User talk:Yngvadottir

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Hi

Hello, and thanks for cleaning up some bits and pieces I'd missed on Adrianne's obituary. Although I don't recall ever speaking directly to her, I knew who she was and of the work she did (which is telling as to the extent of her legacy, as I rarely head off this project any more). BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Paywalled sources

Re Gunman kills at least four in shooting in Rancho Tehama, California; Los Angeles Times is a pay-walled source. Though I can access the content using a VPN, I would advice not using LA Times, or any other paywalled sources since reviewers should be able to access every source for verification.
•–• 16:08, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: I think you should raise this concern centrally and seek a policy ruling; or are you saying there is a policy or guideline that I'm unaware of? (I've barely dipped my toe in here.) So far as my own feeling goes, for what little it's worth, I find the increased paywalling of newspapers very troubling, but I've observed that many provide a certain number of views per month (I think this is what happened with the LA Times in my case) and that some have a different policy for people accessing their site from within their country and from elsewhere. Taken together, those increase the likelihood that someone won't be able to see any given source, so it strikes me as functionally almost impossible to sidestep the problem. Beyond that, I think readers being able to verify or read more if they choose is more important than accessibility to reviewers, who presumably have unusual resources in this respect, even if it's just savvy about things like using a VPN ... and who can always require further sourcing if they are unable to verify the article. (I imagine this also comes up when what's online changes. The article I used for my update was one of those "Here's the latest, updated as we learn more" rolling things.) Anyway, I am probably talking out of huge ignorance. Let me know if there is a rule or guideline, please! Yngvadottir (talk) 16:24, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Fwiw:

• The LA Times source for that article is not paywalled for me, even now.
• We have an explicit policy against using paywalled sources; however, that only applies to the time the article is reviewed, and generally we only notice whether it is paywalled for the reviewer at that time. Commercial news orgs often later paywall their articles, in contrast to Wikinews where our archives are permanently freely available. Commercial news orgs also seem to sometimes play games where they paywall articles for readers in some parts of the world but not others, so that someone in one part of the world might have no problem accessing for review while a reviewer elsewhere might perfectly reasonably not-ready the article because the source is paywalled.

--Pi zero (talk) 16:43, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah ok, that makes sense. In practice, since I don't subscribe to any news sources, that means that if I continue working here, if I can see it I can use it, although I should be prepared for a reviewer to suddenly say they can't see it and require me to find another source. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:48, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Some of the news orgs would let people share the links on social media, and after a few hours, when there are enough number of shares, it will be paywalled. It is better to be on the safer side, and minimise the usage of paywall sources -- use them only when you can't find other sources which mentions the fact(s) you want to include. @Pi zero: I have a habit of source-checking those articles I haven't written or reviewed. This week, I was unable to spend much time on Wikinews, but still, it was something we need to tell others.
•–• 17:02, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Some news sites are more likely to be paywalled; Wall Street Journal, for example. I don't remember the last time I saw an unpaywalled article in The Australian. The rule about if-I-can-see-it-I-might-as-well-use-it should work reasonably well provided you aren't accessing the internet from a university or other institution that may have a group subscription to various information sources. --Pi zero (talk) 20:37, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Charles Manson, serving nine life sentences for 1969 murders, dies aged 83

Published. Review comments; detailed history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for passing it. I saw your review comments going by and was aghast you found that much copying/close paraphrasing. The only thing I can say in my defence is that I didn't expect updating/specifying "blacks" to "African Americans" to be a problem, and saw that as a major change. I can only say if I continue writing here I'll try to do better; I am not actually copying except for names, I must be retaining too much of the phrasing in my mind as I try to be accurate. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:53, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, unconscious copying happens. That's one of the reasons we recommend reading all the sources before beginning to write; but of course that isn't a sure preventative either. Fwiw, when I've written synthesis (not that I've had time to do so lately), I took private notes where I'd collect extensive verbatim quotes from sources, organized by theme, then I'd devise an outline for my article to fit together the themes I want to include, and for each theme I'd have just what all the sources say about it at my fingertips and could generally find a way to thoroughly blend the information, producing text that didn't resemble the sources. --Pi zero (talk) 00:24, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe resigns presidency after military coup, threat of impeachment

There is an update to this story. DW; Associated Press. Are you going to write about it?
•–• 09:48, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you; I'm not at all sure how that's done within Wikinews' framework. If it needs to be a separate story, then no. I've been using my work "weekend" and that's over for this week. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:00, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

the focus is entirely new. So it has to be as a new article. Moreover, your article was published yesterday. And this incident happened today. A published article can not have sources published after the Wikinews article was published.
103.6.156.41 (talk) 14:15, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I thought. So I'll have to leave that for someone else to write up. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:32, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

