User talk:Pi zero/Archive 2

Please do not edit the contents of this page. It is for historical reference only.

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Category:Archived

What's different between my edit and a bot?, how do you know the interwiki i added wasn't exist ? Mjbmr ^Talk 21:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the target of the interwiki does not exist, because I followed the link, ran the resulting content through Google translate, and got back "This category does not currently exist." It's possible, of course, that Google translate provided a bad translation. That uncertainty is why I included a "?" in my edit summary. However, the target also appeared to be an empty category, which seems unlikely to be right either.

Your edits are subject to manual review, which is why I checked the target of your edit. Edits by approved bots get autosighted, until such time as someone stops trusting the bot and blocks it. --Pi zero (talk) 22:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You can changes language in preferences or add "?uselang=en" in address bar, and check this B-R-S told that i can't run a bot, so i stopped running bot and i will add interwiki links manually, the category i created for archived news and the template of it (if it's possible please add the interwiki of it) but i am not admin to archiving news articles, anyways thank you Mjbmr ^Talk 05:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If you'd like to withdraw that blatant mischaracterisation of my comments that would be greatly appreciated. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what are you talking about exactly, you B-R-S told "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange granted bail, set free" was archived and you blocked my account and said bots shouldn't edit archived articles, is it right?, if was archived how my bot could add an interwiki link !?, now i am adding interwiki links manually and you undo my edits, this is not fair Mjbmr ^Talk 12:45, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I blocked your bot until it was archived, as clearly mentioned in the block log. Since you are a liar, and lying on-wiki, I am forced to reveal details of our private IRC conversation. You asked why I blocked the bot. I said that while occasional msitakes are expected (it was a very subtle difference) the bot should not redo what has been undone manually. You asked how to code that, as you did not write it yourself but merely lift somebody else's work, and I stated firmly that you are responsible for your bot and it is not my problem, as I am an admin and not a coder. You then said that since you were incapable of managing the bot yourself you would switch it off. I unblocked. It was only ever blocked for a short period until the article the bot was disrupting was protected. It was you who told me you could not run the bot. I wish, now, I had logged the conversation. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea, the question is can i run it again or not, if i can't so don't undo my correct edits Mjbmr ^Talk 13:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Your bot is currently still supported by the community. You voluntarily switched it off; and, now that the article in question is archived, I am disinclined to prevent you switching it back on. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:46, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for supporting me, i will run it again Mjbmr ^Talk 14:54, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

You haven't answered my question, as presented in the edit summary of my undo and further explained in detail here. I had reason to think your edit was not correct, and I don't see that you've tried to address that reason. If you cannot rationally discuss a specific issue raised about one of your edits, we certainly shouldn't be trusting you with a bot. --Pi zero (talk) 15:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

What are you mean, i created a category on fa wikinews and added the interwiki to en wikinews, is anything wrong ?! check the history of that Mjbmr ^Talk 15:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems there is much less wrong than it had seemed to me, for a moment there. (Sorry if I snapped at you.)

Please explain to me what the following means.

این رده شامل هیچ صفحه یا پرونده‌ای نمی‌شود

My reason for undoing your edit was the translation of that by Google translate. And my undo was tentative because I don't trust automatic translations.

The history link with English uselang is extremely helpful; thankyou. (I recommend using the fullurl: magic word to build such links, by the way.) --Pi zero (talk) 16:11, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Persian Wikinews was started on 17 October and i am one of most active user from starting there check my registration date i translated many policy from English Wikinews to Persian and already doing this, so i created the template of archived articles and the category of it, and no one of admins archived old articles and no one of them will delete my creation, also you can check my contributions, access to them are free Mjbmr ^Talk 16:43, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

What does this mean:

این رده شامل هیچ صفحه یا پرونده‌ای نمی‌شود

--Pi zero (talk) 16:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

"This category currently contains no pages or media" Mjbmr ^Talk 16:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. That clears things up.

There is no substitute for a human translator. Google translate was translating it as "This category does not exist", which I suspected had to do with confusion between "does not exist" and "is empty". Just now, Google translate has translated it as "This category encyclopedia". --Pi zero (talk) 17:08, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It's beta version yet, i think Mjbmr ^Talk 17:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Request to remove reviewer status

Hi Pi Zero. After the Lukashenko/Ukraine drama I caused, as you will remember, I resigned my position as a reviewer, and was given the "due diligence in tagging articles as if reviewed" by Brianmc before I was regranted. I haven't come anywhere close to doing what he asked, and Diego Grez, in his infinite wisdom, has regranted reviewer to me before I feel I'm ready to have it back, and without checking why I hadn't got it. I've referred him to the Water Cooler to read what happened, and ask that he take it off - I've also asked him not to put it back without checking with yourself or Brian. BarkingFish (talk) 13:09, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Hahaha! Infinite wisdom! What a good joke. Removing now :P Diego Grez ^{return fire} 14:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikinews Medal of Persistence

To Pi zero, for all the vandalism and other crap he deals with on a daily basis:). Gopher65_talk 23:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

addition and subtraction signs by recent edits?

I don't know if this is the correct place to post this, but I noticed that next to some of the 'recent change' edits, there are + and - signs, for example +89 and -21. Do you know what that means? --Ashershow1_talk 04:05, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Net change in page size, in bytes. --Pi zero (talk) 04:42, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Reviewer

Hi Pi Zero,
Sometime, in the near future, I am looking at requesting for reviewer permissions again. I would like to seek your advice on when would be best to apply and if you think I have met people's expectations in order to become a reviewer. Thanks, ~YTT ^{T | C} 05:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, no, I don't think you're ready. You've only had, what, four published articles? The second to most recent I see seems to have been heavily edited for publication (actually, so heavily edited that I wonder about the reviewer's independence for peer-review, but that would be a cold, cold tail to try to follow). A little before that, there was the ultimately deleted "Assange fears assassination if extradited to US", which had extensive problems. You need to improve your skills through more writing experience. --Pi zero (talk) 01:08, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Reply

{{replied|User talk:Rayboy8#At least 443 dead after flooding in Brazil}}
{{replied|User talk:Rayboy8#At least 443 dead after flooding in Brazil}}

Umm?

Why did you ignore my question and simply delete it? 24.229.102.138 (talk) 02:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I didn't ignore it. I failed to notice it. (To the extent that it was a question.) --Pi zero (talk) 02:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey, Pi, in the future its best not to just arbitrarily remove comments as it can come off as harsh...especially to newcomers. Happy Editing! IGNORANCE=STENGTH (talk) 02:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Pi zero is competent in Wikinews policy. — μ 02:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Me too, been here since the wee days as Neutralizer haha. IGNORANCE=STENGTH (talk) 02:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

award

On behalf of, and in the name of the Cable of Wikinews Incorporated. For doing those jobs that we are to lazy to do Brian 23:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Reply

Hello, Pi zero/Archive 2. You have new messages at User_talk:Yurtletturtle#Irish_Prime_Minister_steps_down_as_party_leader. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Hello, Pi zero/Archive 2. You have new messages at User_talk:Yurtletturtle#Irish_Prime_Minister_steps_down_as_party_leader. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Hi Pi Zero, Following our discussion on reviewer status, I would like you to review my latest article Premier of Tasmania, David Bartlett, resigns (if you don't mind) so you can highlight issues etc and give advice in order to become a reviewer (what I can change in my writing etc). Thanks, ~YTT ^{T | C} 08:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

William S. Saturn (talk · contribs)

This user has just blanked their userpage; I assume as a reaction to the latest fail of their article.

I'd like you to look at this, see where you think we went wrong, and how we can avoid driving off contributors.

I tried to provide constructive criticism, I don't think the failing review was near such. Can we repair the situation? Or, learn from it?

I'll be ln IRC in about 40 minutes if you want to discuss this; I feel the user made a genuine effort and 'delicate egos' (extreme irony coming from me) were fatally damaged. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:50, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Xe is one of those users who blanks xyr user talk from time to time, instead of archiving. This time, the removed content was an exchange from April.

As of this moment, xyr article hasn't been reviewed.

So I'm thinking there isn't a problem here.

BTW —this is an absurd confession from a computer scientist— learning IRC is still on my to-do list. --Pi zero (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

What is this discussion? I blanked the page because it was old.--William S. Saturn (talk) 23:00, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, if you are on here, please review the interview: Wikinews interviews Jim Hedges, U.S. Prohibition Party presidential candidate. Judging from the above comment, there seems to be an issue with editors getting upset and leaving the project. So what can be done to "repair [or learn from] the situation?" Perhaps you can provide timely reviews for interviews. Arguably, I should be able to review my own interviews, since I've been doing them on here for nearly three years.--William S. Saturn (talk) 01:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, it would help if you could remove the redlinks from Wikinews interviews Joe Schriner, Independent U.S. presidential candidate, caused by some miscommunication at Commons.--William S. Saturn (talk) 01:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

To be clear: Self-publication directly assaults the integrity of Wikinews, and we crack down hard on it. It doesn't matter how experienced, knowledgeable, or trusted the author is. Peer review by an uninvolved editor makes us a news site rather than a blog.

Sorry, but I haven't yet involved myself much in reviewing OR, so I don't consider myself in the pool of potential reviewers for your interview. That's on top of the fact I'm not up to doing a review at the moment; being around isn't nearly like being able to mount such a big intensive effort, after all.

More timely reviews come, statistically, with larger numbers of active reviewers, so if we weren't already inclined to work hard at our relations with newcomers (we were already inclined), that would give us extra incentive.

