text:
Wikinews:Briefs/July 20, 2010

Show Notes
Today on Wikinews : Singapore police arrest a death penalty book author; Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship and, in history, the dream of a young president and a nation comes true on a summers day in 1969.

 * Audio credit JFK at Rice University

Today is Tuesday, July 20, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and this is Wikinews.

Singapore police arrest death penalty book author (1:04)
Singapore police arrested British author and journalist Alan Shadrake one day after the launch of his book about the country's use of the death penalty.

Shadrake, 75, was arrested on Sunday morning at a hotel in Singapore and taken into custody by police on charges of criminal defamation, in response to a complaint lodged by the city-state's Media Development Authority (MDA) over the contents of his new book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock. Separately, the Attorney-General served Shadrake with an application for an order of committal for contempt of court, accusing him of "cast[ing] doubt on the impartiality, integrity, and independence" of Singapore's courts through his book.

Shadrake's latest book discusses alleged "double standards" in the country's application of the death penalty, and contains interviews with local human rights activists, lawyers, and former police officers, including retired Changi Prison executioner Darshan Singh; Singh later claimed that he had been "tricked" into the interview. In earlier media comments, Shadrake stated that he expected "trouble" but no concrete action from authorities over his book, lest they draw even more attention to its claims. Retailers took his book off shelves after inquiries by the MDA; a spokesman for the MDA stated that the book was not banned, but suggested that booksellers "seek legal advice to ensure that the books they sell do not contravene Singapore laws".

Shadrake has written for a variety of newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph of London as well as the New Straits Times of neighboring Malaysia. His previous book, The Yellow Pimpernels, told the tale of various attempts to escape from East Germany over the Berlin Wall. If convicted, he faces a two-year imprisonment and a fine.

Meanwhile, anger over censorship spilled out into the streets in Turkey where

Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship (2:53)
about 2,000 protesters marched against Internet censorship last Saturday in Istanbul.

Protesters gathered at central Istanbul’s Taksim Square and marched down to Istiklal Avenue, chanting slogans against Transport and Communications Minister Binali Yildirim, Internet censorship, and especially against "Law No 5651".

Many Internet groups, nongovernmental organizations, and Internet platforms participated in the protest.

More than 5,000 Internet sites including Last.fm, YouTube and some of Google services are currently banned in Turkey. The bans are issued by prosecutors if the site "is deemed liable to incite suicide, paedophilia, drug abuse, obscenity or prostitution, or violate a law forbidding any attacks on Atatürk."

Reporters Without Borders reported that The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) recently wrote to the Turkish authorities to urge them once again to restore access to banned Internet sites

On this day in history (4:01)

 * Music credit Space X-plorers

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 space flight landed the first humans on our Moon, fulfilling U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon before the Soviets by the end of the 1960s.

Launched from Florida on July 16, Apollo 11 was crewed by Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. Their landing craft, Eagle, spent 21 hours and 31 minutes on the lunar surface while Collins orbited above in the command ship, Columbia. The lunar module was named Eagle for the national bird of the United States, the bald eagle, which is featured prominently on the mission insignia.

 * Audio clip Aldrin on emblems

The command module was named Columbia for the feminine personification of the United States used traditionally in song and poetry. During early mission planning, the names Snowcone and Haystack were used but changed before announcement to the press.

Three days after liftoff, Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and fired its service propulsion engine to enter lunar orbit. In the thirty orbits that followed, the crew saw passing views of their landing site in the southern Sea of Tranquility. This landing site was selected in part because it had been characterized as relatively flat and smooth by the automated Ranger 8 and Surveyor 5 landers along with the Lunar Orbiter mapping spacecraft and was unlikely to present major landing or extra-vehicular activity (EVA) challenges.

 * Music credit Interloper

On July 20, 1969 the lunar module Eagle separated from the command module Columbia. Collins, alone aboard Columbia, inspected Eagle as it pirouetted before him to ensure the craft was not damaged.

As the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface 4 seconds early and reported that they were "long": meaning they would land miles west of their target point.

Five minutes into the descent burn, and 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above the surface of the moon, the LM navigation and guidance computer distracted the crew with the first of several unexpected "1202" and "1201" program alarms.

 * Audio clip 1201 alarm

The program alarms indicated "executive overflows", where the guidance computer could not complete all of its tasks in real time and had to postpone some of them. This was neither a computer error nor an astronaut error, but stemmed from a mistake in how the astronauts had been trained. Although unneeded for the landing, the rendezvous radar was intentionally turned on to make ready for a fast abort. Ground simulation setups had not foreseen that a fast stream of spurious interrupts from this radar could happen. Since the computer had to deal with data from two radars, not the landing radar alone, this led to the overload.

Inside Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, computer engineer Jack Garman told guidance officer Steve Bales it was safe to continue the descent and this was relayed to the crew.

As the descent continued, Armstrong saw that the computer's landing target was in a boulder-strewn area just north and east of a 300 meter diameter crater (later determined to be "West crater", named for its location in the western part of the originally planned landing site). At this point Armstrong took semi-automatic control as Aldrin called out altitude and velocity data.

 * Audio clip Final approach

Eagle landed at 6:17pm EDT with only about 25 seconds of fuel left. This was less fuel than on later missions because the astronauts encountered a premature low fuel warning. This was later found to have been due to greater propellant 'slosh' than expected which was uncovering a fuel sensor. On subsequent missions, extra baffles were added to the tanks to prevent this.

 * Music credit Albinoni - Concerto for 2 Oboes

Then at 10:39pm EDT, Armstrong opened the hatch, and at 10:51 began his descent to the Moon's surface.

 * Audio clip Armstrong stepping off the lander

Aldrin then joined Armstrong on the surface and tested methods for moving around, including two-footed kangaroo hops. The astronauts reported that they needed to plan their movements six or seven steps ahead and that the fine soil was quite slippery. Aldrin remarked that moving from sunlight into Eagle's shadow produced no temperature change inside the suit, though the helmet was warmer in sunlight.

The astronauts then deployed scientific equipment, which included a passive seismograph and a laser ranging retroreflector. While Armstrong loped about 120 m from the LM to snap photos at the rim of Little West Crater, Aldrin collected two core tubes. He used the geological hammer to pound in the tubes - the only time the hammer was used on Apollo 11. The astronauts then collected rock samples using scoops and tongs on extension handles. Many of the surface activities took longer than expected, so they had to stop documenting sample collection halfway through the allotted 34 min.

During this period Mission Control used a coded phrase to warn Armstrong that his metabolic rates were high and that he should slow down. He was moving rapidly from task to task as time ran out. However, as metabolic rates remained generally lower than expected for both astronauts throughout the walk, Mission Control granted the astronauts a 15-minute extension.

After the astronauts planted a U.S. flag on the lunar surface, they spoke with President Richard Nixon through a telephone-radio transmission which Nixon called "the most historic phone call ever made from the White House."

 * Audio clip Astronauts and Nixon

Nixon originally had a long speech prepared to read during the phone call, but fellow astronaut Frank Borman who flew on the famous Apollo 8 mission, was at the White House as a NASA liaison during Apollo 11 and convinced Nixon to keep his words brief, out of respect of the lunar landing being Kennedy's legacy.

For the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, a group of British scientists reflected on the significance of the moon landing:

"It was carried out in a technically brilliant way with risks taken ... that would be inconceivable in the risk-averse world of today...The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date...nothing since Apollo has come close [to] the excitement that was generated by those astronauts - Armstrong, Aldrin and the 10 others who followed them"

 * Music credit Orange Horizon

Famed CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite, famously said years later that he had had as much time to prepare for the moon landing as NASA, but when the mission finally landed safely, he was left speechless. Considered by many to be, at the time, the most trusted voice in America, it was Cronkite's emotional reaction to the landing which many people still remember to this day, possibly due to it adding such a human, emotional element to a technological event taking place so far away.

