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Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009/June

Social bookmarking of Wikinews articles
From a discussion on the Wikinews mailing list, I would like to bring up a proposal to try and spread Wikinews.

In the archives there is a previous discussion of using a "Digg this" button (Also see: Spread Wikinews), Digg links were shot down because viewing the Wikinews page would force you to also load something from Digg.com to get the Digg count. This means Digg gets details of who reads what articles - a technical violation of the WMF privacy policy.

In the mailing list discussion, has proposed using an extension for this, Extension:ShareThis. I am in the process of installing this on the Wikinewsie wiki to see what it looks like. I know this is a closed wiki, I will whitelist a couple of pages to test it on. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Can someone else have a look at the supposed graphics bit for this extension? I got a zip file with .exe and .bat files mixed in with it - wrong download or something else screwy? --Brian McNeil / talk 08:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks ugly, doesn't include Facebook. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I would propose tweaking this as follows (similar to BBC use of social bookmarks):

 * 1) tweak to open bookmarking link in a new window or tab
 * 2) trim list of bookmarking sites to 5 or 6 max
 * 3) include facebook - most popular social site
 * 4) use bigger bookmarking icons
 * 5) suppress external link icons (the little 2-ended arrow)
 * Also, I'd propose if we're using this it is incorporated into the publish template and this is placed at the bottom immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:37, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * the external link icon is an issue with bookjive. Looks somewhat better on monobook. I think all these issues are most likely fixable. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

The URLs for these are, respectively:
 * The five listed by the BBC are Delicious, Digg, reddit, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. As an example, see the foot of this article.
 * http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
 * http://digg.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
 * http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister
 * http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm
 * http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8075158.stm&title=Dramatic%20plane%20arrest%20of%20ex-Iraq%20minister

I think that's do-able without an extension, and thus without having to get any WMF approval for such. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Twitter isn't listed here. Would http://twitthis.com/tools cover it? Does that load JavaScript from their site? If so, can we host it locally? Do we need permission from them to do so? --Brian McNeil / talk 13:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not sure on that one. But just a comment anyway. Twitter, next to Facebook is the most popular for us. I thought they had their own icons too if I am not mistaken. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:21, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It does load javascript from their site. All the javascript does is make the link go into a popup window. We could perhaps host it here, however there is an issue with the (c) all rights reserved notice on the js. Since that is not an official twitter thing, I'm sure somewhere in the twitter help there is instructions on how to add a post to twitter button to your site that doesn't have these issues. I also feel this is definitly do-able without an extension (especially the links at bottom, the links as part of the sidebar is much harder to do without an extension). Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Theres an extended list of urls for the sharethis extension at . As for twitter-the twit this js basically wraps around the url http://twitthis.com/twit?url=[url]&title=[tittle stripped of spaces] (I have no idea if we're allowed to directly use this without using there js). All of this is definitly doable without an extension — Bawolff ☺☻ 23:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Twitthis is also in a prime position to steal passwords. I'd recomend not using it unless we are very sure we trust them. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually twitter seems easy (stealing from a different website - http://twitter.com/home/?status=<blah> Bawolff ☺☻ 03:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not so easy if longer than 140 characters. Computerjoe (talk) 08:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Similar to what's coded up in Commentary (eg ) do we need a   ? Would this go in the FlaggedRevisions extension, or the ParserFunctions extension, or both? Can we draft and vote for a bugzilla entry on this? --Brian McNeil / talk 12:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I would expect this to feed URLs like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 into the social bookmark site. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Considering that anons get the stable version anyways, i don't think we need to send a permalink. We still want them to see ny reviewed changes that might happen.Bawolff ☺☻ 22:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The link is the same and always shows most recently reviewed version - anon or not. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:08, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ?curid doesn't really do much. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras?curid=126950 and http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Major_7.3_magnitude_earthquake_hits_Honduras always go to the exact same page, and does not have anything to do with flagged revs. the difference comes when we do something like http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/An_article_not_about_an_earthquake?curid=126950 . Bawolff ☺☻ 23:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Fair use logos
So, Can i upload apropriate icons for these sites to use for share links? Does anyone actually object to using fair use logos for this purpose? Bawolff ☺☻ 03:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I see this as a perfectly valid FU case. (or is that, "FU Adambro"? :P) --Brian McNeil / talk 07:11, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm amused to see my legacy lives on. The propose use of these logos would seem to be consist with the fair use defence since they would be being used to identify thee websites and actually promote them so any objections from the copyright holders would seem incredibly unlikely. Additionally, without bothering to actually look up the details, I expect the copyright holders actually allow use of their logos in ways like this. Adambro (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Example
User:Brianmc/Sandbox is an example of using this for Facebook. Logo needs to go to the bookmarking link, and I'd say the whole thing should open in a new window just big enough for the entry form. Also the external link icon should go. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:22, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Removing the external link image should be easy enough: add [link] to get rid of that. Tempodivalse  [talk]  14:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I made changes to your sandbox so that the logo links, and the external link arrow goes away. Open in a new window is somewhat harder, and requires js changes (although shouldn't be very complicated javascript). Bawolff ☺☻ 21:29, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Poll for social bookmarking implementation
Nobody has objected, assuming we can code up social bookmarks do people support this being embedded in the publish template and made a permanent feature? --Brian McNeil / talk 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments

 * This sounds like a good idea to increase readership, and I generally support. However, I'm a bit confused on one point: how exactly are the bookmarking buttons going to look like? Sort of like social bookmarks? Tempodivalse [talk]  14:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's just to show some of the coding for it. The look can be changed, someone more graphically inclined might be better than me at that. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the biggest thing here is getting smaller versions of the graphics. Can someone manage that? --Brian McNeil / talk 08:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Smaller than they already are? I assume that will be hard. They're not that big now. Calebrw (talk) 15:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You looked after I'd slogged through some photoshopping to get smaller ones. :) I'd hoped someone else might take the bait and save me the bother, then I got impatient. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * there's no need to include words. Computerjoe (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you know all the icons without a text label? Is it reasonable to even assume that 50% of people who read our content will? --Brian McNeil / talk 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I do, and I assume users who will use these links will know the logos of sites they frequent. Could the name of the site be put in an alt=?
 * I agree with Joe, even before reading this I already removed the text. #1 I know all the logo's.  #2 as anon said - if you use the service, you know the logo.  Sorry if you don't recognize the redit logo off the bat - but you're not going to share news on a service you don't use.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 18:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, to avoid any possible confusion, we should make use of tooltips for the logos, sort of like w:Template:Tooltip? Would that be possible? Tempodivalse [talk]  18:08, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Try it now - works on Firefox, not sure with other browsers. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Works well for me. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Works for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. Calebrw (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Just wanted to let you guys know that the rounded box is not round in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. It's just a box. Don't know if there is a workaround for this or not.Calebrw (talk) 19:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup. Kewl isn't it?  It's a CSS feature IE doens't support so in IE it's just going to be a box, nothing we can do about that. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 19:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you point me to the specific CSS? Calebrw (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "-moz-border-radius: 9px;" It's the "-moz" part that gives it away. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 19:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I added support for rounded corners in safari - rounded corners in IE essentially works by having specially positioned images of rounded corners, and its really not worth the effort/is very hard to make work. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:58, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * As social networks proliferate how do we decide which ones to include? We seem to have the majors covered, but someone (sometime) is gonna come along and ask "why isn't our social network included?" Just a thought, --SVTCobra 01:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Its a tough question. As it stands there are hundreds we don't have. We could make some arbitrary rule, only the five or so most popular (with popularity determined by alexa ranking) or something. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:14, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If we choose most popular, I think what we have now is pretty good. As to the order of popularity, from left to right, i think Twitter is most popular with us at the moment, if we list it that order that is. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 01:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you don't offer a solution for what constitutes "most popular" and how do we administrate that? Do we use top 5 or top 10? What if some sites move in and out of the top 5 (or 10 or whatever)? --SVTCobra 01:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as the number of links go, I would think that the more we can fit in, the better, because we'd get more coverage on more sites, right? I think anything from six up to ten would be a suitable number (any more and it starts looking cluttered, any less and we don't get good coverage). I don't know what to do as far as what sites specifically should be used. I guess we could use some arbitrary number (look at the alexa.com rankings or something) for that. Tempodivalse [talk]  01:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would be wary of adding any more links to the template. Those there were chosen based on what the BBC offers plus Twitter. If they're ordered in any non-arbitrary way I'd suggest by the site's Alexa rank. As to adding any more I'd suggest putting to a vote if the situation arises - but only if the requested site is in the top-20 social bookmarking sites on Alexa (do they have categories like that?) --Brian McNeil / talk 08:13, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I found the docs on facebook in case its useful later: http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php . Bawolff ☺☻ 04:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * With Twitter, I think people will be less likely to follow the link unless the title of the article is shown in the tweet. People may pass the tweet off as spam if it just has a shortened URL. --Meekel (TalkToMe) 23:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Open in a new window
Do we want it to open in a pop up? if so what type of popup? If we just want it to open in a blank window, the following js should work: should work fine. Or do we want something fancier (like a window with a specific width and height. If so what width and height would be good) or are we happy with them being just normal links? Bawolff ☺☻ 01:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * A pop-up might not be a bad idea, if it's possible to do. I'd support something like that. Tempodivalse [talk]  01:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I'm on the subject of js, we could also use it to shorten the urls for twitter (since space is a consideration as it has max of 140 characters). for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_MP_condemns_deportation_of_man_to_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo (106 character) vs http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 (48 chars) or even http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 (41 chars). In addition the Look what I found on Wikinews: line adds 30 characters, making a short url more important. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And longer page titles are simply to long - UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters is 8 characters longer than allowed in a twitter post. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Testing earlier today determined that Twitter will autoshorten the URLs. Calebrw (talk) 02:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * oh cool, i didn't know that. Will it still let you post it if the url is longer than 140 characters before shortening, (as in does it include shortening in its character count thing?) - for example this 150 character long monstrosity? Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I added the social bookmarks to UK government's Information Commissioner takes enforcement action against Liberal Democrat party for cold calling voters. Twitter would not let me submit. "Look what I found on Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/UK_government's_Information_Commissioner_takes_enforcement_action_against_Liberal_Democrat_party_for_cold_calling_voters" is 39 characters too long. So your idea of using for example: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/article?curid=127003 may work the best. Calebrw (talk) 02:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Example: See http://twitter.com/calebrw/status/2012059190 for http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?curid=127003 being converted to at Twitter post. Calebrw (talk) 03:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Uh, I deliberately coded BASEPAGENAME into the social bookmarks template so it will only post main namespace articles even if added on a Comments or Talk page. The only case where I can see this failing is titles like "2008/09 foo" which should not be created and someone has recently cleaned up (changed to "2008-09 foo"). --Brian McNeil / talk 08:05, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Please note that I did not correct all the articles on WN, but rather was able to find most of them in the Football category. If someone better at AWB than I can figure out how to search through WN's 14,000+ articles and only get ones with a "/" in the title, we may be in business. Otherwise, we could have problems. Calebrw (talk) 13:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Those will be fine with what Bawolff currently has in the code, but the template won't be placeable on talk or comments pages; if you do so, it will post a link to them. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry, i didn't realize that was intentional. Personally I'm opposed to using basepagename as then it silently fails. Someone could use it and have no idea why it doesn't work outside main namespace, and get rather confused [or not even notice it gives the wrong url]. I think a better solution would be to wrap it in a if we want to make sure the template is only used in main namespace. Or we could  use  which does not have the namespace, but still includes /'s. (Actually come to think about it, main namespace does not have subpages enabled, so it could be a moot point for being concerned about /'s in basepagename in main ns). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

