Wikinews:Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions/Heavy Water

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Heavy Water (talk · contribs – Edit rights)[edit]


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I nominate Heavy Water (formerly known as Augusthorsedroppings10, and I appreciate the name change). Heavy Water has been very active and has five published articles and a bunch more which went stale due to not receiving timely reviews. Heavy Water has demonstrated good writing skills, an understanding of Wikinews policy, an appreciation for the archives and general housekeeping. Wikinews sorely needs more active users of Heavy Water's quality. Cheers, --SVTCobra 12:01, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I was not expecting this and did not think myself qualified, but I am much honored to accept. I was actually planning to request accreditation today, and have done so anyway, as I believe reviewers should be accredited in order to have scoop access: please see Wikinews:Accreditation requests/Heavy Water.
I should also note that I now have six articles published as SVTCobra reviewed 118th United States Congress convenes; House of Representatives adjourns without electing Speaker for first time in 100 years.
I went more in-depth on my writing in the accreditation request, so I will here explain some more relevant work instead. On several articles, I helped new contributors to understand the style guide and the basics of writing here. Sadly, most of these were not published because of the reviewer issue, so I only have two to list here: Pope Benedict XVI dies at age 95 and Two helicopters collide in Gold Coast, Australia. In both of these instances, the reporter, User:JML1148, was a very good writer (for which I gave them the Exceptional Newcomer Award), but I had to iron out some details in my edit summaries and on the collaboration pages.
I'm more than happy to partake in one or more "apprentice" reviews with a reviewer if any reviewers have time. Heavy Water (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Collaboration is partially happening on IRC, you might want to join #wikinews live connect and #wikinews-en live connect when you have a moment. What is your main OS? I can suggest a good IRC chat app that works better than the 'live connect' link shown above. Gryllida (talk) 00:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: Am I supposed to register or is that only if I'm setting up a channel? Simply entering a "nick" and trying to join the channel isn't working. Heavy Water (talk) 17:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You need to register your nick with NickServ to join the channel I believe. Type "/msg nickserv help register" to get instructions, they will open in a new nickserv buffer. Gryllida (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: I am finally on IRC, as HWater. I only saw inactive Wikinewsies on the #wikinews-en channel, though. Heavy Water (talk) 03:51, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Joined the chat just now - not seeing you on it. Gryllida (talk) 04:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryllida: Sorry, it was late for me and I had already left. I'll join again tonight. Heavy Water (talk) 14:41, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stats[edit]


Questions and comments[edit]

