Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals

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Poor communication[edit]

Browsing through articles recently, there is a startling number of articles tossed due to the freshness criteria. Knowing full well that all of us are contributing out of our own time, it beseeches on how to streamline the process. So I have a few thoughts on how to communicate better during the review process.

  1. If a reviewer rejects the article on any grounds dictated by Wikinews's policies, they should make themselves available to answer any direct questions regarding the specific article and respective review for the next 24 hours.
  2. If an editor, disagrees with a reviewer's stance then an appeal could be requested and documented.
  3. Any non-article related statements with the goal of disparaging remarks and/or intentionally driving collaborative discussion unproductively would be could constitute a 'troll' status for that article.
  4. A new category for publishing articles that are larger and more comprehensive would by released only on Sunday's, more like a news magazine.

I believe that these are options easily implemented as Wikinews is trying to gain social critical mass. With the reviewer pool currently, it is asking a lot but laying the framework is worth doing. AZOperator (talk) 17:15, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

(1) seems to be a matter of trying to be helpful. Reviewers generally put huge effort into trying to be helpful.

Reviewers are chosen to be highly experienced; basically, experts (anyone who isn't shouldn't be a reviewer); and don't throw their weight around for the hell of it. One thing that's pretty sure to sink any news article is for newbies to try to argue with the review, as if it were just some miscellaneous user's opinion and this were Wikipedia where vicious squabbling is routine and tends to succeed as a strategy; our policies and practices are streamlined to avoid controversies entirely, because it's a total nonstarter on a news deadline. Newbies who seek to learn, and expect to keep learning indefinitely (nobody here should ever stop learning), may hope to become veteran experts themselves; newbies whose basic impulse is to argue with reviews not only sink their own articles, they generally don't succeed at Wikinews (this is an attitude shared by all the most spectacular failures on Wikinewsies I can recall).

AZOperator, if I might opine a moment, I've generally been heartened by your positive attitude. It seems to me there are some basics of news writing that we need to find ways to help you get the hang of, and (sadly) a distraction from that discussion has been another user who was systematically fouling our attempts to help newcomers (one of the major activities we sink time into); hopefully, removing that distraction from the mix will allow us to spend attention more efficiently.

You seem to have gotten diverted by the idea that the primary difficulty with your articles has been that they were too large for the reviewers to deal with. I do not believe this to be so. You're trying to write big articles without having mastered basic principles that would get in the way of smaller articles too; and the fact that the articles are big is causing secondary problems that make learning much less efficient. It's not that long articles aren't more challenging for reviewers, but the most effective mitigation for that is a reporter who's really good at Wikinews writing, which is hard to get to if you're only writing long articles that tend to bog down the learning process.

We've also had some users around lately trying to push a higher level of collaborative writing than Wikinews usually supports. My attitude has, until now, been rather indulgent — perhaps warning them that long Wikinews experience has demonstrated that seriously collaborative writing does not work well here, but then just letting them try and find out for themselves that it doesn't work. But I'm thinking that may have been a mistake on my part. Because it's occurring to me now that intensively collaborative news writing may severely degrade a reviewer's ability to give feedback to individual writers, which is essential to the health of the Wikinews project: it's how newcomers progress toward becoming experts, the way we can develop new generations of reviewers.

I was rather shocked when (a few years ago) I first looked up "meritocracy" on English Wikipedia and found an article heavily biased toward preaching the evils of elitism. There is a more positive sense of the word, which Brian McNeil used to use here, in which Wikinews is a meritocracy; our solution to the problem that expert tasks require a high priesthood is to do all we can to help everyone who comes here to learn how to become a high priest. --Pi zero (talk) 18:30, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

At the vary least, self policing is a something that is really lacking here. Even a list of usernames of potential trolls could be put together and I could put into the code that a 'troll designator' follows all additions, collaborations or articles, follows the user until they can prove non-troll actions through an appeal. AZOperator (talk) 02:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
@AZOperator: Keep in mind that Wikinews has very different social dynamics than Wikipedia. People here are individuals in a way that doesn't really have any Wikipedia analog. Brian McNeil used to tell people, "You're not in Kansas anymore." Brianmc was himself something of a case in point: a curmudgeon, is the way we often used to put it. Where Wikipedia elevates "Assume Good Faith" to the status of sacred writ, we explicitly reject it; we make quite a point of being uncensored; and while we seek to avoid squabbles and Wikipedia-style debates we value the right to dispense with time-consuming pleasantries and be blunt. It does require that we have confidence in each other's devotion to the project mission, which we achieve through accumulated reputation (see Wikinews:Never assume). There's some deep philosophy behind that:
Wikipedia needs people to instantly work together with others they might never have met before and might never meet again, using AGF to try to make that happen, and deprioritizing technical considerations which can be left to take care of themselves over arbitrarily long periods of debate/squabble; and part of the result is that, by superficially-trusting, Wikipedia ultimately trusts no-one. On Wikinews, though, we treat social relations as something for the long run, whereas technical interaction has to work in the short run; and we need to apply keen judgement to the question of trusting people, just as we do to (other) sources, where there is no such thing as perfect, uninformed trust, but much of the time we're able to pull back to things that sources say that we can have high confidence are true (even when there are other things being said by the same source at the same time that we either mistrust or simply treat as opinion rather than fact). When I first came to Wikinews, and watched prominent interactions on the water cooler, I quickly realized that this place was the advanced course in social interaction, whereas everybody on Wikipedia was permanently stuck with "training wheels" (I used those once when learning to ride a bike; ghastly restrictive, basically kept me from doing anything but going forward and backward). Wikipedia tries to treat everybody the same; Wikinews tries to treat each individual person as an individual so that their individual trust-worthiness character can be judged as closely as sources are judged, and our whole infrastructure is geared for that. It's a profoundly different way to run a wiki, and yes there have been problems and challenges, we continue to work on some aspects, and there are concerns about problems of scale (right now we're a small community where everyone pretty-much knows everyone else).

(I vividly recall once, years ago, when Jimmy Wales came over here — as steeped in Wikipedian culture as it is possible to be, of course, and always out of his element with news — and, with Wikinewsies explaining things to him, when he finally got some inkling of just how much trust we put in the person who reviews an article, his apparently very-authentic reaction was to think we were completely insane. It reminded me of what Wikipedians say about their own project — that it only works in practice; in theory it could never work.)

