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This is an archive of past discussions from Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2017. 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.


Ethnic slur on front page

I am really reluctant to have to bring this up at this time, but it can't be helped. The main article of the wikinews front page has a title with an ethnic slur (one of the four articles mentioned here). This article is no longer fresh, so I am surprised to see it still displayed prominently, while other articles are being rejected from the Review queue for being stale. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:08, 4 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]

@Ottawahitech: If the word which you think is a "religious slur" is "Jew"; Jew is someone who practices Judaism; just like a Muslim is someone who practices Islam. As for why "no longer fresh" articles are on the main page, all the articles which pass the review are featured on the main page. We do not delete a published article after it is "no longer fresh". They become part of our archived articles, just like any other news website. These lede articles are replaced by new articles. Currently there are no articles to replace them, hence they are there. Earlier this year, when seven articles were published in a day, some articles got just a couple of hours in the lede section.
•–• 19:20, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The only references to ethnic or racial identity I see are: Argentine, Brazilian, Israeli, Italian, Jews, Jewish, Spanish, and US. None of those are slurs. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:52, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: looking at the link of Washington Post article, it looks like Ottawahitech is referring to "Jew". If it feels like a slur, which it should not, I would blame the western media, and the way they report, considering how drastically the meaning of jihad or a jihadi. It has nothing to do with militant activities, but I would be surprised if someone from the western part of the world could accurately tell the meaning. Actually, I don't think most of the Indians or the people from east could tell this.
•–• 20:09, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Moreover, looking at Washington Post's article, it just reflects some western people are unfamiliar with non-western culture.
•–• 20:12, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From a discouraged newbie

I don’t know if anyone here is interested in some feedback from a discouraged newbie? Just in case, here it is:

I liked the friendly and helpful participants and the community here that is small enough to avoid out-and-out flaming even without a policy about AGF

But...

It seemed like the system here was rigged to favour articles written by certain authors(Agastya)/ topics(football) over others. I am sure the experienced editors here disagree. Actually I don’t know if anyone here agrees, but isn’t there a conflict of interest when the only reviewer here is also the author of most articles appearing on the front page? Today for example 4 out of 5 articles on the front page were written by this wiki-news Reviewer:

I hope the reaction to this post will not simply shoot the messenger. I have nothing personal against Agastya who, I am sure, is very talented. Nor am I trying to advance views from outside of wiki-news that are meant to help shut it down. Quite the contrary, I wish things could be improved here so that the front page is less homogeneous and new users are drawn here to help. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2017 (UTC)Please ping me [reply]

