Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009/June

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This is an archive of past discussions from Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current page.


Social bookmarking of Wikinews articles

From a discussion on the Wikinews mailing list, I would like to bring up a proposal to try and spread Wikinews.

In the archives there is a previous discussion of using a "Digg this" button (Also see: Wikinews:Spread Wikinews), Digg links were shot down because viewing the Wikinews page would force you to also load something from Digg.com to get the Digg count. This means Digg gets details of who reads what articles - a technical violation of the WMF privacy policy.

In the mailing list discussion, Bawolff (talk · contribs) has proposed using an extension for this, Extension:ShareThis. I am in the process of installing this on the Wikinewsie wiki to see what it looks like. I know this is a closed wiki, I will whitelist a couple of pages to test it on. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone else have a look at the supposed graphics bit for this extension? I got a zip file with .exe and .bat files mixed in with it - wrong download or something else screwy? --Brian McNeil / talk 08:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looks ugly, doesn't include Facebook. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would propose tweaking this as follows (similar to BBC use of social bookmarks):
  1. tweak to open bookmarking link in a new window or tab
  2. trim list of bookmarking sites to 5 or 6 max
  3. include facebook - most popular social site
  4. use bigger bookmarking icons
  5. suppress external link icons (the little 2-ended arrow)
Also, I'd propose if we're using this it is incorporated into the {{publish}} template and this is placed at the bottom immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
the external link icon is an issue with bookjive. Looks somewhat better on monobook. I think all these issues are most likely fixable. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The five listed by the BBC are Delicious, Digg, reddit, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. As an example, see the foot of this article.

The URLs for these are, respectively:

I think that's do-able without an extension, and thus without having to get any WMF approval for such. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Twitter isn't listed here. Would http://twitthis.com/tools cover it? Does that load JavaScript from their site? If so, can we host it locally? Do we need permission from them to do so? --Brian McNeil / talk 13:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure on that one. But just a comment anyway. Twitter, next to Facebook is the most popular for us. I thought they had their own icons too if I am not mistaken. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:21, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It does load javascript from their site. All the javascript does is make the link go into a popup window. We could perhaps host it here, however there is an issue with the (c) all rights reserved notice on the js. Since that is not an official twitter thing, I'm sure somewhere in the twitter help there is instructions on how to add a post to twitter button to your site that doesn't have these issues. I also feel this is definitly do-able without an extension (especially the links at bottom, the links as part of the sidebar is much harder to do without an extension). Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Theres an extended list of urls for the sharethis extension at [1]. As for twitter-the twit this js basically wraps around the url http://twitthis.com/twit?url=[url]&title=[tittle stripped of spaces] (I have no idea if we're allowed to directly use this without using there js). All of this is definitly doable without an extension —[[image:socialnetworkicon.png|30px|link=http://socialnetworksite.example.com|Share this on [some site]]] Bawolff ☺☻ 23:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Twitthis is also in a prime position to steal passwords. I'd recomend not using it unless we are very sure we trust them. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually twitter seems easy (stealing from a different website - http://twitter.com/home/?status=<blah> Bawolff ☺☻ 03:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not so easy if longer than 140 characters. Computerjoe (talk) 08:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to what's coded up in {{Commentary}} (eg {{fullurl:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}) do we need a {{sightedurl:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}? Would this go in the FlaggedRevisions extension, or the ParserFunctions extension, or both? Can we draft and vote for a bugzilla entry on this? --Brian McNeil / talk 12:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect this to feed URLs like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 into the social bookmark site. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Considering that anons get the stable version anyways, i don't think we need to send a permalink. We still want them to see ny reviewed changes that might happen.Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The link is the same and always shows most recently reviewed version - anon or not. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:08, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
?curid doesn't really do much. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 and http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras always go to the exact same page, and does not have anything to do with flagged revs. the difference comes when we do something like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/An_article_not_about_an_earthquake?curid=126950 . Bawolff ☺☻ 23:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use logos

So, Can i upload apropriate icons for these sites to use for share links? Does anyone actually object to using fair use logos for this purpose? Bawolff ☺☻ 03:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see this as a perfectly valid FU case. (or is that, "FU Adambro"? :P) --Brian McNeil / talk 07:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm amused to see my legacy lives on. The propose use of these logos would seem to be consist with the fair use defence since they would be being used to identify thee websites and actually promote them so any objections from the copyright holders would seem incredibly unlikely. Additionally, without bothering to actually look up the details, I expect the copyright holders actually allow use of their logos in ways like this. Adambro (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Example

