Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2012/April

Attempt to disrupt archived article via sister project

I've talked this over with Pi zero (talk · contribs), who agreed it was alright to post this here.

This is regarding an article that was reviewed, Wikinews interviews New York bar owner on Santorum cocktail, a user over at Wikimedia Commons is trying to get almost all the images used in that article deleted, commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Santorum cocktails.

(The images are all confirmed as free-use licensed per OTRS, and as they're used on a sister project, fit Commons inclusion criteria as in-scope per COMMONS:COM:SCOPE)

It's basically an attempt to disrupt a reviewed, published, and archived article here at our project.

Thoughts?

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 20:14, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

• In the (unlikely) event of the deletion being succesful, we could and should upload locally. Fortunately, it seems the party opposed to these fairly basic principles of Commons is getting a pasting at the DR. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:21, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Thankfully the DR is going that way, yes. However it'd be a shame to let ourselves be bullied into having to upload locally because of w:WP:IDONTLIKEIT from an individual offended by a piece of news. -- Cirt (talk) 20:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Indeed it would, especially given the user doesn't quite seem to understand the often transitory and insubstantial nature of news that differntiates it from encyclopaedic content. In any event, these images have now been kept. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 22:07, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
      • Ah, thanks for that update. :) It appears, unfortunately, there is still another related deletion attempt ongoing at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Santorum images, with images of value that could very likely be useful in future Wikinews articles. -- Cirt (talk) 22:49, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Awards Proposal, Part Tres

OK......I'm proposing that we add the following award as just a generic award. Ideally, to be given to new users who've made a few attempts at articles or whatever. No tight parameters, just use it as you will, when you will.Bddpaux (talk) 20:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

		The Order of the Modest Pencil
		Great work! Keep it up! or something something else.Bddpaux (talk) 20:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Support

Support As proposer. Bddpaux (talk) 20:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment Surely we don't have to be so formal. We're not deliberating on a policy, after all, just having a pleasant discussion amongst compatriots on the project about how best to design and use a token of encouragement. :-)

• Would this be a template? If so, the default message needs work. :-)

--Pi zero (talk) 21:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment :I agree!! So moved!! So decided!! But, again, how does one tweek the default message.....I struggle with that here! Bddpaux (talk) 17:29, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions

Well, to be frank, I don't think wikinews works or were working so far. Why? I think this is because of the following reasons.

No.	Issues	Suggestions
1	Having no print edition. This is why normal newspapers have all articles on their sites even if nobody read them	Have a print edition. Assort all news articles daily into a pdf or something and archive it. Modify the terms and conditions so that anyone can print it and distribute (for profit or otherwise).
2	Not a single dedicated reporter. I don't know why this happens. How come there were days for which there are no wikinews article?	The wikipedia should employ 1 person from each community (based on language) or recruit admins from wikipedia to here so that a minimum quantity of news comes out daily.
3	The period of interest for a news article is very short.This does not happen with wikipedia since all of them are of everlasting importance and will get written some day.	In wikipedia someone first writes some article in raw manner. Then people starts correcting it and a good article emerges. But here The first writer has to write it with quality. So she/he needs to be a skilled dedicated user.
4	Format of wikinews - one link cannot be used twice. therefore lengthy links are needed. For example "India won the cup" would have to be written in the form "India won Cricket World Cup 2011" which makes it very dry. And The front page doesn't show 'all news today	I suggest there be links like en.wikinews.org/2012/04/18 where you can see all news related to this date. Using category and all are little wierd. Again make it mandatory for the topic starter to set a date for the topic. And give one calender at the front page so that users can go to that page with ease.
5	No Editorials	I can understand that there cannot be many versions of the same news. But editors will be ready to spend time in articles when they gets identity. Also people can subscribe to particular authors if they want. Say if I want to write an article about India winning world cup I can create a link like "en.wikinews.org/Aravind V R/India wins world cup".
6	No tags, categories and labels. Or at least I didn't find any	If I don't want to see news regarding basketball matches or if I prefer to see some particular categories of news like gadgets, politics etc. It would be good if there is a localisation filter. And then there should be some provisions (given in the first page itself) for that. Also If I am a registered user, then I should be able to set which news I should see first.