On the particular notion of possible-troll listing, I'm immediately concerned about the danger of blacklisting. Keeping things running smoothly here can be a complex task and, like all exercise of judgement here, falls very disproportionately on the inner circle of the community (which even Wikipedia is unable to avoid, though in giving elevated powers to admins, to crats, to ArbCom, they're constantly at war with their own egalitarian ideals). It can be tricky to pin down, in a publicly visible way, when genuine trolling goes over the line here on Wikinews, in a context where mere abruptness is not necessarily trolling, and the most seasoned members of the community are supposed to tell newcomers with dispatch what they've done wrong, without beating around the bush (and yes, doing so in the most-positive, hence most-useful, way is an additional challenge of review, which we all have our individual perpetual struggles to improve at). --Pi zero (talk) 13:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
(To be clear, when I say "blacklisting", I'm talking about this.) --Pi zero (talk) 14:57, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi AZOperator.

  1. "If a reviewer rejects the article on any grounds dictated by Wikinews's policies, they should make themselves available to answer any direct questions regarding the specific article and respective review for the next 24 hours." is interesting but it would simply be great if another reviewer or peer was able to answer such questions also. This is typically done by people who monitor recent changes or have the article on their watchlist. The closest to streamlining this that I can think of is adding a 'if you need assistance ask at WaterCooler/assistance' note to the review comment at the end via a template, and anyone willing to offer assistance would be glad to watch this respective water cooler subpage.
  2. "If an editor, disagrees with a reviewer's stance then an appeal could be requested and documented. " this too can be done at WaterCooler/assistance but I dislike appeal word and the formality, perhaps a re-review by a different reviewer could be requested (something that would now be rejected saying 'you need to address previous reviewer comments before re submitting')? Is this really a frequent occurrence? I haven't seen many of such cases.
  3. "Any non-article related statements with the goal of disparaging remarks and/or intentionally driving collaborative discussion unproductively would be could constitute a 'troll' status for that article." that would be a 'person x is trolling', this is undesirable and I simply delay responses to such people and when I do respond it is only content-focused while ignoring any personal attacks. if terribly bad and persistent then such people need to be spoken with to see whether they have a difficult life and whether they are agreeable with finding a better support venue than lashing out at people. and of course if everything peaceful fails then a block needs to be added as a last resort.
  4. "A new category for publishing articles that are larger and more comprehensive would by released only on Sunday's, more like a news magazine. " is interesting but not 'wn:fresh and does not solve much of the problems that you see.

Perhaps this helps. Personally I would be interested in further development of the first two points. The assistance to authors is scattered at article talk pages for now where it is really hard to keep track of unless you monitor recent or do something similar. Gryllida (talk) 11:30, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

The word "appeal" worries me, as it suggests a writer treating the reviewer as the enemy. The review process can't work that way; some newcomers do approach the project that way and it's a recipe for failure. Newcomers who succeed use reviewer feedback to learn the principles of the project. The review process only guarantees in general two people on the article, one reporter and one reviewer; it cannot work well unless they're both working for the same goals. There's more than enough for both reporter and reviewer to do in a successful collaboration. (Wikipedia's attitude toward such conflict is generally to embrace it, which clearly cannot work with short deadlines and arguably causes dire social problems even without deadlines.)

Improving communication would need a fundamentally different approach, one that guides newcomers into learning rather than combat. Conflict-based strategy/tactics are a trap, to be avoided. --Pi zero (talk) 12:18, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

  • Yes, I'd consider adding 'for assistance please leave a message here' note at the end of the review comment, in the template. This way it does not read as an invitation to fight.
  • This could also create a new forum specifically for discussions among authors and reviewers, something that is perhaps desired (as opposed to discussing reviewing process on article talks and user talks pages), similar to a noticeboard of sorts. --Gryllida (talk) 03:55, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

HIV in the Caribbean[edit]

My Dutch article Hiv heeft epidemische omvang in de Cariben (Hiv has epedemic proportions in the Caribbean) had been translated into French. If you like, I can translate it into English. But only if you like to review it an complete it when it doesn't meet all needs you have for articles on en.Wikinews. Please tell me if you'd like to have the English translation. It's quite original news. Ymnes (talk) 14:28, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ymnes: well, we require English sources. If you can find English sources, that would be great!
103.254.128.86 (talk) 14:45, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Three out of the four sources are in English. This would mean that I should leave away the third paragraph. I don't know if that will be enough? Ymnes (talk) 14:51, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
... It might even be easier for someone to write it from scratch. An important statement comes from USAID: "The Caribbean region has the second highest prevalence HIV rate in the world after sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated adult prevalence rate of 1 percent" (source) Ymnes (talk) 14:59, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Hi Ymnes. :-) This is not really fresh on its own anymore as it happened more than three days ago.
  • However a few relevant entities may be interviewed to get an idea of prognosis or reasons for the epidemics. Would you be able to name such entities? What questions would you suggest to ask them - something that is missing in the currently available report? (In the case of interview, a report may be published a bit after the event occurred.) Gryllida (talk) 03:58, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
For me it would be mean a search too. A growing or alarming situation can be fresh too, though some creativity is needed. Ymnes (talk) 05:12, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: I see the International AIDS Conference (see Wikipedia and website) has started in Amsterdam on July 24th and the subject is fully fresh now (several news articles per day in Dutch language). There must be articles in English language in the media as well. Ymnes (talk) 16:39, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

@Gryllida: freshness alert :-) Today is the last day of the conference and Bill Clinton was the main speacher. Ymnes (talk) 20:14, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Videos of reviewing[edit]

Hello,

To reduce reviewing load and know what tasks takes so much time for a reviewer, I would like to propose to film the review process.

