out of pure malice and jealousy than should be allowed), I make uploads to WC when necessary, but that's it. I don't think anybody else is really interested, either. After all, the top headline on the Wikizine blog is, "Wikizine totally failed at informing you about Wikimedia news last year." Postings fell from 60 in 2006 to just ONE last year. If you're passionate about it, go for it, but as far as I can tell nobody else is. :-( -- kamnet (talk) 11:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

You are correct. The wikimedia foundation is nothing if not incredibly boring and lacking in interest from volunteers outside of wikipedia. In fact, I've consistently been impressed that wikinews has managed to remain active for as long as it has with such a small user base. That's serious dedication right there. Anyway, you point out the wall I kept hitting when doing the show - that is, can the show reach an audience beyond the borders of just wikinews volunteers? That's why I was always racking my brains to add in some extra content to give the show a unique identity and make it worth listening to for the average person. Even as much as I tried experimenting with format and editing and such, I never could shake the feeling that it was, after all, just a show that reads the headlines and how is that going to be of interest when anyone with a computer already knows what has happened in the news? However, to be fair, that very well have been due to my own shortcomings. I very well may have not been the right person to make the show a success outside of the project. Hopefully you will be able to steer the ship in a new, better direction and make the show a success.Turtlestack (talk) 21:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I feel that the lack of stability and lack of volunteers for this project is what has hampered it from going any further. We make good efforts at doing it several months in a row, but nobody (as of yet) has the capability of gutting it out for the long haul. When working in the early years with my own podcasting efforts on AngryMarks, this is a problem that we faced (and still do, to some degree). The project was pleasant enough, however, that many of us continued on. It took almost three years before we saw any significant increase in our listenership, and that then translated into more people wanting to contribute. Eventually we went from just only one show, to two, and now we have ten podcasts that we manage and distribute with fifteen contributors, most of whom can take any or all of the workload at any given time. So, as boring as it is, that's why I want to start back with Spoken Wikinews first. Just reading dry news isn't sexy, but it is easy, and it allows an individual to build confidence in themselves. If they reach a point where they want more challenge, that's when AWN becomes more attractive. They can take what they've been doing, and do more, give it oomph, give it a personality, and put some creative effort into it. -- kamnet (talk) 22:00, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Brian McNeil had been looking into getting the AWNB some attention with an internet radio station that provides spoken content to the blind. I feel that what you are currently doing with the spoken articles would fit that project even better than the entire show I had been doing. Making the articles here accessible to the visually impaired not only gives the volunteers a sense of purpose but it provides an excellent service too. Diego Grez also mentioned that hearing the articles spoken in native English was very helpful for him to better his English (which is already fantastic) so maybe looking into an educational service that helps people with at least some English experience improve their language skills could be another opportunity. The added benefit that it's news articles also helps with cultural nuance that non English speakers may not be able to pick up any other way. Turtlestack (talk) 21:17, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Spoken Wikinews: I realize that the Audio Wikinews Briefs do take a lot of effort to make it into a polished product. We don't have the people to do that right now. This is why I'd like to focus on getting the Spoken Wikinews portion back up first. This is the easiest because the recordings are meant to be verbatim. Unless the article is poorly written, there should not be any need to do much, if any, editing. And if they are poorly written, then our editors and reviewers should be rapped on the knuckles for letting such poor quality material through. I want to inspire people to get into the routine of reviewing the story, recording it, uploading it and editing the necessary pages. The more people who can participate in those few, easy steps, the easier it will be to build up a team which can take on the bigger task of making a quality AWNB. -- kamnet (talk) 12:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I never considered any of the articles to be poorly written, it's just that they are structured as printed articles and not as scripts for recording and so there are some style differences.

For example, in the most recent spoken article you did, Australian town to change name to promote road safety, the beginning of the second paragraph is written :

"The idea was created by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC). A campaign was launched on the social networking website Facebook, saying that if 10,000 'liked' the campaign page, the name of the town - which has a population of 45 - would be changed. 'Rename Speed' has now gone on to achieve over 33,000 likes."

