Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals

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Could Wikipedia's loss be WikiNews' gain?

My cards on the table first: a) I know nothing of WikiNews' policies or processes; b) I hate seeing good editing work thrown away when it doesn't meet some exacting policy; c) I have no idea if what I'm about to suggest has been said a thousand times before; d) I've no idea how best to push what I'm about to propose, so I'll just leave it here for others to mull over and to take forward, assuming it has legs. . .

Yesterday on Wikipedia there was an article created for a world-wide breaking news-worthy story about a terrorist incident-cum-fatal car crash in NY's Times Square which was quickly slapped with a Request for Deletion template. As the story unfolds, its becoming clearer in this discussion that it is going to be deleted on Wikipedia's policy of WP:NOTNEWS. Although my own contribution to the discussion was initially for a weak keep, I can see this story just isn't going to cut it on Wikipedia's mainspace, and I'm soon going to change my vote. So, once again, well-written but inappropriate stuff will get cleared away from Wikipedia, and everyone can go home happy.

. . . except that I popped over to WikiNews to see how you folks covered the story. It didn't exist. What began as a worldwide story of a terrorist incident appeared to have attracted no activity on this Wiki at all, which I found surprising. And as far as I'm aware, no template exists on Wikipedia that an editor can add to a newly created 'NOTNEWS' article in order to suggest that its contents would merit removal and transfer to WikiNews, or even simply to automatically draw it to the attention of WikiNews editors. And there seems to be no way for a closing Wikipedia administrator - or WikiNews editor - to decide to make that transfer across here for retention and further editing, if appropriate.

But should there such a template or such a process? Would it help if content and article history could be deleted and copied over to WikiNews mainspace or draftspace? It seems to me that it would - though you folks will know best. I wouldn't know how to propose this within Wikipedia without someone immediately citing a dozen policy reasons why it's a stupid idea. But it seems like a potentially good one to me. Any thoughts on whether this could, or should, be taken forward in some way? Nick Moyes (talk) 21:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: Material cannot be transferred from Wikipedia to Wikinews, because to do so would violate the copyright of Wikipedia; the licenses are incompatible. That said, production is more challenging on Wikinews, and there's a whole pile of considerations behind that. You might find page Wikinews:For Wikipedians of interest. --Pi zero (talk) 21:41, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, that's a terrible shame. I really appreciate the speedy reply. Thank you. Sounds like a few licencing folk from both projects could do with meeting up and having their corporate heads bashed together then. (Shrugs shoulders and walks away, never to return) Nick Moyes (talk) 21:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

The differences between the projects are deeper than that; trying to adapt Wikipedian material for news use would likely be less efficient than starting from scratch. --Pi zero (talk) 22:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, and thanks again for taking the trouble to explain. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:15, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to improve Wikinews

News needs to be NEW. We have a constant battle with time. Often the articles get stale and we feel bad about losing an important article.  

There are a couple of things which should be highlighted. 

• First: Often there is only one author for an article. It is primarily due to the factor of time. We can't wait for someone to add/contribute to the article.  

• Second: And this one is very general. Often, we are free, and wandering around the Wikinews project. Sometimes reading the archived articles and discussions, or sometimes, the other language Wikinews.  

I often do that. I search for interesting articles on Spanish Wikinews, sometimes German, French and Russian too. Sometimes, it is really helpful. Instead of wandering here and there [on the internet] for a story amongst so many crowd-pulling articles with misleading headlines.  

So, what I have to say is: When you are free (let's assume you speak two languages A and B and your home wiki is A), please go to B Wikinews and translate an article from B to A. And at the same time, translate one article from A and submit it for review on B. 

Translating articles from one language to another is better than writing from scratch. And it saves time. But please note that each language Wikinews has different policy for foreign language sources.

It saves a lot of time, and I know because I have tried it. Other editors on A and/or B can help you adding something to the article, if this increases participation.

So, you see, one user, who was active only on A Wikinews is now fairly active member of B Wikinews and is also helping A Wikinews to improve the output.

