Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2015/October

Weather temperature

Shall we have a weather (currently redirected to CAT:Weather) displaying temperature and weather condition of various cities across the world?
14.139.242.195 (talk) 10:17, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Current info has a tendency to be proprietary. Somebody who remembers the project history on that stuff would have to comment specifically, though. --Pi zero (talk) 11:21, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Reviews: Articles On Other Web Sites

I want to suggest allowing a new category of article: reviews of articles from other web sites. Democracy Now currently has a most revelational article, in an interview of an author of a book it looks like the CIA may be working to suppress. I am a frequent listener to Democracy Now, and this article truly blows the lid off of the CIA and many of their "executive actions". A good reviewer, or critic, could help readers find worthwhile reading, while possibly not wasting their time on substandard material. I am an experienced writer, and would be glad to donate this service to Wikinews. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Consarnation (talk • contribs)

Hi, Consarnation.

• It sounds as if you may be suggesting a form of editorial, which would violate our neutrality policy. "Accurate neutral news" is at the heart of any description of what we do here. See WN:PILLARS.
• Accurate neutral reporting at second-hand is within our scope, via synthesis articles (though we put greatest value on our most difficult form of publication, original reporting — original reporting dominates our featured article category, but doesn't monopolize it; some exemplary synthesis makes that grade too).
• I'm unsure what you're referring to about wasting time on substandard material. A significant part of review effort here results, for one reason or another, in not-ready reviews — but that's part of the process both of improving articles and of improving reporters.

--Pi zero (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

We're here to create content, so we're never going to redirect ourselves in that way. However you may wish to look up NewsTrust which aims to do what I think you're proposing. If you want to write your own articles, of course, we'd be happy to have you. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 01:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Podcast

Moved from User talk:Pi zero.

Let's have out own podcast at iTunes. After every published article, we will have AWN, and the same will be our podcast. Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/News Briefs says subscribe on iTunes, but nothing happens. Let's have it from now. This will improve AWN as well. After 4 days, I will start working for the cover for podcast as well. We can also have a Weekly update as well. How about it? What other users think? (@Cirt: @Blood Red Sandman: @Green Giant: @Bddpaux: @Bawolff: @RockerballAustralia: @Sam.gov:)
14.139.242.195 (talk) 21:00, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea to me, if you're going to stay active and maintain it. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 21:02, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. —Sam.gov (talk) 19:56, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

There'd likely be some wiki-archeology just in working out who was doing that, back when.

I agree, it seems a good idea if we can maintain it.

Keep in mind, sometimes of late our output gets very slow; I believe earlier this year we once had a full seven days between consecutive publications. --Pi zero (talk) 21:16, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Podcasts, generally are released in regular intervals. Generally. Since, I am blocked, I won't be contributing to articles. But I can upload AWN to Commons. That can be used. While other users will develop the articles, I will make the audio version. News should be spread quickly. And I will keep on checking for new articles almost 5 times a day, record it and upload it. We can have the same on iTunes. In the beginning, we might not attract many users, but everything started from that small number. Still looking for opinions. If it is yes, let's have an iTunes account.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 21:47, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Not sure what the deal is with this IP, but what does he mean about being blocked, and why, and how long has it been, and can we unblock? -- Cirt (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

@Cirt: That's Acagastya, who was a fairly active newcomer earlier this year and then asked to be blocked until next May 1 in order to — so I understood — not be distracted by Wikinews from their education. --Pi zero (talk)

Ah, that, um, sort of makes sense, I guess. -- Cirt (talk) 22:23, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

We need an RSS feed, and (a blog). We can ask at Wikimedia for Wikimedia Blog (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog)
14.139.242.195 (talk) 09:30, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

A second RSS feed?