  • Oppose Meaning NOTHING PERSONAL against this user. Please cross-check my brain here: SVTCobra actually recommended someone for Reviewer who wasn't yet an accredited Reporter? Am I following correctly here? No, just simply No. This user is smart, articulate and writes very well AND is 100% NON-DISRUPTIVE to this project! Heck, that's some major awesomeness right there, BUT: We need to follow the rational steps. Reporter FIRST, then we will go from there.--Bddpaux (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Bddpaux: did you mean to put that in the votes section? Otherwise it might not get counted. Heavy Water (talk) 18:28, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, I am just letting it dawdle in comments for a while. We need to get you nailed down as an Accredited Reporter FIRST. I will just count your nomination (no ire toward any specific party) for Reviewer as fueled by a brief brain glitch.--Bddpaux (talk) 21:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, there is no hierarchy requiring Accredited Reporter before other permissions. In fact, I have never been accredited in all my years here. Becoming an Accredited Reporter requires people to disclose personal information which some people do not wish to do. This does not preclude people from becoming Reviewers, Administrators or Bureaucrats. Another example of a Reviewer who is not Accredited is User:Cromium. While Heavy Water is also applying for Accreditation, the anonymous aspect does not apply in this case; my point is, it is not a requirement to be Accredited first. Accreditation is merely a tool to be verified to gain the trust of interviewees or gain access to an event. Reviewer is whether the community trusts the user to properly fact-check, verify, and copy-edit articles before they are published. They are entirely two different things. Cheers, SVTCobra 14:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:Pi zero was never accredited either. SVTCobra 14:34, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your assessment; furthermore, being in OR does not preclude, nor necessarily aid in, the duties of a reviewer/administrator. But it would behove Heavy Water, upon a successful candidacy, to make arrangements to view scoop and verify OR emails. I'm opposing their candidacy purely on the grounds that I don't think they're sufficiently experienced. JJLiu112 (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Heavy Water some comments have been made about your lack of experience. What is your perspective on this? How would you describe your strengths and weaknesses? In what way would you like to improve over the next year, other than gaining the ability to publish others' submissions? Hope to see your thoughts about this. Thanks. Gryllida (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Gryllida: Yes, I understand and, in fact, agree with those comments; if I were someone else, I would be voting oppose on this nomination. If I nominated myself for reviewership, I would have done so perhaps a year from now. In fact, I ask you to vote oppose if you think I'm not ready.
    Regardless: assessing by review criteria, I would say I'm strong in meeting NPOV (I try, as best I can, to cast off all mental biases or analyses when writing), demonstrating newsworthiness, and avoiding copyright violations, of course. Recently, I began source-checking my articles just before submitting them for review, and that tactic, I find, keeps everything verifiable while maintaining distance (which I would say I do well on). My compliance with the style guide is not quite so good; I can do the easy stuff, of course, like formatting, crediting images, writing in the active voice and attributing actions, but determining what information is important in using the inverted pyramid style is challenging.
    I would most like to improve on my general clarity and inverted pyramid compliance. Usually the only task reviewers have taken on in reviewing my work is some copyediting, so it is especially important to me that I improve in that area.
    To clarify: I'm not here to become a reviewer; I want to help Wikinews, which might include reviewing, when ready. Heavy Water (talk) 20:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a reviewer, you are not allowed to publish an article to which you have made major edits. If you see for example five articles in review queue and they all require major edits. What steps would you take? Gryllida (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    To give a better answer, I'll further develop this hypothetical. Let's say when I enter the text of the first article into Earwig, it pulls up an identical and incompatibly-licensed article. I'd remove the article from the review queue, replace its content with the copyvio template, and request deletion of the offending revision(s) at AAA if an admin doesn't do so shortly after they get online; from what I've seen, that's how reviewers handle blatant copyright violations, and that's how I handle them now. If it were just a few words that could use rewording for distance from source, I could do that and remain uninvolved.
    Next, let's say there's an article about some small town cutting its budget. After reading the article, I'd probably find it not newsworthy for a global audience (especially if the sources are hyper-local, but with greater leniency for OR), I'd not-ready it, ping the author, explain that it was unpublishable as-is, reminding them of WN:Content guide, and ask them to refocus it if possible or incorporate material demonstrating its global newsworthiness. I'd also still not-ready it if it meets newsworthiness but that's not clear to a reader, asking the author to fix that.
    Next, let's say there's an article that is sourced, but interspersed with the author's thoughts about the event, in obvious violation of NPOV. I'd not-ready it, ping the author to explain why it could not be published and direct them to WN:NPOV, ask them to remove any violating text, and resubmit. If the problem was a couple of overly positive or negative words, I could fix that myself.
    Then, let's say there's an unsourced article about an actual event. That would clearly warrant a not-ready with a reminder of WN:CS. However, if an otherwise-thoroughly cited article says "She died of a heart attack", while the sources say "stroke" or don't list a cause of death at all (strange for obituaries), I could fix that.