At the time of the landing in the 1960's, America was at war in Vietnam, undergoing major cultural upheaval with the civil rights movement and had suffered through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King Jr., yet for a brief moment on a summers morning, a quarter of a million miles away from any other human being (except for Collins orbiting above in the Columbia), 2 men looked back at the Earth and saw, what Carl Sagan would described years later as being the place where,

"On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena."

 * Audio clip Buzz Aldrin comments

Outro
And those are the top headlines for Tuesday, July 20, 2010

This has been the Audio Wikinews brief. To receive the latest news, please visit wikinews.org, presenting up-to-date, relevant, newsworthy and entertaining content without bias. Wikinews is a free service and is funded by your generous donations. Click on the donate link on our homepage to learn how you can contribute. This recording has been released under the Creative Commons 2.5 License.

title: Wikinews:Briefs/July 20, 2010


text:
Comments:Wikinews:Briefs/July 20, 2010

Comments from feedback form - "The history section is longer ..."
The history section is longer than the actual news... Looks like we need to start writing more! :D —Benny the mascot (talk) 01:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I don't mind a slow news day since it lets me really play with the history segments :) Turtlestack (talk) 01:25, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

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

title: Comments:Wikinews:Briefs/July 20, 2010


text: User talk:Lavahunter8

title: User talk:Lavahunter8


text: User talk:Sajipallath

title: User talk:Sajipallath


text: User talk:Naresh0821

title: User talk:Naresh0821


text: User talk:Poemangle

title: User talk:Poemangle


text: User talk:Yisoguo

title: User talk:Yisoguo


text: User talk:MrWilkinzz

title: User talk:MrWilkinzz


text: User talk:Ntombozuko22

title: User talk:Ntombozuko22


text: User talk:Tmojsiejuk

title: User talk:Tmojsiejuk


text: User talk:RuthlessTruth

title: User talk:RuthlessTruth


text: User talk:Kyles2324

title: User talk:Kyles2324


text: User talk:Anas alharthi

title: User talk:Anas alharthi


text:
Coalition ups ante on Australian school tax rebates

July 21, 2010 Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott has pledged private school relief if the Liberal/National coalition wins the upcoming federal election. The pledge came in response to the Australian Labor Party leader, and current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard proposing a uniform and school equipment tax break expansion.

Abbott's proposal includes an offer of tax rebates for sending a child to a private school. For students in primary school, prep to grade 6, the rebate will rise to 500 Australian a year per student and families will be then able to claim 50% rebate up to $1000.

"We are expanding the rebate so it can be claimed for school fees and also for other educational costs such as tuition and special educational costs for children with, for instance, dyslexia," Abbott said at a press conference in Brisbane.

Before the election was called, Gillard had aimed to pledge $220 million over four years to expand the current tax breaks to cover refunds each worth $390 for primary school uniforms and $779 for high school uniforms, as well as refunds for other school equipment like texts books and computers.

"We all know that uniforms can be an expensive part of sending kids to school, but this change, along with the existing refund for textbooks and computers, will help families with that cost," stated Gillard.

An opposition spokesperson claimed that the "obvious flaw in Labor's policy is that it only applies to stationery, computer expenses and uniforms [...] You know as a parent that you need help for a whole range of expenses. Extra teachers for children with dyslexia or the costs of doing music and all the other expenses like excursions and so forth."

The expansion is expected to cost $760 million in total and one that Abbott claims needs to happen as "cost of living pressures tend to be greatest when your kids are at school".


text: User talk:Trần Anh Đức

title: User talk:Trần Anh Đức


text: User talk:Actor Jose Acevedo

title: User talk:Actor Jose Acevedo


text: User talk:Amiya Gogna

title: User talk:Amiya Gogna


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply

How can a secular government treasure human rights but censore the internet, the modern day avenue of expression and speech? Turkey, like Australia is Phuketted in this regard...(i'm Australian, I can say this...)


text:
User talk:Lilyinscorpio

Hello,

Your recent contributions are considered to be spam and have been reverted or deleted. Should you believe that your contributions are not spam, please argue your case on your talk page, or in WN:ALERT.

Further spamming may result in your editing privileges being removed. Please contribute to Wikinews in a constructive fashion instead. Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 08:08, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:Lilyinscorpio


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/Xinhua/reply

Chine reports this to justify their own actions - "see we aren't the only ones"...


text: User talk:Hamma-kapilo

title: User talk:Hamma-kapilo


text:
Thread:Comments:ROV detects leaks in Deepwater Horizon well cap//reply

Yup


text: User talk:ShankarJai.G

title: User talk:ShankarJai.G


text: User talk:Mewemad

title: User talk:Mewemad


text: User talk:Judy888

title: User talk:Judy888


text: User talk:Ayan1111111

title: User talk:Ayan1111111


text: User talk:K.Ponnuthurai

title: User talk:K.Ponnuthurai


text: User talk:Ashwinigps

title: User talk:Ashwinigps


text: User talk:Luvlytessy

title: User talk:Luvlytessy


text: User talk:Vdiest

title: User talk:Vdiest


text:
User talk:65.13.77.24

Welcome
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. , welcome to Wikinews! Please refrain from using content pages for testing. Here are a few good links for newcomers on how to edit Wikinews:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee. Again, welcome!
 * Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
 * Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced
 * Introduction - overview of the site
 * Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
 * Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
 * Style guide - how an article should look before publishing
 * Contents - the contents page.
 * Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
 * The front page lead articles often need updating
 * Developing stories need finishing and publishing
 * Discussions need your input
 * And of course, stories need writing!

--InfantGorilla (talk) 10:10, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Our submission guidelines
I'd like to let you know that here at the English Wikinews, we only accept English language news. You've recently made contributions that don't qualify as news. We appreciate your contributions, but we cannot accept the edits you've made, so they have been reverted or deleted.

In the future, if you'd like to submit news, we are more than happy to have your help! Just make sure to check out this article, which talks about what Wikinews is not.

Thank you for your contributions! — Mike moral  ♪♫  06:35, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:65.13.77.24


text:
Thread:Comments:Singapore police arrest death penalty book author/Case continues

He spoke to the press yesterday (Tuesday) after he was released on bail. The investigation continues, and he said he had 2 days of questioning following Sunday's arrest, and more was planned. He can't leave Singapore, and he goes to court next Friday (July 30) on the contempt charge.


text: User talk:180.95.18.33

title: User talk:180.95.18.33


text: User talk:Mohammadalijaisar

title: User talk:Mohammadalijaisar


text:
User talk:ISSJS

July 2010
It is not acceptable to make this kind of change to our published articles  Your test has been reverted. --InfantGorilla (talk) 12:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Old news
According to this, the ISSJS 2010 happened in May, so is no longer news. Your contribution will probably be deleted. --InfantGorilla (talk) 12:48, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:ISSJS


text: User talk:Saefq

title: User talk:Saefq


text: User talk:Denmassalim

title: User talk:Denmassalim


text: User talk:Ali1101362

title: User talk:Ali1101362


text: User talk:Kulakula

title: User talk:Kulakula


text: User talk:Ganga1962

title: User talk:Ganga1962


text: User talk:Arydye001

title: User talk:Arydye001


text: User talk:Monkeynoy

title: User talk:Monkeynoy


text: User talk:Key ehsan

title: User talk:Key ehsan


text: User talk:Whirleygig

title: User talk:Whirleygig


text:
Astronomers discover largest star on record

July 21, 2010

European astronomers have discovered the most massive yet on record; it is approximately 300 times the mass of our sun, beyond the previously accepted limit of 150.

Paul Crowther, professor of at the University of Sheffield, led the team of researchers that discovered the star. The team used the (VLT) in Chile, and data archived from the Hubble Space Telescope. The newly discovered star, designated R136a1, was discovered in the R136.