England: Baby born with heart outside body operated on

Hi. I chose this, out of the various articles requesting review, because it interested me; however, there was some difficulty about the focus, which I tried my best to explain in my review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 04:41, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

United States: Amtrak train derails near Olympia, Washington

Hi, I think this article cannot remain too long under the "development" state. After the template "review" has been placed instead, the article still needs to be reviewed by one of the few authorized persons here, and even then it will still be removed if it's still found "stale". So in that case you will still have done all your work in vain, after all. De Wikischim (talk) 21:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the etiquette is concerning collaboration here on WikiNews. I was intending to start it as soon as there was a number of fatalities and then saw that Ottawahitech (t · c · b) had already started it. I noticed you and someone else expanding it but that it had not been put up for review, so I decided to work on it and put it up for review. I think my next edit, using a source I had lined up yesterday, will be the last before I go ahead and ask for review. I hope none of you will feel I'm elbowing you aside (and I appreciate whoever just fixed a typo I'd made, whether that was you or someone else), but I'd like to see this one make it to the main page. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

In fact, there are several reasons why collaboration of writers on a particular en.wn article doesn't usually work very well, though they can somethings muddle through.

• If an article has contributions from several people mixed into it, the reviewer has to treat it as at least as untrustworthy as the least trustworthy of the several writers involved. Speaking as a reviewer, it's much harder to review an article by an unknown than by an experienced writer with a known earned reputation; and potentially even harder than that when one can't even expect consistency of authorship between different parts of the article, so that nothing about one passage gives any insight into how other passages are written — so reviewing collaboratively written articles can be, at its worse, very grim indeed.
• On the flip side, it's very difficult for a particular relative-newcomer to accumulate positive reputation by participating in collaborative writing, since a reviewer can't easily sort out what they did from what others did.
• Coordination between collaborating writers can be very awkward. It is (so I've been given to understand) usual in professional journalism, when multiple writers contribute to an article, for one writer to be responsible for the article as a whole, polishing it for smooth flow and consistent style.

Veteran Wikinewsies don't usually collaborate on writing. --Pi zero (talk) 04:49, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, my edit button disappeared (temporarily, I hope). Anyway, thank you Yngvadottir, De Wikischim and User:LIVE NIEUWS for writing this article from scratch and taking care of the Review. If this article is published (I doubt it) we will have to see who gets credit for it since competition between editors is encouraged rather than collaboration (I think?). Ottawahitech (talk) 14:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: The notices mechanism on the wiki platform has a pitfall, iirc, that when you look at a diff, that's an old page so if you then edit it directly you can accidentally wipe out things that have been said since the comment you're responding to. I wrote a fairly lengthy remark here a little while back, on the subject of what can go wrong with collaborative news articles, and you wiped it out when you added your comment, above. Anyway, no we don't "encourage competition"; veteran Wikinewsies are very team-oriented. It's just that individual articles tend — most often, with exceptions — to be written by a single reporter, for various practical reasons. --Pi zero (talk) 14:09, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech:: thanks but I do not want to have any special credits or so. Anyway I think you're 100% right that collaboration on this project is not encouraged, unfortunately. De Wikischim (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak for you two, but I've apparently been making one mistake after another. I waited too long to write up the North Korean ICBM (although I still wish that one could have at least been fully reviewed), and I held off on the derailment after seeing it had already been started. I hadn't realized it was an unreferenced stub; I should have gone ahead and written it as I'd intended to do and made clear in my edit summary that it was all my own work. Better yet, I should have started it when it was still chaotic with no number of fatalities declared. Ottawahitech, I think we've learned from that article that if one starts an article, one should go ahead and finish it and put it up for review, because the review system makes collaboratively written articles daunting for the reviewers. When I last looked it was the only article waiting to be reviewed; I still have hopes it will be reviewed and published, but I seem to be messing up an awful lot here on WikiNews. I hope I ddidn't reduce its chances by finally jumping in myself, but since it hadn't been put up for review and I was then into my "weekend", I finally couldn't help it. ... Let's the three of us suggest topics to each other when we see something that would make a good WikiNews article, but don't have time to write it up quickly. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:56, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Speaking as a reviewer, I tend to think of you as having a good attitude and moving briskly along our initial learning curve; "making one mistake after another" is how you learn :-). Our initial learning curve, of basic things a writer needs in order to bring articles rapidly to publishability, we tend to describe as steep-but-hopefully-short; hopefully nobody ever stops learning here, but once one gets up that initial steep bit, things should get much easier. Not everyone has the same experience, even setting aside some cases where people take a combative attitude toward review (which generally doesn't end well; when review works well it's a collaborative process with everyone pulling in the same direction). -Pi zero (talk) 20:38, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm afraid I have a rather hands-on learning style. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:15, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