I'm not sanguine of the central administration lifting a finger to help us. In the past they've been known to go out of their way to avoid helping us. --Pi zero (talk) 11:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Okay. But I have searched about it today. And I have backup for it as well. But still, let's make a try at WM before going out. We are daughter project of Wikimedia. And let's see, what other regular users have to say.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 13:43, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

The wm blog is really meant to be the WMF blog and cover foundation activities. Its not really meant for community activities. I think a better idea would be either to host the podcast blog on tool labs, or modify mw:extension:FeaturedFeeds to support pod casts. Bawolff ☺☻ 14:06, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

RSS is needed for iTunes. And if FeaturedFeeds works on RSS2 (iTunes need RSS version2.0)we won't have any trouble. But anyone here knows about MediaWiki/ or know any user who can help?
14.139.242.195 (talk) 14:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

podcasts arent just normal rss feeds, but have an extra itunes namespace. I could look into it, but im travelling currently, so probably not until next week. The tool labs option is really easy. Modifying featured feeds (or perhaps gnsm) is harder, but would allow the feed to come from our own domain. Bawolff ☺☻ 14:49, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I read about the iTunes requirement, today. I am not well-versed with it. But, being a HTML lover, I understood that they need some special parameters. If the modifications are done, we can launch it! I will design the cover art till next week. ;)
14.139.242.195 (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Just let me know about the outcome once RSS thing is sorted out.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 16:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

populating categories

I suggest we need to be cautious about how we populate new categories. Each new category needs to be thought out carefully for what rule-for-inclusion will be most useful. A classic example is airframers, such as Boeing, where there's an extensive usage note explaining that we don't put an article in the category just because a plane in an incident was made by Boeing. The reasoning there is simple, I think: the category wouldn't be as useful if it included every article about an airplane accident involving a Boeing plane.

A current case I notice is Category:United States Geological Survey, which I feel needs a usage note that we shouldn't put an article in the category just because the magnitude of an earthquake was provided by USGS, since that's going to be true of pretty much every earthquake and it wouldn't be useful. We want, I think, a category for articles involving USGS in some way other than merely their being cited for routinely gathered statistics. I've been trying to similarly limit Category:Red Cross and Red Crescent. I figure on putting usage notes on both of those. --Pi zero (talk) 14:09, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Noted. But my recent edits (about the club and the league), I hope that is okay.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 14:19, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I simply don't know what to think about leagues; I'm wondering how league categories have been dealt with in the past. Is Category:Serie A, for example, more usefully a category for all articles about games played by Serie A teams, or a category for articles that deal specifically with league membership and the like? --Pi zero (talk) 14:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I might add that these sorts of questions are some of the most ubiquitous in our cartegory hierarchy. Place categories are inclusive, for good reason: Category:North America contains all articles that belong to any descendant category: if an article is relevant to Hoboken, New Jersey, it should be in Category:North America. This is because of how these categories interact with dynamic page lists. But then there's a qualitative difference between a category that's really meant to be the union of all its descendants, and one that really deals with articles relevant to the whole. Our Category:World is fundamentally broken because it isn't useful to have a category for all articles that relate to places in the world and we've never really figured out quite what it should have in it. There's an interesting arrangement on English Wikibooks (I know because I implemented it), where there's a hierarchy of subjects, each with a corresponding subject category — and each subject category contains only books that list themselves in that subject, not in its descendants, but for each subject category there's also an automatically populated "allbooks" category that contains all books in that subject and all of its descendants. Unfortunately, it was only possible to set that up, with the automatically populated shadow-categories, because the inclusion of books in subject categories was already being done using a special template, b:Template:Subjects, which doesn't apply on Wikinews where articles get added to categories in lots of different ways. If we were ever to adopt any more complicated arrangement for categories, we would need to make sure it didn't make maintenance any more complicated, not even by a little bit; category maintenance is already difficult enough. --Pi zero (talk) 14:44, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

About the Serie A, it is the league. Clubs play in Serie A, and it is in direct concern since they fight for the Serie A title. Or in those articles about UEFA, where I have requested to add the CAT, the thing is, the clubs need to be on the top of their respective leagues to play in Champions League/ Europa league. The number of teams from a league depends from country to country. This year (better say season), 5 clubs from La Liga are in Champions League. 4 because of their position in the Liga table. And Sevilla, because they won back to back Europa League titles. That is the importance of League. Liverpool has 0 Premier League titles, still because of their position in the league, they have played in Premier League.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 15:04, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

When I've requested categorization for articles, the rule of thumb I try to follow is that there should be some significant reason for categorization. To use the USGS example, it should be restricted to articles where the USGS is significantly concerned i.e. something other than normal reporting e.g. Volcanic bulge found in Oregon which was about work done by USGS staff. I agree we shouldn't include articles just because there's a mention of the USGS reporting an earthquake. With the Serie A example, the category should be restricted to articles other than routine matches e.g. the match-fixing scandals rather than articles which involve a club that plays in Serie A. Potentially we could have hundreds of articles if we covered every match played in Serie A or La Liga in one season but it isn't often we get articles about controversies in these leagues. Match reports would be better organized in sub-categories e.g. if we had Category:2015-16 Serie A season for all match reports for Serie A in the 2015-16 season. Green Giant (talk) 15:30, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

