User talk:The bellman/1

If you're not using Firefox, you're not surfing the web, you're suffering it

Report into 2003/2004 New South Wales (Australia) hospital safety released

Um, are you aware of the misspelling in the title of this article? - Borofkin 02:59, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article has been moved, updating links - Amgine 22:05, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article names

Actually, Dan100 changed the article name. I was just cleaning up the last of the links to the old article name.

You can put any kind of a "Headline" on an article you would like, and link back to the article. For example, NSW Hospital Saftey Report Released: Bad Marks and Bloated Corpses! is just [[Report into 2003/2004 New South Wales (Australia) hospital safety released|NSW Hospital Saftey Report Released: Bad Marks and Bloated Corpses!]] This is called a "piped" (|) title. - Amgine 22:47, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Economy & Business

Thanks for your comments. For the moment i'll try and keep the stats up to date manually - I would'nt be able to create a script or anything as such myself, hopefully someone will eventually. I've several other ideas for the page, including commodity prices, 5 day stock market graphs etc. Hopefully over time the page will become better. CGorman 16:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• That would be great, whenever you get the chance, theres no rush. I'm focusing on trying to build up some decent business content at the moment - imagine some of the latest news articles are over 2 months old! CGorman 21:04, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ahem <raise eyebrow>

And how can I properly trout you if you aren't in IRC? Wb! - Amgine 04:43, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admin nomination

I removed the Q&A Dan100 added to the process as suspected m:instruction creep. I will replace your answers if you wish. -- Davodd | Talk 06:51, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to fail to respond to the reposted questions - Amgine 02:39, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'Questions for the candidate'

moved from Wikinews:Administrators -- Davodd | Talk 02:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

1. What admin chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with?

A. RC patrol (which ill be starting again in a couple of days anyway, when i manage to get gaim working so i can lurk on IRC).

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikinews, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

A. Nepal's King names new cabinet, cause it was wikinews' first featured article.

I didn't know we had featured articles... Dan100 (Talk) 01:34, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

well, what ever we want to call the main article on the front page, it was the first (due more to luck than anything else) The bellman 02:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

3. Do you have any particular plans if you gain adminship?

A. Write a better set of questions for potential admins...?

w:Mus musculus

There you go. - Amgine 03:24, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your text preview button (after content analysis) -> preview - Amgine 03:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Java IRC
• CGI IRC

Admin status granted

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

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information on Wikinews:Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun!--Eloquence 07:23, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! Now, since you have a mouse, and you're at uni, you should locate time to do some more editing! - Amgine 04:18, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, very sorry to hear your Uni is having difficulty with their Internet access! Especially so now that you've gained admin status (read, I have your mop and bucket here, and wish you were ready to clean up! <grin>) Perhaps you can use the enforced break to develop good study habits, which are far more valuable to you at this time. Or you can at least try to be patient... - Amgine 03:48, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Broken internet! Sux0rs! Well, we'll be here when they get it back. I'm sure Amgine will save you some articles. Pingswept 03:54, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

<chuckle> Well, if you will not be in IRC, then I must offer duties... [1] - Amgine 02:50, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let's scrap deletion requests

I'm proposing that we scrap deletion requests, and I'd appreciate your input! Dan100 (Talk) 11:36, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's a quote from Lincoln

In response to your question, "What has that got to do with being from the UK or not?"

The American President Lincoln once said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

Some commentators in American politics have taken to labeling it as an old trope that makes the rounds whenever it suits the political agendas of those who would further tighten laws for the "war on terror".

Anyways, the phrase seems apt when someone wants to take an otherwise virtuous concept, in this case NPOV, to its logical extreme, by not deleting any articles at all, which I believe would be suicidal for Wikinews. — DV 12:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews writing contest launched

Dear The bellman,

thanks for registering for the Wikinews writing contest! It now begins officially. Every day, I will try to make a tally of who has and who has not managed to fulfill their story/day requirements. If you do, however, believe I am missing something, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best of luck in the contest!--Eloquence 06:20, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Veja, FARC and PT:the general didn't tell the truth, says former Abin superior

I translated the article about Veja,PT and FARC as you asked. However I need some help in revision. Veja, FARC and PT:the general didn't tell the truth, says former Abin superior. The article needs some help and support, please help.--Carlosar 10:32, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Its

This is no big deal. CC'd from the user talk page for Chess legend avoids 10 year prison term:

The possessive form of "it" is "its":

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=its

The word "it's" is the contraction for "it is".

