Wikinews:Water cooler/Archive1

I like: the reader of Wikinews can cross information among different sources easyly. Normal newspapers can not do that.---User:carlosar Nov 15 03:42:01 UTC 2004

What should we do if a information from some source(ex:cited newspaper) is wrong or no neutral? ---User:carlosar Nov 15 03:42:01 UTC 2004

Not a problem: If the source is biased, then one can offset it by using multiple sources, as well as reporting on the various sources themselves (e.g. "source X alleges that blah, blah, blah ... "). If the source is wrong, it depends on how apparent that is, if it is obvious or contradicts other reports, then cover all the bases. If a report generally considered to be accurate is later proved to be false, then this can be covered later with the revelation of this (e.g. "new evidence has come to light from source X that event Y was, in fact, blah, blah, blah ... contrary to initial reports of Z"). Sometimes stories develop this way, it comes with the territory. --BenM 12:53, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The links pointed by the article must be checked? ---User:carlosar Nov 15 03:42:01 UTC 2004

Major events at Main Page could be random. What do you think? ---User:carlosar Nov 15 03:42:01 UTC 2004

I would prefer to see all the major events listed together on the main page, instead of seeing one randomly chosen at a time. Foeke 07:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sometimes this can be a trouble. What is/is not a major event? carlosar Nov 15 12:21:01 UTC 2004

Ditto. Ambi 07:35, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, the same problem arises when you want to randomly display a major event. I was referring to the random displaying, rather than the definition of a major event. Foeke 12:52, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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The one thing that strikes me about this most of all is that it really needs some article naming conventions. How about putting the date in the title for one thing? In addition, some of the titles for articles so far sound like they'd be more appropriate for Wikipedia. Ambi 07:35, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I fully agree. For this to be worthwhile as a source later, dating the titles will be essential. Danny 11:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that dates are needed as part of the title. If the title is the article's headline, this should be able to be made unique without a date. What would be helpful is being able to put the date somewhere as metadata, allowing people to search for articles within a particular timeframe. Angela 11:45, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Making the date part of the headline doesn't really improve searchability -- title searches are painful, particularly since the index is limited in word length. All it would accomplish is make titles harder to link to, and require frequent page moves as a story shifts from one date to the next. The way the issue is currently handled can be seen on our first real example article, President of China lunches with Brazilian President. The date is at the beginning of the first paragraph, and at the bottom of the article as a category. On the category pages, we can see each event for a particular date, and we can add navigation links to browse from one to the next.

In the future, as Angela said, we will want the date to be metadata. For this, something like Wikidata will be necessary. For now, we'll have to make do with what is there, which is the category system. The next technical change, which I'll probably have to do myself, is displaying the articles in a category by the date of the last update. This would allow us to generate the various entry pages automatically. But the last update is different from the story publication date. The creation date could be displayed alongside the last update, but this is still not the most accurate. The publication date cannot easily be evaluated because the act of publication is a human wiki editing act at the present time.--Eloquence 12:12, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I see the point, but this strikes me as a rather short-sighted approach. What happens next time the President of China lunches with the Brazilian President? Ambi 23:12, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Simple - we disambiguate with the date when needed.--Eloquence

More comments

I have many objections, but I will try to focus on the main one.

First, I would like that the approval process of the article be clarified. There is currently this process offered

1. Article development, in which a community of volunteers works on the text and media
   1. What happen when articles are original report ? How are others allowed to edit it ?
   2. Is there a minimal time to respect for that process ?
   3. Who decide if and when to put the tag:review ? Is it one person only, or a committee of editors ?
2. Final review, in which the accuracy, neutrality, copyright status, legality and comprehensiveness of the article are verified
   1. Again, is there a minimal time allowed for review, or a minimum number of people ?
   2. Who decide when this time is over and put the publish tag ? Is it one person ? One sysop ? A committee of editors ? A sub committee per topic ? A director of publication ?
   3. At this stage, is adding major content (development) allowed ? If so, does the article goes back to development stage ? If so, are the reviews cancelled ? If it is not allowed to go back to development, may a parallel article be developped ? What happen in this case ? May an article be rejected for too numerous flaws ?
3. Article publication, in which the content is prominently linked and officially labeled as a published Wikinews article. Corrections and updates can still be made for a limited time if they are clearly pointed out alongside the article.
   1. Will all editors be allowed to modify the article or only a limited group ? Who decide what is minor and what is major ? What happen if one editor does not agree with a minor change ? Does the article goes back to development ? Is it still online if there is an edit war on it ? What happen if one editor consider the article is not neutral and has not been reviewed enough ?
   2. Will only publish articles be visible by anyone, or all articles ?
4. Archival, in which the article is permanently frozen, for the purpose of citation. Corrections and updates can still be linked to, but the article text itself may not be changed.
   1. Do we keep the article as if if grossly wrong or grossly biased ? How will corrections be linked to ? What happen if a protected article is said a cp violation or a defaming content ?