The researchers estimate that the current mass of the star is about 265 solar masses, and could have been about 320 solar masses just after its birth.

"Unlike humans," says Crowther, "these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age. Being a little over a million years old, the most extreme star R136a1 is already middle-aged, and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than 50 solar masses."

Astronomers not involved in the discovery, while still impressed, warn of the small possibility that the team could have mistaken two relatively close stars for one large one.

"What they're characterizing as a single massive star," Mark Krumholz told the Associated Press, "could in fact be a binary system too close to be resolved." Krumholz is an astronomer at the.

Another astronomer, Phillip Massey from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, also warns that this may be the case. Massey explained that the star's weight had been inferred using scientific models that were subject to change.

The R136 star cluster, the star's location, is in the in the, a neighboring  about 165,000  away. The Large Magellanic Cloud, located between the  and, is visible as a faint cloud in the. Astronomers are still struggling to understand how these stars form.

"Either they were born so big or smaller stars merged together to produce them," Crowther explained. The researchers believe that the stellar heavyweight record could be held by this star for quite some time. Crowther elaborates: "Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon."


text: User talk:Ifflies

title: User talk:Ifflies


text: User talk:Batmanisbetterthanobamabutonlybyabit


text: User talk:Mohrrj

title: User talk:Mohrrj


text: Talk:Australian election debate moved to avoid clash with cookery show


text: Comments:Australian election debate moved to avoid clash with cookery show


text: Comments:Coalition ups ante on Australian school tax rebates


text: Talk:Coalition ups ante on Australian school tax rebates


text: User talk:Jappap

title: User talk:Jappap


text: User talk:Alessandrogiancarmine

title: User talk:Alessandrogiancarmine


text:
User talk:Soccer-holic

Bug testing
I am most curious,... What's the bug you're checking for?

I'm going to give Diego a rap on the knuckles for inappropriately deleting your userpage. But, I would suggest using a subpage for testing. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

 * The bug I am trying to kill is within a piece of software I need to write for my studies (I am a IT science student). This software eventually aims to semantically enrich Wikinews articles. However, I currently have a critical bug in one of the most basic components, which automically collects the article data via the Special:Export function once a change happens. Since I did not want to senselessly alter any existing articles in the newsroom in order to trigger collectible events, I preferred to slightly modify my own user page instead.

 * Sorry if I may have caused a little confusion over here, but it was all for good scientific purposes. :-) I will indeed switch to a subpage within my userspace for further testing. Oh, and no need to give a rap to Diego, I prefer trance anyway. :-D Sorry again, Soccer-holic (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh wow, thats cool. Please post any results of this (assuming you're allowed to). I'd certainly be interested in seeing your results, and I think others would to (Amgine comes to mind as someone who'd be interested in that sort of thing). Bawolff ☺☻ 21:36, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:Soccer-holic


text: Talk:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill


text: Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill


text:
Talk:Astronomers discover largest star on record

Review of revision 1063373 [Passed]
Do you find it frustrating that the mainstream press doesn't go to talk to other astronomers (especially those competing in the same field) to get a reaction? After all, even eminent teams can misinterpret their data now and again, and go public with an error. --InfantGorilla (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I feel the same way; however, keep in mind that this is a fairly recent event, more information may become available later on. Tyrol5 (talk) 16:59, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

We have 24 hours to improve it further. I have to take my criticism of the mainstream press back: the AP filed this just a few minutes after you filed, ... with reaction from two independent astronomers.
 * http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100721/ap_on_sc/eu_most_massive_star

--InfantGorilla (talk) 17:15, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll add this info. Thanks. Tyrol5 (talk) 17:17, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Info's in, care to review it? Tyrol5 (talk) 17:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Not really the largest star
I don't know if the astronomers estimated the diameter of the star: their claim is actually, the most massive, but many readers will not find that word helpful. A piece by the AP says :"While other stars can be larger, notably the swollen crimson-colored ones known as red giants, they weigh far less." Is that kind of interpretation appropriate in our piece? --InfantGorilla (talk) 17:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I would have no objection to moving the article, should that prove necessary, but I don't think the average layman would know, or even care about the difference between the two terms. Tyrol5 (talk) 17:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

For some reason, most people don't pay attention in high school physics, and have only the vaguest concepts of mass and weight. However, I don't think we should be patronising and say the star contains the most matter, or the most stuff. People who were paying attention in high school would get the point as soon as they get to the phrase "mass of our sun", so perhaps you have made the best of a difficult job. Those who don't care much for "mass" will just say "wow" (I hope!). --InfantGorilla (talk) 17:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have to insist that the article is moved. Saying that it's the largest star suggests we are talking about volume, which we are not. The article should be called "Astronomers discover most massive star on record". --Sunoco (talk) 17:50, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Our consensus from the discussion above was that to the average layperson, the term differences wouldn't matter. We also agreed that anyone who did care about the difference would get the point fairly quickly. Tyrol5 (talk) 18:02, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the words "heaviest" and "most massive" are even more confusing in the woeful state of scientific literacy today. I really dislike "largest" because even people who know little about astronomy will have heard of Betelgeuse, and seen the artists impressions that show it to be much bigger (in diameter or volume) than 300 times the size of the sun.  However, I think we might be stuck with "largest" until we get a better proposal than "most massive".  --InfantGorilla (talk) 18:57, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * New Scientist seems to have beaten most websites to press, and I enjoyed its use of "biggest" and the "humungous", even though they it is entitled to use the words "mass" and "massive". --InfantGorilla (talk) 19:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't think that scientific terminology plays that large of a role in the title itself. Personally, I have nothing against the title as it is now. Tyrol5 (talk) 19:09, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Binary system, and mass calculation probably wrong
This article is lacking in that it protrays the discovery as a single star, while in reality it's almost certainly a binary star system. While the stars involved are indeed massive, the idea that they're over 300 solar masses is a bit extreme, and probably wrong. --Sunoco (talk) 19:18, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The binary partner is probably small, according to Crowther.  If you think the binary partner is interesting to readers, then don't be afraid to propose new wording.
 * When you say "probably wrong", this is 'in press' for a peer-reviewed journal, and the New Scientist also contacted independent astronomers to ask about the calculations in this paper.
 * --InfantGorilla (talk) 19:30, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Crowther or Cowther?
Please address the discrepancy of this different spelling which occurs several times in this article. I have never edited Wikinews personally so don't feel bold enough. Thanks. Careful With That Axe, Eugene (talk) 12:09, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ Feel free to do this sort of thing yourself — check the sources to be sure you've got the right of it, then make the edit.  There's a safety net for you, anyway:  your edits to a published article won't appear in the published version until they've been certified by an authorized reviewer.  --Pi zero (talk) 12:53, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


text: Comments:Astronomers discover largest star on record


text: User talk:Azukaug

title: User talk:Azukaug


text: User talk:Doumeki kun

title: User talk:Doumeki kun


text: User talk:Vamsi4u.2rock

title: User talk:Vamsi4u.2rock


text: User talk:Bassedout

title: User talk:Bassedout


text: User talk:Witttmh

title: User talk:Witttmh


text: User talk:Dogoffuture

title: User talk:Dogoffuture


text: User talk:Wutzofant

title: User talk:Wutzofant


text: User talk:Phillorg

title: User talk:Phillorg


text:
Former Illinois Governor Blagojevich rests in corruption trial

July 22, 2010

Despite promises he would testify in his own corruption trial, lawyers for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich rested their case yesterday morning. His defense did not call a single witness, and apparently feels the prosecution has not proven their case. Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. Speculation that Blagojevich would not testify began on Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge James Zagel adjourned 90 minutes early after a private meeting with the lawyers involved. Robert Blagojevich, the former governor's brother and co-defendant in the case, had already testified on his own behalf. Blagojevich's defense team apparently considered resting their case on Tuesday, but Zagel gave them an extra day to consider their decision more carefully.