It's understandable to forget this rule, because the possessive form for other words uses an apostrophe.

Regards,

— DV 12:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An apostrophe here, and a comma there, and pretty soon you're talkin' some real punctuation. (<-- bad copyediting joke) — DV 13:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Welcommittee

Welcome to the Welcommittee! Nice to have another member. CGorman 15:26, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It scares me how on the ball you are. Anyway thankyou, ive already welcomed quite a few ppl, but didnt realise there was a committee The bellman 15:30, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Im always monitoring the recent changes page! The new front page is great - only thing is maybe a light thin line down the center seperating the lead article and lead 2&3 articles might look more professional. Ignore Paulrevere... he's an extremist - just try and keep him calm, but don't let him bully you. CGorman 15:40, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

custom signatures

To get my signature, I went to preferences. Then, for the signature, I entered:

-- [[User:Davodd|Davodd]] | [[User_talk:Davodd|Talk]]

into the field.

Then I clicked to select the "RAW" signatures box under it before saving ther changes.
Presto - custom sig that looks like this --> -- Davodd | Talk 19:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Photo of Bishkek

Hi The Bellman,

I hope you don't mind I added the photo of the Forbidden City for the Beijing-related article that is topmost in Latest news, instead of the Bishkek photo, which is already in the upper-right hand corner as the second lead. (Good article by the way.) — DV 14:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Coolies, its 2moro over here so i was too tired to bother looking for a forbidden city photo. Thanks for doing the foot work for me. ~The bellman | Smile 14:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lowry report

I read the article history of your story and note the problems you appeared to have at the beginning of the story with your browser. I too, am having problems, but ours may be totally unrelated.

I found it extremely frustrating to spend time on an edit, and then when I attempted to save it, my browser locked up and closed down... losing all the work of the edit in the process. I have taken to 'saving' a copy of my "save" before 'saving'! I browse with MSN9 Explorer, not Firefox.

But the real reason I write, I changed your use of the Italic text for a Lowry report title to simple "quotes". I do not profess to be an expert on punctuation. All I know is what looks right. You may find useful the Wikinews:StyleGuide should you wish to take me to task.

Also, I note your use of the word "that" in articles. I doubt the link above, which admittedly I only once scanned, will answer the issue of THAT. But trust me, serious writers will not use the that word lightly since it is so easy to slip into a story unnecessarily. I suggest a book on grammer if you chose to find an authoritative source on the subject.

Glad to read your articles!-edw 03:40, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Bellman: I dwelled a bit on this message I left for you yesterday and return here now to add more so that you may better understand me.

Fifteen years ago, I am 45 now, I read the famous book "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by author Ernest Hemmingway. [<- I still think that's a beautiful title] The book had such an impact on me that I read more of his works and articles written about him. When my interest in him finally lapsed, the lasting impression it left on me was a rememberance of reading of him that his total writing output for a day was around 600 words. He was very dedicated to using only words necessary to complete his thought.

In reporting on the news, we do not have the luxery of taking too much time to write. It would be old news by the time it got written! But my point is: unnecessary usage of the word "that" places a burden on the reader. The reader must spend time digesting a word that makes no contribution to the idea being conveyed.

Best Regards... -edw 14:22, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback

Thanks for your feedback on my talk page on the article New Zealand praised by NATO Secretary General. I found your remarks concerning "Mr/Mr." conventions to be helpful and informative, and will follow this advice in the future here at Wikinews. Any other feedback you may choose to offer will also be appreciated.