User:Brianmc/Sandbox is an example of using this for Facebook. Logo needs to go to the bookmarking link, and I'd say the whole thing should open in a new window just big enough for the entry form. Also the external link icon should go. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removing the external link image should be easy enough: add <div class="plainlinks">[link]</div> to get rid of that. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I made changes to your sandbox so that the logo links, and the external link arrow goes away. Open in a new window is somewhat harder , and requires js changes (although shouldn't be very complicated javascript). Bawolff ☺☻ 21:29, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Poll for social bookmarking implementation

Nobody has objected, assuming we can code up {{social bookmarks}} do people support this being embedded in the {{publish}} template and made a permanent feature? --Brian McNeil / talk 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

That's just to show some of the coding for it. The look can be changed, someone more graphically inclined might be better than me at that. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think the biggest thing here is getting smaller versions of the graphics. Can someone manage that? --Brian McNeil / talk 08:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Smaller than they already are? I assume that will be hard. They're not that big now. Calebrw (talk) 15:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You looked after I'd slogged through some photoshopping to get smaller ones. :) I'd hoped someone else might take the bait and save me the bother, then I got impatient. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know all the icons without a text label? Is it reasonable to even assume that 50% of people who read our content will? --Brian McNeil / talk 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I do, and I assume users who will use these links will know the logos of sites they frequent. Could the name of the site be put in an alt=? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Computerjoe (talk • contribs) 17:56, 2 June 2009
I agree with Joe, even before reading this I already removed the text. #1 I know all the logo's. #2 as anon said - if you use the service, you know the logo. Sorry if you don't recognize the redit logo off the bat - but you're not going to share news on a service you don't use. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 18:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps, to avoid any possible confusion, we should make use of tooltips for the logos, sort of like w:Template:Tooltip? Would that be possible? Tempodivalse [talk] 18:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Try it now - works on Firefox, not sure with other browsers. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Works well for me. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. Calebrw (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added support for rounded corners in safari - rounded corners in IE essentially works by having specially positioned images of rounded corners, and its really not worth the effort/is very hard to make work. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment As social networks proliferate how do we decide which ones to include? We seem to have the majors covered, but someone (sometime) is gonna come along and ask "why isn't our social network included?" Just a thought, --SVTCobra 01:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Its a tough question. As it stands there are hundreds we don't have. We could make some arbitrary rule, only the five or so most popular (with popularity determined by alexa ranking) or something. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:14, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If we choose most popular, I think what we have now is pretty good. As to the order of popularity, from left to right, i think Twitter is most popular with us at the moment, if we list it that order that is. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 01:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but you don't offer a solution for what constitutes "most popular" and how do we administrate that? Do we use top 5 or top 10? What if some sites move in and out of the top 5 (or 10 or whatever)? --SVTCobra 01:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As far as the number of links go, I would think that the more we can fit in, the better, because we'd get more coverage on more sites, right? I think anything from six up to ten would be a suitable number (any more and it starts looking cluttered, any less and we don't get good coverage). I don't know what to do as far as what sites specifically should be used. I guess we could use some arbitrary number (look at the alexa.com rankings or something) for that. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would be wary of adding any more links to the template. Those there were chosen based on what the BBC offers plus Twitter. If they're ordered in any non-arbitrary way I'd suggest by the site's Alexa rank. As to adding any more I'd suggest putting to a vote if the situation arises - but only if the requested site is in the top-20 social bookmarking sites on Alexa (do they have categories like that?) --Brian McNeil / talk 08:13, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I found the docs on facebook in case its useful later: http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php . Bawolff ☺☻ 04:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment With Twitter, I think people will be less likely to follow the link unless the title of the article is shown in the tweet. People may pass the tweet off as spam if it just has a shortened URL. --Meekel (TalkToMe) 23:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Open in a new window