I'm not directly involved in the business with Commons deleting images. It's possible the redlinks sever a useful purpose as a sort of work order, marking that those images need to be recovered. For an explanation from someone clueful, you might ask about them at the technical water cooler. --Pi zero (talk) 03:44, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I still don't understand why this conversation is taking place. Why is User:Brian McNeil discussing me with you?--William S. Saturn (talk) 03:57, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• Mmmmmisunderstandings, eh? And, a Computer Scientist who doesn't know what to do with port 6667. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Spammer

As you appear to be online, would you be so kind as to kick-ban a copy-vio spammer? — μ 00:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Dealt with. --Pi zero (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

{{w}}

So, do we use the template with obscure unlikely-to-be-created-categories such as w:Nemone, or do we {{w|Nemone}} them all just to be on the safe side? Also, tada! — μ 11:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

DPL is cool, isn't it. :-)

Now that I've already created the thing, I worry (you may notice I do that a lot) because we already get complaints that our articles are mechanically too difficult to write because of the fancy templates we use; I'd hate to be responsible for making that problem worse. In retrospect, I wish I'd gone to the water cooler and asked people what they thought about that aspect of the tool before I created it. If only so I'd worry less about it now.

I think yes to {{w|Nemone}}. I have in mind, when using {{w}} at all on an article, to use it for all Wikipedia references that ought to become local if a mainspace redirect were ever provided. Without trying to guess which ones are unlikely. Two notes about localization of obscure references:

• We can't know what stories future contributors will write, and everything that eventually accumulates enough references for a category has to have started out with fewer than that. If there are a thousand obscure references, and each of them has a one-in-a-thousand chance of ever reaching critical mass, that means we expect about 367 of them to eventually reach critical mass. (Sure looks like it's approaching one over e.)
• We may eventually decide to redirect some rare references to categories, or even some sort of project pages, that aren't dedicated to them. I'm taking my time, meditating over this idea for a long time as I slowly work my way through the backlog of categories, getting a feel for what's out there, but — For example. There are a bunch of articles that mention the Space Shuttle. I'm thinking that when a category is created for that, subcategories will want creating at the same time (to save work in the long run) for each individual vehicle. But what about individual missions? They all have official designations, STS-XXX, and articles often chose to make that a link, but most of them are probably mentioned at most once in our archives, with nearly zero chance of more references later. So, should each of those references to an individual mission redirect to the category for the vehicle that flew that mission? Food for thought, anyway.

Can you tell I've been thinking deeply about this stuff? :-) --Pi zero (talk) 14:58, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

If you keep talking long enough, eventually you'll say something that makes no sense whatsoever. It seems a fairly safe bet that in a thousand trials each of which has a 1/1000 chance, the expected number of positives is... 1. That strange number 367/1000 (approximately one over e) isn't completely out of the blue, though; it's the approximate probability that all 1000 trials would be negative. --Pi zero (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Why are you using this template? It breaks the interwiki linking system which corrects for secure server, user language, and a range of other options. - Amgine | ^t 03:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

What exactly does it break? --Pi zero (talk) 04:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

{{w|Main page}} links to http://en.wikipedia.org, [[w:Main page]] links to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page. The latter is the Foundation's secure servers, which for the most part encrypts almost all the content/forms submissions between the browser and the server. - Amgine | ^t 04:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

w:I want cake and I want cake link to the same (wrong) place. Both secure and non-secure have same interwiki table. There is a gadget you might have enabled that change this, perhaps it doesn't like the template (Although it seems to in my test), but its not the template's fault. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right. But this was working previously; is this a 1.17 issue? <is now baffled> - Amgine | ^t 04:35, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I use that gadget (I work exclusively on the secure server, and have my browser set to refuse cookies from the insecure servers), and they both link to the secure sever for me.

Wikipedia has w:Template:Sec link auto to work around this problem — which is ordinarily a pain, but if we were to build a specialized form of that functionality into {{w}}, it would go a long way toward eliminating the inconvenience. --Pi zero (talk) 04:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah. How about this. Viewed from the secure server, but without the gadget,

• [[w:Main page|]] ==> Main page

  links to the Wikipedia main page, and does so insecurely.

• {{w|Main page}} ==> Main page

  links securely — but not to Wikipedia. {{w}} links locally if the target exists locally, and we do have a local target called "Main page".

--Pi zero (talk) 06:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I've just added a new gadget that underlines fixable {{w}} links in green. Thought you might like it, etc. — μ 22:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Re; Investigative report & survey @ Water Cooler/Proposals.

Thanks for your comments, Pi Zero. This is just a quick note to let you know that I have replied to your comments there, and look forward to your response. Thank you :) BarkingFish (talk) 23:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Fullurl

Thanks for this :) Diego Grez ^{return fire} 01:33, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

De nada. :-) --Pi zero (talk) 01:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

A defiant Gaddafi: "I will die a martyr"

I can remove some information and thereby remove some of the sources. I could remove the bit about the mercenaries (takes care of one source) and/or remove the part about the oil prices (that would remove another). Would that be ok? Mattisse (talk) 22:52, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean to suggest taking any content out of the article, and of course any sources that are needed to verify the content should stay. I only meant to be sure you were aware that redundant/unused sources should be omitted; you never know, people have the oddest gaps in their knowledge sometimes. --Pi zero (talk) 22:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Heh

Just noticed this RfO diff. I'll throw WP:HISTMERGE in your general direction and back away slowly... — μ 14:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Libyan leader says to nation: 'I will die a martyr'

Please see my comments at Talk:Libyan leader says to nation: 'I will die a martyr'. I am very confused regarding your objections. I will probably try a few other articles before I give up, but this is a very frustrating experience. It seems that nothing I do is right and my work is for nothing. Please forgive me. Probably this article is now out of date so feel free to delete it, as well as Danes overestimate their welfare which I apparently worked on for nothing. I guess it is best to pick a local article, like "Two school children killed" to get an article published and not pick an important subject. I guess sports articles are always good, but unfortunately not my interest. I guess WikiNews is not for me. Sorry. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 22:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Important articles are preferred, of course. The problem is that all articles must be newer than 2-3 days old, or it stops becoming 'news' and starts being more useful in a sister project, such as Wikipedia. Pick a subject you like, but make sure you 'hand it in' before the deadline of three days time. — μ 22:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I "handed it in" yesterday, but got only confusing suggestions. I immediately fixed all noted concerns. Next, without reading the sources, the reviewer complained that a list of statements were unconfirmed. Had to spend my time "proving" that the info was in the sources because the reviewer felt that it was not in the sources, even without checking them. Read my attempts to address the reviewer's "feelings" that the facts were wrong at Talk:Libyan leader says to nation: 'I will die a martyr'. For example, he says: " I find no evidence in the sources that the bombed-out residence is a former residence." That fact was present in three of the sources given for the article. I don't know what else I could have done. Mattisse (talk) 00:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The reviewer–author relationship, in a successful article (which I assumed this had the potential to be), is collaborative, not adversarial. They're performing complementary tasks with the common goal of producing a good article.

Verification is about whether things are confirmed by the listed sources, not whether they're confirmed by some other sources that aren't listed. I poured over the —listed— sources before painstakingly writing up a list of things I'd specifically looked for and couldn't find. And rechecked everything on my list before posting. Even then, on three of four points, I didn't say things weren't there, just that I couldn't find them. Apparently, most of those things weren't there because needed sources had been removed due to an earlier (puzzling and frustrating) misunderstanding.

Precision is also at issue. Some of the passages you claim are confirming things, don't confirm them. The "former residence" thing is illustrative. Of the three passages you claim confirm it, two of them do so — but only the third is from a source that was there when I reviewed the article, and what it says is that the residence is bombed-out and unrepaired, not that it's a former residence. A bombed-out unrepaired residence isn't former unless it also isn't lived in — and this is a flamboyant leader known for tent use; hence my caution. --Pi zero (talk) 02:37, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Your instructions to me have been very confusing. I tried to address your complaints but that was difficult since you made it clear you had not consulted the sources in your original list of complains but merely felt they were inaccurate. I can't even find where your comment about "mercenaries" is. In fact, I cannot locate most of your comments, although I remember seeing them at one point. Considering I am a copy editor and am employed by publications, it is strange that my hard work here was for naught. I give up. I feel your stance was adversarial. Please delete my article. Best wishes, Mattisse (talk) 15:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

They don't just get deleted. It will either get fixed and published, or it will end up stale and eventually deleted. To be fair though: His "speech" was more ranting than anything. From what I have seen, there are several websites that use his words differently. I have yet to see an entire, good and proper translation of his speeches of the last few days. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I tried to describe this in the article (from sources) but such info was considered POV, unconfirmed, too vague etc. even when that was what the sources said and I clearly reflected the sources. Good thing real newspapers allow good writing from sources. I still don't understand how the reviewer had so many opinions about the accuracy of the material while confessing he had not consulted the sources. And I still don't know where all his comments are (are they erased?) as they are not all in one place. Where is his "mercenaries" comment? I have searched and searched for it.