DouglasGreen

That time of the year again

This is a form letter that I am putting on the talk page of every admin: As you may know, we are approaching April 1. In many cultures, this is a time for pranksters to pull w:April Fools jokes on others. Because of the ease of editing, wiki projects tend to fall prey to these types of pranks rather easily. Let this be a reminder to us all to keep a special lookout for hoaxes, rampant fiction and other random acts of content vandalism between now and April 2. Good luck, and hopefully not too much damage will be done. -- Davodd | Talk 07:03, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pope

NB: Im giving this message to the 10 or so people I suspect may be on Wikinews when the event occurs.

I've created a story announcing the Popes death - when the Vatican or BBC/Reuters announce he is actually dead please insert the date & time and publish - we will be the 1st news group to break this story (besides our source)! The story is located here User:CGorman/Sandbox. Whilst waiting please improve the story. → CGorman (Talk) 22:48, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews:Story preparation

Seeing how well preparations have gone for the Pope story, i've created Wikinews:Story preparation. Instead of users preparing stories on their own computers and saving them on their own hard drives, they can place them here to allow other writers to add to them before the event. This will help eliminate duel coverage of the same story - Teeks99 had spent some time yesterday evening writing a Pope story - but did'nt load it onto wikinews resulting in his version being made redundent. Hopefully by allowing users to collaborate on a story from an earlier date, our article quality will be dramatically improved. → CGorman (Talk) 15:10, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If I can help you

bellman, don't hesitate to ring my user page. I really enjoy working with images and have every possible image toy on the market. Thank you for the compliment on the old Senate shot. Wasn't that a GAS!! --HiFlyer 16:31, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Invitation to mediate

I'm inviting you to mediate in the dispute DV has with me. AFAIK I've had very little to do with you on the site, so I imagine you will be quite neutral. It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but there you go.

If you are prepared to help, get in contact and we can work out what the next step in such a situation is. Dan100 (Talk) 09:03, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

w:Wikipedia:Mediation will probably be of some use if you do take up my invitation.

I should point out that there does not seem to be one single clear dispute (eg over a single article or policy etc), and I have no dispute with David, but I feel that the issues he has with me need working through and bringing to some sort of conclusion so we can both move forwards. Dan100 (Talk) 10:13, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Chillis

Ah, perhaps I should have made my submission for your "Rules" section more explicit.

I was referring to the idea that, "carefully looking at one's chili before one eats it is a good rule of thumb", in a perhaps obscure reference to my recent work on the Wendy's chili incident. If you're not familiar with the stories I submitted on that subject, I won't subject you to the painful details.

I kind of regret writing that series of stories as it has rather turned me off from eating out at fast food restaurants.

Sorry I wasn't more clear, but your invitation to "feel free to add more rules" was too good to pass up. — DV 12:13, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mediation

Thank you for your kind offer to mediate the issues Dan100 and I have been working through here on the site.

The core issue I have with Dan100 is his selective use of collaboration, depending upon either the contributor or the subject of a news story.

I am really not blameless, so I should hardly be throwing stones on the subject of collaboration. But my learning experience illustrates the value of collaboration in a way that mere abstractions cannot. I have had issues of my own collaborating with some of the more flamboyant contributors, such as Paulrevere2005, but I quickly mended my ways and have strived to work with them, despite my personal wish for a more careful and deliberate reporting style.

The result has been rewarding.

My new attitude has had such a positive effect that Paulrevere2005 even endorsed your nomination of me for Administrator. Despite some of our initial differences, I've also made the effort to work with Alan J. Franklin on his story submissions, and the result is that we have a cordial working relationship at this point.

In stark contrast, Dan100 seems to selectively have little interest in news which doesn't personally affect him, to the point of wanting to delete a news article submitted by contributor Alan J. Franklin, amazingly on the innocuous subject of daylight savings time. This was really beyond the pale, because he didn't lift a finger to try and improve the article. He simply tagged it with a Deletion request and went on his merry way. He did the same with the Flora article so this is part of a continuing pattern of behavior.

I laid out the other issues I have with Dan100's lack of collaboration on policy and and guideline changes, despite repeated requests to build consensus, and the large number of edits he has made without a comment in the edit summary.