Do we want it to open in a pop up? if so what type of popup? If we just want it to open in a blank window, the following js should work: 

addOnloadHook(function () {
var links = document.getElementById('social_bookmarks').getElementsByTagName('a')
for (i=0;i<links.length;i++) {
links[i].target = "_blank";
}});

should work fine. Or do we want something fancier (like a window with a specific width and height. If so what width and height would be good) or are we happy with them being just normal links? Bawolff ☺☻ 01:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A pop-up might not be a bad idea, if it's possible to do. I'd support something like that. Tempodivalse [talk] 01:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'm on the subject of js, we could also use it to shorten the urls for twitter (since space is a consideration as it has max of 140 characters). for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_MP_condemns_deportation_of_man_to_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo (106 character) vs http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 (48 chars) or even http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 (41 chars). In addition the Look what I found on Wikinews: line adds 30 characters, making a short url more important. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And longer page titles are simply to long - UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters is 8 characters longer than allowed in a twitter post. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Testing earlier today determined that Twitter will autoshorten the URLs. Calebrw (talk) 02:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
oh cool, i didn't know that. Will it still let you post it if the url is longer than 140 characters before shortening, (as in does it include shortening in its character count thing?) - for example this 150 character long monstrosity? Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added the {{social bookmarks}} to UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters. Twitter would not let me submit. "Look what I found on Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/UK_government's_Information_Commissioner_takes_enforcement_action_against_Liberal_Democrat_party_for_cold_calling_voters" is 39 characters too long. So your idea of using for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 may work the best. Calebrw (talk) 02:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Example: See http://twitter.com/calebrw/status/2012059190 for http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 being converted to at Twitter post. Calebrw (talk) 03:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Uh, I deliberately coded BASEPAGENAME into the social bookmarks template so it will only post main namespace articles even if added on a Comments or Talk page. The only case where I can see this failing is titles like "2008/09 foo" which should not be created and someone has recently cleaned up (changed to "2008-09 foo"). --Brian McNeil / talk 08:05, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that I did not correct all the articles on WN, but rather was able to find most of them in the Football category. If someone better at AWB than I can figure out how to search through WN's 14,000+ articles and only get ones with a "/" in the title, we may be in business. Otherwise, we could have problems. Calebrw (talk) 13:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<unindent>Those will be fine with what Bawolff currently has in the code, but the template won't be placeable on talk or comments pages; if you do so, it will post a link to them. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry, i didn't realize that was intentional. Personally I'm opposed to using basepagename as then it silently fails. Someone could use it and have no idea why it doesn't work outside main namespace, and get rather confused [or not even notice it gives the wrong url]. I think a better solution would be to wrap it in a {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:0}}|template|Only use this template on the main namespace}} if we want to make sure the template is only used in main namespace. Or we could use {{PAGENAMEE}} which does not have the namespace, but still includes /'s. (Actually come to think about it, main namespace does not have subpages enabled, so it could be a moot point for being concerned about /'s in basepagename in main ns). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Initial test of popup. I've been bold and enabled the js on template:Social bookmarks. Do a hard refresh of template:Social bookmarks and click on when of the share links. See if it opens in a pop up. please report if you think thats a good thing/bad thing and how well its implemented (for example if it gets blocked by a pop up blocker, mention that, etc). Bawolff ☺☻ 02:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It works well for me, I like it. Just curious though, is there any way to get it to open in a window that is not maximised? Not that it would really make much difference, but it might look better in a smaller window. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is, but then the question becomes how big a window to make it. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw this...and my 2 cents if it matter at this point: I generally make it a point to open tabs as opposed to 'windows', using FireFox. I avoid new windows whenever possible. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 02:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note tabs will still be supported if you middle click. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Attempt #2. this should make a window 640x480 pixels.The main difference being that before it used the default open a blank new window setting (which in firefox can be set to open new tab), where this when will almost always open a new window on a single click (new tab on middle click still). I can't really test if this works or not, since my window manager doesn't really play well with non-maximized windows. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I got a popup after hard refreshing the template, but when I viewed an article containing the template it didn't open a popup when I clicked a link. Re: DragonFire1024: I think a popup is best. For Facebook it auto-closes the popup window after you've posted the link. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the code, I would use 'target="WN SocBook"' to ensure a new window is opened and shared if it doesn't get closed and a second site is later bookmarked. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh thats because the popup code is only enabled on the template so far (as not to disrupt the site js while we test this and decide what we specificly want. When its time to move this sitewide, we have to transfer the code from mediawiki:Common.js/Template:Social_bookmarks to mediawiki:Common.js). The window name _blank is a special name that explicitly means new window. If we give it a name like WNSocBook or something, and someone clicks say twitter, and then changes their mind and clicks facebook, the facebook window will load in the window that used to be used for twitter (and won't automatically gain focus if the person had the twitter window minimized) - I don't know if thats what we want. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: facebook closing the window should not be the deciding factor, since a webpage can only close a window explicitly opened for it by javascript, thus facebook can only close a popup, it can't close the main window. (for example, in firefox try middle clicking the facebook icon. It will open in a new tab, but it will not auto-close). Bawolff ☺☻ 05:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Javascript is now enabled site wide. Hopefully it all should work now. One last point. Currently the popup it creates has the following options: width=640,height=480,location,menubar,resizable,scrollbars,status,toolbar We could change how the pop-up looks by changing these options. For example, if we remove location than the url bar will not appear on the popup. Any thoughts on which options would be appropriate? personally I think we should definitly keep toolbar,resizable,scrollbars,status,menubar as i find it annoying when windows popup without those things, but that's just my opinion. thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻ 07:11, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If toolbar will suppress things like the google toolbar, then I think that'd be good to - but definitely hide the URL/location. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<Unindent>Does anyone else think this is ready to deploy in the {{publish}} template? Ready to scan old articles for stupidly placed templates? --Brian McNeil / talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ready to deploy