If someone wants to muck around with the article they can. Perhaps another reviewer will be more reasonable, as I notice articles are published that are badly written and treat topics superficially. The key I think is to choose a trivial topic like "Children shot while playing twiddly-winks in Australia" and use two local sources. Or write articles about a sporting event that oils down to giving the scores. In my case, the reviewer has effectively shot me down and I haven't a clue how to proceed with it now. It appears to me that he is not familiar with the subject. Considering I spent a whole afternoon finding and reading sources and carefully writing the article, I think my work is wasted at WikiNews. Best wishes, Mattisse (talk) 16:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Why do you believe I expressed (or even formed) any opinion at all about the accuracy of anything without studying the sources? This could be very important; I deeply want to understand why you believe that. --Pi zero (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Because you said in your first "failed" template listing poetic POV, and stating "angry and defiant" is pure POV opinion etc.: "I didn't get to fact-checking." You also complained about "merncenaries" while saying you hadn't read the sources.

I can't find all your comments so I can't fully respond. I still don't know where your "mercenaries" comment is. (I have searched and searched for it.) But if you had consulted the sources at that time, you would have found that the wording you complained about was the wording in the sources. I removed it all upon your demand, but if you keep up with the current news, you will see the issue is still relevant. You said, "The phrase "There is widespread speculation that ..." doesn't work. It's vague and sounds like rumor mongering." If you had consulted the sources you would have seen that was the gist of wording, and so close the exact wording, that I worried about being accused of close paraphrasing. In fact, more than one source confirmed, but you complained about too many sources.

You said, "I find no evidence in the sources that the bombed-out residence is a former residence."

Not only has this information been widely known for years, it was mentioned in virtually every article on the speech in one way or another. The exact word "former" does not have to be used in an article to convey the same information. If an article did not use the exact word "former", it explained that it was "ruined" (a word you also objected to), described it as bombed out, and that he used to live there until it was bombed. You complained that the the bombed-out residence is a former residence was mentioned in only one source at the time you consulted the sources, yet you complained when I use more sources. If you say that a statement is POV because it is mentioned in only one source, I have to add more to support it. You seem to demand that an article be a copyvio of the source. And even when I did use the exact wording (as close as I could ethically), you complained. You said, "Failed: "angry and defiant" is pure POV opinion. Don't do things like that. Looking a little further... "ruined residence"? Poetic: POV." You also said in the sample template: "I didn't get to fact-checking." If you had, you would have found that the sources used this or equivalent wording, including the word "ruined".

Yes, after your complaints I did change the article. Isn't that what you wanted? You said "The source says he personally was going to "cleanse Libya house by house", not that he called on his supporters to do so." Personally? He personally is going to cleanse Libya house by house? Some common sense has to be assumed. He called on his supporters to rally and back him. The speech was meant to incite. (Anyway, I changed the wording.) I understand now, contrary to article writing practices for real newspapers, WikiNews apparently forbids using more than one article to support a specific statement. No combining of sources is allowed. One statement, one source. Another statement, another source. And the two better not be combined in one sentence.

It is virtually assured that the article will go stale. I was already forced to combine my article about the escalating violence in Libya with another article about the shutting down of the Internet, even though the Internet angle was stale, only a small part of the story, and not the real issue. The resulting article was disjointed and did not follow your rules for lede, etc. Yet it was quickly published in WikiNews. I put a great deal of work into articles I write, but that effort is wasted here. Libyan leader says to nation: 'I will die a martyr' is already stale, as events have moved on. And the interesting issues, like the mercenaries, and the angry and defiant speech, as well as its incoherence (which reflects on his mental state) were not allowed to be conveyed in the article. Someone commented above on your talk page: "His "speech" was more ranting than anything." I was not allowed to convey this, although the sources did, because you considered any such references as POV.

I work quickly to meet your deadlines, then you complain I have changed things. I have never had this trouble with my editors before. I can only assume that I am unfit for WikiNews. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 18:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

• Addendum: Although I submitted the article on February 22 and you gave a list of complaints on that day, on February 23 you still had not consulted the sources but added more complaints: you said: "The phrase "There is widespread speculation that ..." doesn't work. It's vague and sounds like rumor mongering. Just within itself (I still haven't consulted the sources), my impression is that the article is looking much better, but that one phrase grabbed my attention. --Pi zero (talk) 00:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

  I find it strange that you can continue to criticize the article without consulting the sources at all. This seems to me an emotional reaction to the material. Shouldn't the sources be consulted before discounting information? Mattisse (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Three points, and I wish I could make each of them first.

• I didn't give a list of "complaints", nor "instructions". I commented. Perhaps I'd forgotten what it's like to be very new to the project, when reviewer comments seem like pronouncements from on high; but, well, if the comments don't make sense to you, and you don't say so, the reviewer won't know (easily or quickly) that their comments didn't make sense to one of their major intended audiences.
• You may be assuming (quite possibly unconsciously) that the mainstream news media outlets are neutral. They aren't. Some are less shameless about it than others, but they aren't neutral. When I hunt sources for a story, two of my favorites are BBC News Online and Al Jazeera English, because they're both pretty good about authentic effort at accuracy, and their natural biases are somewhat different so that much bias becomes clear simply by setting them next to each other. When they're giving things very different slants, additional sources are likely to be needed in order to get a broader data sampling; and even then, finding a neutral place to stand isn't a matter of taking a "vote" of available sources — it requires intelligent thought.
• Just as one still has to apply thought to finding neutrality when presented with a broad sampling of mainstream sources, some neutrality problems are obvious before one has even gotten to the point of consulting sources. (Some reviewers read the sources before the article, but many read the article and do basic copyediting on it before looking at the sources; it's been suggested this makes plagiarism easier to detect since people who try to disguise plagiarism by making superficial changes often do it badly, so that good copyediting exposes it.) I either was, or thought I was, very clear in my first review that I was talking about neutrality issues of that obvious sort. I found problems before I ever got downstream to the stage where I would consult sources, and I said so (because I didn't want to give the misimpression to another reviewer that I had looked for verification problems and not found them).

--Pi zero (talk) 21:02, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I did consult Al Jazeera English, but the language was stronger and I figured it would be seen as POV. (I wasn't aware of your preconceptions.) And I did consult the BBC. Almost everything, if not everything that you complained about is supported by the BBC source, even a statement about mercenaries. ("But witnesses say foreign mercenaries have been attacking civilians in the streets and that fighter planes have been shooting down protesters.") The Guardian just had a little more depth to it, making it clear that it was still on the level of rumor, and with quotes from experts and agencies specializing in the subject of mercenaries in Africa. But I see now that Wikinews wants simplistic articles without much substance. I'm not so interested just regurgitating headlines that everyone has already seen for a Wikinews article. Believe it or not I write for a living and I am considered a good article writer by my editors. But obviously I wasted my time and effort here. Well, hopefully soon the article will soon be put out of its misery and deleted. Mattisse (talk) 21:29, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

At least one editor appreciated my work

See Talk:Libyan_leader_says_to_nation:_'I_will_die_a_martyr'#Difficult_subject.2C_excellent_work. I am sorry that I caused you to be "worried". I am sorry that you had so much trouble reading the sources. I am sorry that you were apparently unfamiliar with the topic. I am sorry that your complaints were not at all clear to me. I am accustomed to editors who are straight forward in their editorial comments. I cannot image one saying to me that something I wrote "worried" him. That is not helpful. What on earth does that mean, that you were "worried"?

I would like at some point to attempt another article, but I would like to request, if this is possible, that you do not review my work. It is difficult for me to deal with your preconceptions of what is true, your "worries." Hopefully, if I recover from this experience and write another article for Wikinews, you will not review it. I would hope that you would respect my wishes on this matter. Mattisse (talk) 01:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding my status and the issue of reviewer rights

Pi Zero, thank you for your comments in the past about the possible regrant of my reviewers rights on WN. I have given this a lot of careful thought over the last couple of weeks, and decided that providing I can attach to a mentor, yourself or Brian for example, I am prepared to reapply for grant of reviewer permissions. Notice I'm asking for a mentor, since it's easier for me if I have a second pair of eyes I can turn to in case I miss something, which hopefully I won't. Please get in contact when you're next around, either on here or through #wikinews, since I'm in there pretty much every night. Regards, BarkingFish (talk) 02:15, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Please clarify your remarks so that I can learn from them.

I am sorry for this whole incident. It would help me greatly if you clarified your remarks so that I can understand your comments. All my info was supported by sources.

1. Review of revision 1183486 [Failed] (sources were not consulted in this review)

• Failed: "angry and defiant" is pure POV opinion. Don't do things like that. Looking a little further... "ruined residence"? Poetic: POV.

Is it considered POV if this is what several of the sources said? Three of them used the word "ruined" and "former" referring to his residence. If you read the sources "angry and defiant" and equivalent words were uses in the sources. Should I have gone into more detail, that he shouted and pounded the podium etc., while he spoke from the ruined entrance way in his abandoned house with pipes and wreckage dangling? From the StarTribune: "But the view also gave a bizarre image of Gadhafi, waving his arms wildly alone in a broken-down lobby with no audience, surrounded by torn tiles dangling from the ceiling, shattered concrete pillars and bare plumbing pipes."

• The phrase "There is widespread speculation that ..." doesn't work. It's vague and sounds like rumor mongering.

So even if sources say this, "widespread speculation" and gives examples of it, this phrase cannot be used? And when the BBC says "witnesses said", this reinforced the Guardian source, just in a less complete way and with less information as to the nature of the speculations and without analysis and quotes by experts.

• I didn't get to fact-checking. Is it really necessary to have five sources for this piece? Does each serve some function that wouldn't be served without it? Don't include sources you didn't use, and note that since a full review (which is required for a passing review) does require the reviewer to read all of the sources, the more sources you add the more work for reviewers, which will tend to make your article sit longer on the queue waiting for one of us volunteer reviewers to undertake the task.