- Initial test of popup. I've been bold and enabled the js on template:Social bookmarks. Do a hard refresh of template:Social bookmarks and click on when of the share links. See if it opens in a pop up. please report if you think thats a good thing/bad thing and how well its implemented (for example if it gets blocked by a pop up blocker, mention that, etc). Bawolff ☺☻ 02:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * It works well for me, I like it. Just curious though, is there any way to get it to open in a window that is not maximised? Not that it would really make much difference, but it might look better in a smaller window. Tempodivalse [talk]  02:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * There is, but then the question becomes how big a window to make it. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Just saw this...and my 2 cents if it matter at this point: I generally make it a point to open tabs as opposed to 'windows', using FireFox. I avoid new windows whenever possible. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 02:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note tabs will still be supported if you middle click. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Attempt #2. this should make a window 640x480 pixels.The main difference being that before it used the default open a blank new window setting (which in firefox can be set to open new tab), where this when will almost always open a new window on a single click (new tab on middle click still). I can't really test if this works or not, since my window manager doesn't really play well with non-maximized windows. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I got a popup after hard refreshing the template, but when I viewed an article containing the template it didn't open a popup when I clicked a link. Re: DragonFire1024: I think a popup is best. For Facebook it auto-closes the popup window after you've posted the link. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at the code, I would use 'target="WN SocBook"' to ensure a new window is opened and shared if it doesn't get closed and a second site is later bookmarked. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh thats because the popup code is only enabled on the template so far (as not to disrupt the site js while we test this and decide what we specificly want. When its time to move this sitewide, we have to transfer the code from mediawiki:Common.js/Template:Social_bookmarks to mediawiki:Common.js). The window name _blank is a special name that explicitly means new window. If we give it a name like WNSocBook or something, and someone clicks say twitter, and then changes their mind and clicks facebook, the facebook window will load in the window that used to be used for twitter (and won't automatically gain focus if the person had the twitter window minimized) - I don't know if thats what we want. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: facebook closing the window should not be the deciding factor, since a webpage can only close a window explicitly opened for it by javascript, thus facebook can only close a popup, it can't close the main window. (for example, in firefox try middle clicking the facebook icon. It will open in a new tab, but it will not auto-close). Bawolff ☺☻ 05:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Javascript is now enabled site wide. Hopefully it all should work now. One last point. Currently the popup it creates has the following options:  We could change how the pop-up looks by changing these options. For example, if we remove location than the url bar will not appear on the popup. Any thoughts on which options would be appropriate? personally I think we should definitly keep   as i find it annoying when windows popup without those things, but that's just my opinion. thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻ 07:11, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If toolbar will suppress things like the google toolbar, then I think that'd be good to - but definitely hide the URL/location. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else think this is ready to deploy in the publish template? Ready to scan old articles for stupidly placed templates? --Brian McNeil / talk 09:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Ready to deploy
This is almost ready to deploy. I'd recommend tweaking the javascript so the popup works reliably (perhaps with no URL box) and then my proposal is to put this into the publish template and thus immediately onto all articles. That relies on the publish template being correctly positioned - after the last section sources/external, and on the line immediately before the categories. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this positioning will work best (i.e. immediately before the categories) and that it will fit well if archive is then inserted immediately after the publish template on the article at archive time. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:18, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

 * With one of the points raised being that we could add additional links for bookmarking, I'd like to suggest a possible solution on this. For me, the only link I can see that might be particularly useful is Slashdot, and that would only be on techie stories (Category:Science and technology or Category:Internet). So, what I would suggest is that we only add new sites permanently if we absolutely have to, but the template is modified to allow additional bookmarking sites to be manually specified if the site is appropriate to the categories or topic of the article. Eg, slashdot. Obviously, if this is integrated into the publish template, the parameters would have to go there. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Most things don't get as many votes as below - and it's all support. I think WalterBE is putting this in Wikizine, so we want it in place when the Wikipedians have a look. I don't know the technical details, but putting this in publish will do something like invalidate most of the main namespace cache and cause the pages to be refreshed. I think mis-placement of the publish template should be a minor issue, I know the large batch I archived all had the template moved to the right place, that's in the WN:ARCHIVE rules, and in the Howdy essay on writing an article. People will get a rude awakening if they misplace publish, so correct placement should be self-enforcing. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Deployed and nothing blew up. Some articles don't automatically show it, edit and if publish is correctly placed before the categories add a space after it to force a page rebuild. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me, this should help boost our readership a lot. I went ahead and full-protected the template, since it appears in every published article. Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  13:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We have some articles where the publish template was placed at the top of the article, not the bottom, which causes the bookmarks to appear in a bad location. Is there any way someone could use AWB or something to correct the publish template's placement? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  16:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * There's no easy way to detect articles where publish is at the top. I'm not sure you could set up an AWB job to fix problematic articles; it would have to go through every article, remove the publish template, and append it again. This would force it into the correct place - although after the archive template I suspect. This is really a job for a bot to parse the first paragraph or so of articles looking for publish. Any brave botmeisters? --Brian McNeil / talk 16:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * For a bot, it could just look through the article for the first  (or  ) then compare the length of the article with the index. If publish is not in the first 20% of article than flag the article. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Which bookmark sites to use?
This gives a list of what they consider the top bookmark sites - I note Facebook and Twitter are not listed. It would be good to get Alexa ranks for those we do use - basically I think we need to build our own list of candidates and rank them. I'd recommend ComScore data as more accurate, but it is delayed by a month and lumps all websites from a company/org together (hence WP/WN/etc are all lumped under Wikimedia for ranking purposes).