Acagastya (t · c · b). In fairness, last week there was a long stretch where 4 out of 5 stories on the front page were my first 4 stories created here. The reviewer worked their ass off licking them into shape and advising me. So I am both aghast and grateful.
I find there are a lot of rules here, and I still don't understand why my latest story was rejected as stale when it was posted the day after the event. In fact I have bitten my tongue about the implications for this as a news site. But as a still newer newbie (with no journalistic training whatsoever), I am aware I don't know enough about the ways of this project to judge.
What I do see and would like to emphasize is a terribly small active group, with two or three active reviewers/admins being run ragged. In fact I came here in an attempt to walk my talk by putting some of my free-time writing effort into doing my share to alleviate the low participation here. (Thereby increasing the load on teh reviewers/admins of course, but you can't have everything.) In my view it was scandalous that this project didn't cover the Grenfell Tower Fire (I note that several other-language Wikinews projects did), and I kicked myself for not writing it up. So here I am now. But I do think the low participation is the answer, not bias, conscious or unconscious. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:49, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Ottawahitech: Consider looking at my time card. I am not boasting, but yes, I spent a lot of time on Wikinews. I write a lot [that is subjective]. Note that I became a reviewer in May. I had 200+ articles published before I became a reviewer, and I am not the only reviewer on the project. Note that every article that is published appears on the main page. 4 out of 5 is a small ratio. I have had 9 out of 10 at least twice. But it is due to the fact that Darkfrog24 did not edit Wikinews (for almost a week, they left a talk page message); George Ho also did not write a news article, lately; numbermaniac did write one article (or two), but were busy irl. ‎Yngvadottir wrote some articles recently, yes. The lede section features five recently published articles so it might look that most of them are mine. (look at the last ten published articles; ratio drops to 5/10) But a week earlier, I wrote just three out of ten articles. I would not call Italian court sentences Brazilian footballer Robinho to nine years for 2013 sexual assault as a "football" article, the accused is a footballer. And I did not want AC Milan's article to be reviewed first. Israel: failing to comply with transportation law, Tel Aviv court orders Uber to partially stop its taxi ordering services and India: herd of donkeys granted bail after being locked up in Uttar Pradesh jail for eating expensive plants lost freshness this morning. I was expecting Uber's article getting reviewed, but that did not happen. This needs to be seen in a bigger picture. Sometimes, I write a lot of football articles (I think I have written ~160 football articles), sometimes, there are lot of US-based articles. I remember once I noticed seven out of last ten articles published had 'U' as the first letter in the headline. These patters appear when one wikinewsie is away some some days or weeks. For example, I have my exams from Monday, and would [probably] not write anything for two weeks. (I am sleepy -- it is 1:30 AM, and I don't know if most of this makes sense, or even if this is a "proposal")
•–• 19:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Yngvadottir: you might want to use {{ping}} template. FWIW, the Nortk Korea event happened on 28th. And it was heavily covered in MSM. Whenever that happens, there is so much more happening to the story that the original incident [the launch] loses freshness very quickly. @Pi zero: in this case -- probably they could brief you about it, though it is my responsibility, but I don't think I would be able to explain this sooner. The developments, like US's response, Trump's claims, China and South Korea, and Japan's response -- they become the newer developments. I know it is hard to understand, as a newbie. the first time I faced this problem was when Justin Trudeau was elected as Canada's PM, and it was marked stale in (iirc) less than two days of the vote counting.BTW: I do not have a degree in journalism, and I think there was an article about Grenfell, but it lost its freshness and was later deleted.
•–• 20:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There are so many other things we could not cover, like Catalonia referendum, Rohingya crises, Chile and Kenya elections, the list goes on... We are volunteers and have like outside Wikinews. (Look at my time card and tell me that I don't write frequently -- you would conclude that I do not sleep) Time is the most important thing on Wikinews.
•–• 20:11, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Both the Catalonia referendum and Rohingya crises are examples of recent news events which have been described more or less detail on the Dutch Wikinews (nl:Categorie:Spaanse constitutionele crisis, 2017, nl:Categorie:Conflict met de Rohingya-moslims in Myanmar). On the other hand, the Dutch Wikipedia only has very little information about these subjects (as good as nothing at all about the Rohingya crisis). The situation here seems to be completely inverse; the English Wikipedia does have all this information, while the English Wikinews has literally nothing about it. De Wikischim (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It is not that I did not want to cover them, but why do you people forget we have lives outside Wikinews? Those Wikipedia articles were not written by a single person. Wikipedia does not have a time constraint, we have. Wikipedia has no information about any ComicCon event in India, Wikinews has. Doesn’t prove a point. An encyclopaedic article and a news article are two different things. There were so many developments for Catalonia referendum that any delay was putting things out of freshness window.
223.237.238.18 (talk) 21:53, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
How about the time constraint for this? Of course, this item belongs better here on Wikinews. Instead, Wikipedia covers it now altogether (at the same time, it is still a basic rule that Wikipedia should not function as a news site). --De Wikischim (talk) 09:07, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wikinewsies write what they are interested to write about. If you want to write, go ahead, write about it instead of saying nobody wrote it. I did not get 250+ articles under my name by whining oh nobody wrote about this, or that. The New York article is both a piece of news (or say, was a news) and an encyclopedic article. You might have free time to rant on Water Cooler, I have semester end exams to focus on. Tell me when a teenager wrote 250+ articles, all by themselves.
•–• 10:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I for my part will not write about this here on this Wikinews version, since I do not really feel encouraged by your policy. By the way, I see your articles are mainly about football. De Wikischim (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Then stop discussing about it on WC/proposals -- there is no proposal being discussed by any of you. And as I said before, Wikinewsies decide what to write. As if football articles fail to qualify for "news".
•–• 12:05, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Yngvadottir: Thanks for providing a different perspective. It is hard to judge if one's own personal experience is representative. Please continue teling us how you are faring. BTW I see that you have not tried to publish any more stories here and sincerely hope it is not because of this thread. As I said before: I wish things could be improved here so that the front page is less homogeneous and new users are drawn here to help. Ottawahitech (talk) 17:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]
@Ottawahitech: I don't understand the remark about the 'only reviewer here' being the author of most articles. Two of the most active users here are reviewers. Of the two of us, I haven't authored an article here for ages, being consumed by review and infrastructure. But we have a strict policy that review must be done by a reviewer not involved in the writing of the article they are reviewing.