Unfortunately, it appears we really must set up a mediation page where this material can be laid out bare for an objective analysis, because Dan100 has disingenuously insisted that I have not presented any evidence for these issues.

Specifically, it seems that Dan100 would like a section on the mediation page with links to entries in his user history showing the specific edits that illustrate his lack of collaboration. I find it somewhat distasteful to troll through his 2,000+ edit history, but he has basically called me a liar to my face, insisting that I have presented no evidence, so perhaps links to edits in Dan100's history is the only way?

If Dan100 would simply admit that he could do a better job of collaborating with all of his fellow editors, first build a consensus for important policy and guideline changes, and show some signs of improvement, I would happily drop this matter entirely.

To date, Dan100 has rebuffed my constructive suggestions for how to improve, as if it was only my opinion. Dan100 has also rebuffed Davodd's concerns in the past, so it's not just me. Even cool-headed Ilya was moved to withdraw his support of Dan100's administrator nomination after it became clear that there were issues between Dan100 and the community.

I apologize that this mediation is taking time away from writing news, but the "wiki spirit" is just as important.

Please let me know when you have a Mediation page set up, and I will be at your service to begin the mediation process.

I appreciate that you are volunteering to try and help.

Regards,

— DV 12:13, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for setting up the dispute resolution page. I'll start gathering material for the "Statement by DV" section for submission later on today. — DV 13:55, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful advice, The bellman. I replied to your comments on the Dispute resolution page. Thanks again for taking time away from the news for this matter. — DV 06:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

About Dan100

I have no argument with Dan100 and he owes me nothing. But thank you very much for the inquiry, The bellman. I appreciate any effort at mediation and cooperation and will do my best to offer the same to my associates. --HiFlyer 15:35, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Info for Baxter photos?

Bellman,

Can you provide more info for the Baxter photos you've added into commons? It says 'public domain'. Do we need to attribute someone? There is no other info. eg [2] used as File:BaxterGate.jpg in Protesters arrive at Baxter detention centre in Australian desert.

I read a note of yours somewhere explaining some images came from indymedia and had been approved by their owners. Are these images from the same batch? To ensure they don't get deleted at some point by vigorous Commons admins, it would be nice to add a little explanatory history note to them.

Simeon 12:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Australian Current Events

I just created a Australian Current Events page and figured I would tell someone from Australia. You were the first on the list. congrats, mate. 132.159.147.99 16:21, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories

This message is being given to several people, so please forgive the formality.

I've created a list of categories that must be included in ALL articles to ensure the DPL system works correctly. Adding the revlevent categories from this list will ensure complete site-wide relevent article listing. It is located at User:CGorman/Categories and you can easily cut & paste out of it. I urge frequent writers to bookmark this page to help save themselves time with categorization. Thanks for your attention. → CGorman (Talk) 19:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do as Jesus would have done ;)

Yes im very trigger happy - i only realised afterwards. You see, when i come to wikinews i start at the bottom of the recent changes page and work upwards. → CGorman (Talk) 11:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Country of the Week

Hey, i've changed the format and rules of Wikinews:Country of the Week a little bit to make the whole process more welcoming and indeed simple. Hope you find it so.

Don't forget that Norway is the current country of the week, we've 3 stories so far. → CGorman (Talk) 20:01, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Simeon's changes

As you have probably noticed, Simeon is intent on competely re-writing almost all the Wikinews namespace articles. I object to this on a number of fronts: there's no consensus for such changes, the pages have existed as they were for a long time which I believe is a sign the community accepts them as they are; the existing pages have all been carefully written and constructed by several editors to be the best they can be; and Simeon's changes are to make them grossly longer and harder to read. And I must be honest - a couple of the pages were written by me. I obviously don't mind people altering them, but I do object to them being destroyed. Dan100 (Talk) 08:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Country of the Week

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

oil graphs

Thanks for edits, those are oil graphs showing the oil price problemPaulrevere2005 11:57, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Letter to the editor

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

To do:

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

Sir -

(your text),

(Your name)

(your town and country)

(space)

(Your postal address)