So articles that use more than two or three carbon copy sources (all based on AP, for example) are discouraged? Any attempt to give depth to the story is discouraged?

2. Review of revision 1183910 [Failed]

• I've been hitting snags, things I can't confirm from the sources. There are a number of possible causes, including the sources changing after you used them (and you rearranged your list of sources, didn't you?...), and simply going overboard in putting things into your own words (a difficulty that some people have at first, so I should mention it). Some examples I've noticed so far:

He said protests were "serving the devil", and he mentioned tarnishing Libya's reputation, but I can't confirm he connected the two, saying the tarnishing was what made them devil-serving. Were the "cowards and traitors" the manipulators? Though that seems to make sense, I doubt it's safe to expect everything about this speech to make sense to us, and I can't confirm this. I find no evidence in the sources that the bombed-out residence is a former residence. The source says he personally was going to "cleanse Libya house by house", not that he called on his supporters to do so.

The source did not say he "personally" was going the cleanse Libyra house by house.

I provided quotes from sources for each of these statements to verify them on this page although you removed them. They are accurate statements. Col Gaddafi said the whole world looked up to Libya and that protests were "serving the devil". Are you saying that I should not put things in my own words? I reflected the sources accurately.

e.g.(from the BBC): "anti-government protests which he said had tarnished the image of the country." "Col Gaddafi said the whole world looked up to Libya and that protests were "serving the devil." (They tarnished the country and were thereby serving the devil.) "He blamed the unrest on "cowards and traitors" who were seeking to portray Libya as a place of chaos and to "humiliate" Libyans."

I would very much appreciate if you clarified these statements. If you are too overworked, tired, or for other reasons unable to deal with the sources of my article, I think you should just say that you are withdrawing from the review for those reasons.

Again, I am very sorry that I caused you so much trouble. I too am unhappy that a good story has be ruined and is not going to be published. Mattisse (talk) 15:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm willing to try to clarify. Understand, when communications are apparently breaking down, my visible posts tend to become very scarce, because I end up rejecting many drafts of them. Recently, I've been rejecting every post I tried to write to you, on any topic (even copyright versus extended quotes from other news outlets).

One misunderstanding may be at the root of most others. What I suspect: You may have run afoul of a sharp culture clash between the sort of news environment you are familiar with, and Wikinews. Necessarily a guess on my part. My reasoning:

• It seems as if you went into the article expecting review by an "editor" (but Wikinews uses that word to mean something else) who would either accept the article as-is, or send it back with a list of instructions. And you would then follow the instructions without demure even if they didn't make sense to you. However, a reviewer on Wikinews is a colleague: possibly more experienced, and certainly operating in the role of all-around quality-control enforcer, but feedback and often dialog is needed. For example, dialog concerning my comments evidently was needed at the time. As reviewer and the more experienced Wikinewsie, I should have realized at the time that you might not realize this.
• When it became clear that things were not going well, it seems perfectly natural (under this culture-clash hypothesis) that you would conclude the problem was due to an unreasonable "editor". Probably biased and ignorant, perhaps stupid, maybe just plain crazy.

--Pi zero (talk) 00:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding numbers of sources.

• If an article has been published with multiple copies of a single source (say, AP), that should not have happened. The duplicates should have been removed; and if that left the article with a single source, publishing it was a dire policy violation by the reviewer.
• In-depth articles are highly desirable. To maximize their chances of success, though, it helps to understand what motivates reviewers. Review is a massive undertaking; which of several articles will the (volunteer!) reviewer choose to devote time to?

• An article on an interesting topic does have an advantage. That was part of the reason I committed to your article; I really wanted to see it published.
• Realistically, if an article looks like it will take unusually much work to review, reviewers are more likely to figure they can do more with their time on some other article. Some authors don't realize that excess, unused sources are just making additional work for the review, so they just list everything they can find on the subject; I intended merely to give you a heads-up on this, in case there were any unused sources on your list (and yes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions).

--Pi zero (talk) 03:30, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. My above comment regarding duplicate sources may produce yet another miscommunication. Possibly you are speaking rather hyperbolically when describing sources as "carbon copies" or the like. If several sources each contains information used by the article that cannot be verified from the other sources, then none of those sources can be eliminated. --Pi zero (talk) 02:40, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Carbon copies refers to news sources that are obviously using the same syndicated article as a source, and therefore using multiple copies of articles from the same source, although published by different organizations, is not really introducing difference sources. Each article listed in my sources was an original article and introduced unique information. There were not "unused" articles listed in my sources.

Please see Voodoo sex ritual leaves woman dead, an article I mostly rewrote after it "passed" because the "passed" version made numerous factual errors, as well as POV statements that were the writer's opinion and not supported by the sources.

Regarding the use of the word "editor", an editor in my news organization is a fact checker (among other roles) in charge of quality control of an article I am writing. Here at Wikinews, the reviewer is like an "editor" in my venue, as the reviewer is not a colleague because that person's judgment can pass a faulty article and deep six an accurate article. The reviewer is more like an "editor" in my organization, who can say, "you do not have enough sources supporting this statement. You need another unbiased source. I will not allow this statement to be published in the article unless you find an additional source."

I realize you are well meaning, but I think there are some problems with the Wikinews review process. That is my honest opinion, even if it gets me banned or blocked or whatever. This is demonstrated by the "passing" of Voodoo sex ritual leaves woman dead where the reviewer obviously did not fact check the sources, allowing the article to contain major errors. Again, I realize that the problems in this article are not your fault. But it leads me to feel that if my article had been reviewed by another reviewer, its fate might have been different. Your suggestion (made somewhere) that more than one reviewer reveiw an article is a good one (if that was the meaning of your suggestion). It seems that reviewers have vastly different standards allowing for uneven criteria for what constitutes an article that deserves to be passed. Please take my remarks in the constructive spirit in which they were intended. They are not meant to refer to you personally. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 03:51, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

When the reviewer gives review the time it needs, the review process can work very well indeed. How to guarantee proper review has been a particular project of mine for quite some time; but in your case, the review process seems not to be working for you for some reason I'm not sure of. My theory above is that it's because you're treating the reviewer like a conventional editor, and that theory hangs together quite well, but there may be something more to it, somehow. (Why you imagined I didn't know what an editor does, is a puzzler. You seem to be simultaneously overestimating your own understanding of Wikinews, while underestimating mine.) --Pi zero (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Request for review

Can you please review my article, entitled Fire in Mumbai, India burns down Slumdog Millionaire actress' house; injures 21, leaves 2000 homeless? Thanks in advance --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 17:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Obviously, reviewers pick whatever they fancy, but surely before begging reviews somebody should be chasing up the three overdue articles? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 19:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Although I'm taking a bit of a look at that article, I'm not sure I have time-and-focus for a full review anyway, of it or anything else. I'm at least cleaning it up a little here and there, and perhaps I can leave a maybe-helpful comment or two on the talk page; those things might help make the article easier for any reviewer to fully review later, improving its chances.

Regarding the request, I was thinking of suggesting avoiding the phrase "thanks in advance". It has a better-than-average chance of sounding presumptuous, better-than-average of making the addressee feel pressured, and better-than-average of only making the addressee feel guilty (negative reinforcement) when for whatever reason they don't do (or don't succeed at) what was asked. --Pi zero (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful edits

Thanks for improving US military brig officials order whistle-blowing suspect to sleep naked. I greatly appreciate the effort you put into doing so. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 23:05, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It only needed a few tweaks here and there to pass review (so I could make the tweaks and still be sufficiently independent to publish). Thanks for writing such an article (on an interesting topic!) in the first place. --Pi zero (talk) 13:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Communication

I believe I've mentioned this a few times, but, this doesn't seem to address problem, which is how long/how difficult to get published. What you're saying is: our current output (and trends) justify our current process.

I believe I can understand how you might consider the first sentence blatantly false, as you may not agree with the original problem statement which was, to remind,

The review process as implemented on en.Wikinews is strangling the production and publication process, and more importantly is preventing growth of the community.

However, the second statement does not appear, to me, to be refutable based on the arguments you have presented. You have consistently argued in favour of the current process, modified only by the method of performing reviews. Could you explain to me how that sentence is false? I'm assuming there is some evidence I'm not aware of showing the current process is not limiting article production/community growth. - Amgine | t 16:53, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Some thoughts, all well meant.

• Last year on Wikibooks, I was involved in a big community discussion, and allowed someone to engage me in a one-on-one side discussion on my talk page. I got distracted, and the community decided without me. I'm not keen on side discussions anymore.
• In recent times, when I try to engage in rational discussion with you, it doesn't end well.
• Part of our difficulty may be that you debate, while I discuss. Simply put, I'm trying to get at truth, you're trying to win — on the theory of course that debate serves truth-getting, but in my experience the opposite is true, barring certain staged settings.
• Another part of our difficulty seems to be we just somehow consistently think differently. An illustration: I'm reasonably sure your question here is about my parenthetical comment "I consider your first two sentences blatantly false" — but you see, the two sentences I was talking about aren't the two sentences you're asking about. (This is me laughing at both of us.)

--Pi zero (talk) 03:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Thus my confusion. I should mention that several people have said the long discussion have led them to assume the status quo will remain in place. I tip my hat to your success. And your contribution trends. - Amgine | t 04:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Xe?