That first sentence is fine in print (well, sorta), but it's just shotgun information and doesn't lead well into the rest of the paragraph. It could read better (especially out loud) as:

"The idea, created by the State of Victoria's Transport Accident Commission, began when a campaign titled 'Rename Speed' was launched on the social networking website Facebook. The goal was that if 10,000 'liked' the campaign page (the Facebook equivalent of voting in favor of an idea), the name of the town would be changed. 'Rename Speed' has now gone on to achieve over 33,000 likes even though the town only has a popular of just 45 residents."

Granted, that single change took only about 5 min of my time, but carry that over 6-10 full articles per day and you can see where the time adds up. Now I never went into the actual articles and changed the wordings because, well, I was never really comfortable doing so. I know I could have, I suppose, but I would feel like I was imposing too much of my personal preference and editing style on every single article here. I felt much more comfortable just writing the scripts and leaving it at that. Also, the articles do tend to change and so a spoken recording of them does not always represent the latest, best version of the story. That's why I never bothered with spoken articles and just stuck to the full broadcast since the AWNB was more a record of the daily news and if listeners wanted updated versions of the story then they could visit wikinews and even possibly contribute (or donate).

It's funny, but now that I've been talking to you, I really ave the itch to start doing the show again :) Turtlestack (talk) 16:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I think your change would have been quite fine for an article. Since Wikinews articles are collaboration projects rather than the stylings of any one author, anything which is done to improve an article is most certainly welcome. Beautiful English is just beautiful English. I agree that if it's taking you 5-10 minutes to re-write an article so that it sounds better when you read it, it is a lot of work to do. That's also why I'm encouraging people to just work on one or two articles. If it becomes burdensome work, nobody wants to do it, but if everybody can just dedicate themselves to one or two articles, that's not such a big task. -- kamnet (talk) 01:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That would be ideal. One thing that always stuck with me all through school and beyond was that you should always read your work out loud before you turn in a final copy. It's amazing how much it can improve ones writing. Turtlestack (talk) 06:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Doing so is very natural to me, I've done it all my life. I pretty much think as I speak, I've constantly got voices going on in my head, which, despite other people's misgivings, my psychiatrist says is perfectly normal and not harmful to any of my interactions with the outside world. -- kamnet (talk) 11:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll drop xyr a line to see if xe will talk with you about how it works, etc. - Amgine | ^t 03:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Peer reviews

I noticed that you published a whole lot of articles last night. I'm impressed by the massive feat; but I noticed most (not sure if all) of them were published with no other edits to them at all. A number of the authors involved are definitely still learning — there are various weaknesses in their Wikinews writing that they should work on strengthening — and since they can't see the humongous effort that takes place behind the scenes of a peer review, they're likely to get complacent if they get what looks from "above the surface" like a rubber stamp. I know there was some low-hanging fruit around, like on this one (they'd used no local links at all, not even the obvious one for the Taliban, and had no categories at all, not even one major subject like Crime and law, nor Category:Taliban, nor the parent category of the country that had been added automatically by the infobox!); I'd just remind you that as peer reviewers, we're not only responsible for the legalities —protecting ourselves and the authors from being sued— and the reputation of the project, but, as if that weren't enough, we're also trying to help the authors grow and improve as news writers! --Pi zero (talk) 12:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

DOH! You are right, I didn't even look for categories or other wikifying. To be honest, I was even out-of-step with that myself until somebody urged me to do so on my own article I submitted. I shall endeavor to be more responsible next time. :-) I've just noticed lately that a lot of people have been in the mood of "I don't have time to review" and articles becoming outdated because of a lack of review. I was in a good mood to review. -- kamnet (talk) 13:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it was good to see. I can't resent people for not reviewing; it is a massive effort, and I myself rarely have the simultaneous time, will, and mental acuity needed for it (the will and, sort of, time typically come together for me when it's about 1am local, rather sabotaging the acuity :-) —and we're a volunteer project, after all— but since we've been shorthanded lately, it's especially welcome when we've got a big backlog on the queue and someone does find xyrself with the combination of factors needed.