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

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

Country of the Week

Hey, I just had a quick question. You changed all the wikilinks on the Bhutan/IT article to links to the categories here. Is that a new convention since I was last really active? I normally use the wikilinks as a way to expand to more information, which is useful to readers, especially when some countries may not have categories yet. Just wondering - I don't particulary care, but I personally think the link to a wikipedia article is a bit more useful. Lyellin 03:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Australasia + Melanesia + Micronesia + Polynesia = Oceania

A (very) quick look at Wikipedia indicates that Australasia is a sub region of Oceania (wow an Irish fella given an Aussia a geo lesson on Australia!). When Wikinews was set up, someone (not me!) decided to create categories for virtually all countries, regions and islands by copying Wikipedias geographical cats system. Looking back this seems to have been a mistake as it has resulted in hundreds of empty cats... never the less its probably best to keep Australasia and its like for the time being because as we grow im sure we will find a use for it. (hope you understood all that)

Taking Name2 as the catagory you wish to create you add Catagory:Name2 (without the spaces) to the bottom of the relevent page (i.e. a story relating to Name2), then to make this catagory a sub catagory of an existing catagory you follow the red link to Catagory:Name2 and add Catagory:Name1 to the page. Might sound confusing, but in practice it is'nt; try it out a couple of times. If you fuck up just delete your mess; your an admin ain't you. → CGorman (Talk) 15:52, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

You are a gentleman and a scholar

I wasn't sure if it would seem redundant with the link, but I see your point for North Carolina - I couldn't even find a map of the US to show where it was.

However, could we use our judgment for cities which are famous around the world? For example, even on the backroads of China, I have found that everyone knows where Las Vegas is, so I'm comfortable with a guideline of linking the first instance of that location to our Category page, with a link label containing the name of the city. I think this guideline should apply to other first-tier cities such as Beijing, Paris, New York, and London as well. What do you think?

I'll be sure to note the country for all second-tier cities and less notable states in the future, but I don't want to patronize the reader by pointing out the country for locations that almost anyone would recognize.

Looking forward, believe it or not, there is a third finger story brewing - a gentleman in Ohio found a slice of finger in his sandwich, so I'm scanning for tips on three different finger stories at the moment. Perhaps we need a "finger-lickin' good" category? — DV 12:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

<eyebrow>

<blush> I was in a hurry, and looking for a segué. Will try to recast... (in light of morning and all that) - Amgine/^talk 12:52, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Back?

Is this your triumphant return to Wikinews? We need you! - Borofkin 04:56, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

East Timor

The article is fine exempt for one thing - sources. Both sources are ABC - as a rule o thumb all articles published on the main page most have at least 3 different sources (unless its original reporting). I've added two more, BBC and Reuters, so the article is fine now. I've also created the East Timor Cat and added it to Wikinews:Article distribution. Oh, and welcome back! → CGorman (Talk) 11:52, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Im quick

The CSO report is the articles first source! → CGorman (Talk) 12:32, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Can you take a look

at this please, and perhaps make some comments? I appealed for comments on the same issue a few weeks back but only recieved a limited response :-( Dan100 (Talk) 17:38, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

RSS and DPL

It's a Blogger blog, and I use their 'BlogThis' bookmarklet. I open the page I want to feed, click BT - which automatically links the title of the page as the content of the post - and then click publish.

My procedure each time I do an update is to look at the feed myself to see where I last got to, then just start opening every story since then and blog it turn (using my own 'main page', basically just the Latest news template with an external refresh link). Due to this, I at least 'see' every story on the site, which why you'll often see me adjusting date formatting etc - I see them all!

I do this at least once a day, but quite often more frequently.

The problem with DPLs is that it scrambles the order of stories. So when I come back, I find it very hard it hard to see what's new as they're all mixed up. It would be hard to even find where I'd last got to, let alone work out which stories are new, and which are already-blogged ones that have been edited since I last checked, and have floated up on the list.

There's two ways this could be side-stepped: I could wait until the next day to do an update, by which point we'd be on a new day and I could do the last day in one go safe in the knowledge nothing new is going to be added. That, of course, would add quite a delay to the RSS feed being updated from the time a story is published, which wouldn't be great as we often quite behind the news of the world anyway.