When Zagel directly asked the former governor about his decision, he replied that he understood what he was doing. "It is my decision, under the advice of my attorneys. I make the decision fully and voluntarily," he said.

Blagojevich is charged with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat that had been vacated by Barack Obama when he won the 2008 presidential election, among other crimes. Robert Blagojevich testified that his brother was trying to manipulate the political situation to his advantage, but emphasized that he engaged in nothing illegal. According to some sources, Blagojevich was interested in leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.


text:
Talk:Former Illinois Governor Blagojevich rests in corruption trial

Broadcast notes
The following info came from WBBM News Radio 780 (780 AM) at about 10-10:30 local time. Benny the mascot (talk) 17:26, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * "Despite promises that he would testify in his own corruption trial..."
 * "Rod's defense team apparently considered resting their case yesterday, but Zagel gave them an extra day to consider their decision more carefully."

Changine dates
This edit is allowed since the article hasn't been published, correct? Amgine seems to disagree. Benny the mascot (talk) 21:06, 22 July 2010 (UTC)


text: User talk:Prash n rao

title: User talk:Prash n rao


text: User talk:Quantumor

title: User talk:Quantumor


text: User talk:Naru12333

title: User talk:Naru12333


text: User talk:ARTEST4ECHO

title: User talk:ARTEST4ECHO


text: User talk:Wiki7310

title: User talk:Wiki7310


text: User talk:Xautrai1003

title: User talk:Xautrai1003


text: User talk:جورجيو

title: User talk:جورجيو


text: User talk:Bshaye

title: User talk:Bshaye


text:
Thread:Comments:Apple to give free cases, refunds to iPhone 4 owners/Comments from feedback form - "This article does not really g..."

This article does not really get to the heart of the issue. The issue is not that apple has a problem, but their total lack of acknowledgment. In other words, instead of understanding that its a real problem. Apple instead shifted the blame to all other smart phones, as in all smart phones are faulty. So in essence there is no real need to fix the issue.


text: User talk:Athulvraj

title: User talk:Athulvraj


text: User talk:Foster 1911

title: User talk:Foster 1911


text: User talk:Kirannaik007

title: User talk:Kirannaik007


text:
Facebook reaches 500 million users

July 22, 2010

Facebook, which has been active for six years, has announced that the website reached a total of 500 million users on Wednesday. According to, this number equates to one out of every fourteen people or, according to , 8% of the population of the.

Mark Zuckerberg, the and founder of Facebook, created a blog post in relation to this milestone. "As of this morning, 500 million people all around the world are actively using Facebook to stay connected with their friends and the people around them," he wrote. "This is an important milestone for all of you who have helped spread Facebook around the world."

To mark the occasion, the California, United States-based company released an application, entitled Facebook Stories, that allows the website's users to "tell the incredible stories of the moving and interesting ways they've used Facebook". Zuckerberg stated that there is a "good chance" of Facebook reaching a total of a billion members in the next three to five years.

title: Facebook reaches 500 million users


text: User talk:Ktou

title: User talk:Ktou


text: User talk:Ashes to Ashes Fan26

title: User talk:Ashes to Ashes Fan26


text: User talk:STSPR

title: User talk:STSPR


text: User talk:DrPinch

title: User talk:DrPinch


text:
User talk:AmandaNP

Hi AmandaNP, I've read your name in the Unblock Ticket Request System page in the English wiki; I have a pair of question to ask you about the UTRS, maybe you can help me:

 * 1) Is there a UTRS also on Wikinews (and other projects) or the UTRS in Wikipedia can be used also for requests in Wikinews (etc)?

 * 1) Is there a sort of list of sysops who deal with the requests to UTRS (or maybe something like a template in their user pages instead) or, on the contrary, is there no way to know which sysops deal with UTRS?

I hope that there's no problems with my question and that you can help me with this information, thanks in advance if you will :-)

Hi, can you let me know something, please?

title: User talk:AmandaNP


text: User talk:DGButterworth

title: User talk:DGButterworth


text: User talk:Micseeker

title: User talk:Micseeker


text: User talk:Dr. Lords

title: User talk:Dr. Lords


text:
User talk:Ivanmartinez

Tempodivalse [talk]  21:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ivanmartinez


text: User talk:Pointofgrille

title: User talk:Pointofgrille


text: User talk:Bobrayner

title: User talk:Bobrayner


text: User talk:Kaltersia

title: User talk:Kaltersia


text: User talk:Tubeslice

title: User talk:Tubeslice


text:
'Misleading' Burger King advert banned in the United Kingdom

July 22, 2010

An advert by fast food restaurant Burger King has been banned from British television over claims that it is misleading. The campaign for the new received two complaints over the fact that the burger appears significantly larger on the advert than in real life.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigated the complaints and purchased three burgers from a Burger King restaurant. They reported that both the thickness and the height were "considerably less" than in the advertisement.

The ASA also commented on the actor, stating, "[w]e also examined the size of the burgers in the hands of an average-sized man and considered that they did not fill the hands to the same extent as the burger featured in the advert. We concluded that the visuals in the advert were likely to mislead viewers as to the size and composition of the product."

Burger King responded to the complaints, saying that the advert needed to make all the ingredients in the product clearly visible. Despite the company's defense, it has been ruled that the advert will not be shown again in its current form.


text: User talk:Davide-Bruno

title: User talk:Davide-Bruno


text: User talk:Eloy.wikia

title: User talk:Eloy.wikia


text: User talk:Horchatabeast

title: User talk:Horchatabeast


text:
Thread:Comments:Singapore police arrest death penalty book author/Case continues/reply

This sort of behaviour is completely unnacceptable for a "developed" nation! Its time we teach the cruel oppressive, totalitarian government of Singapore a lesson and BOYCOTT THEIR MERCHANDISE!


text: User talk:Coonclarinet

title: User talk:Coonclarinet


text:
User talk:Fatguy~enwikinews

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Fatguy. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Fatguy~enwikinews that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:17, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Fatguy~enwikinews


text: User talk:Ryan Norton

title: User talk:Ryan Norton


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling.

Who has better responded to their own oil leak? Who has provided more ships, more quickly? Who has cleaned up after the leak more effectively? Who has avoided obstacles from restrive regulations? Who has failed to allow any vessel volunteering to help? Who has prevented foreigners from helping? Who has prevented transparent coverage of the leak? US or China?


text:
User talk:PADRAEG

Tempodivalse [talk]  23:48, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:PADRAEG


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply

Hmm... So you're saying the US government should be like the Chinese government.


text: User talk:Dannydayus

title: User talk:Dannydayus


text: User talk:Earthsizedplanet

title: User talk:Earthsizedplanet


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply (2)

I don't see any comparison data on the points he provided. I'd like to see a detailed analysis of the 2 responses done by a 3rd party.

On whether US governing methods are better than the Chinese one, I firmly believe that the questions should not be brushed aside as obvious by the same ideological theoretical statements, but to be answered with concrete numbers on specific aspects of society and a throughout debate, by neutral parties.

As an example as is, with no other implication, a regime that jails 10 activists but lifts 10 million people out of poverty may be argued to be better than the one that jails none but only lifts 5 million.

One intelligent official who corrupts 10 thousands but creates 1 million may be better for the people than a dumb one who corrupts nothing but makes a loss.