Further to urge reviewers to participate, perhaps the easy peer review gadget may be modified to include a "Please film your reviewing process - see discussion" ('discussion' would be a link to, for instance, this talk page section) note at the top of the review screen which opens when we click the 'Review' tab. This screen is read by any active reviewer. Such a change would require consensus and a modification to a javascript file in the MediaWiki namespace. Gryllida (talk) 10:53, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

No two articles are the same, and no two reviews are the same. While some information can be gathered from these videos, it possibly can not tell everything that is going on, in the head of the reviewer, and someone who has not gone through the article and the sources would never truly understand it. Why don't you try for yourself, Gry?
•–• 11:06, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm trying to identify some time consuming tasks.
  • These tasks may be different for everyone, this is why I am trying to reach many people.
  • I would do it for myself once I meet two conditions: "am reviewing" and "at the home laptop (where I can install things)". This, as much as I wish it wasn't, is a rare occurrence. --Gryllida (talk) 04:01, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Can't do anything about that. FWIW, a video recording would not answer things in the reviewer's head and would never answer "why".
106.213.174.17 (talk) 05:26, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
What I most hope to target (with dialog-based assistance) is wasteful use of thought — in essence, tedium. I care more about eliminating that than about reducing time spent. I've long maintained that people have only so much capacity for decision-making per day; just recently I came across this link for a similar sentiment: [1]. --Pi zero (talk) 12:13, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikiconference North America - Columbus, OH[edit]

Lightning talk at Wikimania 2018, Cape Town, on "Countering the Balkanization of the Body Politic"

I want to do something for Wikiconference North America 2018, October 18-21, that discusses how the people whose Wikinews submissions do not get published might be engaged in some kind of activity that would keep many of them in the Wikimedia system and learning more about the issues that concern them. At Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, I gave a lightning talk on how the Wikimedia Foundation is ideally placed to counter the Balkanization and exploitation of the body politic to benefit elites.

I don't know, but I suspect that many of the people whose Wikinews submissions are rejected return to their social media echo chambers complaining about the impossibility of talking with people different from them. I believe this has contributed to the polarization of the body politic including the rise of right wing extremism in the Western world in recent years -- and possibly even World War III, as we saw in the exchange of insults a few months ago between the heads of state of the US and North Korea. Both Daniel Ellsberg and Robert McNamara have said that a nuclear third world war is essentially certain to destroy civilization some time in the future unless the world's large nuclear arsenals are not destroyed first. (McNamara was US Secretary of Defense and Ellsberg was a high level consultant in the US Department of Defense during the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis. Both have said that the world is very lucky that it didn't happen them.)

The problem is much bigger than Russian hacking of Brexit and the 2016 US presidential elections, as noted recently by Chomsky. More thoughts on this have been discussed here in the past and are available in v:Everyone's favorite news site.

Comments? The deadline for submissions for this October conference is August 15. I want to submit something, and I'd be pleased to collaborate with people more active with Wikinews than I have been. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Kansas City. real name = Spencer Graves. See EffectiveDefense.org, and KKFI Board and member of committees. I'm also a part time journalist with their Radio Active Magazine and to a lesser extent other shows.

Materials to submit, present, etc[edit]

  • What do you need to submit? There is a form to fill out. Have you seen it? What would you put into your submission? We could help you review your form contents and help you finalise your submission. It would be nice to have an updated version of [2] which expands on the work that is said in its last slide. (Further once you make the presentation we could rehearse it via video chat. This all needs you to share each input that you are adding to the system. But this is for later.) --Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I have not studied the details of their proposal form. I felt a need to discuss it here first, and I'm very glad I did. I hope to have your help in developing that. I think it will make the resulting talk -- and the other work we've discussed -- more useful. I can't postpone starting on that too much longer, though.

Side questions[edit]

  • Why does "ow the people whose Wikinews submissions do not get published might be engaged in some kind of activity that would keep many of them in the Wikimedia system and learning more about the issues that concern them" have to start with "the people whose Wikinews submissions do not get published" (emphasis added)? What about people whose submissions to Wikipedia do not get published?
I have a total of 5,178 total edits since 2010-04-18 according to https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikiversity.org/DavidMCEddy. These have been in Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, etc., mostly in English but also in Spanish, French and German -- plus correcting a syntax error in the Ladino Wikipedia ;-)
Very few of my edits have been reverted, and I could understand the logic behind most of the reversions.
I've had a much harder time with Wikinews, in part because Wikinews does not accept footnotes. I've subscribed since 1992 to Le Monde diplomatique in part because it's the only newspaper format publication I know that cites its sources. It would be easier for people like me to write for Wikinews if we could put our fact checking in footnotes that would not be displayed by default but could be displayed by clicking a switch someplace. At the annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors (ire.org) in Orlando, FL, this past June 14-17, someone said you should fact check every word. It would be easier for me to document my claims if I could put them in line with <ref>...</ref>. The notes could appear when I "Show preview" but disappear upon "Save changes" unless I explicitly click a button that says something like "Show notes". DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Perhaps this talk may be dedicated to a call for helping this publishing system become more successful instead? Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but I'm not sure what you mean by that. DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • What do Wikiblogs and Wikianalytica have to do with this? Wikimedia movement is about advancing freedom of knowledge. These tools that you are mentioning do not appear to be related. However anything that you wish to put in a blog may already be added to Wikibooks or Wikiversity, inclusion criteria for which is relatively broad. --Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I think we could facilitate understanding between extreme groups with a system that would more aggressively work to pair people with a crazy rant with someone who would try to move them toward a center rather than drive them away into their own for-profit social media echo chamber. DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Does KKFI publish at Wikinews? Why? Why not? --Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
KKFI has news and public affairs shows. However, I don't know of anyone with KKFI who writes material that would meet the criteria for Wikinews articles. I wrote a Wikinews article about a presentation in Kansas City last December 1 by David Barsamian. It was rejected by User:Pi zero, I think because I had been one of the organizers for that event. A month or two later, someone with Wikinews found that the Barsamian was speaking elsewhere and suggested the article could be rewritten to talk about the his speaking tour, which started December 1 in Kansas City. However, I was too busy with other things to bother with that, and no one else took the time to do anything with it.
Writing for Wikinews is a great education in journalism, but the timing rarely works for me. I tried to write a Wikinews article on the 2013 National Conference for Media Reform, but I misunderstood a comment from User:Pi zero and waited for a reply that I had overlooked until the article was stale. I thought about writing something about Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, but I was too busy to seriously consider doing that. DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Do the "profs at the Universities of Missouri and Kansas", or their students, publish at Wikinews? Why? Or why not? --Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
What about User:Pi zero's comment below: "Professional journalists as reviewers are not something we want because they would import the worst failings of the msm while lacking the local culture that is the source of our strengths and makes possible our fusion of wikis with journalism. In my experience, most professional journalists make terrible Wikinewsies because of the things they think they know that aren't so". Does this provide a partial answer to your question?
I agree with your suggestions that it would be good to get students at universities writing for Wikinews as part of their training. I'd like to see more journalism professors and their teaching assistants as reviewers with their students writing articles. If this happened, Wikinews could grow from one article per day to thousands of local editions -- and people the world over could find the news of most interest to them using the localization software you are proposing to write. However, the comment I just quoted from User:Pi zero doesn't sound to me very inviting for journalism professors and their students. DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Do you really pose 'nuclear war III' as a real threat? Is the propaganda not a cheaper and more powerful tool, which has, in my opinion, already rendered classic military obsoleted, left in the background by inertia, only as much as is needed to continue the games played by previous military entities? I mean there may be more than one opinion on this, but handling the problem of massively produced bias in mainstream media, alone, seems like a sufficient motivation for investigative journalist movement, without mentioning a third world war or its equivalent. Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm for whatever will sell the ideas.
If you think people are more likely to dismiss my presentation if I mention a possible World War III, then I should not mention it.
However, I'm convinced that the threat of nuclear annihilation is a far bigger concern than global warming. Check the Wikiversity articles cited in en4j.org/1 and tell me what you think I'm missing or misinterpreting. DavidMCEddy (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