The most skillful Wikinews veterans write articles that are much easier than average to review, since there are few difficulties for a reviewer to puzzle over, few problems to correct, and their articles are very likely to pass review if they get attended to while still fresh. If a reviewer has just a little time to devote to review — and it is difficult for a reviewer to clear a big enough block of time to do a full review — the most efficient use of that small time is to apply it to an article they can be pretty sure will be easy to review and is likely to result in a publication, all of which encourages them to review a short article by an experienced Wikinewsie. Those sports articles tend to be short, and they're being written by an experienced Wikinewsie. Of course, the people who are most reliably able to produce articles that are easy to review are also the ones whose deep intuiting of the project guidelines and principles, so useful for writing easy-to-review articles, make them best suited to become reviewers themselves.

These things are not the whole picture, of course; efficiency isn't everything. They explain why reviewers would tend to review articles written by other reviewers, but obviously the future of the project requires new Wikinewsies, and we make a lot of effort to review non-veterans' submissions and help them along. --Pi zero (talk) 20:46, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pi zero: Do you feel two reviewers (I assume you mean you and agastia) can handle the Review queue in a timely and professional manner? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:08, 2 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me[reply]

Update from a discouraged newbie

I don’t think this discussion is going anywhere. What are you trying to establish by these “statistics”, @Ottawahitech:? There hasn’t been articles which passed review — lost freshness or had other issues. Just like number of edits has nothing to do with the activity on the project, these statistics does not mean nobody tried to write here, or reviewer did not attempt reviewing articles.
27.59.96.154 (talk) 18:37, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, it is surely not true that nobody tried/tries to write here. The big problem is that there is only very little chance that your article gets actually published. You have to wait until the few authorized reviewers who are active here have finished their work, and by then the news you tried to write about has often already become stale so you did your work actually in vain. (On the other hand, it seems to be no problem that news which is some weeks old still appears on the main page once the article has been approved). De Wikischim (talk) 21:41, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Can’t get enough of this, can you? Why do you people forget that we do have a life outside Wikinews? We are supposed to deal with lot of other things and yet I spend most of my available time on Wikinews. Published stories becomes part of the archive and are on the main page until new stories are published. I don’t understand why you don’t get it. But this conversation is not helping anything or anyone (to write an acceptable article)
223.237.198.229 (talk) 01:15, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, tell me, if you don't want to see "stale articles" on Main Page, and can not get new articles to be published, what do you want the main page to be filled with?
•–• 08:33, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the main point, of course. The reviewing process here as it is now does not work well, so the publication of almost every new article is blocked. De Wikischim (talk) 10:21, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 Then how do you think we have 22 thousand news articles published [which by the way is the most, not considering those written by bots]?
•–• 10:28, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Acagastya: How many of those 22 thousand stories were written in 2017? How many written in 2017 were written by you? How many written by you in 2017 were football related articles? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:55, 12 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]
okay, you want to play it like this. Fine. First things first. This has nothing to do with proposals so stop using this page for your “right to information” campaign. How about you do your homework and count number of articles written in 2017, football articles written in 2017 and those articles I wrote in 2017? Category:acagastya (Wikinewsie) will provide the list of articles I wrote (except ComicCon article). Category:Football (soccer) will give you the list of football articles and you need to check for each month and add it to know how many articles were published this year. Example: WN:2017/December.
•–• 17:19, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ok here is one of my proposals: Reviewers should not be gaining unfair advantage by rejecting other reporter's stories so their their own stories move up in the queue. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:54, 14 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]
@Ottawahitech: I'll be brutally honest. That proposal makes no sense, and as a good-faith proposal seems to result from lack of comprehension of the project. Contributors who know what they're doing are the ones who may eventually become reviewers; and then once they're reviewers you want to forbid them to contribute? We would then limit ourselves to contributors who don't know what they're doing. Or are you thinking that articles on the review queue (granted, we call it a "queue", which is misleading terminology) are supposed to be processed in order of submission? They aren't necessarily processed in that order; sometimes it even makes more sense to process them most recent submission first.