What do we do if though there is 5 editors, 1 is editing the political part only, and is biaised ? Who else than him can approve the page ? What do we do toward a pov pusher ? Who hold the legal responsability and right to modify a protected article after its protection in case of a legal problem afterwards ? Does a sysop is just a housecleaner, or is a sysop a sort of editor in chief with more "right" to declare an article correct than others ? If not, how will we define who are those with the right to decide what is neutral from what is not ? What do we do if a project is under the control of a small "approval" team and restrict reviewing ?

Na, better that I stop here. Perhaps the most important point to me it that I do not believe we will do any breaking news report in a neutral way. Breaking news strive on speed of report, and nearly 4 years of Wikipedia show us that NPOV strive on slowness, carefull rework by dozen of hands. Publishing an article in say 24 hours, then freezing after a few more days is great, but I doubt it will result in anything called npov. I hope there will be a process set as well, to impeach (remove) a published article from public view if this one is said pov by some editors. If not, I think we should not try to publicly pretend we are neutral, but only that we are trying to be. I refer anyone doubting that time is the only way for neutrality to articles such as Nick Berg, Mother Teresa, George Bush articles on en. Anthere 13:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am optimistic about this. I agree it is difficult for an article to be 100% neutral and that every article writter has a specific point of view(although he ought to write neutral articles). But an article may have a lot of general references and Wikipedia references in Wikinews. This is far better than any article in mainstream media. Also, no article writter can have full control over other publishing news, from other people, with different points of view. The reader can compare the information with many different sources here in Wikinews, inside and outside an article.--carlosar Nov 15 14:11:50 2004 (UTC)

I like Anthere's ideas for removing articles from view. I do think if we need to able to react as speedily as possible - probably not as fast as the commercial news sites, but still fast. The added safeguard of being able to kill articles that aren't really NPOV (even though these should be caught by the review anyway) would help. Ambi 23:20, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think that removing an article sometimes may be necessary. Also I think that removing an article may be so dangerous than not removing it. We need a good politic here.--carlosar Nov 15 14:11:50 2004 (UTC)

Response to Anthere

Others are allowed to edit original reports, as long as they do not alter information without good reason. It's very similar to asking: Can I change a quotation in a Wikipedia article? An attributed factual claim? Yes, you can, if your change is consistent with the source or if you manage to undeniably prove that the source is inccorect.

The minimum time overall for editing an article is equivalent to the minimum review time (8 hours for normal articles, 4 hours for urgent review articles). There is currently no minimum number of reviewers, but we may add one later.

The tag {{review}} can be put on an article by anyone, but if the review fails, then the article can either be deleted, improved or fall back to the development state. Most likely, it will stay in the review state for a longer period of time. We'll have to sort out what to do with articles which fail and become out of date, my intuition would be to let people keep editing them, there's no harm in completing the historical record, even if it takes months.

Articles can technically be published by anyone, but in the review guideline I have suggested that for the starting phase, this should be done by sysops. Several models are thinkable here in the long term, including a quorum among randomly chosen active users. I'm not too keen on linking this to sysop status, but I'm also not too keen on having edit wars during publishing right from the start. So I'd like to see some good suggestions here.

The post-publication stage is tricky. Right now, the idea is that any major edits after publication have to be clearly pointed out as UPDATES or EDITS at the bottom of the article. I would like to keep such edits at a minimum - if there is a substantial development, a new story may be justified instead. The default after publication if there is no consensus will be that the edit is not made. Right now, anyone can modify published articles, but we may have to alter this later if it turns out to be a problem.

All articles will be visible to anyone, but articles in development are clearly labeled as such and not linked from the main article namespace.