WikiTribune?[edit]

Also, what do you think of WikiTribune? I don't know, but I believe Jimmy Wales would have preferred to see Wikinews grow into millions of local editions but was frustrated by its slow rate of growth. I think he has a good idea in trying to use professional editors with volunteers. However, its status as a for-profit company turns me off, and I'm concerned that it may have a similar impact on others.

This suggests to me that we might try recruit reviewers who are a cross between professional editors and experts in conflict resolution and group therapy. Maybe encourage groups like the American Friends Service Committee and the Denver Conflict Resolution Institute to pay people to serve as Wikinews reviewers. Wikinews submissions that could not reasonably qualify as journalism might be referred to some Wikiblog or Wikisocial initiative that could help build bridges to escape the Balkanization that is required to make money for commercial media including Facebook.

As I've said before, I believe that the Wikimedia Foundation is ideally placed to counter the Balkanization and exploitation of the body politic to benefit elites. And the articles rejected by Wikinews represent opportunities to help different parties in conflict better understand their opposition and thereby find ways to reduce rather than amplify conflict.

Comments? DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:51, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

My thoughts: Jimmy hates Wikinews and has no clue about news. Professional journalists as reviewers are not something we want because they would import the worst failings of the msm while lacking the local culture that is the source of our strengths and makes possible our fusion of wikis with journalism. In my experience, most professional journalists make terrible Wikinewsies because of the things they think they know that aren't so — just as most dyed-in-the-wool Wikipedians make terrible Wikinewsies for the same reason.

As I've said before, I see the really crucial struggle atm to be a war for the soul of human civilization between the fact-based mindset, where one's core instinct is to try to build the best foundation of objective fact one can and build one's opinions on top of that, versus the opinion-based mindset where one starts by choosing what one will believe and then find or invent "facts" on top of that foundation of opinion. The Wikipedian community has lots of people who are at least partly fact-based, but in net effect it fails to come down hard on the fact-based side; Wikinews is thoroughly fact-based. --Pi zero (talk) 22:50, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

What can we do differently to help Wikinews grow to better respond to the crying need for more fact-based information that would attract a much wider audience? DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:40, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
One change for this is discussed in the 'Banner' section below. I hope this may gradually increase the rates of publication of news happening now, including breaking news, thus resulting in more visitors and thus resulting in more content and programming contributors. Gryllida (talk) 05:55, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • It may be possible to recruit people from area-based "wiki projects" at Wikipedia. They know the local area, which may put them into the best position to gradually get involved into original reporting in their area. If you are keen on this, join a WikiProject and meet several people. Find who of them appears to have fact-based thinking, is ready to large volumes of reading, looks sensible and approachable, and may be ready to write news. Work with them for some time, and then invite them to help you with a same topic story at Wikinews.
  • Another venue may be writing about events which are happening now -- breaking news -- and identifying those, plus writing about them in great detail, would need to be at the core of the experiment. This needs two leaps: identify the event and write about it. It is my hypothesis that (a) the same person identifying the event and writing about it is a waste of time; (b) identifying can be done based on social media, semi-assisted; (c) people who identify events and put them somewhere may find it a pleasant activity, settle in and start writing articles eventually; and (d) writing a story needs to be done by one person initially, and doing that in real time collaboration is a waste of effort.
  • There already is the WN:Requested articles page, which is easy to use. I am not sure why it is not used by everyone to fill it with many pages of stuff that people saw on TV or read at a random news site. In my opinion this would greatly improve things, as people capable of identifying news correctly (fresh and relevant) would receive the pleasure of seeing someone write the story, and later begin to participate.
  • Some merit is in asking a school or a university to provide their students with practice at Wikinews as a part of their homework. University of Wollongong does this.
  • All of the above is about increasing the amount of sensible authors and visitors; from them, reviewers may be selected.
  • Reviewing, as well as authoring, is technically challenging. User:Gryllida/Tasks is a start of my attempt at fixing this, and WN:Dialog is Pi zero's software whose output is more reliant on wiki markup, so that it is easier for people to develop wizards in wiki markup. Your contribution to either of these things, or any other technical improvement, would be greatly welcomed. Similarly would be your pointers to technically minded or outreach minded people who would be willing to help with any of the points raised above (or any points that come to your mind that may seem useful). --Gryllida (talk) 23:51, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy to collaborate on a proposal for a presentation at Wikiconference North America in Columbus, OH, October 18-21. I plan to attend. If we get more than one person with a connection to Wikinews, we may be able to attract an audience for a session -- or part of a session -- devoted to, e.g., "Growing Wikinews".
Last month I attended Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town. Someone there ask, "Is Wikinews still alive?" I said, "Yes, but they have yet to figure out how to make it grow to meet the need." DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:40, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
This is discussed above. Don't know about others, but personally I do not expect to be able to travel (I am in Australia at present). I may be able to afford it, but doubt in the benefits that this would add. Perhaps only if the other attendees are really keen on making all this work here. Gryllida (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I concur: I don't see us making enough progress by October 18-21 to justify you making that trip. However, if we can make progress on this, I think we could have something to discuss at meta:Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm in July or August of next year. DavidMCEddy (talk)
@DavidMCEddy: I feel you are likely mistaking something in your perception of Wikinews. In your thinking about what is needed, it seems as if (and, keep in mind, I'm struggling for how to put this) you're underestimating the existing infrastructure and overemphasizing warm bodies and volume of output.
  • Obviously we do want more people; but not just for the sake of having more warm bodies. I think someone here (quite possibly our erstwhile resident curmudgeon brianmc) may have remarked at some point —abrasively, but not without a valid point— that Wikinews is not a social club. Our goal is, and must be, to apply sapient minds from the general internet population (that's the "open wiki" aspect of the project) to the task of news production; the existing infrastructure is extraordinarily well tuned to that purpose, and it's absurdly easy to underestimate that existing infrastructure. Throwing more bodies at the problem is the Wikipedian solution, and it absolutely does not work for news production, where large numbers on any given article can only hamper its transformation into news output.
  • Volume is not an end in itself. Producing quality news output from an open wiki is a extraordinarily difficult thing and it's nothing short of miraculous that Wikinews can do it; that's why Wikinews lives on while other "citizen journalism" efforts have come and gone, and volume is desirable only when it doesn't interfere with that.
  • Those of us thoroughly immersed in the Wikinews infrastructure do have an understanding of what's needed to make things work better, and the problem isn't simply "drumming up more people", it requires careful tweaks to the infrastructure —which, again, is working extremely well already, though there are particular aspects of its function that need streamlining— in order to bring more people to bear without causing the whole system to overheat and melt down.
  • I'm getting from you a sense of urgency to grow things right away. I don't exactly disagree, but, as I say, we need to make the machinery run more smoothly if we're to bring a lot more people to bear on it without causing overheating and meltdown.
--Pi zero (talk) 14:36, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