The only one I spot in that BestRank list that I'd add is Yahoo! --Brian McNeil / talk 09:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

--Brian McNeil / talk 09:49, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Facebook: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 17.9%
 * Twitter: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 1.8%
 * Digg: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.4%
 * Del.icio.us: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
 * reddit: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.1%
 * StumbleUpon: Alexa reach (1 month avg) 0.2%

Votes

 * as nom.--Brian McNeil / talk 21:05, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * per Brianmc. Calebrw (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * if more sites added and template made more attractive. Computerjoe (talk) 19:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * as long as we use can make it less obtrusive than what's currently displayed at social bookmarks. Something like this would be more suitable. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  22:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 15:46, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a thumbs up from me. Anything which encourages readers to share content with others is a good idea. The current version of the template looks good but no doubt some more minor improvements will continue to be made. The only thing I would ask is that some appropriate template is added to the image logos such that they are categorised in some way and so don't turn up on Special:UncategorizedFiles which is a good tool for spotting problems if not allowed to become too cluttered. Adambro (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "Anything which encourages readers to share content with others is a good idea." I would agree with that. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 19:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Cirt (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A-OK and seems to be working. Though, see my cm above. --SVTCobra 01:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Great idea. Good opportunity to expand our user base. -Meekel (talk) 14:28, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Go for it! 121.245.58.36 (talk) 06:38, 5 June 2009 (UTC) Oops!That was me. Signing my support after logging in now. Prashanthns (talk) 07:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Remember me from only adding the big one, which is not neutral. --84.44.154.239 (talk) 21:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This is now live! Cause havoc and mayhem on your favourite news sites by highlighting disasters and accidents from 2005/06. ;-) --Brian McNeil / talk 23:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Use elsewhere
Seems other languages are quite happy to 'steal' this idea. See the bottom of this Arabic Wikinews article. Also think Portuguese has it too. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You do come up with good ideas. ;) Calebrw (talk) 05:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This one was 'stolen' by me from the BBC, check the bottom of their articles. ;-) --Brian McNeil / talk 10:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

WebCite
Should Wikinews ask to become a level 1 or level 2 member of WebCite. Wikipedia is a member.

WebCite will permenantly archive a webpage; a useful measure to fight linkrot or dynamic sources.

Your thoughts? Computerjoe 's talk 23:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Would be a great idea for already-reviewed-and-published-articles, but not really for anything else, IMO. Cirt (talk) 23:32, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As some articles are reviewed, this could be used. I reviewed one which linked to a constantly changing NASA page as a source - no permalink was available. Membership of WebCite would allow this to be avoided, as we could link to that form especially. Computerjoe 's talk 23:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think Cirt didn't realise you meant for sources we cite as opposed to ourselves as a source. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah. Computerjoe 's talk 00:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * With 's clarification of the matter, I agree that this idea is a good one. A few weeks ago, there was a who was kind enough to create  to help rectify some of these issues with George W. Bush's WhiteHouse.gov vs. Barack Obama's WhiteHouse.gov. Going forward, a stable URL for references would be great. Calebrw (talk) 03:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Webcite certainly wouldn't hurt. However i believe the original link should always be the primary link. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Apologies for my misunderstanding - for this purpose, it's a great idea. :) Cirt (talk) 04:40, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If we get consensus, could someone ask WebCite for an account (perhaps there's a more reliable point of access than the current one?). Also, should this be done automatically or manually? Perhaps an archived link and the original could be included on news stories? Computerjoe 's talk 09:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps something looking like: * Which would make
 * . April 14, 1942 [permalink]

Bawolff ☺☻ 21:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Precisely. Do we have consensus to edit the source template to allow this? Computerjoe 's talk 22:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would say not yet. See Template_talk:Source. I do think it would be a good idea for a sandbox to be created to test the new script before it is run. I don't think it would be the best idea to change such an important script with no testing done. Template:Source/Sandbox would be my choice, but something in a user space would be fine too. Calebrw (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I will email WebCite and see if we can get their support. Computerjoe 's talk 23:08, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Move Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo
Please, move (may be a bot) the content of Category:Congo to Category:Republic of the Congo, both are same, and the correct category should be Category:Republic of the Congo. Shooke (talk) 21:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * However Congo is more commenly known name - we often use the common name — Category:United States vs category:United States of America. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The presence of the Congo category is confusing, as I expect many DRC articles end up there. It would therefore have to be done manually, due to misplaced DRC articles. Computerjoe 's talk 22:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't get me wrong, One of them should definitly be deleted. I'm just not sure which one. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:17, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * But is not same that United States case. There are two countries with Congo name, Category:Democratic Republic of Congo, and Category:Republic of the Congo, so Congo is a disambiguation, please see Congo in Wikipedia, so Category:Congo should be deleted. Shooke (talk) 04:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * thats interesting - I didn't know that. I'll get on moving them. Bawolff ☺☻
 * ✅ Bawolff ☺☻ 19:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Many thanks Shooke (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

News Briefs
I'm starting up the Audio News Briefs again and be releasing them on a regular basis. At the moment the only exposure I have is a small link in the newsroom to Audio_Wikinews. I am in the process of re-organizing the Audio_Wikinews section since it's a mess but what I do have that can be of use is:

Since it's looking like it's going to be a one man show, there is going to be the odd day where I can't do it (next one being the 27th). Also I do intent to do alot more revamping regarding how audio wikinews is organized. One thing I would like to point out is that I have gotten the RSS feeds working well (despite past entrys still lingering) and since there have been a handful of requests saying they would like a daily (podcast) newscast so I think this could work well.

Anyway, what I'm asking is for some kind of exposure on the front page but not just a link to Audio Wikinews since I'm still working on that set of pages. --James Pain (talk) 12:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Also what wouldn't be too bad would be something I can put in articles I use in the news brief that states 'This article was used in the June 20 2009 news brief' and either the audio of the brief or a link to the news brief. --James Pain (talk) 12:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We have Awn brief ShortListen and AW. If those don't work we could make something more specific. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Abbreviatons: U.K. vs. UK and their ilk
Unlike the U.S. which has periods, the UK does not in AP style. I believe the same applies to the EU, but I am not sure and will try to check. Can't fix the article now though. Calebrw (talk) 17:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have seen you cite AP style as authoritative before, but why? Imho, I'd prefer if we dropped the periods for all three; indeed we could drop them for almost any abbreviation. Lots of newspapers have done so. Our style guide doesn't have a lot on this but you can see acronyms instead of full names for what we do have.--SVTCobra 18:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hart's agrees with your preference. Personally, I do not favour a rule that differentiates between "U.S." and "EU".  It's arbitrary and difficult to remember.  The idea that "us" is a word whereas "eu" is not, upon which this arbitrariness is supposedly based, doesn't really wash all that well with an international readership.  ☺ Uncle G (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * To my knowledge AP style is used throughout the world when writing in a journalistic style. That being said, writing in the AP style is more heavily favored in the U.S. than it is in other parts of the world (and frequently, many publications have their own MoS that they use). However, AP style provides a great resource that breeds continuity, which at least in journalism is essential to proper understanding. Differentiating between "Bombay" and "New Dehli" (for example). I'm not purposing that Wikinews adapt AP style formally, but I do think it should be used to fall back on. I would also welcome further discussion of this as I may be to just America-centered in my views on this. We could move this to the Water Cooler. Calebrw (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The Associated Press' style book should not be a fallback without good reason. What suits Wikinews and takes account of project limitations should be. I would choose U.S., U.K., and E.U. - not to conform to any country or region's mores or preferences, not to follow some other organisation's style guide, but because when these abbreviations are used as the starting 'word' in an article title they should be grouped together in the relevant category. I would be happy to see this discussion copied to the water cooler with a brief intro, others may have better reasons for choosing a particular scheme. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I favour those as well, as can be seen by the fact that my use of them triggered this discussion. ☺  And the argument that MediaWiki's categorization mechanism works better when they are used is a good one.  (The category sort order can be overridden, of course.)  But SVTCobra above and Hart's (which I have open beside me as I type this) both favour no full stops at all when the abbreviation is an initialism, composed of all-uppercase initial letters, or a recognized acronym. Not all abbreviations are all-uppercase initialisms or (recognized) acronyms, of course, and Hart's recommends full stops for some other forms of abbreviations, including mixed-case initialisms (such as "I.o.W." for "Isle of Wight") and abbreviations that are not initialisms (such as "Jan." for "January"). In practice, I don't see abbreviations of the "Jan." sort being a problem.  We won't run out of not-paper if we use "Isle of Wight" rather than "I.o.W.", and there is certainly no other benefit, apart from saving column inches, to the latter.  The same is true of some of the other abbreviation examples that Hart's gives (e.g. "Cambs." for "Cambridgeshire" and "Sun." for "Sunday").  The space constraints that would motivate their use don't exist here. Hart's covers a lot more than just the above, by the way.  Furthermore, there are other guides.  I also have one of the several — different — English usage guides that The Times has published over the years.  Uncle G (talk) 12:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the I.o.W. one is a real edge case, something that should never be used over the expanded form in the article - a headline might be different, but I'm struggling to think of any other examples. As said, months should never be abbreviated (the not paper rule), so that leaves country abbreviations and other acronyms. Whichever way we go I'd like to make one a definite rule - never use US for the United States, if the two full words cannot be used use USA. This seems to be tending towards no periods, which is what I'd expect for NSA, NASA, FBI, CIA, MoD, UN, UNICEF, etc. In putting this in the style guide I'd split it into two parts. First, headlines; in these the abbreviations will be important as this is where we have space constraints. Within the article I think we should specify that a use within the first paragraph should have expanded form with acronym for elimination of any ambiguity (eg United Kingdom (UK)). --Brian McNeil / talk 21:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia in the UK
What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place in the UK?