I'm not saying there is any correlation between these things, and it would certainly be better to have ideal worlds where the Wall Street people donate all their money to the charity. But it is often necessary to chose a devil and it is not always obvious which one is greater 10 years later.


text: User talk:Nusaibah Salleh

title: User talk:Nusaibah Salleh


text: User talk:Anilkrishnayadav

title: User talk:Anilkrishnayadav


text: User talk:Hes gonna get banned

title: User talk:Hes gonna get banned


text: User talk:Clare porcelain

title: User talk:Clare porcelain


text: User talk:Haga4501

title: User talk:Haga4501


text:
Wikinews:Briefs/July 21, 2010

Show Notes
Today on Wikinews : China attempts to clean up an oil spill in the Yellow Sea; astronomers believe they may have discovered the most massive star yet; Australian politicians promise school tax breaks ... after the cooking show is over and, in history, the Wingfoot Air Express crashes into a bank in Chicago.

Today is Wednesday, July 21, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and this is Wikinews.

China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill (0:38)
After an oil pipeline in China exploded and spilled around 1,500 tonnes of oil into the Yellow Sea near the city of Dalian, the government has launched a cleanup operation consisting of more than 800 vessels.

The spill occurred on Friday, after a pipeline at the port exploded. The oil terminal at the port has been closed ever since. Authorities have been using 24 ships designed for cleaning up oil, and today ordered around 800 civilian fishing boats to join the operation.

The spill has been halted, although an oil slick which measured 50 square kilometers at its height remains in the harbor, and ships are using absorbent foam to remove oil from the water, as well as barriers to keep oil from reaching the shore. Despite their efforts, parts of the coast reportedly have a slick of oil evident on beaches and rocks.

Although rough seas have affected the cleanup, authorities expect to have completed the operations within ten days.

According to domestic media, concerns over safety at the port have been raised in the past; a government study in 2006 noted that five projects at the port were at risk of accidents.

The spill has caused ongoing disruptions to the port's operations, with several ships, including six oil tankers carrying a total of around twelve million barrels of oil, having been diverted to other ports both in China and other countries.

On a "brighter" note,

Astronomers discover largest star on record (2:02)
European astronomers have discovered the largest star yet on record; it is approximately 300 times the mass of our sun, beyond the previously accepted limit of 150 solar masses.

Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, led the team of researchers that discovered the star. The team used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and data archived from the Hubble Space Telescope. The newly discovered star, designated R136a1, was discovered in the R136 star cluster in the Tarantula nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy about 165,000 light-years away.

The researchers estimate that the current mass of the star is about 265 solar masses, and could have been about 320 solar masses just after its birth.

"Unlike humans," says Cowther, "these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age. Being a little over a million years old, the most extreme star R136a1 is already middle-aged, and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than 50 solar masses."

Astronomers not involved in the discovery, while still impressed, warn of the possibility that the team could have mistaken two relatively close stars for one large one.

"What they're characterizing as a single massive star," Mark Krumholz, an astronomer at the University of California, told the Associated Press, "could in fact be a binary system too close to be resolved."

Another astronomer, Phillip Massey from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, also warns that this may be the case. Massey explained that the star's weight had been inferred using scientific models that were subject to change.

The researchers believe that the stellar heavyweight record could be held by this star for quite some time. Cowther elaborates: "Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon."

To put into perspective the size and luminosity of this star, if it were to replace our sun it would be as bright as our sun compared to the moon and according to team member Raphael Hirschi from Keele University, "Its high mass would reduce the length of the Earth's year to three weeks, and it would bathe the Earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible,"

 * Music credit Ice

Coalition ups ante on Australian school tax rebates (5:30)
Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott has pledged private school relief if the Liberal/National coalition wins the upcoming federal election. The pledge came in response to the Australian Labor Party leader, and current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard proposing a uniform and school equipment tax break expansion.

Abbott's proposal includes an offer of tax rebates for sending a child to a private school. For students in primary school, prep to grade 6, the rebate will rise to $500 Australian a year per student and families will be then able to claim 50% rebate up to AU$1000.

“We are expanding the rebate so it can be claimed for school fees and also for other educational costs such as tuition and special educational costs for children with, for instance, dyslexia,” Abbott said at a press conference in Brisbane.

Before the election was called, Gillard had aimed to pledge $220 million over four years to expand the current tax breaks to cover refunds each worth $390 for primary school uniforms and $779 for high school uniforms, as well as refunds for other school equipment like texts books and computers.

"We all know that uniforms can be an expensive part of sending kids to school, but this change, along with the existing refund for textbooks and computers, will help families with that cost," stated Gillard.

An opposition spokesperson claimed that the “obvious flaw in Labor's policy is that it only applies to stationery, computer expenses and uniforms [...] You know as a parent that you need help for a whole range of expenses. Extra teachers for children with dyslexia or the costs of doing music and all the other expenses like excursions and so forth.”

The expansion is expected to cost $760 million in total and one that Abbott claims needs to happen as “cost of living pressures tend to be greatest when your kids are at school”.

As contentious as the Australian elections are turning out to be,

Australian election debate moved to avoid clash with cookery show (7:32)
A televised debate between Australia's candidates for Prime Minister in the upcoming election has been rescheduled and shortened — to avoid a clash with popular cookery show MasterChef.

The pre-election debate traditionally lasts 90 minutes and occurs at 1930 on the first Sunday of the campaign.

With the grand finale of the cooking competition already scheduled for that time, and expected to attract around four million viewers, the decision has been made to move the debate forward to 1830 and shorten it to 60 minutes.

When asked about MasterChef, Prime Minister Julia Gillard replied: "I can understand the fascination with cooking and eating, so I know many Australians will watch that show. But I think Australians still pay some regard to the debate and the election campaign."

The debate between Gillard and her Liberal/National Coalition primary opponent Tony Abbott has already been the subject of controversy. Former PM Kevin Rudd had committed to holding three debates before the election. Gillard insisted she only wanted one.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown had also wished to be part of the debate, but joked that he probably had more chance of appearing on MasterChef.

On this day in history (8:52)

 * Music credit The Dread

In 1919, the Wingfoot Air Express, a dirigible owned by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago in what was, up to that point, the worst dirigible disaster in United States history.

The airship was transporting people from Grant Park to the White City amusement park when it caught fire at about 4:55pm while cruising at an altitude of 1200 feet over the Chicago Loop. When it became clear the dirigible was lost, the pilot, Jack Boettner, and chief mechanic, Harry Wacker, used parachutes to jump to safety. A second mechanic, Henry Weaver, died when his parachute caught fire and another passenger, Earl H. Davenport, a publicity agent for the White City Amusement Park remained in the blimp and died when the airship crashed. A fifth person, photographer E. H. Horton, who parachuted from the dirigible broke both legs and later died at a hospital.

Inside the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank building, 150 employees were closing up the day's business in and around the main banking hall, which was illuminated by a large skylight, when the remains of the Wingfoot struck the skylight directly and flaming debris fell through to the banking hall below.

According to Harriet Messinger, a switchboard operator, "There was a shadow and I looked up to the roof. Instantly a crash sent the glass flying on [to] the heads of those below. The girls hesitated, many of them stunned by glass or too frightened to run. Then the huge machine came through. It seemed to fill the bank with flames that searched out every corner. The heaviest part, the engines and tanks, fell to the floor and exploded."

The intense heat made rescue operations very difficult and rescue workers had to wait a half an hour before they could get at the horribly burned bodies trapped under the wreckage. In all, ten employees of the bank were killed and another 27 injured.

No official cause of the accident was determined, though the pilot told a New York Times reporter that it might have been caused either by static in the air (as they were unusually high and in less than optimal atmospheric conditions) or that the engines had backfired, creating a spark due to the fuel mixture being "a little too lean".

In the aftermath of the accident, the city of Chicago adopted a new set of rules for aviation over the city and the crash led to the closing of the Grant Park Airstrip and the creation of Chicago Air Park.