When I counted, there were 33 Wikinews. I am not asking you to dream about each WIkinews write a different story and due to translations, we can have 33 articles on 33 projects. No, with the current number of reviewers, this is something I would call impossible.

But, you see, with time and experience, more and more editors can be capable to review articles. Besides, when you contribute to A and B, so, sooner or later, you can review on both the languages. About "reviewer" status, there is something I would like to add later.

So, we might not be able to publish 33 articles, but we can surely improve output of all the Wikinews. I was talking about "one user who knows A and B". Consider other editors knowing A and C; E and F; X, Y and A; Z and C and other combinations which makes a network. I have been trying to create a table of users vs languages they know with their proficiency and user rights.

I request all of the users to use the babel templates on their userpages. And if you do not mind, time zones. Users for the Original Reporting and accredited reporters, please provide geographical information if you are okay with sharing that information. Country, city or province, whatever you this is correct.

I request the admins to prepare a list of admins, reviewers and active editors.

Now, there are some very important things, like: what are the policies of various language Wikinews.

Each language has its own practices. So, it is very important that we understand each policy, and finally, create a policy so that the articles are acceptable on every Wikinews.

I am not asking you to abandon your local guidelines. You can and may continue writing articles as per those guidelines. The others may choose to translate it, and add those features so that it is globally acceptable.

There is also a probability that nobody translates it. Many factors including things in real life can affect that. But our aim is to improve all of the Wikinews together.

If we try to stick to the threshold policy, made by considering all of the policies of various projects, we can produce better news articles.

The main challenge is to know which articles to translate? So, I thought, why not create a page on any Wikinews, which contains a table. It will have article headlines and all languages in which we have Wikinews project. Add a tick, star, plus or any fixed symbol next to the headlines for which it is written.

So, when an editor visits the page, he or she can see what are the current articles (make sure you mention the date on which the event took place). See for which languages it has been translated and if there is a language he or she can translate, do it.

I would not expect a Canadian editor to know or understand Russian (for example) or a Polish to understand Arabic (for example), but it is not necessary. But speaking for general public and to make this task [understanding only the headlines] simpler, editors can use machine translation.

But this should be only done when you (editors) are free, on Wikinews and probably looking for something to write.

This will improve the content of Wikinews as well as contributors.

Editors who can speak more than one languages, please help translating [local] policies, style guide and other [important] regulations.

If you have any idea to make "looking for the translated articles in the table" better, please share with us.

Thank you very much for your time and patience.

The entire content is licensed under CC0 1.0/Public Domain.
acagastya 08:45, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at the UserBabel matrix. link
acagastya 09:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

A miscellaneous note: It's my understanding that the one-author thing, or at least one-primary-author thing, is only partly because of the time pressure. It also is partly because of the need for a consistent style and smooth flow throughout. There is interesting discussion of how this sort of thing is handled here and in msm at the talk page for 2012 Featured Article "Observing the 2012 Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the US, and wider world". --Pi zero (talk) 10:18, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this why you doublechecked my language listing a few days ago? Whew! I thought it was something else! Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:58, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hidden CAT for who published the article

It would make searching the archives easier. So just like a Wikinewsie category, there should be a CAT for reviewers. It would be difficult to do for the current archive, but at least we can start.
acagastya PING ME! 03:14, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

To make a serious proposal that could entail truly vast amounts of labor, please log in. --Pi zero (talk) 03:49, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

It's an interesting thought. This would be, in effect, a way of gathering statistics — the saying is, of course, that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. If we set out to do something like that, it's going to be a huge effort at the end of which we'll have just the sort of statistics that we chose at the start of the effort — so we should think very carefully about how the statistics we gather might be misleading. That is, we need to make sure we're asking the right question before we undertake to answer it. Whatever exactly we want to do with this, it seems too involved, and too technically precise, to be done on such a massive scale without semi-automated assistance, which I take to mean we have some time to figure out just what we want to do before starting to implement it. --Pi zero (talk) 04:44, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

It is impossible to add categories to 21k articles in the archives, but we can start from today. Often I want to look for an article, which I know XYZ had reviewed. It would make it easier to search for it.
acagastya PING ME! 04:51, 22 August 2017 (UTC)