We need contributors who know how to produce material that's substantially up to our standards; that makes reviewing vastly easier and more effective, as the reviewer then mostly only has to double-check that, yes, everything is just fine. It's nerve-wracking, time-consuming, and exhausting to deal with material that's not up to snuff, but we gladly do it again and again; we like to help enthusiastic, good-willed newcomers learn the ropes — and it's the only way we can help inexperienced users to become veteran Wikinewsies who do know what they're doing and can pretty consistently write articles that are vastly easier to review. However, there are two very different sorts of reactions we get, broadly speaking. Some users grasp that the objective is to produce vetted output, and they respond to our feedback by continually striving to improve. It's very rewarding to work with folks with such a positive attitude. Then there are users who see review as an obstacle to them getting their (presumably, intrinsically superior) work published, and respond to feedback by arguing and complaining about it; we try to help them too, and somethings they eventually straighten out and become excellent Wikinewsies, but alas sometimes they only end up complaining ever-more-bitterly and eventually make proposals such as "let's do a soft close of the project". --Pi zero (talk) 18:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Review-before vs. instant-unpublish: examples of alternative models

When Wikinews first began the review process was much as it is now: the mainstream model of single-authored articles submitted and reviewed by a limited number of editors. This model failed to scale during a world-wide news event. A different model was established in which articles could be self-published on the understanding that anyone could instantly unpublish the articles.

There were strong arguments against that model - spam, misinformation, bias - but the strongest argument against it at the time was Google News refused to carry content which did not have editorial oversight. Nonetheless, en.WN contributors continued with the instant-unpublish model for 18 months, and showed slow but steady growth due in large part, in my opinion, to the instant gratification of users seeing their article published in a timely fashion. With the fast-publish model more minor errors exist in published articles, encouraging new contributors to 'fix' them, and again giving them instant feedback of seeing their changes live.

But pre-publishing review crept back in, and was re-established as policy.

Google and main stream news media have abandoned/strongly limited the pre-publish review model, just as they have nearly eliminated copy editors and fact checkers. en.WN rate of published articles has steadily declined over a decade under the pre-publish review model.

These two are not the only citizen journalism models, but they represent two extremes. I believe the community should talk about changing the current model which has manifestly failed - again. Shake things up, find a new way. - Amgine | t 21:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Amgine. You haven't changed your position on the thing we disagree about, I see. Your account of history, I have some doubts about, but since I wasn't present for that part, I'll merely note that I don't actually trust your version of it to be seen through unbiased eyes. The part about "manifestly failed" is, of course, bullshit.