Outro
And those are the top headlines for Wednesday, July 20, 2010

This has been the Audio Wikinews brief. To receive the latest news, please visit wikinews.org, presenting up-to-date, relevant, newsworthy and entertaining content without bias. Wikinews is a free service and is funded by your generous donations. Click on the donate link on our homepage to learn how you can contribute. This recording has been released under the Creative Commons 2.5 License.

title: Wikinews:Briefs/July 21, 2010


text: User talk:Jdrinehart2504

title: User talk:Jdrinehart2504


text:
Comments:Wikinews:Briefs/July 21, 2010

Comments from feedback form - "Ack! I read the date wrong at ..."
Ack! I read the date wrong at the end of the show! :( —Turtlestack (talk) 04:11, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

title: Comments:Wikinews:Briefs/July 21, 2010


text: User talk:Aerowikipedian

title: User talk:Aerowikipedian


text: User talk:Anandmurali010

title: User talk:Anandmurali010


text: User talk:Leduylinh1981

title: User talk:Leduylinh1981


text: User talk:Waldonian

title: User talk:Waldonian


text: User talk:Jorge LLanos

title: User talk:Jorge LLanos


text: User talk:もーびるー

title: User talk:もーびるー


text: User talk:Sohelcse

title: User talk:Sohelcse


text: User talk:True grave unit

title: User talk:True grave unit


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply (2)

The present government of Turkey may be phuketted, but Turkey, it appears, does not completely agree with the present government.


text:
Weather bureau forecasts an early spring for Australia

July 23, 2010

Australians have been shivering through one of the coldest winters in the country's history, but the has issued a nationwide forecast for the coming months which predicts warmer conditions in most parts of the country excluding Tasmania.

The southern hemisphere's Spring Equinox occurs in September, but the forecast suggests unseasonal weather conditions across the nation for August and September. Temperatures in Queensland and Western Australia are predicted to soar well above the average, with heavy, torrential springtime rains arriving well in advance, and is expected to have both negative and positive effects on the agricultural industries of the states.

The south of Australia is similarly anticipating warmer-than-average conditions with Victoria, South Australia, and southern Western Australia anticipating balmy to humid weather. This comes in contrast to parts of New South Wales, which experienced their coldest night on record, while Melbourne, Victoria dealt with its coldest morning in 15 months.

Forecasters hypothesise that warmer temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Oceans could be responsible for the onset of an "early spring".


text: User talk:Erkumaravel

title: User talk:Erkumaravel


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply (3)

Well the people of Australia dont agree with internet censorship and yet, here we are...T_T


text: User talk:Muda atmaja

title: User talk:Muda atmaja


text: User talk:Dovanhoa5t

title: User talk:Dovanhoa5t


text: User talk:شارع السد

title: User talk:شارع السد


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply (3)

The Chinese Should Try Opressing The Oil Spill, It Works on The Tibetans....


text: User talk:Fredg136

title: User talk:Fredg136


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/Xinhua/reply (2)

I find this humorously ironic that Xinhua is reporting on this.


text: User talk:Quteil pro"ad

title: User talk:Quteil pro"ad


text: User talk:TheBusfahrer01

title: User talk:TheBusfahrer01


text: User talk:Robertbiggs34

title: User talk:Robertbiggs34


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply (4)

I have not seen any articles indicating that Australians are attempting to influence their government to change its policy. Please direct me to some.


text: User talk:E.s. budiawan

title: User talk:E.s. budiawan


text: User talk:Moha-dwairi

title: User talk:Moha-dwairi


text: User talk:Hussineynaguib

title: User talk:Hussineynaguib


text:
User talk:P90xkicksfang

July 2010
Hi, please do not place any kind of on our website - it will be  so no one will see it. If you do want to contribute to Wikinews, see the introduction. --InfantGorilla (talk) 09:01, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

 the wub "?!"  10:12, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:P90xkicksfang


text: User talk:Sandip90

title: User talk:Sandip90


text: User talk:Gembul 80

title: User talk:Gembul 80


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply (5)

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/conroys-internet-censorship-agenda-slammed-by-tech-giants-20100323-qt83.html

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/internet-censorship-protesters-set-to-fade-to-black/story-e6freooo-1225821337902

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/operation-titstorm-hackers-bring-down-government-websites-20100210-nqku.html

There's just a few...

p.s I didn't appreciate your tone =) but I'm ignoring it as a miscommunication...


text: User talk:SASSOU GHISLAIN

title: User talk:SASSOU GHISLAIN


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply (4)

There are many problems in China, but efficiency in handling oil spills is definitely not one of them.

Yes, USA government should be more like the Chinese government when it comes to handling oil spills. Not on many other topics, though.

Fail strawman is fail.


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply (5)

The Chinese should be good at cleaning up oil spills by now, they've caused enough of them... like the one just off the coast of Australia, over the Great Barrier Reef...ringing any bells?


text: User talk:Moustafasafwat

title: User talk:Moustafasafwat


text: User talk:Applecart123

title: User talk:Applecart123


text:
Thread:Comments:Turkish protesters march against Internet censorship/uh oh/reply (6)

Their is not a miscommunication. I had not seen any articles and now I have. Thank you.


text: User talk:SoHome

title: User talk:SoHome


text: User talk:JakeChaos

title: User talk:JakeChaos


text:
Thread:Comments:China launches major cleanup operation after oil spill/Comparison, unusual, surprising, and humbling./reply (6)

Yeah. Gladly they learned to clean the stuff quickly in China.


text: User talk:Irwanabdrahman

title: User talk:Irwanabdrahman


text: User talk:Aled1

title: User talk:Aled1


text: User talk:Cbalci

title: User talk:Cbalci


text: User talk:Ernestfax

title: User talk:Ernestfax


text: User talk:Vinayaggarwal

title: User talk:Vinayaggarwal


text: User talk:Windhover crafts

title: User talk:Windhover crafts


text: User talk:Tuantmsh

title: User talk:Tuantmsh


text: User talk:Bkkarimbam

title: User talk:Bkkarimbam


text: User talk:Yuyamarino

title: User talk:Yuyamarino


text: User talk:Grmon

title: User talk:Grmon


text: User talk:5alidalbishi

title: User talk:5alidalbishi


text: User talk:Asadali34528

title: User talk:Asadali34528


text: User talk:Meh3448

title: User talk:Meh3448


text: User talk:Rhetor86

title: User talk:Rhetor86


text: User talk:Negus negus

title: User talk:Negus negus


text: User talk:Wnaween

title: User talk:Wnaween


text: User talk:Christianponoc

title: User talk:Christianponoc


text: User talk:Driech

title: User talk:Driech


text: User talk:Budie larasatie

title: User talk:Budie larasatie


text: User talk:Emmanuel002010

title: User talk:Emmanuel002010


text: User talk:Wikipicker

title: User talk:Wikipicker


text: User talk:AboundingHinata

title: User talk:AboundingHinata


text:
Thread:Comments:Pakistani Punjab police website hacked/Comments from feedback form - "not enough information"

not enough information


text:
Talk:Facebook reaches 500 million users

Asumption
This quote "according to The Hindu, 8% of the population of the Earth." This is missleading because it is assuming that each account is only 1 person. In reality some people have multiple accounts, or accounts to represent something they like such as a basketball team, or a hobbie of some kind.--12.31.160.200 (talk) 13:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:Facebook reaches 500 million users


text: Comments:Facebook reaches 500 million users


text: User talk:Hiraldo 0

title: User talk:Hiraldo 0


text: User talk:CrimsonThunder04

title: User talk:CrimsonThunder04


text: User talk:Joehall31

title: User talk:Joehall31


text: Talk:'Misleading' Burger King advert banned in the United Kingdom


text: Comments:'Misleading' Burger King advert banned in the United Kingdom


text: User talk:Ppsandeep

title: User talk:Ppsandeep


text: User talk:Nev1

title: User talk:Nev1


text: User talk:PineHill

title: User talk:PineHill


text: User talk:Ratedstar007

title: User talk:Ratedstar007


text:
Thread:Comments:Cyclone Laila lashes across India's Eastern coastline/Comments from feedback form - "good"

good


text:
Thread:Comments:Naoto Kan elected new Prime Minister of Japan/Comments from feedback form - "i wanna know what the subject ..."

