Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2009/October

Single Source Imported Articles

The recent rash of imported articles from VoA and SETimes is annoying me. Both of those publications have their own internal biases, and therefore shouldn't be used as a single source for an article (mind you, their bias isn't nearly as strong as CNN, FOX, or Al Jazeera, but they still aren't fully NPoV).

Now I have no problem with us copy/pasting parts of their public domain articles into ours, but just because they are public domain doesn't mean we can simply bipass the single source rule. Part of the reason for that rule (beyond copyright issues) is so that we can eliminate article PoV as much as possible by balancing the PoV from multiple sources. Right now that isn't happening.

So here's what I propose:

Public domain sources should be treated just like any other source, with the exception that copyright issues are null and void. This means that while you can use, say, a VoA article in it's entirety (c/p), you have to include *more* than what is in the VoA article. You can use the VoA article as your base, but you have to add to it. I've seen Tempo doing this sometimes, but with the new bot it isn't happening. Gopher65_talk 13:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we should generally balance out biases in VOA articles, but if an article is NPOV by our standards to begin with, then i don't see a problem. I think we should deal with this issue on a case-by-case basis. Also, copy/pasted articles still have to be backed up by at least one other independent source, so it isn't exactly {{single source}}. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:16, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought we had clearly agreed that import from a public domain source would never allow bypassing of the {{single source}} rule. I have commented here there and everywhere that special considerations be made for these sources, and an emphasis placed on their inherent biases. Such should influence the choice of sources used for verification, and require an active effort to counter the POV of the imported source within the article text. I've not the time to do this just now, and document it elsewhere. However here's a few thoughts.

Use of VOA now is selective. Someone picks an article and actively imports it. Their bias, plus the VOA bias. Less up-front, in-your-face emphasis on the bias of the source. Less scrutiny of work to counter the source bias.

Bot importation means all are imported. Specific templates (such as my extensive work on {{develop}}) can emphasise the bias and work required to counter it. I proposed project namespace pages on this elsewhere, and I see no reason why the importing bot could not put an additional boilerplate on an imported article's talk page.

Anyway, I'll just go back to looking at Project INDECT now. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews:Global rights usage

• Wikinews:Global rights usage

I made this policy. Others feel free to discuss and/or change it. :) Cirt (talk) 04:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Tempodivalse [talk] 13:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd look again at the deleted contributions bit. But, the rest is good. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

• Looks good. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

• The {{see also}} from Global sysops/Deleted contributions is to a section that doesn't exist; I noticed this because I was trying to go there in order to work out the intended meaning of the sentence "The English Wikinews has adopted a policy that certain types of deleted contributions that remain visible to administrators through Special:DeletedContributions." --Pi zero (talk) 22:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I created it - Wikinews:Criteria_for_deletion#Access_to_deleted_pages based on common practice. I'd appreciate if people looked over this new addition to make sure that its accurate. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:58, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews:Fair use - limitations

As most regular Wikinewsies will have noticed, I obtained a quite lengthy video on Project INDECT, and felt it was in the public interest to upload locally in it's entirety, and then embed in an article.

Nobody has actually challenged me on this, but under the current terms of WN:FU it should have been zapped on sight. How can we rework that page to allow video content like this; do we need to go back to the Foundation and say their criteria we have to work within are overly restrictive? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Simple. Wipe out the bit that says anything not on the whitelist is banned. You'd probably need to develop guidelines on how to handle a non-whitelist potential FU upload, but that's the way forward. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:57, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably the core of it. However, in what? five years on Wikinews, this is the only time I've seen a piece of video that I just had to use. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

People, listenin to the fair use policy - as if ;). How about adding another criteria. "Any media that could be justifiably argued as fair use, adds very significantly to the article in question, and is by its very nature imposible, and never will be possible, to be replaced by a free equivelent, may be uploaded." Bawolff ☺☻ 15:21, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, Bawolff. I'd support adding that to WN:FU. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)