Yes, in most cases we will keep articles if they are grossly wrong or grossly biased, but we will point out a correction or update alongside the archived version. These can be linked from the bottom of the article. When an article cannot be kept for legal reasons, it can be listed on Wikinews:Deletion requests, and a consensus has to be found there to delete it.

We deal with POV and NPOV in the usual wiki way. During the review process, any POV problems should be sorted out. If a consensus is found even though the article is POV, then obviously the resulting published article will be POV. Certainly there will be instances of that happening. NPOV, on Wikipedia and Wikinews, is an ideal and can only be approximated. Wikipedia articles which you consider NPOV now may very well be POV again tomorrow and vice versa. There is no rule which says that even if you keep articles editable forever, they will naturally converge towards NPOV -- the exact opposite may happen. The review process takes a snapshot of an article at a particular point in time when the people working on it agree that it is good enough to receive the burst of attention that comes with the publication of a news article.

In case of legal problems with archived articles, the community will try to resolve these problems together. Sysops do not hold any special role in this process, they just execute whatever the community decides, through consensus or a large majority vote. I don't understand the question "What do we do if a project is under the control of a small 'approval' team and restrict reviewing?" - this is not the case. The review process is open to anyone.

NPOV has multiple components. One of these components is that we do not engage in clear, obvious propaganda - opinions are attributed. This, I believe, will be easy to achieve within the Wikinews context, and any article which fails to do so is unlikely to pass through the review process. Another component is that articles should strive to be balanced within the topic which they present. This is something that can only be accomplished to the degree that people with the required knowledge participate in writing the article. I agree that in the latter category, time helps, but Wikipedia has the exact same problem as Wikinews here, as new information is constantly added to most controversial articles, requiring balance again, and so on, ad infinitum.

We will try to approximate NPOV as best as we can given the people and the tools which we have, and sometimes we will do well, and other times we will do poorly. In general, however, I believe we can do better than the current dominating media.--Eloquence 03:02, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your long answer.

The minimum time overall for editing an article is equivalent to the minimum review time (8 hours for normal articles, 4 hours for urgent review articles). There is currently no minimum number of reviewers, but we may add one later.

I do not remember where these values were decided. 4 hours seem fair for breaking news, as speed in essential. However, I do not think normal articles should follow such a short pattern. This would give possibly 8 hours to write an article and put major information in it. Then possibly 8 hours to review it. I think such a time is just two short for a regular article. I do not think these are classical values for such "normal background" articles. I'll give an example, I have been interviewed several times in the past months. Each time, the journalist who decided to make an article on Wikipedia contacted us between 2 weeks to 4 days before. He usually gathered information during 2-3 days (eventually required in case of 2 or 3 interviews) before writing the article. I think that 8 hours of writing do not even allow one editor to participate one evening in the article with certainty. I think this time is just too short and need to be ... errr... not even changed... but just set at a longer value.

Articles can technically be published by anyone, but in the review guideline I have suggested that for the starting phase, this should be done by sysops. Several models are thinkable here in the long term, including a quorum among randomly chosen active users. I'm not too keen on linking this to sysop status, but I'm also not too keen on having edit wars during publishing right from the start. So I'd like to see some good suggestions here.

I do not think starting with sysop is a good idea. Sysop are technical help, and the trust we put in them to technically defend and clean the site is of a different type than reviewer value. I would prefer that very quickly, editors allowed to publish are part of an editorially approved team. Or better, that publication only occur when 3 or 4 editors have approved publication rather than one. This can be community inforced as on any wiki. We need to trust people to do as recommandations outlines. We do not need sysops to decide which is correct from which is not correct. This is not their role.

Yes, in most cases we will keep articles if they are grossly wrong or grossly biased, but we will point out a correction or update alongside the archived version. These can be linked from the bottom of the article. When an article cannot be kept for legal reasons, it can be listed on Wikinews:Deletion requests, and a consensus has to be found there to delete it.

I do not think it is a good idea to keep articles which are grossly wrong. I would support deleting them, or downgrading them to development again. Keeping biaised articles is not fitting with our goal.

I don't understand the question "What do we do if a project is under the control of a small 'approval' team and restrict reviewing?" - this is not the case. The review process is open to anyone.