This is almost ready to deploy. I'd recommend tweaking the javascript so the popup works reliably (perhaps with no URL box) and then my proposal is to put this into the {{publish}} template and thus immediately onto all articles. That relies on the publish template being correctly positioned - after the last section sources/external, and on the line immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think this positioning will work best (i.e. immediately before the categories) and that it will fit well if {{archive}} is then inserted immediately after the {{publish}} template on the article at archive time. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • With one of the points raised being that we could add additional links for bookmarking, I'd like to suggest a possible solution on this. For me, the only link I can see that might be particularly useful is Slashdot, and that would only be on techie stories (Category:Science and technology or Category:Internet). So, what I would suggest is that we only add new sites permanently if we absolutely have to, but the template is modified to allow additional bookmarking sites to be manually specified if the site is appropriate to the categories or topic of the article. Eg, {{social bookmarks|slashdot}}. Obviously, if this is integrated into the publish template, the parameters would have to go there. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Most things don't get as many votes as below - and it's all support. I think WalterBE is putting this in Wikizine, so we want it in place when the Wikipedians have a look. I don't know the technical details, but putting this in {{publish}} will do something like invalidate most of the main namespace cache and cause the pages to be refreshed. I think mis-placement of the {{publish}} template should be a minor issue, I know the large batch I archived all had the template moved to the right place, that's in the WN:ARCHIVE rules, and in the {{Howdy}} essay on writing an article. People will get a rude awakening if they misplace {{publish}}, so correct placement should be self-enforcing. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There's no easy way to detect articles where {{publish}} is at the top. I'm not sure you could set up an AWB job to fix problematic articles; it would have to go through every article, remove the publish template, and append it again. This would force it into the correct place - although after the {{archive}} template I suspect. This is really a job for a bot to parse the first paragraph or so of articles looking for {{publish}}. Any brave botmeisters? --Brian McNeil / talk 16:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For a bot, it could just look through the article for the first indexOf('{{publish}}') (or {{Publish}}) then compare the length of the article with the index. If {{publish}} is not in the first 20% of article than flag the article. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which bookmark sites to use?

This gives a list of what they consider the top bookmark sites - I note Facebook and Twitter are not listed. It would be good to get Alexa ranks for those we do use - basically I think we need to build our own list of candidates and rank them. I'd recommend ComScore data as more accurate, but it is delayed by a month and lumps all websites from a company/org together (hence WP/WN/etc are all lumped under Wikimedia for ranking purposes).

The only one I spot in that BestRank list that I'd add is Yahoo! --Brian McNeil / talk 09:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Facebook: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 17.9%
  • Twitter: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 1.8%
  • Digg: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.4%
  • Del.icio.us: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
  • reddit: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
  • StumbleUpon: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.2%

--Brian McNeil / talk 09:49, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

This is now live! Cause havoc and mayhem on your favourite news sites by highlighting disasters and accidents from 2005/06. ;-) --Brian McNeil / talk 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Use elsewhere

Seems other languages are quite happy to 'steal' this idea. See the bottom of this Arabic Wikinews article. Also think Portuguese has it too. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You do come up with good ideas. ;) Calebrw (talk) 05:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This one was 'stolen' by me from the BBC, check the bottom of their articles. ;-) --Brian McNeil / talk 10:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WebCite

Should Wikinews ask to become a level 1 or level 2 member of WebCite. Wikipedia is a member.