• @Pi zero: I know you mean well but you are providing a lot of advice here(user talk page) that should be provided elsewhwere for all to see, instead of being repeated on many little-viewed pages. No wonder you are too busy to Review articles, spending so much time participating in usertalk discussions. This is also forcing wannabe reporters to follow your contributions, instead of writing stories. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:39, 22 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

@Ottawahitech: You misjudge me, and the situation (what the limiting factors are). Our documentation isn't that bad; it's not apparent to me that you've taken full advantage of what's available — surely by now I've directed you to WN:PILLARS, WN:WRITE, perhaps even WN:Article wizard, and you might consider reading WN:SG (our style guide is made to be short enough to read straight through). We spend a lot of our time helping individuals — everyone is an individual here, it's a fundamental difference from Wikipedia. --Pi zero (talk) 17:19, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

United States: Two killed, more than a hundred injured in Amtrak train collision in South Carolina

This needs a bit (at least) of touch-up, due to developments this morning. See my review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 14:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the prod—and for looking at it. Unfortunately I'm having my ear talked off; I'll update it as soon as I can. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, @Pi zero: did my best, resubmitted. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Another problem has come up. Argh. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 23:49, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I saw and am about to start looking. I wish they wouldn't do that; it's already led me to not use cerain good sources. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:51, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Iran: Wreckage found of plane crashed in mountains; all believed dead

Hi. I was uncomfortable with the number of similarities that turned up on prelim check; review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 22:16, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Nepal: Bangladeshi airplane crashes on landing at Kathmandu, 51 dead

Do you know how to get the cool map from w:US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211? --SVTCobra 01:34, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't complete the review tonight. I made some edits, but I got bogged down by the sheer number of witness names in the article. Gotta sleep. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Nepal: Bangladeshi airplane crashes on landing at Kathmandu, 51 dead

There are some crucial updates to this story — airline company issuing statement in defence of pilots. Had to not ready the article since it is needs updating. Article’s talk would tell you what I have suggested.
•–• 02:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

United States: Coroner's report shows that former patient killed himself and three hostages at California veterans' psychiatric center

Your article has been published. Hopefully, you don't feel like I butchered it in my review. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:35, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

United States: Great Mills HS students join protest after school shooting

I am a little nervous with this ... it was your article ... we had slow reviews on Wikinews ... I thought the topic of your article was important ... I wanted to save it ...
I used as much as I could. In order to refocus, I had to reduce your details on the original article. Give it a look. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:15, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi SVTCobra, thanks for the effort and for letting me know! I had considered writing up the March for Our Lives and had started gathering sources, but had few hopes of being able to get it through review; the police are being cagey about releasing numbers of participants, so I would have needed umpteen sources, especially since I wanted to mention the participation in foreign cities also, plus I was starting to see splintering of the coverage with stories about objections from some in the African American community in the wake of the Sacramento shooting. I would have had a brief mention of Great Mills students, but I hadn't thought of doing what you did. When I last looked at Great Mills, it had not been officially announced that the shooter was killed by the deputy's shot; I assume this has since changed. Also I would have kept the detail that it was his father's gun. And I think it's important to note that the demonstrations did not only take place in the US, and I think the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas killings deserve explicit mention at the end since they were the impetus for the protests (and there is a Wikipedia article on the events to link to, although we didn't manage to cover it). But some of that is just me, and my lack of knowledge of the system here; great idea, well done. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:07, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Feel free to make changes. That's why it is a wiki! --SVTCobra 13:09, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

No, I bow to your superior knowledge of the system here :-) I note with sadness that Pi zero still found my rewritten version short on attribution. We spoke on IRC before he looked at that version and he explained to me that en.wikinews is stricter about attribution than almost all mainstream media; I hadn't realized that but still fail to see where I could have usefully or even possibly stuffed in any more iterations of "according to the Sheriff's Office". And we really need some coverage of the protests yesterday. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

"I note with sadness that Pi zero still found my rewritten version short on attribution." — it baffles me how I've ended up doing so much review here, as by nature I don't like to cause anyone distress. I didn't review the article; I only remarked that such was my quick impression, which may have been exaggerated. Looking at the old lede now, I see that there's an attribution to the Sheriff's office toward the end of the paragraph, and it seems possible my concerns might have been put to rest simply by (somehow) sliding that forward to somewhere in the first sentence of the lede. At any rate, it's true time was getting very tight, and the freshened article has merits of its own, so, here's hoping things work out. --Pi zero (talk) 13:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Not your fault at all, thanks for looking at it. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

For better or worse, I gave this story another run. See: United States: Emergency calls from Great Mills High School shooting released. Cheers, --SVTCobra 18:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi

How are you? Are you still around?