i wanna know what the subject that naoto kan studied at university was.


text: User talk:Bousson

title: User talk:Bousson


text: User talk:Alexsci

title: User talk:Alexsci


text: User talk:Jack Shade

title: User talk:Jack Shade


text: User talk:Adrian two

title: User talk:Adrian two


text: User talk:Scieberking

title: User talk:Scieberking


text: User talk:GeezerDoc

title: User talk:GeezerDoc


text: User talk:SASSOTO

title: User talk:SASSOTO


text: User talk:Environment101

title: User talk:Environment101


text: User talk:Kironbd07

title: User talk:Kironbd07


text: User talk:OldManNeptune

title: User talk:OldManNeptune


text: User talk:Borolad2k9

title: User talk:Borolad2k9


text:
Delta Airlines flight makes emergency landing

July 22, 2010

Delta Air Lines flight 1457 departing from made an emergency landing after it blew out a tire during take-off. The flight was destined to, Oregon. There are no injuries reported at this time.

The  departed from  Thursday afternoon. The flight was carrying approximately 160 passengers and six crew members. spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said that the flight turned around when the flight crew noticed the blown out tire. The flight was forced to go into a holding pattern to burn off fuel for more than an hour before it landed. The 737 landed safely at around 1500 local time (2000 UTC).

Delta did not immediately return calls inquiring about the flight. After some time Delta Spokesperson Anthony Black told the Associated Press that the 160 passengers on board would be put on a future flight to Portland.


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2010/July

"Older News"
Dear Wikinews, I would like to read news articles from one month ago. How can I do that? Thanks, Reader

 * The easiest way is to search our site for the news you want. We have a search box on every page, or you can use the Special:Search page.  Does that meet your needs? --InfantGorilla (talk) 14:04, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Archives is also a good starting place to browse a full list of all articles published. C628 (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Third opinion on paraphrasing requested
I would like to request an opinion from an uninvolved user on this disagreement: --InfantGorilla (talk) 10:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Talk:Bronislaw Komorowski wins Polish presidency in run-off

The death of Autosight
Now that Autosight has been laid to rest for all but bots, we need to do two things: Update the policy pages and alert everyone with reviewer rights (including admins).

The alerting would consist of a boilerplate and a bot to spam it onto every reviewer's talkpage. Any volunteers? My bot-fu is nonexistant. As for internal pages: What's the damage? What's the list of pages that need updated? Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * My bot is good spamming (lolz). --Diego Grez return fire 17:10, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Xcellant! I'll maybe work on the template tonight, though it can't be completed until we've changed the pages. Would you stick in a new task request at the bot page please? Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:13, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. --Diego Grez return fire 17:15, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * /me votes against spamming people's talk page. If it really matters that much, put it in mediawiki:Sitenotice and template:wn news. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 * I'm not keen on that. If a reviewer comes back after a month or two of inactivity, they won't see it. I view this as critical for reviewers to be aware of; it greatly changes the nature of the priv. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Don't even think about it. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 22:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think a site notice is fine. Griffinofwales (talk) 22:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Noticed -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 22:29, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

- Side note, we now have a new auto-sight related gadget in special:preferences. Also, the lack of autosight kind of screws with rollback. If an article is sighted, vandalized, then rollbacked to the sighted version, the rollback edit is not auto-sighted. Which is kind of a problem (probably a bug). Bawolff ☺☻ 22:28, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hooza! Bawolff FTW! -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 22:29, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Thanks Bawolff. A checkbox was/is part of the initial proposal anywayz. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 22:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Hmm, 13751 - I wonder if we should re-open that. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Not checked bugzilla, but, yes.
 * If an editor rolls back to a sighted version, then the new version should be sighted.
 * If an editor edits an earlier, sighted, revision making no changes, that new version should be sighted.
 * Make sense? --Brian McNeil / talk 01:08, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with that, yeah. Tempodivalse [talk]  02:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * On the checkbox note, I filed 24085, as really that should be done by default, and not in javascript. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I've updated two pages, and determined a third doesn't need anything done. Is that all? Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 18:08, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Aaron has implemented a fix, per Bawolff's bugzilla submission. Just a matter of it, eventually, being rolled out to us. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:06, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

WN:NOT
Since Amgine has taken it upon himself to make life as difficult as possible see we do things properly, here's a quick vote: Let's add Wikinews is not Wikipedia,or any other WMF project you care to mention to WN:NOT. Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:40, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Or any wiki you care to mention? — μ 17:41, July 10 2010 (UTC)
 * any other wiki. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:43, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Reworded: Wikinews is not Wikipedia or any other project; it is a unique and distinct project with its own policies and processes. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:47, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * <likes> -  Amgine | t 17:51, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Ya Benny the mascot (talk) 17:52, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Tempodivalse [talk]  17:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Just do it! -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 18:08, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Logo NIKE.svg — μ 18:10, July 10 2010 (UTC)
 * You are evil, and should be banned like asbestos. -  Amgine | t 20:51, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Me too (without the sloganeering.) --InfantGorilla (talk) 19:01, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! Diego Grez return fire 19:03, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds alright to me. Tyrol5 (talk) 20:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Right to reply?
Please see Talk:ARM: 2010 worst year for Afghanistan since US invasion ( A similar opinion was later expressed at Comments:ARM: 2010 worst year for Afghanistan since US invasion.) --InfantGorilla (talk) 12:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy on self references
What's our policy on someone writing an article and mentioning their own name in the article. As in "Wikinews reporter Diego Grez reported the aftershock was clearly felt in Pichilemu." I'm not sure that I see a problem with it, but I wanted to check to see if we had a policy covering this already that I wasn't familiar with. Gopher65talk 01:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Original reporting in the form of an interview routinely mentions the name of the interviewer, so I don't see a problem with it either. --Pi zero (talk) 01:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy on user/template space?
Do we have any explicit policies on the use of pages in user or template space — and if not, do we have unwritten policies about them?