The second would be to change the colour of the visited links into something I can see. I honestly did not know visited links are a different colour - I'm slightly colourblind, have difficulty distinguishing colours of similar shades. I did try editing my monobook.css to make visited links something easy to see (eg black!), but couldn't get it to work. But even if someone else did manage it, it would be a bit of a bummer for me - I'd have to blog stories the first time I open them, else the effect is lost. I often like to edit stories before I put them on the RSS.

I must say though, I've always held back this argument about the RSS back in discussions about DPLs on the main page on the previous occasions it's been discussed. I honestly believe the bigger problem is that everyone visiting the will experience the same problem. Yes, only about 10% of people are colourblind but we should bot be neglecting them, and even for the ones who can see the visited links it's still not very good - not everyone reads every story, for example, and anyway how many news sites list their latest stories by the colour of the link, instead of their order in the list?! It's just too "non-standard".

Yeah, this issue also applies to our region/topic sub-pages. However the use of DPLs was the result of considering the costs and the benefits. We trialled it for a month or so on South America before I rolled it out across the rest. We came to the conclusion that sub-pages that didn't always list stories in the right order was better than ones that didn't list new stories at all! Only a very few of the sub-pages were being updated manually, and even then it was sporadic. (I'd like to point out though that I did consult with the people who were doing this before DPL'ing the pages they were looking after - I only installed DPLs with their permission.)

I believe the only solution to this problem is to get DPLs to list stories by the time the category was added. We basically need to be very nice to the likes of Ilya, Amgine, and Eloquence, who I'm sure could get it going. Then we'd need to get approval from Brion - he's not going to run anything on the site he doesn't trust, quite rightly!

Phew, sorry for the essay, I hope you find it insightful! Dan100 (Talk) 09:06, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS The RSS has always shown strong growth. It's now up to 1,200 readers - we gain about 100 readers every ten days. I think why the RSS is growing better than our Alexa traffic rank could be connected - people come and sign up to the RSS, then don't return to the site!

However, having written all that, looking at the water cooler the issue seems to have died down for a bit, and I'd rather let sleeping dogs lie for now. I hope it was vaguely interesting anyway! It was good to write down my reasoning in a comprehensive manner, and could be useful for future reference! Dan100 (Talk) 10:10, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

RSS 2

After that, I'm starting a new section! Easier to deal with.

First - Amgine is a bloke :-). Second - the built-in RSS feed. There's two problems with it, one major, the second show-stopper. The first is that it lists articles by time of last edit, like DPLs, so if someone edits an article from three months ago it's suddenly "latest news"... hmmm. (It did sort by time category addition briefly, but then didn't... I mailed the guy who wrote it and apparently that was the 'broken' version - he'd been paid by some company running MediaWiki to write it.) The big problem though is that the extension doesn't work at all with MediaWiki 1.5, which is going to be installed imminently. So unless someone re-writes the whole thing from scratch to work with 1.5, it's going to die. (There's some other small bugs with it too, like the 'author' field.)

If it did work properly, then yeah, I'd let it replace my feed - happily in fact. I'd probably like to see us keep the Feedburner address for it though - it wouldn't be too clever to ask 1,200+ people to change address. Dan100 (Talk) 13:19, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An invitation

I'm attempting to start up a new edition of Wikinews, one with a simpler user contributions system at m:Wikinews/Start a new edition#Open English. The goals of this project would be to simplify the process of submitting articles such that anyone with no knowledge of the Mediawiki software or the Wikimedia projects culture can easily understand and submit an article, and immediately see it on the main page developing articles section.

If you would be interested in supporting this project I would be pleased if you would sign up at the Meta page.

Future talk 2

Hello, I would like to invite you to attend our second future talk, it will be held on Monday, August 1 at 21:00 UTC. It will be held on the Wikinews IRC channel #wikinews For more information please see the page on meta The main topics will be audio Wikinews, WNN and portals/neighborhoods It would be great if you will be able to attend. --Cspurrier 15:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)