Well, if a breaking news article may be published after 8 hours max (4 editing, 4 review), a little team of people editing every day at 8am, reviewing at 12am, and publishing at 16h can in effect succeed to publish every day a biaised article. In case you do not see well what I mean, I will just indicate that activity on the french wikipedia is at peak during french day light hours and is rather sleepy during french night hours. We could very well have a team of people publishing news during our night hours with no possibility for most editors to react before it is too late.

If we accept that publication times are so short, we need a serious system to either remove biaised articles or to empeach people. Generally, I think it more positive to act on articles than on people. Anthere 18:39, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Discussion boards

It'd be nice - if and when this does get the go-ahead, a system of WikiProjects or noticeboards was put into place fairly quickly. I notice at least one of the Australian editors has already arrived, and it'd be nice if we could have a place on Wikinews to coordinate the development of Australian stories. Ambi 23:20, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

hear, hear!  :) --BenM 05:57, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reply articles to anti-Wikipedia FUD

It would be great if Wikinews editors could write reply articles to FUD generated against Wikipedia ala techcentralstation.com : The Faith-Based Encyclopedia. For example, in this article (written by non-other than a former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica!) the author gets a bit nit-picky about our article on w:en:Alexander Hamilton. It would be wonderful to compare the oldest version of EB’s article on Alexandar Hamilton we could find to ours. Ideally we would choose their 3 year old version but let’s look at their 11th edition version (EB should have had an article on Hamilton for over a hundred years by that time).

The most glaring thing is that it has ‘’extaclty’’ the same birth date issue (his major criticism)!

Or when the current editor-in-chief of EB said in a recent Guardian article; "People write on things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on the UK TV soap opera Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair."

Which is absurd comparison since EB does not have an article on Hurricane Frances or Coronation Street, and our article on Tony Blair has been longer than the EB version for well over a year.

I could go on and on, but I think you all get my point.

PS: I think EB has started to get beyond their dismissiveness stage concerning Wikipedia and are starting to come to the realization that Wikipedia, not Encarta, is their number 1 threat. We should therefore have a well-developed anti-FUD apparatus to handle the impending onslaught of Wikipedia-bashing from EB and their allies. I think the most logical place for that is Wikinews (those articles may have to be under an ‘Opinion article’ category ; please do not use the often-misunderstood ‘Editorial’ name).

-- Maveric149 23:31, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In my very first Wikinews proposal, I suggested allowing teams of people from a particular point of view to write op-ed pieces on a particular issue. There would be a solicitation phase during which other people can submit articles from a different point of view. This is still rather controversial and I want to sort out the normal news publishing process first.

Certainly, any rebuttal of Wikimedia-related FUD cannot be done from a neutral point of view and as such cannot be done within the current Wikinews framework. I'd suggest publishing a press release or open letter in cases like this for now.--Eloquence

Any rebuttal from a Wikimedia project would probably be seen as biased. Besides, the best way to respond to criticism of Wikipedia is simply to keep writing and keep improving. We don't need to respond; quality speaks for itself. Note that our Alexander Hamilton article does now mention the birth date discrepancy :-) Isomorphic 16:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Op-ed piece sounds fine, as long as it is clearly labeled as op-ed. And indeed, it may have a better news value for potential content users (newspapers that would use our contents based on a license).

A more neutral approach is to review recent press& blog coverages (including the ABC's column mentioned on WikiEN-l, along with an interview with Jimbo, from a neutral point of view. Tomos 02:36, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hey, everyone, personally i find this bit really funny - Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy. - this Robert McHenry fellow is allegedly a former editor-in-chief of EB but fails to understand the different feedback mechanisms and meta-processes which really are not unique to wikipedia (except in the particular way they are combined and implemented and in their goal); they are common to biological and social systems - shouldn't an editor-in-chief of an encyclopedia have a fairly wide general knowledge of at least elementary notions in most major fields? This is our advantage in not having any hierarchy (ok, jimbo cult aside... ;)

Anyway, EB has already been torn to pieces (NPOV-ally, of course ;) in wikipedia and elsewhere:

• m:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia
• [1]

Enjoy! Boud 04:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please, let's make this worthwhile

Oh, good. Another !%*$ news site with endless regurgitations of the same stuff the existing media generates so abundantly. Exactly what we don't need Wikinews for is to create the 1001st story saying "Arafat dies."