[edit]


This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.


At the top of the site in the banner we have a recommendation that people write stories. Instead of this they could request them - a task that takes less than two minutes, and may be accompanied with an optional invitation to create an account. It is a hypothesis that people leaving such requests would invite more participation, potentially help to identify breaking news, and those of the people who add relevant stuff (newsworthy) would be rewarded with the pleasure of seeing their story published. Then they may sign up and gradually increase participation.

It is thus proposed to implement one of these two changes:

1) to change (or randomize, with this added line) the banner text to

"Know of something happening today? Request an article about it now."
In this case the "Wikinews:Requested_articles" page would need to be modified to include a large green button, for instance
When entering a news article, please format it properly so it is more accessible to other users. We recommend you use this button:

2) to change (or randomize, with this added line) the banner text to include the direct link

"Know of something happening today? Request an article about it now."
Then people would be able to view the list of requests after they have saved their request.

It would be my personal preference to follow the second change.

I would perhaps also suggest to add the 'request an article' link to the sidebar after the 'write an article' link before the 'water cooler'.

I understand that all of this may result in people writing more articles, and the review load may be increased. However if these articles are left in the requested articles page, they're relatively easy to clean up (if abandoned), and someone more experienced may actually choose to write a full story and follow it through to publication.

This may also help to identify news happening today, which people care about.

And like mentioned above, people more successful at requests may become sensible authors and later reviewers.

This is only (I think so, anyway) a burden-free (?) method to reduce the learning curve.

What do you think?

--Gryllida (talk) 00:36, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Suggestion for a new platform model[edit]

I think what you are doing is impressive and sorely needed, but I wonder if a different platform model might work better. Perhaps a Wikimedia News Browser, or possibly a progressive web app, where all articles can be read on their own native site, and the news agency can still monetize, but each article is tagged on a blockchain to uniquely identify it, and then admins for the browser/app can rate the article based on any number of conditions including 'fakeness'. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 103.61.198.57 (talk • contribs)

We're not here to advertise commercial news sites. --Pi zero (talk) 01:34, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Hello 103.61.198.57. :-) Wikinews publishes bias-free content pertaining to fresh events (starting with 5Ws in the first paragraph) under a free licence (see footer). External sites usually don't do that. A feed from them, even if rated, would be uninteresting. Perhaps Wikinews can not promote such a feed. However if some materials at an external web site are fresh and relevant, they may be added to WN:Requested articles. Do you have a suggestion how to facilitate the addition of relevant materials from these external web sites here? Gryllida (talk) 01:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
A platform similar to 'Web of Trust' may be made, to rate individual articles for fakeness instead of rating websites for malware threats. I wouldn't mind helping to develop or train it, if contact details of a willing co-author become available. However I would have concerns with such a system being subjective. Not really sure how to address that..? Gryllida (talk) 05:57, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
The problem of who to trust is basic to journalism. There are two broad strategies: majority vote, and editorial vetting.
  • Any system fundamentally based on majority vote is subject to majoritarian bias. Basically, whatever the popular prejudices of the day are, the system will echo them. Wikipedia has this problem.
  • Any system based on editors with special status is, one one hand, capable of resisting majoritarian bias, and on the other hand, can go horribly wrong if the editors themselves are biased. More in a moment on how based to go about this strategy, but first a bit about why news has to use editorial vetting.
Fact-based news cannot be done by the majoritarian route, for two reasons.
  • Fact-based worldview depends crucially on an upstream filter against bias. The majoritarian-bias vulnerability cannot be tolerated on the upstream filter (consequences likely to be disasterous), and that's where news is.
  • Majority vote is inherently slow, whereas an upstream filter has to act with dispatch. (Clarification: Wikipedia has a ludicrously slow filter, even for those things its filter is even capable of catching, which is the point of the exercise; unfiltered material isn't news.)
When you get right down to it, nothing else can come close to the filtering effectiveness of a sapient mind functioning in top form. A group of people voting can't do nearly as well. An algorithm, by itself, can't hold a candle to it.

Some years ago I recall watching a panel discussion, put together by one or another US university, on the future of journalism, the panelists chosen to be young rising stars in journalism. They all said pretty much the same thing (though I seem to recall one of them seemed more articulate about it): there's staggeringly vast information flow coming at us constantly, and the problem is to rapidly mesh incoming information with the earned reputation of the journalist. When you get right down to it, that's editorial vetting. Upstream filtering by a sapient mind.

Two key factors in editorial vetting are choice of editors and community culture. They are not separate. Corrupt editors can create a corrupt culture (although the fact-based-journalism culture is itself strong enough, as an ideal, that it can sometimes infect even a severely compromised news org). The right culture —though it can't work miracles, such as turning black-hat editors into white-hat editors— can nurture conformance to policy from editors with a really broad range of ideologies, creating greater stability/robustness of the news org itself. Policy that combats bias of all kinds is by nature a powerful tool in gathering editors who promote fact-based journalism, and the process snowballs. Wikinews culture, in particular, is geared toward nurturing a community of fact-based sapient minds for journalism; the community sifts its own membership on the outer periphery and its authorized reviewers on the inner side of things. The whole is, tbh, quite wonderful to contemplate in its entirety. --Pi zero (talk) 13:50, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Developing a process for a regular news broadcast[edit]

What kind of process would you suggest for a group trying to start a regular news service?