Hey, I noticed a couple users (yourself included) using "xe" and "xyr" in their sentences on talk pages. I cannot for the life of me figure out what it's supposed to represent. Enlighten me? Thanks. --Ashershow1_talk 18:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

wikt:xe : gender-neutral way to say he, him (xym), their (xyr), etc. Diego Grez ^{return fire} 18:41, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the accusative is usually xem; that's how I used it, anyway. --Pi zero (talk) 18:45, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah I see. How is it pronounced? Like xylophone? --Ashershow1_talk 18:48, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The only one of them that has an IPA pronunciation in Wikitionary is xe (zee, rhymes with see); I suppose xyr rhymes with seer, and xem rhymes with them. --Pi zero (talk) 19:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi!

Since our misunderstanding, I have published 13 articles without problems, of which you passed one. I would like to continue our arrangement (if it exists) that you refrain from reviewing my articles. If that is ok? I seem to do so much better with other reviewers, as they are explicit if there is a problem and I understand what they mean. Thanks for understanding this. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 01:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not comfortable promising, as it seems to me nobody gets to decide who will review xyr article. I can say, I'm not eager to repeat the misunderstanding; it was the first time since I've been at Wikinews I was tempted to resign. I treated the 'naked' article with tongs, against such a possibility, and the later, full-review part of that was only because an interesting story was approaching stale. --Pi zero (talk) 04:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Pro-life / individual rights

I've posted my reasons for changing individual rights to pro-life on Talk:Dying Canadian infant moved to U.S. hospital for medical treatment. I don't think it does specifically relate to abortion (pro-life campaigners are often opposed to euthanasia too), and two of the three groups are listed on Wikipedia as pro-life. It isn't a POV thing, it's just the most accurate name for those groups. "Individual rights" is what the Daily Mail says, but it's a really crap description. Everyone is for individual rights, so it's a fairly meaningless description. It doesn't inform the reader as to the general philosophical basis for these groups views. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Old discussion here, but "anti-abortion" is the NPoV term that I normally see used instead of the highly PoV phrase "pro-life". "Individual Rights" doesn't accurately describe the anti-abortion cause (whose rights? The mother's? Obviously not, since they want to remove the choice from the mother, and are therefore most definitely not for an individual's rights). And Tom Morris, not everyone is for individual rights;). A significant majority of people on all sides of the political, religious, and philosophical spectrum strongly believe that everyone should be forced to behave exactly as they behave, even if that impinges on an individual's freedom (or more appropriately, an individual's "right to maximum non-interference in their lives, subject to restrictions on their ability to interfere in the lives of others". Or, in other words, "live and let live".). Gopher65_talk 15:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Libyan Rebellion

Do you know why that is showing on Template:Lead article 4 when it shouldn't? --[[::User:Nascar1996|Nascar1996]] ([[::User talk:Nascar1996|talk]] • [[::Special:Contributions/Nascar1996|contribs]])

Is it still doing so now? (I just sighted the {{Banner}} edit and null-edited the main page, so all bets are off.) --Pi zero (talk) 01:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The main page doesn't have the pending changes tag, but the template above has a image on it that shouldn't be there. I would remove it, but I don't see anything. --[[::User:Nascar1996|Nascar1996]] ([[::User talk:Nascar1996|talk]] • [[::Special:Contributions/Nascar1996|contribs]]) 01:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what difficulty you're seeing. The image I see on the template, and the article, is File:Lolol, near Villa Esperanza.jpg, which is specified in the template by parameter "image=Lolol, near Villa Esperanza.jpg". --Pi zero (talk) 02:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Hum, that seems odd. Maybe I might need to purge the cache from now on. I did that several times though. --[[::User:Nascar1996|Nascar1996]] ([[::User talk:Nascar1996|talk]] • [[::Special:Contributions/Nascar1996|contribs]]) 02:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Anchor

By the way, <span id="foobar" /> works too. — μ 14:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Appreciated. Seems like using the template sometimes has an advantage in clarifying intent. Not in markup that's already a mess, though; e.g., I used id= in this. --Pi zero (talk) 14:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

links

OK. I think I finally got what you mean about linking with {{w| Thanks for putting up with me! Mattisse (talk) 00:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

comma in New York Times to start charging for access to web news

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Serial commas Perhaps a questionable case, as I intentionally left it out? Mattisse (talk) 00:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

In the particular case, I found the passage very difficult to parse without the comma.

In general, note you're referring to the WP:MOS. Wikinews is not Wikipedia. Granted, we do make a point of not getting into holy wars about things like serial commas, but imho we're more honest about it. I've long considered that particular section of WP:MOS intellectually dishonest, because it pretends to a symmetry of ambiguity between the two styles, rather than owning up to the purely political compromise. --Pi zero (talk) 02:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you make a correction in an archived article?

It has been pointed out to me [1] that there is an error in France first to recognise Libyan rebels as "legitimate representatives of the people": Miss labeled title should not read "the US Secretary of Hilary Rohdam Clinton" correct title is "the US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton".

I cannot fix it because it is archived. Hopefully you can. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 16:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Done (as you'll have observed). Glad to help. --Pi zero (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Recent 'drama'

I hope my recent contributions in an effort to defuse an unacceptable situation meet with your approval.

You may note the "post-mortem" item on a sub-page of Geoff's talk; your comments on that, subsectioned, would be most welcome.

Geoff starting on, what I felt was an attempt to lay groundwork for defence of later outbusts, isn't. A followup in the same form based on the actual version reviewed may reinforce that more-than-serious quality concerns existed; plus any remarks on xe's response to what I characterised as a "terse rejection"(see xyr talk).

Obviously I'd want my advice on WN:AAA considered, possibly given clear indication it meets with community consensus, and a strict interpretation and application of action suggested therein.

Would you concur? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Re defusing, I'm hardly in a position to criticize. My last effort to defuse such a situation resulted only in the end of a long-standing mutually-respected-colleague relationship between me and a prominent Wikipedian, and my de facto retirement from en.wp.

On procedural issues (both blocking and review), I'll take a close look as soon as I can. Due to real-world responsibilities, I expect to have approximately zero time on-wiki today. --Pi zero (talk) 13:59, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey Pi zero, just wanted to thank you for your additional changes to Nottingham Express Transit extensions get Government approval‎ that you made a few hours ago. It's only my second article here so I am still interested in what I can do to improve what I am writing, and will bear in mind the changes that you have made for all future articles. Kind regards, Goblin 10:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikinews standards of civility

Hey, I noticed you haven't commented on Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#Standards_of_civility this thread yet. I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have. Thanks. --Ashershow1_talk 12:34, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Think tank meeting

If you're interested, we're still having a meeting on IRC. You can access it here. —Mikemoral♪♫ 00:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

IRC was never realistically an option for me. Even if I had the energy left to learn the software after all the sniping on-wiki, I don't think in real-time; I'd probably fry my brain trying to keep up, and still never get a word in edgewise. It's a perfect way to prevent me from having any input. --Pi zero (talk) 01:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay then. Just so you know the next one will be on April 10 at 21:00 UTC. —Mikemoral♪♫ 01:54, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I found the basic IRC commands to be quite easy to master if you use the web interface. (Learning various commands as a channel founder or operator is a whole new world, but making simple comments just consists of typing something into a bar and pressing "enter".) Of course, not everyone likes to philosophise over every comment like you. :-) Tempodivalse [talk] 01:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I did too, and I am a technical dumbbell. I have ChatZilla on Firefox. And I finally figured out the few little things that are needed to use it. It was a nice chat. Pleasant and people were kind. It's true that to get a word in edgewise the conversation becomes somewhat disjointed, but good feelings were exchanged. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 00:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough

I deleted it right off the bat, cause as I just said to Fetchcomms, on a day like this, and with a story that looks that stupid, putting "happy april fools day everybody" in the edit summary is not a great way to get it kept. BarkingFish (talk) 02:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Heh. Yeah, I noticed that edit summary. More prosaic but safer would have been "Despite the unlikely topic, this is real". --Pi zero (talk) 03:02, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I am determined that nothing April Fools related is gonna get through today, so if edit summaries like that turn up, I'm gonna be on them like snot on a hankie :) BarkingFish (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Urrgh, please, no April Fool's jokes. It's hard enough for us to establish our credibility as a news source. Joke in userspace or something, if you must. Tempodivalse [talk] 03:06, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Cf. Talk:Florida woman addicted to eating furniture --Pi zero (talk) 03:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Polar bear Knut's death linked to encephalitis

I see that it was a big mistake to correct the article. The article correctly reflects the sources. The mistake template adds information not given in the sources. It is only because I followed up a readers comment and looked up more about rabies that I made the correction. Big Mistake! I'll never do that again. You should add to the correction notice that the information about rabies being a virus was not contained int the sources.

Therefore the "correction" contains additional information not contained in the sources. Isn't that revising the "snapshot of history"?

I'm going to stop reading reader's comments, for sure! Regards, Mattisse (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

The phrasing of the source is hard to untangle (as I found when I first studied it), but on still further study, yes, I agree it actually does include rabies in a list of things that are indirectly stated to be non-viral. (One may suspect the error arose because the source author, too, got tangled up in the source phrasing, but that's as may be.) We strive to word correction notices in a way that doesn't gratuitously ascribe others' mistakes to us; my originally proposed phrasing fell short in that regard.

