Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2013/September

Help a Wikinewsie Out (finding interview subjects)

Would it be possible for some one to code a program that does the following:

1. Reporter fills out a template form for inclusion on a page named something like Wikinews:Help a Wikinewsie that includes information on finding subjects for interviews for articles. Template would include general topic, how the reporter can be contacted, what medium the reporter is looking to conduct the interview in, language of interview, etc.
2. Push unique requests as they come in automatically to a special facebook account and Twitter account purpose created for this? Create a daily digest of requests that be pushed to a mailing list that anyone can subscribe to?

This might make it easier for Wikinews reporters to find people to interview on subjects. It would be nice to have say a Wikinews specific version of http://helpareporterout.com . --LauraHale (talk) 06:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts.

• My impression, which could easily be off, is past efforts of this sort haven't worked out for us. I'd really like to hear about what we've tried and whether/why it didn't work from folks who've been involved in Wikinews OR significantly longer than I've been on the project. We have two pages on-wiki that afaik haven't been particularly useful in the time I've been here: WN:Request an interview and WN:Requested articles.
• We have to post published articles to FB by hand; I suppose the same would be true here.

--Pi zero (talk) 11:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Wrong approach.

• Question: What is the problem you are trying to solve?

To be clear, and this is me with the Systems Analyst hat on, never start by asking for a program. Your process should go like this:

1. Problem Statement: What is the problem you need solved?
2. Ideal Solution: (You'll probably not get this) A fairly high-level outline of the 'all-singing, all-dancing' solution
3. Accept reality: (Finite resources – both human and financial) Work out what you can achieve
   • Iterate, from the Ideal Solution, down to something achievable
   • Remember, 'computer' was once a job title; your initial solution may have substantial 'manual elements'
   • Capture what works, what doesn't
   • Improve the initial solution based on feedback, and new suggestions

The two examples Pi zero mentions?

1. Request an interview: Kook, crackpot, and conspiracy-theorist magnet.
2. Requested articles: Shouldn't need to say much on why that failed; we have no spare writing capacity. This is a "Wikipedia-esque solution" ; simply won't work for us.

However, it does not sound like you're looking for people coming nagging us to interview them, or to write articles for them; neatly, back to "What is the problem you are trying to solve?". It sounds, to me, like you're looking to pull together a Wikinewsie shared-address book. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:12, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

We do not have the scoop for a shared-address book of this scale. I am looking for something that would basically be a local project specific duplication of HARO (help a reporter out). This gets difficult in some areas, and there are a number of subject experts who might be willing to be interviewed on a subject if asked. This allows those folks to track requests, and would make some of our processes potentially more transparent. It could also be used cross languages. At the moment, this could be done manually and then pushed to FB and Twitter on a separate account with centralization taking place on meta under TWG. Asking people to come to us ends up with a lot of problematic crap. This could facilitate getting quotes for articles or doing longer interviews with experts. --LauraHale (talk) 04:08, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Permission error

I got the following (with the above heading) when trying to sight my addition of a parent cat to Category:British Airways:

You do not have permission to <action-badaccess-group0>, for the following reason:

You are not allowed to execute the action you have requested.

Unsure what that means in plain English. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It sounds as if perhaps the system was momentarily confused about who you were. Alas, I've just sighted it myself, which worked but means we can't properly recreate the circumstances for you to try again. --Pi zero (talk) 13:19, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Farewell Toolserver, hello tool-labs

Hi everyone, this year Wikimedia Deutschland announced that Toolserver will close in July 2014 (as I remember in some Wikimania talk :$) and the devolpers must migrate own code to tools-labs servers (Wikimedia servers) or elsewhere. So, after a long-battle (over 2 months), I announce that I finished the migration. Mmm... why Superzerocool is saying this in Wikinews?: simple!, the Market Data and Euro rate exchange pages are updated via bot: now the server is tool-labs in Wikimedia infrastructure. Please, say thanks to Wikimedia Deutschland for the support in this three years. Do you have any comments, please, ask me in Spanish wikinews!. Superzerocool 19:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Abuse filter

Please see Wikinews:Admin_action_alerts#Auto_spambot_detection_with_User:Abuse_filter. -- Cirt (talk) 14:27, 29 September 2013 (UTC)