We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that Wikimedia UK can support here. There have been lots of ideas posted here which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also got a list of things that we've already supported here.

We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives, which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at 8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net. For more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please see

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/.

Thanks, Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/

Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited. Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL, United Kingdom


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009/May

Notice - Discussion at Meta on Global policy
Please see Water_cooler/policy. Cirt (talk) 21:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

 * For all the fretting that is going on ... I just don't think it will affect Wikinews. We don't release articles with unsourced claims and we don't do biographies. --SVTCobra 00:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Newcomer
I think that maybe if you would like to help newcomers you can give them a special comment on there talk page, explaining things like the tags you would put on an article. I was a newcomer and this was the biggest problem because Tempodivalse kept telling me that i was incorrectly tagging articles. 09akoguc (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * We've a similar discussion going on over on the Policy section of the Water Cooler, and another on the wikinews mailing list. This should be centralised. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

New notice
Hello people! I'm here to ask you about a creation of a notice: The soccer team "Barcelona FC" won the "Champions League 2009". Any body can create an article related? We have it in es.wikinews pt.wikinews and fr.wikinews.

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit talk 19:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Yes, it's right here awaiting review: Barcelona defeat Manchester United in 2009 Champions League Final. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:51, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Vitorbraziledit talk 21:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009/September

Licencing update on the 'Pedia! Worth us taking a step ?
Hey everyone, for those that haven't followed the link in the banner An overwhelming number of users have voted for migrating the Pedia to CC-By-Sa. More importantly I was well pleased to see the board has decided to implement the change starting in June! I'd been hoping for something along those lines for a while, because I do see a great opportunity for us as well. Yes I know we currently have the CC-By licence - thus the situation that we can only feed into the Pedia, and not vice versa hasn't changed. See here for a short semi exchange between me and Bawolff on that.

OK to get to the point: What do people think: Does this raise the question for us whether we should change our licence so as to make content sharing possible both ways between us and the Pedia?. I realise that for one, that's not for us alone to decide - however I do think the english Wikinews has a strong leadership role, and if we we're to favor this, chances are we might get others to share our views. Also, of course, our current licence was chosen for a reason - however, I do think that if the Pedia had been using CC-BY-SA at the time of our founding, the decision may have been made in a different direction. So! I'd be very interested in your opinions! Regards Sean Heron (talk) 23:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC) P.S. Woot woot! Licence change - party time!

 * Actually, that poll covers "wikis operated by the WMF" which is not merely WP, but presumably includes WN. Therefore the licencing update is already set to affect English WN. To be fair, all WMF wikis were invited to vote on this. Next steps as described on the results page are imminent final revisions to proposed terms of use. DL+1613 (talk) 23:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as Wikinews goes, it only covers local material already under GFDL. We would need a separate vote to migrate to CC-BY-SA, and it would not suit how we want to share our material. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well that's where I'm saying there might be different opinions - I don't see the problem with giving attribution through a link for example (though yes I realise, following the discussions on the licence change that may be in legally murky waters/depend on interpretation of the CC-by-sa licence). Regards Sean Heron (talk) 17:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I know this is an old thread, but Wikinews moved to the CC-By license in 2005. When WP moved to this license we were able to share content both ways - that is, WN can directly incorporate content from WP. Keep in mind that WP has so many more contributors that A) it's difficult to keep a breaking story current with their flood of incoming edits, B) sourcing a breaking story on WP requires a link to a specific revision to avoid later edits removing/altering the facts sourced.

 * It may be interesting to try an experiment or two of syncing breaking news stories from WP. It might be useful to use a bot to do so. It may be indicative to the WP project that they are not encyclopedic, but I doubt that will actually impinge. -  Amgine | t 15:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This does not agree with the understanding I came to discussing this. As I understand it, we cannot copy from Wikipedia, but they can copy from us. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:30, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

 * That *was* true, until this past June when they became CC-by like Wikinews. Now we're effectively under the same license (and btw: I talked with Mindspillage about WN shifting to 3.0, and she thinks it would be no problem if the project decided to do so - no license upgrade problems.) -  Amgine | t 22:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Editprotected user group
I know this has been brought up before, but I'd like to suggest that we have a new user group installed here - one that can edit protected pages, but has no other of the admin privileges. I don't think this should be hard to implement - all a developer has to do is to make a new user group with the same parameters as a regular user in the database, except with "editprotected=true" instead of "=false". Such a user group could be very useful, especially for trusted non-admin users, who when wanting to make changes to archived articles would not have to leave masses of editprotected requests. Thoughts? Tempodivalse [talk]
 * If there is someone that wants this ability and is invested enough into the Wikinews community, at this point in time it would probably just be simpler to go the RFA route. Cirt (talk) 02:29, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I just feel like there are enough user groups for a community this size. The bar for getting admin is pretty low (in fact a number of admins failed the suffrage test for the arbcom vote). That's just an illustration of how easy it is to get admin which allows you to edit archived articles. How many levels of user rights should we have for such a small project? We've already tied 'rollback' to editor status, but I am not comfortable doing so with the archive. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:45, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Agreed. The editprotected backlog at the moment is due mainly to the request to add categories that are being contested under DR. The number of open editprotected requests is usually quite manageable. --Jcart1534 (talk) 03:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

 * We also have Bureaucrats who have been with us for under a year. The bar is getting very very low here on Wikinews. -- Sken   my talk 09:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Jcart1534. I've looked at those editprotected requests, and I'm not comfortable making those changes until the category discussion above is completed. So it's not that there are too many editprotected requests for us to handle, it's just that I (and the others who handle most of them as well, I'm sure) am waiting for community consensus on an issue before proceeding. Gopher65talk 15:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

 * It's needless. -- Sken   my talk 09:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The bar for adminship is not as high as Wikipedia, this is not needed. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not needed. This isn't a very large community, and more user groups would cause more hassle then they're worth at this point in time.  hmwith τ   16:30, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * as per some of the other comments, additional user groups create additional hassle and I don't see a great benefit that might result. I think if we trust someone enough to allow them to edit our archived stories then we should be able to trust them enough with the other admin rights. Adambro (talk) 15:41, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * per my comment, above. Cirt (talk) 18:04, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is needed for this purpose. However I think it might be useful in the case of a bot who needs to edit protected pages. Currently the practice is to give them admin privs. Personally I'd feel much safer if the max damage those bots could conceivably do is to edit archived articles. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Most active users here are already admins, so I agree that it isn't needed at this time. – Juliancolton  | Talk 18:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * and — heh. I was going to oppose this outright, but Bawolff's comment got me thinking (danger Will Robinson! Danger!). I feel the same way about bots. Sometimes they go crazy, and I feel really uneasy having bots with full adminship. So I oppose this as a new usergroup for people, but I'd like to see a new botgroup with this ability. Most bots could then be given only one ability: the ability to edit protected pages. I'd feel much more comfortable about that than the current system. Gopher65talk 15:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

New users unaware of rules
One of the common problems we have here is people coming in from other Wikis and not knowing about things like WN:ARCHIVE. I propose the creation of a new template, notcurrent, and a bot set to add it to every published article two days after publication date. The template is then removed when the article is archived and protected.