WebCite will permenantly archive a webpage; a useful measure to fight linkrot or dynamic sources.

Your thoughts? Computerjoe's talk 23:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would be a great idea for already-reviewed-and-published-articles, but not really for anything else, IMO. Cirt (talk) 23:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As some articles are reviewed, this could be used. I reviewed one which linked to a constantly changing NASA page as a source - no permalink was available. Membership of WebCite would allow this to be avoided, as we could link to that form especially. Computerjoe's talk 23:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think Cirt didn't realise you meant for sources we cite as opposed to ourselves as a source. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Computerjoe's talk 00:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With Brianmc (talk · contribs)'s clarification of the matter, I agree that this idea is a good one. A few weeks ago, there was a Merlissimo (talk · contribs) who was kind enough to create MerlLinkBot (talk · contribs) to help rectify some of these issues with George W. Bush's WhiteHouse.gov vs. Barack Obama's WhiteHouse.gov. Going forward, a stable URL for references would be great. Calebrw (talk) 03:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Webcite certainly wouldn't hurt. However i believe the original link should always be the primary link. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for my misunderstanding - for this purpose, it's a great idea. :) Cirt (talk) 04:40, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If we get consensus, could someone ask WebCite for an account (perhaps there's a more reliable point of access than the current one?). Also, should this be done automatically or manually? Perhaps an archived link and the original could be included on news stories? Computerjoe's talk 09:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps something looking like: 

*{{source|url=http://example.com/original|title=Some article|author=Somebody|pub=News R Us|date=April 14, 1942|archive=http://webcite.invalid/123h95FG4}}

Which would make

Bawolff ☺☻ 21:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would say not yet. See Template_talk:Source#Edit_request. I do think it would be a good idea for a sandbox to be created to test the new script before it is run. I don't think it would be the best idea to change such an important script with no testing done. Template:Source/Sandbox would be my choice, but something in a user space would be fine too. Calebrw (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will email WebCite and see if we can get their support. Computerjoe's talk 23:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Move Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo

Please, move (may be a bot) the content of Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo, both are same, and the correct category should be Category:Republic of the Congo. Shooke (talk) 21:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

However Congo is more commenly known name - we often use the common name — Category:United States vs category:United States of America. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The presence of the Congo category is confusing, as I expect many DRC articles end up there. It would therefore have to be done manually, due to misplaced DRC articles. Computerjoe's talk 22:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Don't get me wrong, One of them should definitly be deleted. I'm just not sure which one. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But is not same that United States case. There are two countries with Congo name, Category:Democratic Republic of Congo, and Category:Republic of the Congo, so Congo is a disambiguation, please see w:Congo in Wikipedia, so Category:Congo should be deleted. Shooke (talk) 04:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
thats interesting - I didn't know that. I'll get on moving them. Bawolff ☺☻
Done Bawolff ☺☻ 19:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks Shooke (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

News Briefs

I'm starting up the Audio News Briefs again and be releasing them on a regular basis. At the moment the only exposure I have is a small link in the newsroom to Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews. I am in the process of re-organizing the Audio_Wikinews section since it's a mess but what I do have that can be of use is:

Latest Audio WikinewsEdit
Audio Wikinews
Audio Wikinews
Audio Wikinews News Brief for August 6, 2010
Recorded by: Turtlestack
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Audio Wikinews
Audio Wikinews
Spoken Wikinews recording of Walter Frederick Morrison, inventor of frisbee, dies at age 90
Recorded by: Rayboy8
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Since it's looking like it's going to be a one man show, there is going to be the odd day where I can't do it (next one being the 27th). Also I do intent to do alot more revamping regarding how audio wikinews is organized. One thing I would like to point out is that I have gotten the RSS feeds working well (despite past entrys still lingering) and since there have been a handful of requests saying they would like a daily (podcast) newscast so I think this could work well.