I ask, because I'm working on such a project in conjunction with other supporters of KKFI, which is a listener-sponsored radio station in Kansas City in the middle of the US, straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas. KKFI is an affiliate of the Pacifica network of roughly 200 listener-supported radio stations. We've been broadcasting at 100 KW for 30 years, with 24/7 programming for much of that period. We have a paid staff of 2.5 and local programming produced by a couple hundred volunteers. The paid staff are a chief operator, a "development director / event coordinator and fund raiser", and a volunteer coordinator.

We plan eventually to raise money to pay a professional editor / journalist to take the lead in producing our news broadcasts, presumably with the help of volunteers. However, we want to try to do something with volunteers, then raise money to expand.

My initial thought is to create a wiki listing potential sources of local news. This would include a "tip line", a list of existing local newspapers and broadcasts with material posted on their web sites, plus local political jurisdictions with links to published minutes of their official meetings plus links to other major sources of local news that might be scanned on a regular basis to generate news stories. Another section could have national data bases that could be mined for local angles on national stories. Another section might make it easy for people to find local civil society groups. This is similar to my previous suggestion (see v:Everyone's favorite news site) of something that would translate longitude and latitude into lists of relevant sources of local news, except that this would be for a geographical area rather than a specific point -- and the lists would help journalist with a regular scan for stories that could interest their audience.

Might it make sense to try to create something like that within Wikinews? I think I could do it in Wikiversity. If I understand how new Wikimedia Foundation projects tend to be developed, this could then lead to something posted on Meta-Wiki and from there to the Incubator, etc.

Suggestions? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy: It seems to me what you're describing would be worth trying to support through Wikinews. That's my thought on first exposure to the idea. Although there are some things I have objected to hosting at Wikinews, in the past, because I felt they would undermine our news publications, our activities are not inherently limited to those publications. I'll think some more on the matter.