The template should caution against a) Major changes b) Adding unused sources c) Adding sources dated after publication. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea to me. – Juliancolton  | Talk 21:25, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Would notcurrent go at the top (where it would be noticed) or at the bottom (where it wouldn't be in the way)? --Pi zero (talk) 22:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was wondering the same, but came to the conclusion that it would most likely go at the bottom. IMO we should try to avoid notices at the top of articles whenever possible. – Juliancolton  | Talk 22:38, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * At the bottom would have the ideal least impact on the appearance of the article, but to be effective I really think it has to go at the top. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If it goes at the top, and it's a separate template, then that's more bother to remove when archiving, isn't it?
 * Would the upper right corner be a workable place to put it, visible enough without being as disruptive as a hatnote?
 * I keep wondering if there's a way to add some logic to the date template to take care of this automatically; it certainly knows the publication date, from which it should be able to deduce the default moment to put up a notice, but I don't know of any way it can detect whether or not the article has been archived, so it wouldn't know when to take the notice back down — unless we're willing to settle for having it simply take the notice down after a fixed number of days (like seven, or a shade more to be safe).
 * --Pi zero (talk) 00:16, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I know it should be possible to have the date template add some marker to the article once it's two days old, but there's a catch - I don't know how to make that conditional on the article being in the publish category. If it can be made conditional on categories there's nothing to stop use of more complex conditional code to suppress the marker when the article is archived.
 * The alternative is to use a bot. The bot could - as proposed - add the notcurrent template, it could even remove it when the article is archived and protected. There's also, based on your 'thinking aloud' another option. Make "notcurrent" a parameter on the date template. I would also have suggested an "archived" parameter, but I don't think you could add that to the date template and still get the archived notice at the bottom of the article. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:55, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's the problem. As far as I know, the only data accessible to the template branching logic are the template parameters, whether or not there exists a file with a given name, and the components of the name of the page on which the template is transcluded.  It looks as if mw:Extension:DynamicPageList (third-party) might support an (expensive) call that could be used to branch on whether a file with given name belongs to a given category, but even if that's so, it's not the world we've living in now.
 * Presumably the bot would have to have admin privileges, since it would have to remove the notcurrent template after archiving.
 * I take it you're not enthused by the prospect of a date template that just automatically adds a warning after a fixed time, and then removes it again after another fixed time. That would seem to be the least technically intrusive solution, not requiring a bot to run, let alone an admin bot.  Admittedly, there is a certain inflexibility in the arrangement (notwithstanding optional parameters to vary the times involved).
 * --Pi zero (talk) 12:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * For the time being, an auto-added/removed warning based on the date within the template would be fine. Unfortunately, I'm running into the usual issues on Wikipedia (See w:Template_talk:Recent_death). Some reasoned input on the discussion would be appreciated, I can find it very frustrating dealing with some of the ways people deal with things on Wikipedia. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We could automate it with if logic inserted into an article when it is created. This would involve adding to the default article template:
 * . This could then be manually removed when the page is archived. Den dodge T\C(en.wp) 13:27, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This would need to be a lot more complicated to deal with articles that are published several days after creation. It's also incomprehansible code to most people - there's a good chance it will be edited out frequently. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:51, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It may be possible to edit MediaWiki:Common.js to determine the date the article was published based on its category, then add a warning to the edit page (Wikipedia does this with pages that are sorted into Category:Living people). That way it wouldn't have to appear in the article at all and you could avoid any bot action. —Noisalt (talk) 14:03, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Determining the date of publication would seem to require some support from elsewhere. Perhaps one could use logic within date to check whether the current date differs from the dateline by between, say, two and twelve days, and within that range add the page to ; then the javascript could check that the page is in that category and and not.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, there's a variety of options up now. Someone poke Bawolff about Javascript options. I'm going to look at a few templates I could crib code from to make notcurrent. I don't think a near full-width template would be appropriate, so suggestions for something more discreet welcome.
 * Oh, and another Javascript idea... If referred to a main namespace Wikinews article from a page on Wikipedia, can we give some sort of specific Wikipedians read this? --Brian McNeil / talk 16:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I definitely think we should go with a js option so that it is not visible when users read the page, only when they go to edit. Just like the warning that is displayed when one begins to edit an archived article. Cheers, --SVTCobra 16:54, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, now that's probably the best idea so far. A template inserted via javascript when the article is published, a published version sighted, not archived, and the current UTC date two or more days after the date of publication. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:27, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposed warning
Per SVTCobra's suggestion above, Mediawiki:Common.js would require changes. The objective is to warn that no major changes should be made to an article that was not published recently.

Assuming there is some template for this, say, notrecent, then the content of that template must be inserted above the edit box when a contributor selects to edit an appropriate article. The criteria defining articles where this warning would be displayed are as follows:

 * 1) The article must be in the main namespace
 * 2) The article must be in category published
 * 3) The article must be in a date category
 * 4) The current UTC date must be two or more days after the article's date category
 * 5) The article must NOT be in category archived
 * 6) The most recently sighted revision of the article must meet all the above criteria

The last of these requirements, integration with Flagged Revisions, is not essential to this. If it is not currently possible then a separate discussion should be started to establish how FlaggedRevs status information can be made available to scripts.

I would suggest the following text, with whatever decorations are appropriate to make it stand out:

' Caution!  You are about to change a Wikinews article published some time ago.'

Wikinews articles are a snapshot of what is known at a specific point in time. They are not meant to be encyclopedic, such content should be added to the appropriate Wikipedia articles. If you are a new contributor to Wikinews, please see the introduction.

All contributors should note the points below:
 * Do not make substantial changes to any article published two or more days ago
 * Do not add details from sources more recent than the date of the article's publication
 * Do not add unsourced material
 * Do not editorialise or add personal, or unsourced, opinion
 * If there are significant developments subsequent to publication, visit the newsroom and start a new article

How's that?--Brian McNeil / talk 18:38, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

 * It all looks good, and procedurally sounds good, to me. (Well, okay, if I were writing it I'd put a fullstop at the end of each bulleted item, but other than that... :-)   --Pi zero (talk) 19:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Is the editnotice extension enabled here? If not, we might want to file a request at bugzilla. Den dodge T\C(en.wp) 19:32, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Everything suggested here is possible with javascript (Combined with using the editintro option. Similar to how we do quiz edits. I'm not familiar with the editnotice extension, but we can just use edititro, which i believe is part of core ). I suggest we start making editintro from wikipedia and editintro notcurrent. (Just to clarify, the wikipedia warning would appear When editing right?. We could potentially make a ''Hey Wikipedian's, come look at this custom welcome appear in the sitenotice instead, but i think its better from an edit.). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:44, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I have an initial version done (could probably be improved from an efficiency standpoint though.) You could test it out. Its under Experimental-editIntros in gadgets. It uses editintro from wikipedia and editintro notcurrent. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:47, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I seem to get editintro notcurrent as I would expect. When should editintro from wikipedia? Oh, and it seems incompatible with the syntax highlighting gadget. --Brian McNeil / talk 01:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If you click on the wikinews link at Simon_Dee, and then edit the wikinews article, it should come up. Currently if both the wikipedia and the not current warning apply, the not current wins out (that could be changed to give a combo message or something like that). It should be noted that the wikipedia message only comes up if you go directly from en wikipedia -> an article -> an edit page. If you got wikipedia-> an article ->browse around a bit->then edit, it won't show up. By the highlighting extension I assume you mean wikiEd? It does work in WikiEd, you just have to scroll up (wikiEd seems to scroll down automatically). Bawolff ☺☻ 01:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * p.s. This doesn't currently integrate with flagged revs. It just sees what the user sees. Thus an anon user will see the latest stable, and so will the script. OTOH a registered user will see the latest version, and so will the script. Since it is very rare that these two versions would differ in terms of date or published, i don't think this is an issue. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * [unindent] I changed the gadget slightly, so that its more efficient. Anyone have internet explorer to test this on? Bawolff ☺☻ 07:17, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This didn't seem to work with IE8. I was editing a page from the 26th so I should have got a warning. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:15, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to work on IE7. Did you remember to log in? Bawolff ☺☻ 02:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I found a minor little problem. If you have the option checked where a preview box appears upon first edit (I think it is the "Show preview before edit box" option), then the warning appears waaaaaaaay at the top of the page, in a place where no one would likely notice it. It should instead appear right above the edit box. Gopher65talk 16:12, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Enable Extention:NewUserMessage
Many of us run around and welcome the newbies that show up, seems that more and more are being welcomed these days. So why don't we just skip the hard work and turn the bot on? Specifically there is mw:Extension:NewUserMessage. It will add whatever welcome message we want to all the new users. All we have to decide is A) Do we want it (The answer is yes, BTW) B) do we want wgNewUserSuppressRC on, I'd say yes (It's just another bot). C) Do we want wgNewUserMessageOnAutoCreate on (Translation: Do auto created users get welcomed), at this point I'd say why not? I think this is great for nothing else than we _know_ everyones got the message about What Wikinews is and how they can help (And how their random BS articles is going to get deleted by me and then they will be permablocked).  PS.  This is the same thing Commons uses.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 18:31, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Votes