Anyway, what I'm asking is for some kind of exposure on the front page but not just a link to Audio Wikinews since I'm still working on that set of pages. --James Pain (talk) 12:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also what wouldn't be too bad would be something I can put in articles I use in the news brief that states 'This article was used in the June 20 2009 news brief' and either the audio of the brief or a link to the news brief. --James Pain (talk) 12:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We have {{Awn brief}} {{ShortListen}} and {{AW}}. If those don't work we could make something more specific. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abbreviatons: U.K. vs. UK and their ilk

Unlike the U.S. which has periods, the UK does not in AP style. I believe the same applies to the EU, but I am not sure and will try to check. Can't fix the article now though. Calebrw (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have seen you cite AP style as authoritative before, but why? Imho, I'd prefer if we dropped the periods for all three; indeed we could drop them for almost any abbreviation. Lots of newspapers have done so. Our style guide doesn't have a lot on this but you can see acronyms instead of full names for what we do have.--SVTCobra 18:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hart's agrees with your preference. Personally, I do not favour a rule that differentiates between "U.S." and "EU". It's arbitrary and difficult to remember. The idea that "us" is a word whereas "eu" is not, upon which this arbitrariness is supposedly based, doesn't really wash all that well with an international readership. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • To my knowledge AP style is used throughout the world when writing in a journalistic style. That being said, writing in the AP style is more heavily favored in the U.S. than it is in other parts of the world (and frequently, many publications have their own MoS that they use). However, AP style provides a great resource that breeds continuity, which at least in journalism is essential to proper understanding. Differentiating between "Bombay" and "New Dehli" (for example). I'm not purposing that Wikinews adapt AP style formally, but I do think it should be used to fall back on. I would also welcome further discussion of this as I may be to just America-centered in my views on this. We could move this to the Water Cooler. Calebrw (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The Associated Press' style book should not be a fallback without good reason. What suits Wikinews and takes account of project limitations should be. I would choose U.S., U.K., and E.U. - not to conform to any country or region's mores or preferences, not to follow some other organisation's style guide, but because when these abbreviations are used as the starting 'word' in an article title they should be grouped together in the relevant category.

      I would be happy to see this discussion copied to the water cooler with a brief intro, others may have better reasons for choosing a particular scheme. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

      • I favour those as well, as can be seen by the fact that my use of them triggered this discussion. ☺ And the argument that MediaWiki's categorization mechanism works better when they are used is a good one. (The category sort order can be overridden, of course.) But SVTCobra above and Hart's (which I have open beside me as I type this) both favour no full stops at all when the abbreviation is an initialism, composed of all-uppercase initial letters, or a recognized acronym.

        Not all abbreviations are all-uppercase initialisms or (recognized) acronyms, of course, and Hart's recommends full stops for some other forms of abbreviations, including mixed-case initialisms (such as "I.o.W." for "Isle of Wight") and abbreviations that are not initialisms (such as "Jan." for "January").

        In practice, I don't see abbreviations of the "Jan." sort being a problem. We won't run out of not-paper if we use "Isle of Wight" rather than "I.o.W.", and there is certainly no other benefit, apart from saving column inches, to the latter. The same is true of some of the other abbreviation examples that Hart's gives (e.g. "Cambs." for "Cambridgeshire" and "Sun." for "Sunday"). The space constraints that would motivate their use don't exist here.

        Hart's covers a lot more than just the above, by the way. Furthermore, there are other guides. I also have one of the several — different — English usage guides that The Times has published over the years. Uncle G (talk) 12:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the I.o.W. one is a real edge case, something that should never be used over the expanded form in the article - a headline might be different, but I'm struggling to think of any other examples. As said, months should never be abbreviated (the not paper rule), so that leaves country abbreviations and other acronyms. Whichever way we go I'd like to make one a definite rule - never use US for the United States, if the two full words cannot be used use USA. This seems to be tending towards no periods, which is what I'd expect for NSA, NASA, FBI, CIA, MoD, UN, UNICEF, etc. In putting this in the style guide I'd split it into two parts. First, headlines; in these the abbreviations will be important as this is where we have space constraints. Within the article I think we should specify that a use within the first paragraph should have expanded form with acronym for elimination of any ambiguity (eg United Kingdom (UK)). --Brian McNeil / talk 21:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia in the UK

What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?

We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.

We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see [2]

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .

Thanks, Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/

Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom

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