For my own difficulty with things slipping my mind, I use the tips checklist (which I admit to some self-frustration over, because I should have found a way to whip it into a shape that the community would embrace more). --14:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get a pull-down menu for the Topic and Country categories so that there's a visual cue to add those to the article? -- kamnet (talk) 14:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Interesting idea, very. Possibly something can be arranged using Special:CategoryTree, which could be both versatile and robust. --Pi zero (talk) 17:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Kamnet. You have new messages at User talk:Rayboy8#Audio Wikinews. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Hello, Kamnet. You have new messages at User talk:Rayboy8#Audio Wikinews. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Egyptian man names daughter 'Facebook'

Hey, I liked the recording you made of 38 killed in attack on Afghani bank and I was wondering if you'd do another one for Egyptian man names daughter 'Facebook'? --Ashershow1_talk 17:41, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Wondering the same for 2011 'Pichileminian Week' ends; I can help you with the pronunciations if you like :P Diego Grez ^{return fire} 17:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I was actually waiting to see if anybody else wanted to record them, I didn't want to be accused of hogging all the cool and easy ones! Or, if either of you are able to record audio, I'd like to see others try. I can edit to clean up any sound as long as you can smoothly read it. -- kamnet (talk) 20:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd be glad to do an audio recording of some articles, but I'm 15 years old and I'm concerned that the professional quality of AW would be compromised if a teenager started doing recordings of articles. That being said, I do have a fairly deep voice so it might be ok. Let me know what you think and be completely honest; I have no problem being told I'm too young for something :). --Ashershow1_talk 00:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no such thing as too young. As long as you can speak English smooth and clearly, that is the most important thing. If you'd like, take a look at the the guidelines and give it a try. Like I said, if you have problems making the audio sound acceptable, I can help fix that. -- kamnet (talk) 00:41, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I've recorded an audio version of Eleven children injured in Scottish school shooting; two teenagers detained, but I seem to be having trouble with the .ogg file type. Audacity automatically saved it as a .aup and exporting it to Ogg Vorbis doesn't do anything. Any thoughts? --Ashershow1_talk 03:45, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Export should first bring up a form where you fill in the metadata for the file (I should upload the template I use). After that it will ask you where you want to save the file, and what name, and select the file format. If you've entered a file name, selected Ogg as the format, and click save, then it should save it to the directory you selected. The default compression setting is 5, so you shouldn't need to mess with that. If you still can't get it to work right, feel free to e-mail me the file at kamnet+wn@gmail.com. -- kamnet (talk) 04:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Kamnet. You have new messages at User talk:Ashershow1. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Hello, Kamnet. You have new messages at User talk:Ashershow1. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Sending some people your way

I've been in touch with Dennis Michael - he's the guy who did CNN’s “Hollywood Minute” for 18 years and now has been doing his own broadcasting project over at SoundCloud. He's been looking to make his project part of something bigger and so I told him to get in touch with you if he's interested. You may want to contact him yourself too at his website if that sounds like something you may be interested in working with him on. He's very talented, motivated and funny and has decades of professional broadcasting experiences so at the very least he could be a great resource to help make the Audio Wikinews project (or your own projects) even better. Turtlestack (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

privs

Busy elsewhere? We understand, but this is a notice of privilege expiry!

Note! Your privileges on English Wikinews have been reduced.

Under the Privilege expiry policy (enacted October 13, 2012) the rights held by your user account have been reduced due to inactivity, or lack of privilege use. You can view your user rights log here.

Point 4 of the Privilege expiry policy provides for fast-tracking reacquisition of privileges. We all understand that real-life commitments can severely curtail the level of commitment you can give to Wikinews; the privilege reduction is in no way intended as a reflection on your past work, or to imply you are unwelcome. The aim in curtailing privileges is to address security risks, and concern that a long period of inactivity means you may not be up-to-date with current policy and practices.

--Pi zero (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2012 (UTC)