 * -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 18:31, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As long as this is something that will work and not break every other day. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Commons has been using it for a long time without much problem, so it probably can be trusted to work well. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's technically not a bot. It is an extension that sits and intercepts internal MW calls when new users are created.  That triggers the extension to go create the proper users talk page with the proper message.  So the only way it can "break" is if the code stops working, and I'm sure a few dozen other sites would go screaming about it first. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 19:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * with bot extension enabled. I'd also suggest it welcome autocreated users as well. This is much easier than manually typing in the same thing for every user, and it could help encourage users to contribute to the project - as well as help make their contributions more informed with regards to site policy. The only downside is that it may feel less personal to receive a welcome message from a machine rather than a person - but I don't think this will be too much of an issue. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:36, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Shoone (talk) 18:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * although it's a tad impersonal -- Sken   my talk 18:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * – Juliancolton  | Talk 19:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Cirt (talk) 19:23, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is better than contributors welcoming everyone. Some time back the approach used to be only to welcome people who made an initial non-vandal edit. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ;) --Brynn (talk) 03:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * it'll be like our own wal*mart greeter. --SVTCobra 23:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * We'll even put a smiley in the welcome for you SVT. Bug 20508 filled.  I'll also be creating the MediaWiki namespace items that are required here shortly.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 00:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * — I've been after a welcome bot for a looong time. This is better though. It was recently implemented on the Strategic Planning Wiki, and it's worked well so far, for the most part. Gopher65talk 16:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't think of any harm that would come from it. It will be a good thing to have. <font face="times new roman"> hmwith τ   19:57, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Write an article!
As part of an effort to encourage more readers to write articles, I've created Write an article!. I suggest we make a bolded link to it on the Main page header. Thoughts? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  20:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There already is a "Write an article for Wikinews" section on the Main Page. It is not terribly prominent, but it is there. Not sure about what is best. --SVTCobra 01:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know we already have a box for it, but it's further down the page than most casual readers will scroll. I thought something at the top of the page would catch readers' attention more. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  01:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * While I'm not against trying to get more people involved, we need to cater to our readers too. On Wikipedia people end up at the main page because that is where you start - but then they leave ASAP.  On the other hand people come to the Wikinews Main Page for a reason, they want to see the latest news.  We need to keep the news the main attraction.  Besides, we've already got a bold link that points to introduction which is essentially the same thing as "Write an article".  You want to get more people writing? Making the story creation process less scary.  Writing an article is 6 (printed) pages long.  tl;dr. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 01:35, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal - depopulate/remove "reviewer" user group
I'd like to suggest we depopulate or even remove the user group Reviewer. Since FlaggedRevs has been installed well over a year ago, the group has never been used, as the "sighting" function provided by Editor status has always been sufficient for our needs. IMO this group is redundant, it just creates extra unneeded clutter at Special:Userrights and other pages policy pages and frequently confuses newbies. Thoughts? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  02:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

 * <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  14:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's part of Flagged Rev, we probably CANT get rid of it if we wanted to. And who really cares about the users who have it.  Plus, "Clutter" on Special:UserRights? please... I've got 5 options, and I'm a crat. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 02:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * hmmm, I didn't think of the technical difficulties that might arise from trying to remove the group. Is it stone-set into Flagged Revs, or do we have some leeway in what we choose? If we can't remove the group, another alternative would be to simply depopulate it and remove its documentation from WN:RFP and other pages - it's completely useless, it takes up needless space on our policy pages and on several occasions has caused confusion with people mistaking it with the more common Editor status. (ps. not that it makes a difference, but there are actually seven options as a crat if you use Special:Userrights on a non-admin.) <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  03:00, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * From what I read, yes, it is built into the extension so removing isn't an option (Renaming might be possible, but whats the point). And you are correct... 7 options.  Anyways, it isn't mentioned on WN:RFP or Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions  other than it exists.  We do have Reviewer which gives a 1 sentence explanation of what it is.  I don't think we should remove that since someone is bound to run across it and go "Whats this?!!? I can haz reviewer?!" -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 03:12, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * - This is a good idea by, at the very least depopulate it and remove it from documentation, as it does nothing. Cirt (talk) 04:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's an established part of FlaggedRevs, I doubt it would be technically convenient to remove it. There may be some use found for it in the future so I see no point in mucking about and wasting time asking for non-critical software changes. As to userrights... How many people even know how to find that, or particularly care about it? There are a lot more important things to worry about on Wikinews. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * although we may want to update the documentation. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk • contribs) 10:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I know when I joined, it was definitely confusing & if possible, would simplify things if it could be removed. Otherwise, remove all mentions of it.  <i style="position:absolute;z-index:-1;bottom:0;width:2.8em;height:8px;background:#eee;"> </i>  Tris   10:57, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * (this has been brought up before however) - I believe that this only serves to confuse new users (especially considering the review process does not use the reviewer user group; You do not need any group to edit, You need to be an editor to review articles, and if your in the reviewer group, you have theoretical powers, but can't use them as it screws up the review process. Its a wonder anyone can make heads and tails of it). If at some point in time we need it we can reverse the changes made. To rename all we have to do is modify MediaWiki:Group-reviewer and MediaWiki:Group-reviewer-member. Also, I believe (but am not sure, i read it quite a while ago) that the flagged revs docs says we can  configure it to have only a single group. Bawolff ☺☻ 11:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * From what I understand from reading through some MediaWiki documentation pages, it's technically possible to set the FR to a single group without much difficulty (see mw:Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs and mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs). <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  14:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Bawolff, you explained it better than I ever could have. When I first started editing here (fairly recently), I was incredibly confused. Luckily, I had other editors to help explain things to me. If I didn't, I don't know how I ever would have figured it out. <font face="times new roman"> hmwith τ   19:55, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * - Serves no purpose than to confuse people. – Juliancolton  | Talk 01:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Noes, my user rights! What's to say we aren't going to use it in the future? What clutter? --<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif"> Sken   my talk 17:21, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note, it's not so much the "clutter" as the needless confusion the group causes. See the above comments, at least a few newbies have been perplexed by this process and I think it does more harm than it does good. It hasn't served any purpose for over a year, there is little likelihood it will ever be needed at this point IMO. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  17:28, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Current events
I propose Current events template on Main Page. <font style="color:#0000FF">Saqib Qayyum  <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#0000fa;"> talk 09:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not completely sure what the purpose of such a template would be. Isn't the entire Main Page already full of "current events" as it is, being a news site? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  17:31, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm going to take a geuss: Are you proposing that a template be added that list ongoing events (ie events that have multiple articles associated with them, and our likely to have more coverage in the near future). Is that what your proposing? Bawolff ☺☻ 23:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yea, I'm kinda wonder where and for what purpose. Plus I think there are probably better ways to present that information. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 23:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm proposing a sidebar template that list Current events and Ongoing conflicts. Each link to a specific category. <font style="color:#0000FF">Saqib Qayyum  <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#0000fa;"> talk 08:48, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the biggest drawback would be the need to manually maintain this. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Take a look at this page, right side after Orignal reporting. <font style="color:#0000FF">Saqib Qayyum  <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#0000fa;"> talk 15:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with Brianmc. If we were to do this though, i think linking to a category would be kind of ugly. it would be better to link to a portal page, or even a portal like page with information similiar to Portal:Australia/APEC_Australia_2007 (or just generally be more like Portal:Australia/In-depth_coverage as oposed to a category link). Bawolff ☺☻ 17:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Might be a good idea, but we don't have bunch of articles related to any current event or ongoing conflict rather than few as mentioned User:Saqib Qayyum. 10:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is not a vote - there first needs to be a halfway decent idea and proposal. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:00, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Newsroom
I would like to recommend a Protection policy that only registered users can create a new article. <font style="color:#0000FF">Saqib Qayyum  <font style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#0000fa;"> talk 09:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I could think of some reasons to oppose such a change. What reasons do you have in mind to support it?  --Pi zero (talk) 11:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I really have to agree with Pi zero here, why? Wikinews uses Flagged Revisions, so no unregistered user can actually publish an article. Such a restriction would severely limit the number of potential contributors. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure this is a good idea. We have enough trouble getting people to write articles as it is, if we increased the bar to force users to register to create pages, this could potentially put some people off. And nobody who doesn't have Editor status can't get an article on the front page anyway. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  12:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and say what everyone else wants to say: REQUEST DENIED.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 15:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

New currency templates
One of the regular things seen on Wikinews is quoting a value in one currency, then showing it converted to one or two other currencies. Here's a general idea of what would be useful for this:
 * Displayed as: £ 25 (US$ 40.7, € 27.6)
 * The first parameter is the amount, the second is the ISO currency code which the amount is expressed in. Following this there are one or two pairs of values, the ISO code for a currency being converted to and the conversion rate for the date of the news.
 * The first parameter is the amount, the second is the ISO currency code which the amount is expressed in. Following this there are one or two pairs of values, the ISO code for a currency being converted to and the conversion rate for the date of the news.