    Lastly, let's say there's an article written entirely in chronological order, with obvious typos and grammatical errors. I'd have to not-ready that, reminding the author to use the inverted pyramid and check for typos and grammatical errors. On the other hand, if there's a typo or a passive-voice sentence, I could fix it.
    Apologies for the text wall. In sum, I would attempt to tread the fine line between being too involved and returning the article to the author, taking the risk they won't be able to complete it in time. I hope this helps, Heavy Water (talk) 23:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you please provide example of bias by omission in a draft and how you wrote to the author about it requesting corrections? Gryllida (talk) 10:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sometimes a draft author is unresponsive. In what circumstances would you start editing the draft yourself directly and ask another reviewer to look at it after your edits? When would you consider that necessary? Gryllida (talk) 10:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you say this is a common problem? Gryllida (talk) 10:58, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I've seen many users create a draft that is certainly unpublishable, and then vanish indefinitely without completing it or addressing review comments. As I said in my reply below, I would take it on a case-by-case basis. Heavy Water (talk) 18:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm, no, I haven't encountered that in a draft. Heavy Water (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, by "that" I meant bias by omission. Heavy Water (talk) 18:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gryllida: It requires balance. If I find the article and ping the author on the talk page right as they're working, and they don't respond in a few hours, I could presume they're not returning to work on the draft.
    If I arrive later, I might give it a day before I try to work on it myself. If the article is just fooling around, I think it's perfectly safe to assume they've abandoned it.
    By involving myself in any draft, however, I would also risk the article going stale if another reviewer were not able to get to it. Heavy Water (talk) 18:54, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    And, if I'm too busy to work on it, a not-ready with an explanation (if it's submitted for review) is about the best I could do. Heavy Water (talk) 18:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you very much. What do you think about the User:Gryllida/welcome a bit software (it runs on its own user account so you can see what it does there)? Gryllida (talk) 10:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    (note that it hasn't been running for a while, after some system upgrade caused issues with my continuing to run it with a new perl release. I am already aware of that issue. the question is what you think about the idea and implementation.) Gryllida (talk) 10:07, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it was cool, we need to facilitate greater responsiveness by experienced Wikinewsies, especially reviewers, to provide feedback. And talk page messages display that yellow banner at top, so they're not easily missed. Heavy Water (talk) 19:22, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, Question - would you be able to provide an example of something that you have had an opinion about (i.e. 'this is publishable' or 'this is bad' or something else) and then discussed it with someone else and then came to agreement that was different from your initial position? Gryllida (talk) 10:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There usually aren't people around here simultaneously to have a conversation per se, but here's an example of something I learned from. In December, I submitted an article, but I had, in choosing my second source, obliviously absorbed some information from an article I did not cite. This information became the focal point of the article, and only a not-ready illluminated to me that this was unsourced. Through a conversation with the reviewer, I had to refocus the article, by which time it, too, became stale. I was reminded to cite all sources, and I thus learned the hard way that I should source-check myself. Heavy Water (talk) 05:42, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • How would you describe your existing experience with computers and programming? Many thanks. :) Regards, Gryllida (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I have read about and understand the technical process for completing a peer review and publishing using EzPR. If I were to need to do it manually (that problem, to my understanding, was a combination of the article not being tagged as under review, not being marked as reviewed, and some gadget error), that would be a challenge, but I could probably learn. There are also the Main Page leads, which I have plenty of experience with. I think that covers all the technical knowledge needed for reviewing. I can also write basic HTML or JavaScript, if that helps. Heavy Water (talk) 20:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    What programming or computing experience do you have, that is not wiki-related, if it is not a secret? Gryllida (talk) 10:43, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, not much. I wrote a few localhost HTML/JS/CSS websites and read some books when I was into that. I'm not sure how much programming is relevant to reviewership, though. Heavy Water (talk) 05:42, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pinging RockerballAustralia, Cromium, and Chaetodipus, who have been active in the past few days (although Cromium is semi-retired) and have not voted/commented here. Your input would be greatly appreciated. --Heavy Water (talk) 20:44, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

  • Weak oppose — without discounting the user's exemplary and commendable spirit, nevertheless from my experience they still make some routine errors of a novice editor, which are usually ironed out with time. I have no doubt of Heavy Water's potential, but as a reviewer, I recommend waiting. --JJLiu112 (talk) 07:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Closing as successful. It has been a month, if you didn't vote it is on you. I don't like to close my own nominations, but Wikinews really needs active reviewers. --SVTCobra 19:28, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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