Correction notices aren't part of the article, i.e., they aren't part of the snapshot. It's not generally to be expected that the information contained in a correction notice will be from the article's sources. --Pi zero (talk) 23:26, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Please point out which source clearly represents the source of rabies as viral? Mattisse (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Really looks like we should have a category for these guys. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I can get to that later today (my local time). Doable; 32 pages plus the article now queued. --Pi zero (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
• One other issue is the queued article is, er, "rather substantial". I'm concerned that this is really putting people off looking at reviewing it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:31, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Could we make sure we have the right name though? :-) — μ 19:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Not likely to make that mistake again. ;) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Done --Pi zero (talk) 03:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

My opinion

That was stupid. - Amgine | t 19:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

We just got through chastising Diego for bringing the word stupid to bear against another contributor. It's not constructive. --Pi zero (talk) 02:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

And your point would be? I find your action, after months of discussion regarding self-publish, ludicrously hidebound, an exemplar of being a slave to process without a clue as to what that process is intended to accomplish. It is, of course, my personal opinion. Make of it what you wish. - Amgine | t 03:04, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

My point was that your comment served no constructive purpose, while tending to corrode the community. --Pi zero (talk) 03:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Mmm, you may be correct. I apologize. I think your choice of actions was not constructive in light of the extensive discussions which have taken place, and exemplified poor judgment and lack of consideration. In a word, nearly exactly what I mean by the term stupid. However, I am fully cognizant of the pejorative connotations connected to that term and so I hasten to point out that I am merely expressing my opinion of your actions which seemed to me to be thoughtless and lacking conscious consideration of the situation. I would normally have expected a more nuanced response from a central participant in the discussions of current community opinions regarding review policy and practice, but I understand I have, perhaps, higher expectations than are reasonable.

I hope I have made myself sufficiently clear in my expression of a personal point of view. - Amgine | t 03:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems as if you're focusing too much on the form in this matter (i.e., the word stupid), and missing the spirit. --Pi zero (talk) 05:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Or, perhaps, you've completely missed my point of arguing over the process and not the action. <sighs> - Amgine | t 01:09, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

No, Amgine, I've simply been working very hard to avoid commenting on errors in your thinking about me. Nothing appears to have changed since I observed, some time back now, that you seem to misunderstand pretty much everything I say; in which case, trying to explain myself to you would be a waste of time and effort, likely resulting in a great deal of profitless unpleasantness.

The only thing in this thread I've considered so important that it was worth trying to overcome the communication barrier has been your approach to the thread. Unfortunately, the flaws in it seem obvious to me (making it difficult to know how to explain them), and clearly they aren't obvious to you. So I've been puzzling over how to clarify.

• You've been using hostile phrasing. Things said hostilely would be better said without conveying personal animosity. Often this can be accomplished largely by omitting some needless words.
• You've been saying it's your opinion that this that and the other are true. Which is difficult to distinguish from claiming not to have an open mind. Contrast that with my own habit of pointedly describing how things appear — which is both nonconfrontational and cautious, making it easier for all parties to consider the situation objectively. Note that some of the opinions you've been describing would make unlikely appearances, because, when cast in that form, they'd sound incautious.

--Pi zero (talk) 03:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

<undent>

Your actions are in contrast with your language usage. I prefer to write concisely, deliberately, writing in the positive form (or mood) and active voice. If you view vigorous writing as hostile, that would be your interpretation and not the words themselves. When I have parodied the ineffectuality of a passive, hedged, and carefully qualified conversational gambit, attempting to exemplify how it does nothing toward resolving the circumstance and therefore constitutes a waste of the writer's and reader's time, you have failed to understand the message.

But you have also failed to understand direct and blunt language. In my opinion you should stop slowing change; online communities survive best in flux, and fail as they become stable and fixed in form. While I hold no personal animus toward you, I admit I dread being asked to look at threads to which your signature is attached. - Amgine | t 15:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

You have, evidently, failed to understand either my actions or my language; your perception of contrast between the two is further evidence that you don't understand them.

Here is my assessment of you, based on observations to date. All subject to the usual disclaimers, which I won't repeat again and again as they'd make it longer and more opaque. I've doubts whether this will accomplish anything, but since you chose to articulate your assessment of me, I'll give it a try too. Please note that I in turn hold no personal animus toward you.

You do not perceive conceptual subtleties in the world (that's the best short description I've come up with; the technical terms would make things less clear, rather than more). It is, iirc, possible to be conditioned to mimic inability to perceive conceptual subtleties, though I see no actual evidence to support that hypothesis here. Actual inability to perceive conceptual subtleties is a property of the way one's mind works that does not change during adulthood. The individual goes through life unable to perceive a whole dimension, as it were, of the conceptual world around xem; and a significant segment of the population have this property, to varying degrees.

• It doesn't occur naturally to you there'd be a difference between understanding you and agreeing with you.
• You don't naturally see the difference between what will look like vigorous advocacy, and what will look like hostility.
• The difference doesn't naturally occur to you between saying something looks like x, and saying one thinks it is x.
• It doesn't occur naturally to you there'd be gradations and nuances to someone's attitudes toward different rules; if someone considers one rule important, your instinct is that xe's a slave to the rules, rather than, say, that xe has thought long and deeply about the relationships between various rules, the various principles underlying them, and the social dynamics and technical operation of the project.
• It doesn't occur naturally to you that "change is good" does not mean "any change is good".

This would imply your cognitive skills aren't well suited to understanding the subtleties of a complex system. So that you're not well equipped to gauge the difference between constructive and destructive change to the project. When someone advocates destructive change, they reduce other contributors' capacity to plan and implement constructive change. --Pi zero (talk) 17:07, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

{{w}} template

Would you object to not using the {{w}} template for links for which a local link will likely never exist (eg Nicola Roxon)? That template is extremely hard on the servers, so I'd suggest that it should only be used when there is a reasonable chance that a local portal will be created in the near to mid future. Excessive use of this template means that on a large article with 15 wikilinks (a reasonable average number for a large article, I suspect), we would using a minimum of 30 "if" statements per pageload. Once or twice per article for likely-to-be-created links is fine, but using it on every single wikipedia link seems like too much to me.

Side note: As I was writing this, I noticed that the template doesn't automatically redirect to categories in the event that a portal or hard category redirect doesn't exist, but a category does. That would be easy enough to fix though. Example: {{w|Currency_images}} should check to see if Currency_images exists, then it should check if Category:Currency_images exists, then it should redirect to Wikipedia. Another nested if statement should do the trick, though that will make the template even more resource intensive than it already is. Gopher65_talk 14:06, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

First, specifically: It's important that links like Nicola Roxon use {{w}}. {{w}} isn't primarily a tool for managing specific links; it's a tool for use on a vast scale in both time and space (mainspace, that is :-) to tame the entire, inhumanly vast pile of unlocalized links, undercategorized articles, and uncreated categories that, in a profound way, are preventing Wikinews from feeling like a project in its own right, rather than an annex of Wikipedia. Note that there is no reason to think Nicola Roxon won't become a category, at some point, if there is a proper infrastructure for managing such things, which is what {{w}} provides.

The issue of server load was discussed with Bawolff before creating the template.

Of all the problems of local-linking and categorization that I slowly studied over months of manually whittling away at our categorization shortfall, the number one problem I identified, that absolutely prevented feasibly eliminating, reducing, or even bounding the shortfall, was that creating categories required far more searching and individual edits to articles (and finicky edits, at that) than merely populating it. Populating it could be done with hotcat. But localizing links to it was the bigger problem, and without localizing links there'd be far less motive to create it in the first place.

Here's a taste of how {{w}} fixes the problem.

• When there is no mainspace redirect for the target, {{w}} not only links to Wikipedia (preserving secure server status similarly to wp's sec link auto), but also adds the page to a hidden category, making it possible to find possible candidates for category creation.
• When creating a new category, one populates it, then creates a mainspace redirect, causing {{w}} links to switch to it once it's worth linking from article text.
• At that point, the locally linking {{w}}s add their pages to a different hidden category. This other hidden category is a work order: check to see whether the page should belong to a category associated with the locally-linking {{w}}; if it should, check whether it does; and once any associated categorization has been taken care of, replace the {{w}} with a hard local link.

--Pi zero (talk) 16:21, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok. Gopher65_talk 21:24, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for taking care of all those "pending changes" on Indian activist begins "fast-unto-death" hunger strike to end corruption. When the article looks like the "pending changes" have been implemented, then more "pending changes" are added to adjust it. Couldn't it get out of control? Mattisse (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It could. Fortunately, it didn't; the other two edits didn't edit-conflict with rejecting the big one. Thanks for pointing out that the big change involved sources from after the date of publication. --Pi zero (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Advice needed

I find the hardest part of writing an article is generating the headline.

So far on my current article I have had three:

• Tampa Bay Ray's hitter Manny Ramirez retires after positive test for perforance-enhancing drug‎
• Champion baseball player Manny Ramirez retires after positive test for performance-enhancing drug
• MLB player Manny Ramirez retires after positive test for banned drug‎

However, I am still not happy. I hope I am not causing a mess with all these name changes. Do you have a good idea? Now I am inclined toward

• Tampa Bay Ray's Manny Ramirez retires after positive test for banned drug
• Manny Ramirez retires after testing positive for performance-enhancing drug

What do you think? (I should stop obsessing.) Mattisse (talk) 18:07, 9 April 2011 (UTC)‎

I recommend

Baseball player Manny Ramirez retires after testing positive for performance-enhancing drug

Identifying the sport seems important to orient the reader, "Champion" is a needless word, and "testing positive" is active. --Pi zero (talk) 18:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this user page an advert?