I've assumed in the above example a default of one decimal places accuracy. The default may be more appropriate as two, but in any case a parameter such as 'precision= ' could override any default.

The template will need inbuilt logic to convert currency ISO codes into an appropriate representation and wikilink. There may be a use for another optional parameter, say 'wikilinks=none', that suppresses use of wikilinks to the currency pages.

The only other thought I'd add to this is perhaps providing a unit or multiplier parameter, eg 'unit=million', and displaying this after each currency amount.

What do people think about this, and can we build some gadgets or other tools to help fill in the parameters (such as by reading current currency rate data off some external website)? --Brian McNeil / talk 12:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * That sounds like a good idea, I'd support implementing something like this. One note, since currency rates change over time, won't we have to subst: the template for it to correctly reflect the content of the article it's in? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  13:03, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No, the template will not need put in place with subst, that's why I have the actual on-the-day exchange rates as parameters within the template. I do think currency value is a rather long template name, would money be better, and still meaningful to most contributors. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:05, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Full list of currency codes: ISO 4217 - I'd suggest only coding for active ones. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've started coding some of the bits that will be needed for this template at User:Brian McNeil/money, I'm going to build the list from the active codes. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:51, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As I build this I'm running into a few questionable points.
 * "franc" appears multiple times for different currencies and there is no alternative short code - Do we rely on the link, or put franc? Do we assume the plural and use "francs" instead of "franc"?
 * As with franc, there are several other currencies codes where there could be singular/plural questions. Remember, one case is "Euro", the plural of which is the same, i.e. "Euro".
 * Non-latin codes for currencies. A number of the currencys from Cyrillic or Arabic regions have non-latin text/codes. Should we use this?
 * Other issues? --Brian McNeil / talk 14:46, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as other tools to fill in the template: that sounds great, but its not happening as a javascript gadget due to the Same origin policy (unless we have a bot update the js source with new currency values at regural intervals. could be tied into market data bot i suppose). For franc, i think we should put frank. Plural/singular forms I don't think will come up very often, since how often do you see a singular dollar in a news article. If it does, this could be codded into the template using NaN undefineds . I'm not sure about non-latin codes. Are articles are in english, so i think its reasonable to presume we'd use latin codes. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps for unknown currencies we should just pass through the currency code given. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

→
 * I started working on some of the other parts:

 * Basically it works by calling money which than calls user:Brian McNeil/money to convert the currency code to the link/fullname, and calls money/toDec to figure out precesion.
 * There's a problem with big numbers with all the trailing digits 0 going to exponential notation:
 * Also note, I've made it add commas every three decimal places for clarity. However thats kind of confusing with the commas seperating the different currencies

 * I'm not sure if we want to include non-latin scripts that are RTL. For example is the below what we want? (i geuss we could overide the bidi if it isn't, but i think its easier just to stick with latin, as most of our readers won't understand the arabic anyway):

USD →
 * Precesion defaults to what is normally used by that currency. It can be changed with a flag:

USD →

Bawolff ☺☻ 01:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The gadget idea isn't to maintain currency data here on Wikinews, but to provide an easy way to insert a money template with current exchange rate data. You launch the gadget, specify the amount and the currency it is expressed in, give the other one or two currencies you want equivalents shown for, then it generates the template code to insert by looking up the rate information somewhere else. This "somewhere else" bit is the issue, some of the rates for these obscure currencies aren't readily available.
 * There are some issues do need discussed about adopting this approach to monetary values. How would we update the style guide to cover this? What are appropriate currencies to express values in? I think a good argument could be put that, as an example, for a story about Jamaica you'd express amounts in their local currency and convert to USD and EUR to make the amounts meaningful to as wide an audience as possible. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:45, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * money really doesn't seem to be much use. In writing news the vast majority of monetary values given will be things like 1.2 million X.
 * I completed entry of the list of codes, excluded the various ones for precious metals and obscure trading units, and moved the whole lot to Money/ISO 4217. --Brian McNeil / talk 16:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The issue with using a gadget with an external source - is due to security restrictions that is unlikey to work easily (js can only load data from the domain that it originated on). We can work arround that by using an external script (the only thing that javascript can load not from the same domain access is other script files to execute). Thus we could use something like http://currencyconverter.55uk.net, however thats trusting them to not send us any evil javascript. A better approach might be to get someone (Zach maybe) to make a simple perl script on the toolserver to query google calculator, and than return the result in the right form, but i don't know if there is legal issues with that. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:14, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent] Some examples with units:

→

→

Bawolff ☺☻ 20:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Review time "limit"
I seriously think we need to cap the amount of tme between a request for review and a decision to publish or not. Delaying reviews are hurting the credibility of Wikinews IMHO. My suggestion is to have something like a six hour time before we "have to review" an article. I'm open to suggestions --05:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how this would work. What if, after the time limit is up, there is nobody online to review? And if there are reviewers online, then we're going to force them to review the article? Everyone here is a volunteer, and does only what they want to do when they want to do it. imho, obliging users to review articles, even when they don't want to, isn't a good idea and could drive some people away. I know I wouldn't like it if I was obliged to review articles against my will (although i don't mind reviewing articles, there are times when i'd rather do something else on-wiki, like write an article etc.). I think the best solution to this problem is try to get a larger user base, and try to promote more Editors. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  12:42, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I'm with Tempo here, but I can think of an alternative suggestion: Can we set up something in Category:Review similar to the list of changed sighted articles that tells us exactly how long an article has been sitting in review for, and order them oldest first? That would help draw attention to stuff that had been waiting awhile. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 12:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good idea. Can't DPL be set up to list articles in the chronological order in which they were last edited? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  13:46, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The idea behind the "time limit" was so we could keep new editors from getting frustrated then not return. but arguments against are good and seem to address the prblem--RockerballAustralia (talk) 21:52, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * DPL could be set up to order by last edit or the time the review tag was added. However the problem is that it only provides the date, not the hour the tag was added. We could make it so that the reviewAlert gadget is always on regardless of your settings when you view CAT:REV. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:04, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Force review my football, no pun intended. There is no way you're ever going to force it, EVER. Our review system isn't the most awesome, but thats the way it works.  It just so happens that you get to see the dark side of it.  Most of what you write is Australian Rules Football, is it not?  With the except of you and DizzyStar, no one else wants anything to do with them. I review them when I can/have the energy, but lets be honest, I don't know jack shit about it.  Most people that do reviews on a regular basis don't want to get involved with it because they don't know jack shit about it either.  You could claim all sorts of obscene things about a game, and we'd never know any better - and that makes most reviewers very neverous.  But lets take Wikinews previews the 2009 Brownlow Medal for example.  All you did was copyedit it, why don't _you_ review it?  Most reviewers do copyedit what they are reviewing. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 16:22, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * just as a note, Rockerball had his editor status removed recently (see WN:FRRFP), so he can't currently do any reviews. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  16:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Also I had added some OR to it so I didn't want to review it just I case I shouldn't have.--RockerballAustralia (talk) 20:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't know how viable this would be, but I think it may be a good idea to have an article automatically reviewed by the software/a bot after a certain time limit, as long as it had not already failed a review, and add a template to the top of the article that says "This article may contain some innacuracies, as it has not yet been reviewed by a human editor." These articles could then be placed into a separate category, but would otherwise act just like normal published articles. Then a human could come along and manually review/un-review the article. <em style="color:blue">Den <em style="color:red">dodge T\C(en.wp) 17:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's probably not a good idea. A bot could easily let through articles that are copyvios or blatantly violate our policies, like NPOV or newsworthiness, and possibly could damage our reputation or get us kicked off Google News. I think it's best to have a person do it, even if it means a slightly longer wait time for an article to be published. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  17:26, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

 * The full name of the process is peer review. The point is to certify that a qualified sapient mind has examined the article and judged it to meet the criteria for publication.  If we don't consider all sapient minds qualified, then surely we wouldn't afford that privilege to a bot that can't pass the Turing test.