What I'd propose here is:

1. When any article is first created, its first section should be Justification—in which the article's purpose here would be justified. Appropriate justifications could be judged by the community of writers, and might include:

• To provide original reporting on an event that the major media hasn't covered (yet)
• To present a depth of background information not found in typical news stories (stuff like this article on John Kerry's background)
• To bring together or summarize information in a novel way (stuff like w:Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003)
• To improve upon the best of the existing stories available in the major media by including important aspects of context (this might allow for an article such as "Arafat dies" that featured, say, a good neutrally-written biography, but only if there weren't already such stories with comparably good biographies in the major media—which for this example there almost surely would be)

2. Then, when the article undergoes final review, one element that must be evaluated is whether the article satisfies its justification; if not, it shouldn't be published.

I truly hope that someday, when I look at a list of Wikinews headlines, instead of seeing 50 stories that look like Reuters copycats with an occasional really valuable one hidden in the mix, I'll see a collection of items that are actually worthwhile to read and, in some way or other, better than what's available in everyone's newspaper.

Do others agree? Plenty 01:46, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. There is much value in providing an open content version even of traditional news. As more and more news sites become "registration only", and as more and more people have the technological power, but not the resources, to provide news from the grassroots, it is of essential importance that there is a free (as in speech) alternative to proprietary newsfeeds. Remember, everything here is open content. If we succeed, any street newspaper can take our material and publish it and add some regional viewpoints, and as a result compete with mainstream media with 1000 times their resources.--Eloquence

One benefit I see to providing the open source content is the linking we can do. We can provide that direct link to a wikipedia article on a politican, a movement, an event, etc. That's a GREAT advantage for us, and works even for articles that might be reworks of already reported issues. Lyellin 03:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, you have a different vision for the utility of Wikinews.

How would you feel, then, about implementing my proposal as above, but with one added Justification of last resort called either "None" or "Open-content version of existing media reports," so that people like me would at least have a way of locating the more valuable stories which a community like this might generate in smaller numbers? Plenty 05:39, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think a better approach would be to create a portal for this purpose (similar to "Featured articles" - but we'll also have an FA equivalent, which will include regular topics), and have a nomination process specifically for that purpose. You just have to think of a clever name.--Eloquence 11:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The problem with that approach is that then, if an article's value is to be recognized, someone would have to know about the nomination process, take conscious note of the fact that the article is valuable in a way that most aren't, and take exceptional action to nominate it. Many worthy articles would be missed.

Wouldn't it be better to integrate the identification of value into the article creation process? What do you think would be better about the other approach? Plenty 19:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I tend to think that every article created should be valuable, and that the value isn't determined by if it is a re-hash of something already reported, or if it's completely new, but by what the reader wants. To input a "value" or "worth" or "justification" qualification into the creation process... scares me.

Me too. We're here to cover news. World news. Tech news. National news. Local news. It'd have to be of immensely low notability for me to want a story gone. Ambi 13:30, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Some news has very time-sensitive value. Others do not. If Wikinews tries to beat Reuters and other wire news agencies in the areas of time-sensitive news reports, I think our short-term prospect is grim. We might succeed in the long-run, if we gather enough people to work on this project. But if our short-term performance is not so good, I am not sure if people will join us.

So I am inclined to say that we should try to create the type of news articles that can be published in a news magazine. If your news story is likely to become useless after several hours, you may want to change the topic, or delay the release until things settle down.

In terms of areas of news, I think it is okay to publish local, international, tech., or any other types of news. Tomos 03:03, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is a known issue in indymedia - most local collectives put the priority on first-hand news which does not come from official and/or corporate sources; each local indymedia is autonomous and decides its own editorial policy: some hide all articles which are just copy/pasted from corporate media, many (like IMC PL) shift official/corporate articles to a section called other media or something similar, so that this does serve as some way of integrating non-first-hand news reports.

IMHO, if wikinews does allow non-first-hand news reports (which i expect is most likely to be the case), then to a large extent it will be much more biased towards government/corporate news sources than indymedia, simply because government/corporate news is distributed on a mass scale and when a single person hears 30 slightly different, but nearly consistent versions of the same story, it's hard for him/her not to believe that the integreated version is close to NPOV, even though the reality is that it's just 30 mutated versions of one public relations firm press release. There's also the Wikinews:Digital Divide aspect, which indymedia, in principle, tries to overcome by putting the priority on local, face-to-face meetings.