Could you possibly help me with a quick question? What are your favourite news sources and your favourite news reader application? I am just checking as I would like to integrate Wikinews article writing into the apps which people most commonly use for reading news.

To reply please click here.

Best regards, --Gryllida (talk) 05:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Question

Hi Gryllida, You asked: Could you possibly help me with a quick question? What are your favourite news sources and your favourite news reader application? I am just checking as I would like to integrate Wikinews article writing into the apps which people most commonly use for reading news.

I don't use apps; I only use a PC and a laptop, no smartphone or notebook. So that's easy.

These days I rely heavily on the BBC News website, which I like because it at least tries to be international in scope and to have both breaking and in-depth stories. Back when I was able to afford hard-copy newspapers, I used to love the New York Times but became more and more upset with loose grammar and spelling that suggested lax editorial control, and when they started being more rigorous about publishing corrections, my impression was justified; then their website became one of the first to bar free access, and it never had the breadth of coverage that was the main thing I liked, so if I find one of their stories republished I'll still read it with some respect, but I avoid going there direct. Similar for the Washington Post except that I never liked the hardcopy paper there: very insular. But republished stories from them show the breadth and depth the NYT used to have. Of the British papers, The Independent used to be by far the best website, but I understand it's changed hands and isn't good any more, so these days I read The Guardian and sometimes The Telegraph, but both are plainly biased politically. So my main news site after the BBC is currently sfgate, the free site for the San Francisco Chronicle, which has good breadth for a regional US paper and isn't as biased as it once was. And republishes WaPo and sometimes NYT stories. I also read the local free papers when I can get them, and when I was active on Wikinews I remember making heavy use of the AP and AFP, but there was always a balancing act with respect to review because their stories had usually changed by then so I had to find some paper that still had the older version up. (I should note that when I read hardcopy papers I also liked Knight Ridder papers and gagged at Gannett papers, but Knight Ridder is gone, gone, gone, and I wouldn't recommend the Mercury News to my worst enemy, while Gannett, now using the name of its USA Today paper, has got a bit better but is paywalled up the wazoo.) I personally also like reading French-language, German-language, and Scandinavian-language news coverage, but we aren't allowed to use foreign-language sources here: some of my en.wikipedia work, such as Hvaldimir and Teddy bears of the Gobelins, shows me having fun writing from such sources.

I'm unlikely to return to Wikinews. I don't think I'll ever be very good at news writing, and I had one bad experience that caused me to quietly leave. I wish the project well and feel a bit sad about leaving, especially since the WMF is driving me away from Wikipedia, and I'm afraid I'm not a good source of data for you, but thanks for asking :-)

--Yngvadottir (talk) 16:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Wow at "I don't think I'll ever be very good at news writing, and I had one bad experience that caused me to quietly leave.". I can only reassure you that it is not your fault, and I miss you a big way. Let me know if I can help you with this.

This looks like a lot of paper based reading. Do you know of Wikinews:Print edition? Were someone to update it, would you see yourself printing it out to read, or sharing it with a local library? Gryllida (talk) 21:47, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Used to be a lot of paper-based reading, yes, and I was an early adopter of NY1, although I no longer watch TV. I'm afraid I don't have access to a printer and now live in a particularly tech-crazed place, so although I'm glad to see you (used to?) do that, I wouldn't be able to use it to try to bring in readers. I'm in many ways an outlier, but very much a news addict, and my time here happened to coincide with a number of crashes and other disasters, which I found fitted relatively well with my interests and writing ability and the demands of the review process: I tried a couple of politically focused articles but ran into the problem that by the time they got reviewed there had been such widespread coverage, the reviewer found them no longer fresh. Anyway, disasters worked better for me (awful thing to say). I'm proud—and grateful, a lot of people helped me, including by choosing to review and re-review my drafts—that I got so many stories accepted during my time here. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:39, 16 August 2019 (UTC)