Wikinews:Water cooler/technical

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Can and should en.Wikinews be revitalized

I believe the writing is on the wall with the Sibling Project Lifecycle, as Bawolff initially indicated here.

Today I also found that Flagged Revisions, the extension that underpins our ability to protect Published articles is no longer supported and is considered "clunky, complex and not recommended for production use."[1], [2] For a sense of what kind of support we might get if there is a problem with using 'clunky' and unsupported software, read this old WP thread.

We have had a years-long struggle with maintaining an adequate number of active reviewers and have a seriously hard time with regular maintenance such as updating our generations-old copyright license.[3]

We have recently permitted global sysops to assist with everyday admin tasks because we don't have enough active admins to help keep up with the basic work of deleting vandalism.[4]

More often wn.WN is getting essentially scooped by en.WP on news stories. The latest example is Killing of Yahya Sinwar. When viewed or considered as if one wants to shutter en.WN, and if we discount the advantage of peer review (which arguably WP has), there is no real advantage of en.WN publishing our article in addition to the coverage that en.WP already has on that event. WP has much better reach as far as readership, the platform is better-maintained, its impact on the Internet-at-large far exceeds en.WN, and the WP community is highly active.

en.WN by contrast is 1) not highly active, 2) does not significantly impact the wider Internet infrastructure or other wiki projects, 3) lacks the resources necessary to sustainably execute the project's mission, and 4) has a strong external project to merge with; WP. These are four of the six criteria to consider for closing projects.[5]

I personally would like to see this project revitalized and I'm all-in however I can help. We need more urgency and organization from more reviewers and admin to get things turned around and pump some new life into the project. That's not to say only reviewers and admin are needed, but we certainly can't move forward without them.

If you agree and have ideas, please share them here. If you disagree and think I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, please let me know. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 19:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Should? Yes. Can? Jury's out.

If you look at community discussions for the past 12 years or so, there are routine discussions about how Wikinews is dying and we need to do x to save it. In reality, when Wikinews was founded, that was the golden age of citizen journalists and semi-professional bloggers, before a lot of that got gobbled up by social media sites (c. 2003 to 2010). I think there's still a place for Wikinews and I hope it's successful, but I'm not very optimistic about any legitimate course for Wikinews to be a place where someone could read the homepage and click thru on a number of articles to be reasonably informed about current affairs, which is the basic measure of whether or not a general interest news site is successful. And since ostensibly, Wikinews has no particular geographic scope (unlike a local newspaper) or point of view (like a political party-run paper or a government propaganda outlet) or limitation on topics (unlike specialist publications), the reasonable amount of stories published on Wikinews to meet its mandate would be several hundred a day at a minimum and ideal maybe... 20,000? about local news, sports, scientific findings, interviews, human interest stories, photojournalism, exposes, investigative journalism, and so on. Wikinews is really orders of magnitude away from where it should be and it would require thousands and thousands of active editors to even approach that, but even if we were just narrowly trying to cover the dozen or so biggest stories of the day, plus some original reporting, that's already a struggle here.

I don't want to be dour, but the situation is dire and I will continue to contribute original reporting to Wikinews and do occasional maintenance, but we should be realistic about how Wikinews is basically irrelevant to the online news landscape and is easily the weakest of all our sister projects. Even other small projects like b: or v: could in principle "catch up" to where they need to be, because it's not like there is an urgent need for a few hundred new textbooks a day, so we could kinda/sorta get around to those sooner or later, but when news becomes old it ceases to be news at all. The problem actually only gets worse day by day. :/

If anyone out there has great brainstorming on how to achieve that goal or get even 1% of the way to it, I'm all ears. Unfortunately, I've chimed in on these conversations many times over the past decade and the problem persists. The only reasonable ideas that I have ever come up with are 1.) having journalism students at universities publish here and 2.) copy news from appropriately-licensed venues. In the past, the community has more-or-less rejected the latter. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I've written a proposal at water cooler, the idea is to write shorter stories to get them out more quickly. Can do without flagged revs if needed but i'd like to keep it on to prevent spammers from getting into news feed. Gryllida (talk) 11:03, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

(Note that the idea was tested and worked; however needs at least one author and at least one reviewer, i.e. two persons at minimum, so @Koavf and @Michael.C.Wright, you guys are welcome to write a short story once a week in a hope the other reviewer would get it reviewed quickly. Check latest feed for examples.) Gryllida (talk) 11:05, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

For every article a reviewer writes, at least two reviewers' time is consumed. If we think about a reviewer's time being the ability to do work, i.e., publish a story, and one reviewer 'unit' can be spent on any given article to either write/expand it or review it, then any time reviewer units are scarce for the project, reviewer units (I think) should be used to review/coach, not to write/expand.

And I consider myself 1/2 or .5 of a reviewer unit. Reviews take me more time as I learn how to review and publish effectively, accurately, etc. It will also consume another reviewer to double-check my work and possibly issue corrections if the work can't be checked within 24 hours (as has happened).