However, logic is sensitive to small errors (one wrong inference in a logical argument is enough for the whole argument to be completely wrong). And wikinews including re-integration of numerous mutations of official govt/corporate news reports is still going to be much more sensitive to minorities coming up with alternative viewpoints on what happened, where, when than any govt/corporate news source. In fact, if 30 people each look at a news article and say to themselves, hey, sure, that's more or less correct they probably won't edit it much - and then when/if someone comes up and adds something obviously different, well, there is some danger of people saying it's POV because they don't want to believe it, but that person's contribution will probably have more effect than simply the democratic weight of the author - this is the consensus process instead of democracy.

So IMHO there's not much point in being worried about including re-integration of govt/corporate press releases in wikinews; wikinews is not trying to reproduce indymedia, the two are complementary, with wikinews focussing on the wiki, virtual side, while indymedia focuses on the local, physical non-virtual side trying to encourage people to post first-hand reports of news events. (wikinews and indymedia are closer to one another in goals and techniques than wikipedia and indymedia, but that's no problem IMHO.) Boud 03:57, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Renaming the project: WikiNOVA

I have been hoping and searching for something like Wikinews for a long time. Would it be possible to change the name to something less English and more international like WikiNova? -- rotoz 15:35, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why? While I think there will definitly be a few different languages used here, look at the site now. It's pretty much all in English. And the language itself is a fairly common choice as a second language, so more people know it. I think the name is good and should stay, but just out of curiousity what does NOVA stand for?--Arca 03:57, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It does not bother me that the English version of this project is called Wikinews but when we start having other language domains this will become a problem I think. I'm not sure that fr.wikinews or ja.wikinews could become a respectable news source in those language communities with those names. --Bjarki 15:57, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with changing the name to WikiNOVA. We already got a name, logo and web address. WikiNOVA doesn't sound like a website about current events and somepeople may confuse it with NOVA on PBS.- B-101 00:10, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ukraine & etc

1. I added Ukraine to the main page. Sorry for taking down Latest News, I did it only after I realized that the stories there are 5 days old.
2. I feel there is a lot of things to discuss before we try making official wikinews
3. Article names - should they really include all the title? Suppose we've written an article with 54 dead but then some injured people die again and that's 60 - should we rename the article?

   They died again? That's rather unfortunate! ;-) Lankiveil 02:26, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

4. The main point is from where we are going to take news. If from BBC, CNN etc, then we can't be better then them. If we'are starting something new then we shouldn't mimic the traditional format. 203.162.3.146 08:31, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ukraine and US

Warning: Sarcasm follows

Well, of course with so many important events as

• 19 Burmese political prisoners released; more to come
• Beheaded bodies found as fighting continues in Mosul
• Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) invades in Bahia

we have no time to write about unsignificant countries, like United States and Ukraine. Oh, some of you might know that they recently had elections and perhaps one or two have heard that there were some problems - don't remember what... Oh, nothing major, just people are unsure who won the elections. But don't worry, if it comes to fight in Ukraine, or if the country is broken into two part - who even cares?

Likewise, we shouldn't bother ourselves with the possible irregularities in the 2004 US Presidential Election. First, if we write about it, this could be considered an Americocentrism. Second, the candidates are so similar, it doesn't matter who won. Third, even if electronic machines do falsify the vote, which is yet unproven, who cares? Nobody wants to know more about it.

So I'm happy Wikinews concentrates on right things: Chinese plane, Sudanese peace, Brasilian movements. Clearly, we should report about every accident that involved death of a single person. In the future, we will be reporting not only all plane crashes, but also all auto, moto and velo accidents.

Ilya 06:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC) (PS. According to the rule of being bold, I'll try to write something about these topics and I'll put them on the Main page under the new section Ongoing events if no objections will be brought).