The need for a venue that melds the vet-before-publication ethic of news with the contribution-by-The-People ethic of wikis, which is what we do here, is desperately needed in these times of opinion-based worldview and rampant lying by fiction outlets calling themselves news. The lack of vetting in social media and Wikipedia has only grown more severe over the years, and attempting to resurrect your don't-vet-first ideology on Wikinews now, when vetting is most desperately needed in the world... well. I'll stop short of what I'm really thinking about that, and merely say it shows very poor judgement on your part. --Pi zero (talk) 22:05, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily this is a Mediwiki-based project. I believe you will find that May 2006 - a few months after I had accepted to do Wikimania and so was stepping away from the project - was the watershed of articles published per day and contributor activity. The stats are readily measured. I prefer hard facts. (Also note: that watershed was likely due the writing competition others had organized and were pursuing without my involvement, which is as it should be.)
As for your opinion of how things should be done by the community, I am in favour of your expressing - and acting - on it. But it is your opinion. While the free-for-all we had for a time was productive, it was not always fun and probably would not have the same outcomes today. That is why I think new contributors should take the reins of this discussion, the currently active should be talking about what can be done to increase article churn. I mean, my opinion is people writing should create the norms, but it is only my opinion. - Amgine | t 22:43, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2006 doesn't strike me as relevant to the history, but I also doubt the history you're interpreting is relevant, in which case arguing about it is wasteful (though admittedly most of this thread is wasteful). Note, Wikinewsies who write articles are not driving this thread; I don't like to be unnecessarily harsh toward OTH (whom I've not yet given up hope for), but this thread is being driven by a (very human) impulse to destroy rules in order to avoid learning them, an impulse that ultimately cannot coexist with anything more credible than an unvetted blog. The world doesn't need more unvetted blogs (well... that was true yesterday, at least; what damage today's net neutrality thing will do remains to be seen; but blogging is not a wikimedia function, and is absolutely not news). --Pi zero (talk) 00:30, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In short: shut up and follow the rules. No. But you should be aware that June/July 2006 was when pre-publication review became policy again. - Amgine | t 00:39, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with your characterization of what I said. I suspect it's based on what you expect to hear, rather than what I said; that does happen, especially when two people already have a long history of disagreeing vehemently. Though our long failure to find common ground on this issue saddens me; still, sad or not, there it is. I could almost imagine a very pleasant, and interesting, and ultimately profitable exploration of the issues in which we come to a clear understanding of the overall landscape of the issues and find that both our views fit into a unified view... but I don't really believe anymore that we could get there, even though the destination might exist. --Pi zero (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's a very nice thought. But what I would like to hear is neither you, nor myself, but the opinions of people who have not been around so long they have lost perspective. - Amgine | t 01:20, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Long experience does not necessarily cause loss of perspective. Nor does lack of experience confer understanding. --Pi zero (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion: reviewing articles before publishing them is a good system as such. But with the currently very low number of reviewers active here now who are solely authorized to approve, it surely does not work the way it should. The only effect now is that almost nobody can actually publish an article because it becomes stale before having passed the review, except for the reviewers themselves (who, in addition, mainly choose subjects they have written themselves to be published on the main page). De Wikischim (talk) 08:47, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
we write what interests us. And no matter what we write about; if it is published, it appears in the main page. I have no clue what you mean by “mainly choose subjects they have written themselves” — we have strict policy against self publishing.
223.237.215.67 (talk) 09:06, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I thought user:Acagastya was a reviewer too - perhaps I was wrong, sorry in that case. Almost all the articles which appear now on the main page are about football - so according to the English Wikinews, football is the only important thing for a news site to report about. In the meantime, all kinds of other news items are fully ignored, or they have been written but the articles have been disapproved by the reviewer. To be honest, this annoys me somewhat. De Wikischim (talk) 09:36, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I write what interests me. I write football news and it is news. You can’t not ready it for being a football articles. I have written articles on other topic. I remember the time when I wrote an article about a eighth grade girl who was raped on Indian Independence Day and asked Dutch Wikinewsies to translate it. They said it was not news. So don’t tell me what is news and what is not. If you want to see the articles which I wrote and are not about football, see the <DynamicPageList> category =acagastya (Wikinewsie) notcategory=Football (soccer) </DynamicPageList> Tell me, did you or your home Wikinews write about it? Tell me, weren’t they newsworthy?
223.237.215.91 (talk) 09:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@De Wikischim: Some of your remarks might be explained by some misunderstanding about how en.wn review works. I'm not sure what misunderstanding, though. A couple of quick thoughts.
  • Reviewers are volunteers, just like all other contributors here except that they've earned the community's trust to wield the review bit — a very high level of trust, indeed. Reviewers are not allowed to review an article they're involved with; basically, we aren't allowed to be a coauthor of an article we review; which is why when a reviewer reviews an article, they avoid making big changes so as not to disqualify themselves from reviewing that article. Reviewer is given only to contributors who are trusted not to abuse it and trusted to deeply grok our policies and practices. It's fairly predictable that articles written by reviewers are going to pass review smoothly because the writer knows how to meet our standards, and if that were no so they would not have been given the review bit.
  • We don't just say "no, that's not acceptable"; when not-ready'ing an article for reasons that might not be fully understood by the reporter, we try to write helpful review comments (taking extra time and effort to do so). For example, the last time I reviewed an article of yours, I wrote an extensive review comment trying to help you particularly with our concept of focus, which seemed to be giving you some trouble.
--Pi zero (talk) 14:14, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update Dec 17, 2017: 4 out of 5 articles on the front page were still written by agastya ( 2 football)