It also seems to me Amgine (ping) might have some useful thoughts on this (notwithstanding Amgine and I have in the past had some spectacular disagreements on suitable directions for Wikinews expansion; I'm hoping, optimistically no doubt, that in this case we can all play nicely together. :-). --Pi zero (talk) 23:25, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@Pi zero: How do you suggest I start? By creating something like "Kansas City news sources and process for KKFI" under Wikinews? Then invite my collaborators at KKFI to contribute?
We can do this. ¡Sí, se puede! DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:12, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Well, as I say, I need to think about this. --Pi zero (talk) 03:37, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Authorship issues: I'm not sure of the legal implications here. Aren't articles published here attributed to 'Wikinews', leaving little to no room for publishing them in the name of, say, KKFI? Not arguing against the idea, only that I am not sure of the implementation. Gryllida (talk) 11:51, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: I'm proposing to publish the process here, but our news would more likely go elsewhere, esp. kkfi.org but possibly elsewhere as well. In any event, we need to use the same "CC BY-SA 4.0 International" license, so there shouldn't be a problem if we cross post some of it in both places? DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:03, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Why'd you publish elsewhere? Surely if your news is freely licensed and bias-free and written well it can be published here? Perhaps both? ('Both' may perhaps partly solve authorship issues, but possibly not entirely, as attribution to one source would need to be given in another.) Gryllida (talk)
I can meet a deadline if I publish elsewhere. I may not be able to meet a deadline if I try to publish here. DavidMCEddy (talk) 22:43, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@DavidMCEddy: Am I reading you correctly, that what you're envisioning is trying to meet an external-to-Wikinews deadline (such as, oh, let's say, the time of a scheduled radio program), and then injecting into the process publication on Wikinews as something to try to get in before the scheduled program? (I can think of a variety of comments I might make... but I want to be sure we're talking about the same things.) --Pi zero (talk) 23:58, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand you. I am one of maybe a few dozen people who regularly produce news and public affairs material that is broadcasted on 90.1 FM in Kansas City and subsequently offered via podcasting on kkfi.org. This is roughly 10% of KKFI's 24/7 schedule -- or 2.4 hours per day. However, our current local news and public affairs programming is NOT curated based on any systematic scanning of sources that might represent in any way the most important things our audience would want to hear about. I am working to change that. Most importantly, I want a regular list of potential news sources that our team would scan and discuss in regular editorial review meetings to select the stories to report along with deciding who would research, write, edit, record, and assemble whatever we broadcast -- with a narrative also published on something like kkfi.org/news and perhaps elsewhere. Some of that might be offered to Wikinews, depending on how much time KKFI's news team (initially at least all volunteer) might have to invest in that. However, I won't allow the Wikinews review process to prevent us meeting a deadline -- and I also don't want to overwhelm Wikinews reviewers with more material than they feel comfortable processing.
There should be a place in the Wikimedia system, preferably in Wikinews, that would invite people to document the specific process the KKFI News Team would follow to produce our regular broadcasts. I'm happy to involve Wikinews reviewers in any way that makes sense.
We plan to apply to join the Institute for Nonprofit News as soon as we are eligible, which I think would mean shortly after our first broadcast. (I attended their overlapping conference with Investigative Reporters and Editors in Orlando, FL, in June. They helped me develop the broad outline of what we need to do to make this happen.) DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:19, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Wikinews could possibly not advertise or promote you in any manner. The best outcome from my view would be KKFI adding submissions to Wikinews and making them published. Perhaps you want to try that with a few of your publications and see whether it works out well? Otherwise what point would be in working together? Gryllida (talk) 11:35, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 My number one concern at the moment is finding a sensible place to develop regular procedures for producing KKFI News. Wikinews seems like an ideal place for something like this, because its mission is news, and anyone should be allowed to contribute ideas moderated by standard Wikimedia Foundation rules. I would NOT suggest that this be featured on the en.wikinews landing page: It would not interest that general audience. With luck, this could grow to become a prototype for founding other local news departments with a loose affiliation to Wikinews, all bona fide nonprofits with reasonable journalistic standards for fact checking, documenting their sources, fairness, and editorial independence. We don't want Wikinews to support the creation of a news department for the American Nazi Party, to name only one extreme example. This can be accomplished, I think, by developing rules similar to those used by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN); see my responses below to your questions about that. I'd like to encourage the KKFI News Team to occasionally try to publish its most general interest reports on Wikinews, but I would not want to encumber Wikinews with everything we produce, both because it could overwhelm the capacity of your current reviewers, and because KKFI News will have deadlines, which we might not be able to meet if we had to wait for approval by Wikinews reviewers before we broadcast something. DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:22, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Published articles usually go to the main page into the 'published news' column to the right. They also go to the large area at the left with larger headlines and pictures. For local articles this step may be skipped, or only one large image out of five may be dedicated to your local area, or a better place may be designed. It is my belief that the need to update the design of the main page to suit regular local news reports should not in any way interfere with your group publishing at Wikinews. Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
It is also my view that your group needs to start publishing here regularly (while the news is still fresh) to have one or several persons responsible for providing the materials and completing the write up based on the reviewers' feedback and the current policies at Wikinews. If such stories can be written by you, I can see the benefit of working together; volunteers from the public may get involved in news production, and you could then also take their output and publish it --with attribution-- at your web site. That may lead to an increase in citizen journalism, which is one of the missions here. Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
As far as KKFI's off-Wikinews publications go, they would possibly (in my opinion, at least) have no place at Wikinews. Only its on-wiki publications would be of interest, I believe. Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
What are the eligibility criteria for joining Institute for Nonprofit News and what are the benefits? Gryllida (talk) 11:35, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 INN's "Membership Standards" are available by going to inn.org > "For Members" > "Membership Standards". In brief, the organization must be a bona fide nonprofit in the US [a 501(c)(3) organization] regularly publishing high quality original reporting for a general audience that is investigative or public service by nature, that maintains editorial independence (e.g., independent of partisan or religious affiliations) and lobbies only for free press issues. KKFI and its affiliate Friends of Community Media (FCM) will have to make some changes to our policies that are relatively minor, I think, to qualify for INN membership. These include publishing an editorial independence policy and the names of all donors who give us over US$5,000 in a given year. After KKFI has a regular news program based on reasonable procedures, we plan to file for INN membership. INN membership has several advantages. Most obviously, in the recent past INN has had an annual "News Match" program that would match up to US$1,000 per individual and up to US$28,000 total. That should cover roughly half of one full time journalist or editor. It's therefore not much compared to what we'd ultimately like to have, but it should be a great help in helping us grow from an all volunteer effort into something more substantial. INN membership has other benefits like guidance on good policies to have, low cost access to legal help, advertising our existence on their web site, and their annual "INN Days" conference I attended a couple of months go; the latter was instrumental in helping move the project to produce "KKFI News" from a desire to a project with a first broadcast scheduled for August 18. DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:22, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Scope: Would the published output be local to a particular area or international? Gryllida (talk) 11:51, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Primarily local: w:KKFI is a radio station in Kansas City, as I mentioned above. Our mission is to serve the underserved. Our audience is primarily interested in national and international affairs to the extend that it impacts them, and we need to make that case.
We are starting as volunteers with the hopes of fund raising to create a real investigative journalism organization focused on Kansas and Missouri. We're not going to compete with existing organizations like ProPublica, to name only one. We might, however, compete with w:KCUR, National Public Radio in Kansas City, which has a paid staff of ~25 journalists (I've been told; I haven't checked it): They have corporate sponsorship that we don't, and others tell me they are not as hard hitting as my confidants felt they should be, because of their funding model. We might occasionally research a local angle of a national story, e.g., Google fined for wage theft from employees in Missouri or a Kansas City railroad company being cited 340 times since 2000 of violations of some federal regulation.
This is also related to the discussion above on "Wikiconference North America - Columbus, OH": I still want to file a proposal to talk there (deadline: August 15). I'd like to talk about this and my Wikiversity article on v:Media and corruption, because that fits with this -- but somehow turn it into a workshop on how we can get more people involved in creating local news departments, not necessarily for Wikinews but with a news process published in the Wikimedia system and with occasional articles that don't have tight deadlines published on Wikinews. DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:20, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Developing Wikinews platform and tools to suit local reporting could be great, as this is something other Wikimedia projects does not do, and it may help with organising local working groups. What technical features would a site need for local reporting to be easy? Gryllida (talk) 21:46, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Let's create a prototype and discuss. DavidMCEddy (talk) 22:43, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@DavidMCEddy: A worst-case (or, pretty bad case) scenario I can envision is that something is created, gets legs, and turns out to be detrimental to Wikinews while it has value elsewhere, so that keeping it is bad for Wikinews while getting rid of it is harmful to other projects that Wikinews would like to at-the-very-least coexist peacefully with, if not partner productively with. So it seems to me a bit of further thinking on this could be desirable. I'd try to cobble together some further thoughts right now, but hope to review first the article Gryllida has submitted; conceivably I'll be able to do some cobbling here after that review. --Pi zero (talk) 00:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
OK. I'll be in a KKFI-organized conference from Friday night through Saturday. Our initial goal will be to produce 5 minutes of local news to broadcast Friday at ~5 PM. Our first editorial review meeting will be next Tuesday at 1:15 PM Central. Before then, I would like to have a page that people could edit, preferably on Wikinews, to create a first draft of the process we will follow to produce a systematic scan of sources we think would be of greatest interest and utility to our audience. Noon tomorrow, I will print a flier inviting people to join this news team. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:19, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
And how often do you have such editorial meetings? What is their purpose? Gryllida (talk) 02:27, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Our initial plan is half-hour phone meetings Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:15 - 1:45 PM, supplemented with emails and probably extensive use of Google Docs. Thursday afternoons, one member of our team will assemble the broadcast to air Friday at 5 PM. As our news team grows, we will meet more often and apply for more broadcast time, possibly with different sub-teams responsible for the material broadcasted on different days -- but still scanning the same news sources. With that, we also plan to initiate a major fund raising campaign, so we can hire professional editors to manage the volunteers, etc. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:09, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
It could be a good idea to have a prototype that integrates into wiki well, or is otherwise easy to discover from the wiki. This could possibly help people move from reading a local story to the space where local stories are being identified and written. (Just a thought - external tools hosted by wikimedia forge somewhat frequently face such problem.) Gryllida (talk) 02:23, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Sure. And if it's on Wikinews, it could serve as a prototype for other groups that want to create their own local news service, possibly but not necessarily in conjunction with a listener-sponsored / community radio station. That provides a key connection with what you and I have discussed earlier about a wiki that could translate longitude and latitude (or a geographical area rather than a point) into a list of political jurisdictions relevant to that area AND a list of local news sources relevant to that area -- AND a list of local civil society organizations actively serving an area including that point or that service area. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:09, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I reeally want to comment on this; hopefully when I'm done with this review... --Pi zero (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
@DavidMCEddy: Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner.