I believe this is an 'all hands on deck' situation for both reviewers and admins. I'm starting to wonder if the more established or senior reviewers and admins are like the proverbial frogs in boiling water, unaware of how the environment is changing around them. It seems they might be thinking, 'It's always been like this, nothing has collapsed yet, so what's the big deal?'

I went to the front page of en.Wikipedia today and there is a section titled "In The News." None of the links in that section point to en.WN. None of the linked articles have 'sister links' to en.WN articles. We're already effectively replaced.

I don't want to be dour, but the situation is dire...but we should be realistic about how Wikinews is basically irrelevant to the online news landscape and is easily the weakest of all our sister projects. I agree with Justin's assessment and I think the only way we change the situation is 1. more active reviewers and 2. some sort of updated (faster/easier/more-efficient) way of reviewing. We need the first in order to accomplish the second. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 00:53, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Replied at the 'assistance' water cooler page. Gryllida (talk) 02:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I think there is so much that Wikinews is capable of, that it hasn't been able to fully achieve over the years, due to social/technical/financial underinvestment. I know I've proposed occasional trial balloons like this in the past (not coincidentally in 2016, 2020, and now 2024!), when it's hit home for me as a US citizen the failure of the wider news ecosystem in the social media era, and why the world needs a strong Wikinews so much.

It would be a great time to be able to come together, and brainstorm some potential new approaches that could build up Wikinews in different directions, along with shoring up and making sustainable its existing model. It would be great to convene a monthly audio/video call with core English Wikinews editors to work out these ideas and priorities. The affiliate that I'm part of, m:Wikimedia New York City, has progressed to the point where we are now applying to foundations that give significant grants, and I was thinking maybe we could help in this process. Pharos (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. I've been thinking about this and wanted to reply sooner but got busy/distracted.

I would love to hear more about this and am interested in the idea. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 16:21, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Global sysops isn't needed now i believe. Mon to Fri i'm helping when there's not a class. I'm sure we can find a couple more volunteers if my proposed model continues. See also more details.... Gryllida (talk) 11:08, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I have 500 things to say, and I have very little to say. I just think English WN has lost itself. I believe in citizen journalism -- I do. I just don't really know what we're up to around here. First: there is just very little psychological payoff here -- that's the honest truth. Bickering, fussing etc. etc. (and I've done a pinch of that myself, admittedly) -- and to what end? Who are our customers? What if our readership goes up 3% next year, or drops 4% next year? ....who cares? I've been involved here for about 14 years or so and I think my writing has improved and I've done a few interesting things -- but secondly: who gives a flying fig anymore about 'journalistic integrity'? I am not exactly leaving -- but I feel a bit adrift. Maybe a few things have no business being so egalitarian. I'm just losing the wind in my sails.--Bddpaux (talk) 20:46, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I know previously you believed in adding reviewers quickly. I was hopeful that would be successful. Maybe that just needs more backers and more momentum to become part of the solution.

What else would you suggest as part of a strategy to turn things around?

What are your ideas on ways to reduce the bickering and fussing and make things more collaborative? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 23:43, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Date categories

How are the dates categories created for published articles? Is it a manual process done each month? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 16:29, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Stories (always?) begin with {{date}} and the first parameter has the date, adding the category. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:21, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm referring to categories such as this one: Category:November 4, 2024. These categories are automatically added to published articles by EasyPeerReview. I'm hoping there is a tool that create the categories rather than requiring each date cat to be created manually. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 18:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Oooooooooooooooh, sorry. Humans manually create them, but in principle, a bot could. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I previously proposed a script that might be helpful. Asked42 (talk) 06:27, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I recently used this to create DPL list pages as a working demo. Asked42 (talk) 18:33, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I was going to try the script myself today but you beat me to it. Thanks for creating all of those categories! —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 14:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I didn't actually create the categories; I only created the DPL (Dynamic Page List) pages.

Date categories: for example, Category:November 5, 2024

DPL pages: for example, Wikinews:2024/November/5.

So you can still try it and leave me a review if you find any errors. Asked42 (talk) 15:05, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

The heading on the Main Page versus WN:Water cooler and WN:Newsroom

Why is there a flash of the heading on the two project pages I linked, but not on the Main Page? — JJP_Master (she/they) 19:38, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Can you reword this? I don't have any idea what you even mean and can't seem to reproduce whatever it is you're experiencing. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:41, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Koavf, when I go to WN:Water cooler or WN:Newsroom, the title of the page (e.g. "Wikinews:Water cooler") can be seen for a brief period of time as the heading. The Main Page does not have this--"Main Page" never appears above the content of the page. — JJP_Master (she/they) 19:46, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Gotcha. That is because MediaWiki:Mainpage-title is set to a hyphen to deliberately not display. This is a feature of MediaWiki software. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:53, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Koavf, okay, thank you! — JJP_Master (she/they) 19:58, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

i see it as a heading anyway, it does not disappear for me? Gryllida (talk) 23:45, 5 December 2024 (UTC)