On the front page started by agastya (who goes by different IDs and IPs):

(another article: England: Baby born with heart outside body operated on; surviving, three weeks after birth was started by User:Yngvadottir — congratulations

Meanwhile there are now Five articles queued in Review:

most if not all are already stale. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:01, 17 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]
If I may add something: I find it rather shocking that an evident spelling error in one of the titles named above (acqusition) still appearsappeared on the main page without being corrected. So this is apparently not a serious issue, while all kinds of articles written by others than Acagastya are rejected for all kinds of far-fetched reasons? De Wikischim (talk) 17:17, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'd thank you for pointing out the spelling error, but you clearly didn't mean to improve anything or you would have gone about it differently. --Pi zero (talk) 18:02, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, next time I won't notify you again about no matter what blatant spelling error. And do you really think it isn't my intention to improve anything? Did you have a honest look at my earlier contributions? De Wikischim (talk) 19:22, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@De Wikischim: If you were really trying to improve things in this case, I apologize. To be clear, though, I doubted your intentions in this particular case because your remark was hedged with snideness/trolling about core en.wn policies whose underlying principles and journalistic values are, for whatever reason, apparently not visible to you. --Pi zero (talk) 20:07, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So you didn't even notice that I already made this remark earlier today, only to conclude a number of hours later that the same spelling error was still there on the very prominent place? By the way, I'd advise you to be very thrifty with using qualifications such as "trolling". Only if someone's a real troll, it is justifiable to call him that way. De Wikischim (talk) 20:15, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@De Wikischim: Indeed, the first I knew that you had made that remark on the article talk page was when I saw your revert of it in RecentChanges. Unfortunately, it's extremely easy for remarks on article talk pages, such as that, to go unnoticed. A suggestion: The most effective way to get a remark like that noticed is to {{ping}} someone (if you know who to ping), a lesson I've learned the hard way myself; another approach in this case would be to use {{editprotected}} on the talk-page request, which would not necessarily get it noticed quickly, but at least it would go on a queue so would not slip through the cracks entirely.