Seems to me several basic site principles need to be keep carefully in mind, and we need to work out how things relate to them. One important principle, of course, is, no advertising. That's closely related to neutrality; because it's ultimately a neutrality concern, no advertising is not even limited to commercial advertising. Another important principle to keep in mind, though, is WN:NOT, especially the clause Wikinews is not a free wiki host or webspace provider. In my experience, this is a standard item on the "this project is not" list of each wikimedian sister. Pages on the project should be there to promote the function of the project. Which brings up another basic site principle, namely, the purpose of the project. We're here to do participatory journalism, and this point needs to be parsed carefully. There is no earthly reason we can't be friendly toward other journalistic efforts; we've got nothing necessarily against even for-profit journalism, though we certainly aren't here to promote other news sites, commercial or otherwise (and though we're not friendly toward propaganda, disinformation, or anti-journalism generally). However, if we're to host something on Wikinews, it ought to first and foremost promote Wikinews news production. If it's not going to do that, if its long-term path is not focused primarily on Wikinews news production, that's a problem.

Btw, the page you created? I can undelete that temporarily; perhaps it can find a semi-permanent home, perhaps even a permanent one, in another namespace (project space, maybe?), but it clearly doesn't belong in mainspace. --Pi zero (talk) 01:59, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Publishing local news here may provide a positive feedback loop: more people come to read news here, and some of them get started with reporting their local news as well. This makes more news, and even more readers. This is, as mentioned, a loop.
Would the public not benefit from encouraging such citizen journalism (or participatory journalism) in the Kansas area? All that would be needed is someone (such as KKFI) starting to publish here regularly with the aim of attracting those readers who have a passion for facts. Wikinews provides a platform where reviewers may occur, and where new contributors may receive training and guidance. Also, Wikinews publications may be reused, as they're released with a free licence (see footer); this means anyone may remix them and add them to local newspapers, provided the attribution and licence terms are attached to the story. Gryllida (talk) 02:21, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Local news is within our scope; that's visible in our newsworthiness criteria. It goes through the same review process, to the same standards, as the rest of our output. Including being written for an international audience; so an international audience can understand the story, including why it is significant, and as with any story the international reader can then decide how much of each story they, personally, are interested to read. --Pi zero (talk) 02:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
On what do you base the news that you publish? On texts published by others ('synthesis' article) or on data obtained first hand ('original reporting')? Gryllida (talk) 02:27, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
How do you identify what to write about -- what is current? I have no idea how this happens at news organisations. How many people work on this task? What is its flow? Maybe this could be interesting to explore as at Wikinews often an event is found and written by the same person while finding it is a lot easier and could be spread out to multiple contributors to save the writers' time. Gryllida (talk) 02:28, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I envision a "tip line" (for KKFI it will be "news@kkfi.org", at least initially) plus a list of news sources. The "tip line" can identify for us newsworthy events AND potential scandals. A newsworthy event would be relatively easy to cover -- record a fair amount of material, then select the most interesting 55 seconds, etc. Potential scandals would be passed to people to investigate and document meticulously what they find. Some of those tip need to be dropped after some investigation -- preferably after a few minutes rather than a few weeks. Others could turn into major services to humanity, like the contribution of amaBhungane to forcing the resignation of the President of South Africa this past February. Democracy dies in the dark -- and grows with better news.
The news sources would include other local news outlets and political jurisdictions of special interest to KKFI's audience, especially the area's most underperforming school districts: I plan to work with local chapters of the League of Women Voters, who have "Observer corps" to help recruit volunteers to attend such meetings and write what they see. I also hope to interest professors of economics and political science at, e.g., the University of Missouri-Kansas City to tell us what they think the most important issues they think we should look for. I'll have more to say about this after we actually start doing it. However, I think it's important to have a great platform like a page on Wikinews where the details could be discussed of what potential news sources to scan, etc.
KKFI exists "to provide a channel for individuals and groups, issues and music that have been overlooked, suppressed or under-represented by other media." We will provide only very limited coverage of sports, if any at all -- unless it's high school or other amateur athletics, and not even that at least initially. At the IRE conference in June, I got a list of national data bases (which I can't find right now) of violations of federal regulations by major corporations. Those things are underreported even by the Public Broadcasting System in the US. I plan to mine those data bases for local angles on national stories and make that a staple of KKFI news -- both what we broadcast and what we publish on our web site. We have to be meticulous about fact checking, when we do that, for obvious reasons: Poor people are routinely libeled and slandered with impunity, but you can't denigrate people with power without solid evidence. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:09, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Wikinews's 'tip line' is WN:Requested articles, right? However in all years of Wikinews existence it received very little attention from anyone. How can it be improved? Gryllida (talk) 11:38, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 How can I find it on en.wikinews.org? I found "Request an interview", but that seems different. DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:22, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

It is linked from he WN:Newsroom which is linked at the sidebar. There's a related discussion here but it is remarkably ignored (for now) for some reason. Gryllida (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I mean re "a wiki listing potential sources of local news" it can be WN:Requested articles and re "a list of existing local newspapers and broadcasts with material posted on their web sites, plus local political jurisdictions with links to published minutes of their official meetings plus links to other major sources of local news that might be scanned on a regular basis to generate news stories" this can be any page in an appropriate namespace, a few people could work on it and if it works well then it can be tried by other groups of volunteer reporters. Gryllida (talk) 11:32, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Consistent with User:Pi zero's comments above, I posted v:Kansas City Nonprofit News to Wikiversity. I've also submitted a proposal to lead a Workshop on countering the Balkanization of the body politic at WikiConference North America, October 18-21, in Columbus, OH. As I've said before, I believe the Wikimedia Foundation is ideally placed to counter the Balkanization and exploitation of the body politic that currently threatens the future of humanity. If you'd like to collaborate with organizing and presenting this workshop, please let me know -- or just show up and offer your thoughts in Columbus. Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:27, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

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