User talk:Drvanas12? Plus it has a promotional outside link. Thanks! Mattisse (talk) 11:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --Pi zero (talk) 11:47, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

what do you think?

Can you explain to me what this site is about? I don't understand what is going on. It doesn't seem like it's about writing and publishing articles but more the technical stuff. Yesterday no articles were reviewed. Is it that there are just no editors here? Or is there something I don't understand? 00:05, 16 April 2011 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Mattisse (talk • contribs)

Tempo reminds I'd left free out of the vision, below: our material is free forever, never to disappear behind a paywall. Okay, so, free neutral reliable citizen journalism. (Thanks, Tempo!) --Pi zero (talk) 11:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

There are two questions there, I think — what the site is about, and what's going on.

• Wikinews's idealistic vision, I'd say, is neutral reliable citizen journalism. How to bring that about is the trick, and that's where the technical stuff comes in. The basic site standards are made up of neutrality and accuracy (elements of the vision), copyright (legally necessary), and site style (which, at its essence, promotes neutrality, accuracy, and effective journalism, all elements of the vision). Volunteers submit candidate articles, authorized peer-reviewers (who are also volunteers, of course) peer-review them, and when a candidate article passes authorized peer review, it is published.
• What's going on.

Because the authorized reviewers are volunteers, there's no forcing anyone to peer-review any particular article, nor even to do any peer-review at all, certainly not on a specific schedule. We have few enough active reviewers that it's quite possible, through convergence of circumstances, for none of them to have much time to do peer-review on a given day.

There is (I've observed) a threshold of reviewer availability, below which our output drops precipitously. We've spent a lot of time over the past few months below that threshold (exquisitely painful for me, personally, because I'm the one who archives published articles after seven days, so I'm intensely aware when our output bottoms out). We've been over the threshold for the past month or so — but only barely over the threshold, and Blood Red Sandman (certainly one of our key contributors) is in the middle of a roughly-two-week wikibreak.

--Pi zero (talk) 01:28, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

(Sorry for chiming in here, but I thought I might have something of value to add.) The site is about creating professional news, free to reuse by anyone. I think that goal is noble and very worthwhile. What's "going on" is, simply put, that we don't have the manpower to function as well as we should. We had a slight boost about a month ago, but we weren't able to "ride" the wave and it crashed. I was hoping to use the writing contest to help stimulate things, but it hasn't worked. Like Pi zero says, there is a critical mass, below which articles go stale before they can be published. A lot has to do with newbie encouragement - user writes an article, if it's published, he's encouraged to write another one, but if it's failed due to staleness, he has less incentive. Others see his failure, and are disinclined to write further themselves because they know there's a fair chance their output will suffer the same fate. It's a vicious cycle, one that's awfully hard to get out of once it's started.

Ultimately though, I think our priorities are wrong. We're focussing on details like fancy templating/javascript but ignoring the bigger picture - namely, the embarrassingly low output of news. That's like the fable about an entomologist spending hours in a museum, noticing every detail of the tiniest insect, but never even seeing the elephant statue in the middle of the room. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:07, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Why would an entomologist care about an elephant? (I mean that in a serious fashion - Forcing volunteers to have priorities does not work. Its a wiki after all - Everyone does what they want to.). Bawolff ☺☻ 02:59, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

We aren't ignoring the bigger picture; though that comment may have been meant as hyperbole, it's worth debunking anyway. I don't think any of us are ignoring it; and personally, my primary focus ever since I first came to Wikinews (two and a half years; time flies) has been grokking the grand scheme of the project.

I traced our reviewing standards, above, directly back to what we're trying to accomplish because I was making the point that the review standards are actually quite solidly grounded in basic principles, rather than fussy details — even though there are some fussy details, which have bearing on the basics and, in any case, really aren't the problem. I didn't address the bigger picture of the problem because my comment was already getting so long, and it was arguably not part of what was asked. But here's some big picture. Put over-simply (glossing over "little details" like the learning curve for the site-specific notion of quality):

• Writing a high-quality article takes far more time-and-effort than writing a low-quality article, while peer-reviewing a low-quality article may take significantly more time-and-effort than peer-reviewing a high-quality one.
• The crossover point, where reviewing an article takes less time than writing it did, can actually be relatively high on the quality scale (depending on factors including the working speeds of writer and reviewer, which are quite variable between individuals).
• Wikis are very good at distributed tasks, but right now our review process is monolithic, not to mention a single point of failure in the process, both of which wikis are bad at.

I've had in mind for over a year, now, that we should find a way to turn the review process into an incremental one. After several frankly traumatic experiences here that caused a hiatus of a month or so in my pursuit of this idea, I've been moving back to it for the past week or so. The biggest difficulties in coordinating incremental fact/copyright checking seem to me to be edit conflicts and intervening edits by non-reviewers; there are several different approaches to those difficulties, which I'm chewing on now. No workable approach can use the second level of review, simply because it isn't feasible to get consensus for spending that on incremental review. --Pi zero (talk) 03:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Somehow I got the impression originally that the project needed more article writers. But now it seems that too many articles are written and it is a waste of time to write more. Mattisse (talk) 13:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Well-written, fresh articles is one of the ingredients to boost project output. Another is a sufficient pool of available labor by qualified independent reviewers.

Would you accept a nomination for reviewer? Having the bit doesn't require you to use it, after all; not only did I not start doing peer-reviews immediately when I got the bit, but it was a very long time before I felt ready to peer-review any OR review at all (I think my first OR review was a fail for not having detailed reporter's notes).

Note that in your first RFP, two of the "not yet" votes specifically mentioned one month in relation to a possible renomination — and that was somewhat over a month ago. --Pi zero (talk) 15:22, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

[2] This is why I will never accept a renomination for reviewer. Mattisse (talk) 22:07, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

At first I didn't follow your reasoning, but with some additional comments you've made, I think I see it now. Not using the bit doesn't allow one to escape the sense of responsibility that comes with it, and one gets sucked in. At least, for those of us whose minds work that way. --Pi zero (talk) 03:25, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Re:newbie help

Your comments at Alternative task for newcomers were responded to by an enthusiastic newbie, and the advice given him was to use IRC. So I am idling away as recommended on IRC. Perhaps it would help if wikinews did not encourage new editors to edit, as it seems like it is more of an inconvenience to the wikinews established editors than not. Mattisse (talk) 17:35, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The IRC advice was in response to a different aspect of xyr post — how to get to know the more established users. I wouldn't know whether that technique works, since I've gotten my impressions of folks on the project entirely on-wiki, slowly over a long period of time.

On my idea for a form, the ball is now in my court: if I want to see it happen, I'll presumably create it myself. Lack of comment on the idea from other established Wikinewsies could mean nobody noticed the suggestion, but more likely nobody had any comment xe wanted to make on it. Vague proposals don't usually produce much discussion. I chose to put it out there to let others know what I was thinking of, and give them an opportunity to comment if they did have any to offer. --Pi zero (talk) 18:10, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I noticed you joined IRC - that's you isn't it? At least they said "hi" to you! It would be a mistake for me to run for reviewer, I think. Mattisse (talk) 18:39, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

That's me, yes. The verification it's me is my wikimedia cloak, wikinews/pi-zero.

As someone who said no when first asked whether I'd accept a nom for admin, I'm not likely to push someone to accept a nom.

I imagine I warranted hi's from a couple of folks there because I've acquired some notoriety as a prominent Wikinewsie who has until very recently never used IRC. --Pi zero (talk) 19:34, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that!

In doing a ce of UK to ban export of lethal injection drugs to US it occurred to me that I might be changing it too close to the source, since I must have had the awkward wording for a reason! Your rewording was perfect. Mattisse (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Categories

Oops, I forgot to cat up that article before I published it. Thanks for catching that. Gopher65_talk 03:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

So your ready to hide the truth?!

Why did you banned the content of the school bus bombed?! You want people to don't know that the Palestinians are targeting children in their attacks on Israel? Go with that! I don't want to say this, but please don't act like an anti-semite!

Thank you --Moto53 (talk) 08:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

No judgment was made about the newsworthiness of the news event your article was about.

In order to be published on English Wikinews, an article must meet some basic standards, and its satisfaction of those standards must be rigorously confirmed by an authorized peer reviewer. Only then is it published. I left a note on your talk page, and tagged the article as under development, but unfortunately neither you nor anyone else attempted to improve the article. Eventually a notice was issued that the article appeared to be abandoned, and would be deleted unless work on it resumed. Work on it did not resume, and it was deleted. --Pi zero (talk) 12:51, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikiink2_

Here's the documentation. — μ 12:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --Pi zero (talk) 12:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

no accusations have been made?

Brien McNeil has make accusations against me [3] that are against policy, as I understand it. I understand he is powerful and editors are afraid, justifiably, to stand up to him. He has made it clear he can harm people of wiki and on.

So he cannot be accused for doing such a nasty and destructive act in the worst possible way? He is being accused, but you state he is not. Since he is not, another user is being driven away because no one is unwilling to take a stand. Or if they do they are reprimanded. So it continues.

The site is ruled by threats, with the "nice" editors supporting the threatener by either ignoring his misbehavior, or pouring tactful but useless honey in other places to smooth over any dissent so the ruler can get his way with minimal or no criticism, while he demeans others. Nothing will change.