I don't wish to let your objection to the "snideness/trolling" description go unremarked, but note it would be amazingly easy to just make things worse. I consider "snideness/trolling" a lesser gradation than "trolling" (which in turn would be marginally lesser than calling someone a "troll"); but I think if you look honestly at things you've said in this thread you'll find there's a tinge of trolling there, and you may find that eliminating that tinge from your commenting style can improve the general atmosphere of discussions in which you take part. --Pi zero (talk) 21:09, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My suggestion would be to just fix it, rather than notify anyone about it. I understand wanting to highlight what appears to be different standards, but that is actually a form of disrupting to make a point. - Amgine | t 22:47, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Amgine: Although it's a good thought, in this case, alas, they would be unable to fix it, as lately we've found it advisable to fully protect published articles against moving, due to page-move vandalism. So they really would need to request the article be moved. --Pi zero (talk) 23:09, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Amgine:; if I could have fixed that error myself yesterday, I surely would have done so. Unfortunately you use the fact that I couldn't as an argument to disparage my intentions. De Wikischim (talk) 09:06, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, you cannot rename a page after it is published because of the page protection settings. Only an admin can do that.
223.237.228.137 (talk) 09:15, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
De Wikischim: No disparagement was intended; in fact I was taking issue with Pi Zero's response because of course I had assumed, on a wiki where it is easier to repair vandalism than to commit it, that at most an article would be partially protected to allow community members to address these kinds of minor errors. It appears I was mistaken, and for that I apologize. - Amgine | t 18:00, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If the consequences of page-move vandalism to published articles here were as trivial as you suggest, we certainly wouldn't fully protect against moves. --Pi zero (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For an admin I believe it is three clicks with the move over redirect. For a user, one page move, (at least) one search, one c/p and a click. Of course to *do* the page move vandalism requires creating an account and waiting, iirc 5 days, then two clicks and typing/pasting a new title. But I may be mistaken; I am out of practice. - Amgine | t 21:23, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I said consequences; nothing to do with how many clicks it takes, afterward, to restore the wiki to its previous state. (In fairness, btw, you should probably throw in a few more clicks to block the vandal, as part of the overall mop-up operation.) --Pi zero (talk) 22:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update Dec 20, 2017: 4 out of 5 articles on the front page were still written by agastya ( 2 football)

The front page of wikinews still carries the same articles that it did when I last reported here. The oldest article on that page has a "focal date" of Friday, December 8, 2017. It was written by agastya.

There are two articles waiting for Review now, both with a "focal date" of December 18, 2017:

Presumably all articles waiting in the Review queue when I last reported here have been rejected(?):

Ottawahitech (talk) 15:06, 20 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me [reply]
If I were you, I would try to improve and write a better article, submit it for review and divorce it. That is the key, not these statistics.
106.209.244.231 (talk) 06:28, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@106.209.244.231 …and if I were you I would stop giving advice to people I know little about.
Why try to write articles here when rules are made up on the fly and not by established policy? Take for example: Talk:African Lives Matter stages protests in Westminster London (which will soon be deleted) where 223.180.11.222 tells user:De Wikischim that two independent sources published within the last three days are required, and directs readers to: source. Anyone heading over to read this official policy will discover that it contains no such information. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:39, 21 December 2017 (UTC) Please ping me[reply]
I don't think that's the page to find that particular aspect of policy on. Our policies and practices evolve very slowly, following underlying core principles, but documenting them also lags behind — it took us many years of thought and hands-on experience punctuated by community discussions before we produced our WN:Newsworthiness page, for instance. Lagging documentation is a familiar pattern (so I'm told) for small news orgs, which tend to put their time into doing rather than writing about what they do. Atm a good place to start looking for description of current policies and best practices, other than of course asking an active reviewer, is WN:PILLARS. --Pi zero (talk) 14:01, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Ottawahitech: first of all, pings would not work for non registered users. Secondly, if you had read WN:SOURCE, it says: “Multiple independent sources are usually required…”, and article in question is not an OR to bypass this rule.
223.180.25.181 (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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