Though I don't know how far these all will work, i think Wikinews is an absolute need of the day. All the corrupt media are sabotaging democracies by deceiving the people. Aravind V R (talk) 14:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It's easy to misunderstand the nature of this project, which is very different from its sisters (such as Wikipedia). Review is core to what en.wn is. There is no such thing as a published article with one author; every published article is a profound collaboration between one (or more) author(s) and one (or more) reviewer(s). It isn't meaningful to ask which is more important, authoring or reviewing, because both are absolutely essential to the result, which is a news article that has been thoroughly vetted and passed by an independent reviewer. The labor involved is intense, and we pour so much available volunteer labor into it that we have quite limited additional labor available for embellishments like a print edition — not that we haven't been exploring that; we have. You may also be missing the nature of the neutrality we achieve. We're not here to expose the lies of the evil establishment; we're concerned with presenting the truth neutrally. Both establishment and its opponents may sometimes find that upsetting, as both often lack our belief that there is such a thing as neutrality. Editorials, for example, would violate both neutrality and non-ownership. --Pi zero (talk) 14:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Interesting list, Thank you. I think what you mean by "No tags, categories and labels" is that there is not a central list whereby you can browse. The articles have categories, and, of course, you can search for categories or even articles. Browsing, however, is still a valuable search method.Crtew (talk) 15:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

If I had to add to Aravind V R's list, then I have always wondered why there is not more collaboration between the international Wikinews sites. Wikinews has the potential to be an international, multilingual source of news from citizen journalists. Citizen journalists could fuel "foreign desks" by populating them with expert natives in as many nations! There should be at least the interface for bringing content from the international Wikinews outlets on one page. Translations are the biggest hurdle but with Google Translate and other applications, even this is not as big of a hurdle as it was 6 or 7 years ago. The problem is that the sites all have their independent procedures and standards for writing, editing and publishing. Don't the international Wikipedias have the same standards?Crtew (talk)

In some cases, the issue becomes if you let anything be published, like editorials or reviews, then quality will go way down and reliability will suffer. If you involve an editor, then you'll get into POV and neutrality disputes. Wikipedia is run by the model that everyone is an editor, but that doesn't work well in an environment where the shelf life for news is short. The philosophy at Wikipedia is that mistakes will eventually be corrected. Eventually is not good enough in the short window. The strength of Wikinews English is that there is "immediate" verification, reliability and quality control. Also more peer teaching is also done here than I've seen in Wikipedia because of the interation between the writer and the editor and others.Crtew (talk) 15:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

A while back I recall somewhere-or-other watching a panel discussion on the future of journalism, with the panel made up of a bunch of bright young stars in the field. What they all said, basically, was that there's vast quantities of information out there, the challenge is to provide credible information, to meld information with reliable objective accuracy of the journalist. Merely achieving quality quickly isn't enough; we achieve it before we publish, and it's worth meditating on the utterly profound transformation of an article that occurs when it is rigorously reviewed separate from what copyedits might be made. It's not just about making needed copyedits; the input of the review process would, if published without review, be a blog post about the news, while the output of a passing review process is, if the review is done properly (not rubber-stamping), a news article. --Pi zero (talk) 15:36, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

• Let's go over these points one by one:

1. Yes, we'd like to kick off a print edition again. It was done in the past, but we're short on people to do it at the moment. Plus, it'd be more-likely to be a weekly item. There are possibilities regarding contributors running it off locally, with advertising, that would cover costs. At-issue is the problem of setting up a quality desktop-publishing workflow for this.
2. Wikipedia has "not a single dedicated encyclopedist". It is the nature of wiki projects to be volunteer. The WMF, frankly, would never go for a paid Wikinewsie — even on minimum wage plus expenses. It would be good, but faces too many hurdles.
3. Timeliness. We know that one! The axiom I coined to address people submitting stale news is: "Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news." Sadly, this also puts significant pressure on volunteer contributors and leads to burn-out. So, it links with your point 2 as well.
4. Requiring unique titles. This does not need the 'dry' titles you suggest. Take a look at the articles I've contributed. Many an inventive title in there; and, for sports, you can easily use appropriate adjectives to avoid always sticking in the year. Using "YYYY/MM" prefixes is a horrible idea because that is what Google News would index and list. We're constrained by the MediaWiki software and, I think, do pretty well to work around shortcomings.
5. Editorials , ... NEVER. Not ever. Completely violates the Foundation's neutral point of view policy. We do have the http://wikinewsie.org domain (which I host), and it may be possible to post editorial content there. However, who gets to do so has to be limited to established contributors to Wikinews who demonstrate the ability, and reliability, not to turn such into a rant-fest. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)