I am also beginning to see the cliques and cabals (as the are called on Wikipedia) here. I clearly see why no substantive discussions take place on wiki about this project. Everyone tip toes around and I can see why. This project seems to be to belong to an off wiki group of editors that have been here a long time. All new blood is discouraged, as they do not want new editors. Brien McNeil has said so.

I used to see the "In the news" section on the Wikipedia main page as a joke, but now I see it is much more useful than wikinews.

My initial days of writing articles were joyful, but seeing the underside as it is, I now realize I wasted my time in trying to do my best.

Sincerely, Mattisse (talk) 17:56, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I was (clearly unsuccessfully) attempting humor (evidently it wasn't enough to put a smiley on it) with the parenthetical remark about "if anyone dared". Any of us will oppose Brian when we feel that's what's called for. He's got an abrupt manner and is (underneath the abruptness) often right, which perhaps looks to outsiders as if he's getting his way because of his manner, but that's not the case, and he certainly doesn't always get his way.

I honestly don't agree that accusations were made; I'd read the section you link to before, and as you've cited it here I've read it again. Brian was addressing the issue of trust, which is quite different.

Don't know where you got your impression about not wanting new editors, but it's not the case. --Pi zero (talk) 18:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• Brian said so emphatically to me and Tempodivalse. He said there were too much trouble, they were incapable of learning to that it was pointless to teach them, that cleaning up their articles took 4 hours plus in time and he had learned the hard way that it was useless. Then he dumped on Tempodivalse for saying that he found newbies could learn and it was worth trying to teach them. Mattisse (talk) 21:32, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Sample diff Mattisse (talk) 21:42, 19 April 2011

• I understand my comments at RfCU came off as abrasive, but I would have said the same even if someone else was insisting upon the request. I feel strongly about anything regarding checkuser. As much as possible, I try not to have ill will against brianmc; it actually seems to me there's more evidence of a "vendetta" the other way around. Why do you feel I'm actively "out to get him", so to speak? I suppose the point isn't relevant, but it's something I've been wondering about. I've been able to edit many other projects without ever having problems with users anywhere near this degree. Tempodivalse [talk] 19:28, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• Caps was uncalled for; and, you're encouraging Querulant behaviour (/me notes that's not on wiktionary). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:33, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• {{sofixit}} — μchip08 19:35, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

• How many times have you, in turn, used caps, or used far, far more hostile and disrespectful language towards me? Why have you not been chided and blamed in the same fashion? Your comments frequently incite drama, usually as much as or more than mine, yet you don't appear to care about it. Tempodivalse [talk] 19:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Shoot me again! 'Cos ah ain't dead!

I'm blunt. Undoubtedly. I've done questionable things, and said really nasty things. No citation needed. I have gone to great lengths to tone down my language, and to try and avoid conflict with you Tempo. However, every single attempt by yourself to intervene where a situation evolves and I'm involved is like pouring water on an oil fire. But, like an obsessive-compulsive with an itchy scab, you keep picking at it. I'd propose the following, take it or leave it, and I'm placing the onus on you here:

1. The whole CU debacle with Mattisse is removed; I doubt xe could successfully hide a sock in a laundrette.

Comment So it is you who think I have socks! How delightfully upfront you are. Well I don't. I have no socks. Any on wikipedia were blocked long ago. If you ever looked at the edits of my socks you would see that they were harmless, just a desire to edit without being stalked. I could explain more, but obviously you want to think I am a bad. Mattisse (talk) 21:59, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

1. You try to mentor this user - and acclimatise them with this project's 'weirdness'.
2. You, and other users below the age of consent refrain from speculating on what happens in a real office or newsroom. I read Private Eye regularly; moles in major UK newspapers, and at the BBC, detail far worse than goes on in IRC. My own 23-odd years of experience working in offices in eight different countries sees far worse sexism, abusive language, and 'die harder cynicism' than you can imagine.

A parting point might be that you try and explain to Mattisse my own "issues" with Wikipedia; they won't follow their own policies, I got admin taken off Jimbo here, and my current guestimate is that I've personally spent in excess of US1,000 providing resources and in my reporting work. (I've also been working 10+ hrs per day for nigh-on two weeks). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:23, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Mattisse has effectively left the project. I've already tried several times to re-interest the user in writing but she seems to be totally disenchanted with Wikinews; I don't think anything will work at this point.

Actually, I don't think I'm going to stick around this project too much longer either. The main goal of editing should be fun; without that, what's the point? Writing is unrewarding and any contributions go by disregarded and unappreciated. When I see almost every new user to this project burnout at rates far higher than any other WMF wiki, I think something's got to be wrong. This project does not have to be so "weird" that nobody wants to stay around.

Your self-acclaimed experience, frankly, isn't showing in your interactions with other users. Maybe someday you'll visit a country whose culture demands showing respect towards the individual. Then see how far your attitude of "everyone is stupid unless proven otherwise" will take you. Tempodivalse [talk] 21:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Schizo...

Thank you for this :) I completely forgot アンパロ ^{Io ti odio!} 00:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

adding categories

I can't figure out how to add more than one category at a time to an article. It worked once for me but that was it. How to do that? Thanks, Mattisse (talk) 21:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Before telling HotCat "Ok" on the first category you're adding, you start adding another one. That puts you in a multiple-changes mode of HotCat. A "save" button appears at the start of the list of categories, and you can just keep entering as many category changes as you like, until you click "save". (And when you do click "save", you're then in edit mode, so you then have to save the edits to make them go into effect.) --Pi zero (talk) 21:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. That explains it. Think I understand now. Mattisse (talk) 22:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Guantanamo

With regards to this, I respect your revert. I know I'm not the sole author anymore; and I overreacted when I saw it had been marked as stale and another POV tag had been slapped on it. I apologise. wackywace 18:06, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

No worries. :-) --Pi zero (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

US Federal Reserve Chairman gives first news conference

That pullquote is in the article text . Look at the very bottom. It is a quote by Bernanke. Nascar did no wrong.

"Unfortunately, the reason we use this vaguer terminology is we don’t know with certainty how quickly response will be required," he said.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, said of Bernanke's performance at the press conference, "He was well-prepared and did exactly what he wanted to do - do no harm."

I hope you don't remove it, as it really sums up the whole thing. Thanks, Mattisse (talk) 18:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It's fine. Nascar removed it from the text during review, missing the one detail among many in our practices that {{QuoteLeft}} is for pull-quotes; I restored it in the text; and Nascar sighted my restoration. --Pi zero (talk) 18:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. He's thinking of the other place, where the policy on pullquotes is the other way around. There it is for material not in the text (which makes more sense to me, but never mind!) Thanks for restoring it. Mattisse (talk) 18:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Can you fix a bunch of redirects I made a mess of?

Maybe some of them should be deleted? They have to do with my article title changes for Deadly tornadoes rip through southern US, killing close to 300, some to update and one was an out right typo. What a mess I made! I would list them here, but I can't trace them down. Sorry, Mattisse (talk) 23:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, they're now all fixed. You'll find [{Special:WhatLinksHere]] a useful tool (if you didn't already know about it! — μchip08 23:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I never thought of that. Thanks! Mattisse (talk) 23:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Pope John Paul II beatified

Could you please re-review the news, it's waiting since yesterday, Regards!!! --Esteban (talk) 10:43, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I've re-reviewed it. Sorry I didn't have time for a good copyedit; hopefully I'll have time to do that a little later. --Pi zero (talk) 12:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I just changed the phrase "the doctors..." and changed the source. Regards!!! --Esteban (talk) 20:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

could you fix?

Someone has vandalized Deadly tornadoes rip through southern US, killing over 300, adding obviously ridiculous information. Could you reverse the vandalism? Regards, Mattisse (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't around at the time; but I see DragonFire reverted it a few minutes later. --Pi zero (talk) 16:46, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought you were always around! Thanks anyway, I know you would have taken care of it. Mattisse (talk) 18:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

One confirmed dead after tornado hits Auckland, New Zealand

Thanks for that; I've never done this before and should probably have spent more time observing the done thing :) sonia 06:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations on your article! And my changes were technically simple exactly because, underneath the things I tweaked, the article was basically sound. --Pi zero (talk) 11:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I am soliciting your input please!

I am attempting a Dispute resolution at Wikinews:Dispute resolution/Brian McNeil and Mattisse and I am soliciting your input as to the problem. I urge you to give feedback. Soliciting input is the next step in the Dispute resolution process. Please do! I cannot contribute to the project until this is resolved. Your viewpoint is much appreciated. Regards, Mattisse (talk) 00:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Space Shuttle Endeavour launches for final time

I've moved this to the article talk page, and replied there. --Pi zero (talk) 20:37, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

US sources

"(on careful study of the sources, they say the *journey* was to Salem - one source mentions the train was headed for Portland)" - I think US sources would have explained the situation, as it is not complicated. Those from the UK and Australia are writing about something they are not clear about, which is why their newspapers contain so many errors about the US. Mattisse (talk) 22:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't want to bloat the article sources if it could be avoided. I had consulted an article by a Portland, Oregon TV station (I think it was the one everyone loves to cite for this story, though I seem to have misplaced that link now), which supported the interpretation that Salem was not the ultimate destination. --Pi zero (talk) 22:51, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the existing sources states she was hauled off at Salem. I didn't find one for the ultimate destination, but hadn't gone through all. The IP edits did correct the state for Salem, other problems with them made me, initially, reject that too; and, correct on source-checking. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:59, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The Coast Starlight, the train involved, operates from Los Angeles to Seattle. C628 (talk) 23:00, 24 May 2011 (UTC)