That said, I have briefly looked at Category:Protected edit requests and it has 120 requests at the moment (mainly football ones). Some I can agree with but others need reconsideration e.g. we need a new Category:Inter Milan for the articles relating to the Italian football club of the same name. Green Giant (talk) 16:05, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict!) ┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Each season has a CAT. But the thing is, since I joined, I don't find anyone else contributing to a football match report. Unfortunately, those CAT will have very less articles. But if they all are linking to the league CAT, it is fine. Again, what happened to one of my articles, I remember...It was all fine. No issues. But it got stale in the review queue. Other articles came and their found their place on Main Page but a football article was not touched upon just because it takes time to review them. Okay I understand and I got over it. But, once my block lifts, each Saturday and Sunday, there are 5 league matches. La Liga, Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga and Serie A are the ones most followed leagues. I am ready to flood in all those matches. Let's make a CAT actually a good one. And let's cover news. Barcelona news concerns millions. But at the same point of time, Wolfsburg match also affects a huge crowd.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 16:13, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Inter Milan thing. I was about to make the CAT, but I was too tired to do it.
But there is no club like Inter Milan. It is a controversial thing. And whatever WP says, the club it is Internazionale or Inter. Even on WN, the club is referred as Inter/ Internazionale. We need to be cautious while making the CAT.
14.139.242.195 (talk) 16:18, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to me that Serie A probably ought to be reserved for articles that have to do with the league as a whole rather than just 'one of the teams involved in the article is in the league'.

Regarding review load and articles going stale waiting for review. One of the marks of the most experienced Wikinewsies is their consideration for reviewers. Please don't flood the review queue with articles that we don't have the capacity to handle; it only puts stress on everybody, and if anyone else is submitting articles at the same time it's likely to cause problems for them, too. Pace your submissions.

I might also add a remark about review priorities. There was a moment when I made a conscious decision to take on a long-time review role on the project (part of the prerequisite for such a decision being an exit strategy: I had to have a plan for growing the project so I wouldn't need to be constantly on-duty indefinitely, and the plan I came up with was the dialog tools). At the time I made the decision, we had a class of journalism students submitting lots of articles, and nobody was reviewing anything, perhaps because they'd look at this huge queue and be scared away just by the size of it and the problem of knowing what to review first. Over a period of, I think, a day or two, I reviewed something like fifty articles; one good adjective to describe the experience would be traumatic. Almost all of them were non-ready (except that in those days it was called fail, afaict simply because it hadn't occurred to anyone that it would come across needlessly negative and then it was just the way things were), but I made a point of saying something helpful about each one, something the writer could learn from, even if, in many cases, the article was also no longer fresh. But I learned some hard lessons about how to prioritize reviews when the review queue has too much on it.

• If one person has flooded the queue, either they're a newcomer who doesn't understand the implications, or they're probably being inconsiderate; and one might then choose to review one of their articles but no more until all other writers with submissions pending have at least had one reviewed.

[addendum: yes, there are more complicated reasons someone might submit multiple articles at once; but each of those reasons comes with a preferred order of review, and it probably still makes sense to spread one's attention as widely as possible between different writers. --Pi zero (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2015 (UTC)]

• If the review load is close to, or beyond, our capacity at the time, it's usually a bad strategy to tackle the review queue oldest-first. This was something of a revelation to me, because unless one has thought through the consequences it's really easy to assume oldest-first is the "fair" way to go. But if there are more articles on the queue than you're going to be able to handle anyway, and you review the oldest ones first, you're just minimizing the average freshness of articles that do get published, while at the same time minimizing the likelihood that, when an article is in need of revision, there will be time to revise and resubmit it and get it reviewed while still fresh. Whereas if you review the freshest article first, then if published it will be fresher than anything you'd get from the old end of the queue, and if not-ready it has some chance of being revised resubmitted and re-reviewed in time.

--Pi zero (talk) 17:34, 29 October 2015 (UTC)