Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/Archive/10

Proposal for new project: Baha'i Faith news

I am interested in starting a new project on wikinews covering news on the Baha'i Faith. This would be similar to the egroup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BahaiMonitor although would also cover internal nes, such as where new people are elected to National Assemblies etc.

I am interested to hear whether people think this would be viable or not, and if so, what considerations should I have when starting this project? Is anyone willing to collaborate with me on this?

AndrewRT 14:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

If you start writing articles/get other people too, it will be viable. The best way to get it off the ground is to start. As long as all articles writen follow our policys (especially Wikinews:NPOV) then they should be fine. Wikinews is supposed to be about local news too, so in a way this would be local to the Baha'i comunity. Then just make a portal (I could do that for you if you want) and add [[category:Baha'i]] to the bottom of each article about the Baha'i faith. It then all apears in a page about Baha'i news. Is that what you mean. However you'd probaly be writing most of the news for the first while. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:08, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for advice & support Bawolff - I'v corrected the link. Could you start by setting up the portal for me? That would be a great help - I'm still a wikinewbie so it would take me a while. I like the way the Quaker one has been set up.

I think NPOV would be ok - the items in BahaiMonitor are quite factually based, not pushing the BF or anything. However, they would only really be of interest to Bahais and those with a close interest in Bahai - would this be a problem? AndrewRT 18:37, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I worked on the Quaker portal but have let it slip now, but I'm happy to help out & it might reignite my enthusiasm for getting the Quaker page back up! I would definitely advice getting a few people involved who understand the point of having it as a wikinews site rather than a community site, otherwise you might struggle to keep it going. Also, you need to consider how to handle news of a small community, we had discussions about how 'newsie' a report of a very small event had to be. Clearly you don't need to go seeking 'the other side' all the time but it does need to fit into the wider community. Also I don't think it's a problem that it appeals to a small community, but I did have issues over whether it should appear on the main page, I thought it was too much to have several articles on the Quakers in the main page, that it would look a bit strange, but others felt that no story shoudl be hidden away. Would be happy to share ideas! ClareWhite 11:22, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Clare, thanks for getting in touch and congratulations on the Quaker site - it looks good! Thanks also for your offer of help - I have a ready source of stories (prob about one per week) so that shouldn't be a problem, but I will definitely need some help with the technical wiki side of things.

I'm worried about what you said about the main page. If I put up an article, e.g. "Tunisian Muslim says ask forgiveness from Baha'is" in the Baha'i portal would this appear in the main page? If so, I think people will start getting annoyed that stories they have little or no interest in will be put in front of them! Is there any way of stopping this? Obviously I've no objection - quite the contrary - to wikinews using the stories like this if they want them, just concerned that it will reduce the sound to noise ratio for the average wikinews reader. AndrewRT 13:13, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

That was my concern too. If you definitely want to keep them off the mainpage, then it looks as if keeping Category:Local only on them and avoiding the Publish tag should do it. If you want to differentiate between Developing and Published within your own portal we used SpecialDevelop and SpecialPublish within the workspace, but as there wasn't the same volume of peer editing I felt that fell a bit flat. The counter-concern to not wanting the stories to appear in the main page is the suspicion people might raise that your portal exists as a separated minisite and doesn't conform to mainstream Wikinews rules. Have a look at this discussion| for the background on this and then make up your mind! Dan100 was most help on the technical side of things, but I don't know, has he been around? You're very welcome to copy the sources of the Quaker page for your pages and I did find this guide very usable, though I don't know if it's changed since then. I felt that many of the features of the Quaker page were more suitable for a little community like these though ClareWhite 16:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I personally don't see any problem with those types of articles appearing on the main page. Its not like we have too many articles. If you use category:local only then it won't appear in develop, but will appear in published. by the way I created portal:Baha'i with a nice inputbox to create articles with. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:56, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think one article a week on Baha'i would be too much on the Main Page. If it grew to where half the stories each day were on Baha'i, then I would say that would make this look like a Baha'i news org, not a general one, and that would be a problem. But, it doesn't sound like that will happen here. StuRat 17:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for their comments and support. Hope you liked the first article!

One thing I thought afterwards is that these articles might benefit if they had a template explaining that they related to the category Baha'i. I was thinking of something along the lines of: "This article has been written as part of the Bahá'í Faith local category. All articles should comply with wikinews policies such as neutral point of view, style guide and cite sources; however the focus of articles is different to non-local articles as greater emphasis is placed on things of interest to those interested in the local category"

What do you think? Would such a template improve the readability of local articles, particularly for those browsing the Main Page? AndrewRT 20:35, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Of course, don't feel you need to restrict your reporting to only Bahá'í. Many religious people and organizations devote a great deal of effort to reporting general news, such as the Christian Science Monitor. StuRat 04:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point!! I'll do this too. AndrewRT 13:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Satire new for wackynews

is it ok to write Satire news like http://www.chaser.com.au/ and CNNNN I would love to write some. Satire news facts are often incorrect and silly. Maybe a one of those warning stubs or whatever could be developed. It would also be great to work with others doing it and i cant think of anywhere that give you that opportunity I hope you guys approve --Whywhywhy 10:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like fun, but I think another site would be more appropriate for that, like Uncyclopedia (http://uncyclopedia.org/), which contains satire encyclodpedia articles. You could also toss in satire news there, perhaps with the goal of breaking off a new UnNews site, if enough interest develops. StuRat 17:49, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

*Cough* --Deprifry|+T+ 17:56, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

As Deprifry says, that'd be UnNews, you're not the first to want to do some satire. Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

ima going to added a link in wackynews 2 UnNews so idiots like me dont suggest it again. --Whywhywhy 08:35, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, becuase its been sugested a couple times (Special:Undelete/Satire), and i think theres something about it(UNnews) on WN:BJAODN.Just a warning, quite alot of stuff on Uncyclopedia:UnNews is quite stupid. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

A workflow proposal

I've outlined a proposal aimed at generating more content on Wikinews. It's here. So, what do you think? Zocky 02:22, 28 November 2005 (UTC)