 * While we're brainstorming, though — Reviewing is a multi-faceted operation, with a specific number of facets (copyright, newsworthiness, verifiability, NPOV, style). So, what would happen if we (somehow) split up the review process into these individual facets, so that different editors could certify that an article meets the different criteria?
 * Would reviewing a subset of the criteria be enough easier than reviewing them all that it would make any observable difference in how fast articles get reviewed?
 * How could one readily be sure, if different criteria are being reviewed at different times prior to publication, that all of them are actually being reviewed by editors?
 * --Pi zero (talk) 21:45, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

 * First question: No, unless there was a highlevel of communicastion between the reviewers and they did their reveiwing simultaniously. Second: see previous answer.--RockerballAustralia (talk) 05:02, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent) Why don't we go with a bot thing, but not use the curid in the URL? That keeps things off Gogle News until human-checked, but does get them out. I'm not at all sure I like the idea, and considering it's mine that doesn't bode well for it, but I just thought I'd throw that out there anyway. Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 06:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm against any sort of bot reviewing or publishing articles, even if they don't get out on Google news (remember we're still mirrored on several other sites and have news feeds at twitter etc.). As i said above, a bot has no way of determining an article's copyright, neutrality, and other style issues that need to be met for publishing. imho we ought to strive to be as accurate and professional as possible (we've had enough problems with that in the past), and having a bot autopublish things without human oversight isn't going to help things much. I think that the best solution to this is to try to nominate more users for Editor status, so that they can help clear backlogs. We could also have a "first-come, first-served" basis for article reviewing (i.e., an article that was put up for review first should be reviewed first, we could use DPLs to do that), to prevent articles from staying in the queue until they're stale. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  13:43, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Bots doing reviews? Bad idea. Cirt (talk) 16:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Also from a technical prespective, that would be difficult to implement having some articles have curid, while others don't (unless we have two seperate lists). Google news also would pick up on some articles that don't have curid if they have a # in title. But most importantly, as Cirt said, bots should not do reviews. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[unindent] I was bold and made some changes to CAT:REV to try to address some of the issues raised (that people don't know how long something has been waiting). You may have to do a hard refresh. If you don't like them feel free to revert. People who use readyAlert gadget won't notice the difference. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:37, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


text:
Comments:UN report says number of "abject poor" tripled in Gaza

This is what happens when you vote the wrong way
Hamas won the 2006 democratic election in Gaza, a lesson in what happens when you vote the wrong way in a free election.Soapy (talk) 19:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The rest of the world contributed to the problem too. There was widespread refusal to recognise those the people of Gaza chose to elect. Whoever is in power there, there will be humanitarian problems. Should you, through inaction, collectively punish the electorate because of those who they saw as best representing their interests? Yes, with Hamas that means "people who believe Israel should be wiped off the map, and are prepared to try and do so in any way they can" - terrorists to use common shorthand. If the global community is not trying to help, then they should be able to say why - and the sort of reasons I would accept are that distribution of aid is being used to cement support for the terrorist viewpoint and convince people it is right.
 * A far more mild comparison is my strong objection to how many evangelical groups work with the homeless and extremely poor. There is a price to pay for that aid, being forced to let them try and convert you to their way of thinking. Of course, I question religion's explicitly stated exclusion from the criteria for diagnosing mental illness. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey I totally agree with you, I was just pointing out that this was the U.S's "devotion" to democracy. Democracy when the people we want are elected, but a coup or sanctions for anyone we don't want. Soapy (talk) 01:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * So you guess accept a terrorist organization then? So you guys have no problem with the BNP in leadership, Nazis or any other hate group?--66.229.23.225 (talk) 08:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Go troll elsewhere Mr Anonymous - you are a feeble troll who hit Godwin's law on the first attempt. When you're dealing with Hamas, or the BNP, or even the Nazis, you're working on the principle "Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie until you can find a big enough rock". --Brian McNeil / talk 09:24, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I'm hitting Godwin's Law and I'm not a troll. Hamas based it self on the Nazis and its main goal to wipe out the Jews from Israel, so good job on being ignorant of facts Brian. If you voted for a terrorist origination that based it self on the Nazis then you get what you deserved. It sickens me that people like you support murders like Hamas.--66.229.23.225 (talk) 18:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


text:
Wikinews:Reports/September 2009

I've been told at one point in time, we had a regularly scheduled newsletter of the important goings on at Wikinews. I can't find it in the list archives, but no matter. I figured it was about time to start/resurrect it. After all, we do important things around here and if you aren't on the Wiki 24/7, you might miss something. So here are the important highlights from last month:

 * September 12th we had a banner day with 20 published articles in one day. - http://enwn.net/A029
 * The RSS feed has been truncated to a more reasonable number - http://feeds.feedburner.com/WikinewsLatestNews
 * We started a page to help Wikipedians better integrated with Wikinews - For Wikipedians - http://enwn.net/197b
 * Make Lead has been integrated into Easy Peer Review by Bawolff - http://enwn.net/b05f
 * Bawolff also gave us not one but two different gadgets that integrate to Wiktionary WN:WiktLookup - http://enwn.net/F52b
 * As of September 16th, we're not being carried on Google News, due to a change in MediaWiki. Bug #20818 - http://enwn.net/246c
 * Some article statistics were made User:ShakataGaNai/Statistics Project - http://enwn.net/5967
 * The Main Page is getting an overhaul, with the new design to show up in the next 24-48 hours - http://enwn.net/h
 * Policy proposed & passed to "Expire" Accredited Reports after 2 years. - http://enwn.net/6972
 * All the Water Coolers are now being archived (by month) automatically.
 * New Administrators: 1, New Editors: 5

Something important get forgotten? Want to help participate in next months newsletter? Stop by and leave a note on the respective months entry: User:ShakataGaNai/Around_enWikinews - http://enwn.net/D132

title: Wikinews:Reports/September 2009


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User talk:Muralinan

Welcome
Tempodivalse [talk]  20:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:Muralinan


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User talk:213.65.42.73

Thanks!
Thank you for your productive and helpful edits on Wikinews. We really appreciate what you've done. Wikinews needs more good editors like yourself; please consider getting an account! We'd be very happy to have you. Cirt (talk) 20:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:213.65.42.73


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User talk:204.181.0.114

Thanks for experimenting with Wikinews. Your test worked, and has now been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles may disrupt the site's working and will be reverted quickly. Thank you, Tempodivalse [talk]  20:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:204.181.0.114


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Wikinews:Reports/October 2009

Wikinews Reports - Highlights of actions, events, and excitement on enWikinews for October 2009. I (SGN) managed to put together a fair amount of news, but I'm always looking for contributions from others. If you want to throw something in for next month (It can be anything Wikinews related), please stop by Reports ( http://enwn.net/Db3E ) and leave a note, or update the respective subpage.

 * October 9th @ 2300UTC - The new Main Page layout went live. The major changes include: introduction of a 5th lead, lead #1 becoming larger and more prominent, a clean 3 column layout.  http://enwn.net/h Discussion: http://enwn.net/eD5E
 * October 14th - Popular articles fritzed out and hasn't returned. It's place on the main page has been replaced with alternate content.  http://enwn.net/7695
 * October 20th - User:Millosh brought his VOA bot (User:Millbot-VoA) over from the Serbian Wikinews. After some testing and discussion, has gone live importing articles. Discussion: http://enwn.net/F1BC
 * October 20th - Vector skin became the default skin for Wikinews - Discussion: http://enwn.net/06aE Site notice: http://enwn.net/D2E8
 * October 30th - The enhanced (edit) toolbar went live. We got a little press too! http://enwn.net/8381
 * October 30th - "Around enWikinews" got renamed and found a new (more permanent) home at Reports http://enwn.net/Db3E
 * User:Brian McNeil is working to give a direly needed overhaul to the Newsroom. Demo User:Brian McNeil/Newsroom http://enwn.net/76aa
 * User:Amgine is writing the "Google News Site Map" extension in order to facilitate Wikinews getting back onto Google news.
 * The mailing list was mostly quiet with the exception of a thread about what do with Wikinewsie.org http://enwn.net/03fe
 * By popular complaint, enwn.net now supports a "preview" mode by appending a dash to the end of the URL. Example: http://enwn.net/h-
 * Enwn.net has been renamed to WMF4.me . The new more generic name is supposed to cater to the entire WMF audience, not just us. Don't worry though, enwn.net will continue to work.  Homepage: http://wmf4.me/ Identica: http://identi.ca/wmf4me Twitter: http://twitter.com/wmf4me
 * Bawolff's #wiktLookUp is working, and live on at least 6 WMF wikis and an unknown number of blogs. More information on the blog plugin: http://trunc.me/c943
 * New Administrators: 1, New Editors: 3

Also something very, very, very important. On November 8th, Wikinews turns 5 years old!! To celebrate, there will be cake! But only for those that help contribute to Story preparation/Wikinews turns 5 ( http://enwn.net/a1a2 ). It is a work in progress, and there is only 8 days remaining! Let's make this one heck of an article! (The abuse of the exclamation mark will continue until the article is done).

title: Wikinews:Reports/October 2009


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Talk:US unemployment rate reaches 9.8%

Addition
editprotected Could someone please add the category Category:Bureau of Labor Statistics? Thanks. Evrik (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. the wub "?!"  10:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:US unemployment rate reaches 9.8%


text: Talk:Plaintiffs and Amazon propose settlement to Kindle deletion lawsuit


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User:Faznu

Ah News Faznu (talk) 22:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

title: User:Faznu