Please do. Also please notice that this site is brand new, and we are writing articles as we can, as we make policy as well. Holes will happen. I do not believe there have EVER been any discussions along the lines you suggust on either of these topics- they simply haven't been written about, and other newsworthy things have. Unfortunetly, that will happen until we can get a large writer base. Lyellin 07:15, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What?! You mean the small handful of regular part-time editors this site currently has cannot cover every single world event that is covered by thousands of paid journalists worldwide? Surely we must give up our means of employment and social lives and work harder! Wikinews must be perfect even before the semantics are worked out and it officially launches! (Smart#&$edness begets smart#&$edness.) Garrett Albright 09:34, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is inevitable, and it is the case for Wikipedia as well. However, if we grow to any reasonable size, it is likely that we have more articles than we can showcase on the Wikinews Main Page anyway. Hence we can use the instrument of article visibility to make sure that readers will be given as unbiased an outlook as possible..--carlosar

"Wikinews concentrates on". Hm? Who is this wikinews of whom you speak? People write what they can. I would love to write more about the important Ukrainian election. But do I live in Ukraine? No. So, what realiable sources do I have? One: The Economist, and I think they will be unhappy if I copy their articles. ;) This probably goes for most people here too. In short: The lack of cover will fix itself when more people get involved. If everybody contributes the best they can, it will work out fine. --Regebro 01:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is an excellent test for the Wikinews:Digital Divide issue, in the more practical side of the digital divide among people who have some internet access, but many do not speak English, many do not touch type, etc. etc.: So let's just look at the populations:

w:Burma - 43 million

w:Iraq - 25 million

w:Brazil - 184 million

w:USA - 293 million

w:Ukraine - 48 million

Certainly the USA has a bigger population than any country except for India and China; so falsified elections there are certainly important. But the Ukraine is much less populous than Brazil and only slightly more populous than Burma. The MST Movement is certainly just as important as the orange revolution in Ukraine. You're right that stories on the US should not be excluded, but mocking the importance of other parts of the world is not a very concrete step towards correcting the Wikinews:Digital Divide If we want to go strictly by population - i.e. if we want to be really neutral, then we should have something like 6-7 news stories from China and India for every USA news story. Boud 13:43, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Most of these issues will be resolved with scale and diversity of participants. I think we dont need to worry about it. Besides, I think that what you criticizes (the coverage of regional stories) is a strong point to Wikinews. The mainstream media does not do that(sometimes they cant because they cant mantain a reporter at every single country) but we can do. Also, I think people will cover the most important regional news. The coverage of regional news is an important aspect of Wikinews and it is a virtue. -- Carlosar 02:12, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This site has been SLASHDOTTED!

Currently you are item #3 on /.(slashdot). Thats how I found it. By linking from Slashdot.

That is a news item I would suppose but since I am unsure of the 'footing' I will just post it here.

Being slashdotted it rather more than mundane. It means a huge number of visitors(usually) will visit the site. It usually is enough to easily clog many servers(haven't noticed or else you have very good pipes to the backbone.

Wikipedia gets a lot more traffic than Slashdot, believe it or not. Wikinews is hosted on the same servers. Dori 07:43, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just imagine if everybody would support this project. (note: this will give admins a dilemma: a lot of knowledge or burned out server, hi hi ;-P).

Protect the main page

Do you think the main page on Wikinews could be permanently protected, just like on Wikipedia? Denelson83 08:22, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did this tonight, in an attempt to protect it from vandalism. Lyellin 04:09, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

crosswords

Right, so if wikinews is a newspaper, then do we want a crosswords page? I love making crosswords! Would my crossword page get far? Wonderfool (Wikipedia)

I don't think that Wikinews is a newspaper. It's a news source — but nothing in being a news source requires (or implies) that it must have crossword puzzles. Though of course neither does it preclude them.

I think we could make crosswords a feature of the site, but for that, try making them within your pages in the User namespace first, and post about them and then we can discuss how and if they will fit into the big picture of things here. -- IlyaHaykinson 03:09, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After I fill in the answers with a marker or crayon (pencil doesn't write on glass very well), do you have any suggestions on cleaning off my computer screen so I can read other Wikinews content? Seriously, I think we need to keep in mind that people will be accessing WN on their PCs and the analogy to newspapers may not be appropriate in this instance. :-) Davodd | Talk 11:54, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm Thinking about you all and praying for you.

--Chuck Harris 21:20, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)May God bless you with whatever you need to help your children. I've done what I can here in South Carolina. But maybe I ought To come help. I feel so helpless in the face of your tremendous suffering. Please God. Help my fellow human beings in their struggle and bring them comfort.

So much is lost. So much can yet be salvaged. There is a child breathing somewhere. A woman. A man. What can be done to immediately distribute on-hand resources to outlying areas unreachable by land due to road wash outs? Why aren't the global powers prioritizing airlifting and distributing critical supplies by sea as a pressing priority? Structuring a distribution network is fundamental management.