(And, on a somewhat related note, what would be the preferred way to handle [ this] (which Nascar1996 pointed out)?) --Pi zero (talk) 04:42, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Unwritten policy of if you do stupid things in either of those namespaces we're going to delete them, otherwise not really. Generally users in good standing can use user space for whatever they want as long as they are not overly spamming something. With that said Wikinews is not a free web host/soapbox/etc and if the user is not positively contributing, we're much more strict. As for template, the template should generally be usable on multiple pages. templates for user-space (esp. userboxes) is a bit more controversial, but generally allowed if its reasonable that multiple people will use them. As for your link, that should be deleted. Its acceptable for the user to note on their user page that they work at blah, but only if its a user in good standing. If a user's only contributation is to spam something on their user page, then it should be deleted. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:03, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Archiving policy is stupid
Either an article is able to be edited, or it is archived. This policy currently states an article should not be archived until 7 days (or 10 days), but it should not be edited after 24 hours. Either the article should be archived effectively immediately (with copy edits, etc., optionally available via admin), or it should be editable until 7 days. -  Amgine | t 02:41, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I should mention I have challenged this policy on its talk page, as well. -  Amgine | t 02:45, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * From what I understand, the policy does not blanket-prohibit edits after 24 hours, but limits them to minor things such as grammar, formatting, or punctuation (in other words: no additions or changes to the context). I think the idea is to allow non-admins to fix typos and the like while the article is still reasonably "fresh" and high-trafficked, and only lock it up once it's become old news and nobody's going to look at it anymore. I know a lot of newbies aren't aware of all this and it does cause some confusion, but I'm not sure an immediate full-protect after 24 hours is the way to go - and allowing any edits, including content ones, for the full week, is certainly not something I'd support. Tempodivalse [talk]  04:08, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But then, you were the one who changed the policy (without any community input I can find) from 36 hours to 24 hours. -  Amgine | t 04:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * As I recall, that edit was to fix the contradictions about duration (36 vs. 48 hours) and to reflect current practice. There was a water cooler thread on the issue: Water cooler/policy/archives/2010/March. Tempodivalse [talk]  04:31, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. It's still anti-wiki, imo, to prevent editing to an article which is not archived. Either archive it, or leave it to be edited. -  Amgine | t 04:39, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Historical reasoning on this - Archive backlogs, if you recall. I'd like to look that over and propose competent revisions before it gets diddled with too much. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 13:21, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * <grumble> And I still think archiving can easily be automated; you just need to be willing to allow a bot to have admin status (and be operated by an admin.) The bot could quite easily be set up to examine when articles should be archived and do so - and in the process add it to a category allowing easy admin review of archived articles to check for late vandalism/additions. This would reduce the workload on admins, especially the boring repetitive stuff no one with half a brain really likes to do. -  Amgine | t 15:48, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * We do have an archive bot, sort of ... it's called Tempodivalse. Smile.png Seriously though, I wouldn't be opposed to someone (read: bawolff) creating a script to make archiving possible with one or two clicks instead of the repetitive, dull process it is now. I'm not totally comfortable with a bot doing it unmonitored, as it won't detect obvious things like bad formatting.
 * To reply to your other comment, WN:ARCHIVE in itself is rather contrary to the spirit of wikis, I don't see how the additional pre-archive restrictions are much worse. The obvious alternatives are: 1), full-prot after 24 hrs, which is arguably even more "anti-wiki" and has the added disadvantage of fewer people being able to make legitimate, minor corrections, and 2) allow any changes for the full seven days, which is even worse because it's against the spirit of news. Honestly, I don't see a big problem with the status quo. Tempodivalse [talk]  17:45, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * The archiving policy is not stupid, it is pragmatic. There are many contributors should hang their heads in shame at their command of the English language. Both authors and reviewers. Were competent reviews being carried out a bot could archive. That, of course, flies out the window when people are gullible enough to painstakingly fix the grammar of a pisspoor copyvio/paraphrase, then publish such. Which, as smarter readers will guess, is one of the points I'm looking to reach, and respond to, on this page. Copyright violations, or too-close a paraphrase must be blanked and rewritten on a sub page. It is a school of hard knocks, but vital to project integrity. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 18:32, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Delete a published article?
I think it has come time to document our policy for deletion of published articles.

In the meantime, Bronislaw Komorowski wins Polish presidency in run-off was published before it was deleted (as a PROD) under suspicion of copyright infringement. Do you think it requires a retraction notice, or should remain a red link?

--InfantGorilla (talk) 15:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I suppose we should issue a retraction notice, just to inform readers who stumble across the article via Google News and other means. Benny the mascot (talk) 15:57, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But in the first place, should we even be deleting published articles through PROD or SD? I thought current practice was to have them go through DR. Benny the mascot (talk) 15:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a longstanding consensus that published articles should never be deleted. However, obviously we cannot keep copyright violations. Saki's interview has shown that in extraordinary circumstances it is appropriate to delete articles on ethical grounds. Therefore, I propose the following additions to policy:

 * Factually inaccurate articles that have been published should have Correction added to them.

 * Articles that have been published may be deleted and replaced with a retraction notice upon ethical grounds. Consensus to do so must be obtained at WN:DR.

 * Published articles that are copyright violations may be deleted via WN:PROD. They should be replaced with a notice explaining the deletion.

Does that suit everyone? Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 16:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Let's make the policy simpler: "Articles that have been published and subsequently deleted should be replaced with a notice explaining the deletion." This one-sentence policy covers all of the different reasons for and methods of deletion. A policy for "factually inaccurate" articles is unneeded at the moment. Benny the mascot (talk) 17:12, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Benny's suggestion seems to explain BRS' last two points more concisely (since PROD, DR, etc, is already standard practise and policy). I'd suggest leaving BRS' first point and making Benny's alternative the second point. Tempodivalse [talk]  17:23, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * "A policy for "factually inaccurate" articles is unneeded at the moment." I'm going to have to challenge you to back that up. I can think of three major cases where this happened - two of them could have been avoided had we ever actually written the policy down. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:26, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I oppose Tempo's suggestion that we accept my exact wording for any of that. These are the points it must contain, not necessarily the manner in which they shall be presented. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:26, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I didn't necessarily mean we should use your suggestion word for word, just that overall I think it could be less detailed. Just for the record, I don't agree with Benny's comment about factual accuracy since we've had several screw-ups proving that to the contrary. How about this alternative:
 * -Factually inaccurate articles that have been published should have Correction added to them. Articles that have been published but subsequently deleted, through WN:DR or WN:PROD, should be recreated with a notice stating the reason for deletion.
 * Is this a reasonable alternative? Tempodivalse [talk]  17:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I can that.  Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 17:36, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Me too. Diego Grez return fire 19:06, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Factually inaccurate articles are dealt with on a case-by-case basis with community consensus. Why should we write a new policy that tells the community to do what it already does in practice? It's a form of instruction creep, I think. Benny the mascot (talk) 17:46, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * "Why should we write a new policy that tells the community to do what it already does in practice?" --> "I can think of three major cases where this happened - two of them could have been avoided had we ever actually written the policy down." Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 18:40, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This discussion might benefit from specificity, unpleasant though it is to dredge up cases of this kind. (I'm thinking that how we word policy on this needs to be clearly informed by an understanding of what we want it to accomplish.)
 * BRS, what were the other two cases you had in mind? --Pi zero (talk) 19:03, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The three I can think of: Ukranian manufacturer preparing to sell Adolf Hitler dolls was dealt with without fuss, and set the standard. Had we made it policy then and there, the massive fuss regarding Passengers on Air France Flight 447 sent text messages to family members before plane disappeared could have been avoided. Please see Talk:Passengers on Air France Flight 447 sent text messages to family members before plane disappeared and Deletion requests/Archives/2009/Q2 to determin just how much time was wasted sorting that one out. At that point there was firm consensus established. Chronologically, the issue was again raised briefly at Talk:Wikinews investigates: Advertisements disguised as news articles trick unknowing users out of money, credit card information, though I had forgotten that one. The last one is the one that led to aa recent request to de-reviewer somebody at WN:FRRFP and led to several hours of confusion after an article was de-published. I think all these cases demonstrate a need to make this clear in policy. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 19:29, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Meanwhile, we could probably do with documenting how: does it need protection (yes), sighting, Category:No publish,  an archive tag, and/or Category:Archived? --InfantGorilla (talk) 19:24, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I (perhaps only partly tongue-in-cheek) suggest we beat some sense into people who are stupid enough not to do a competent review. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:56, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That should go without saying, as long as we bear in mind real world laws on corporal punishment. However, to mitigate this particular case, I should point out that, at Wikinews and elsewhere in the world, people are woefully unaware of the implications of a close paraphrase.  I suggest that we would be better to educate firmly but civilly. (Ducks) --InfantGorilla (talk) 20:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to explaining how —details as in InfantGorilla's post above— I think we need to be clear that in cases that do not involve deletion, consensus is needed in order to add a correction tag. Otherwise anyone who disagrees with an article is going to be tagging it and claiming they were just following policy. --Pi zero (talk) 22:15, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I didn't consider that, but it's a good point. So would something along the lines of this work:
 * "Published articles deemed factually inaccurate by the community should have Correction added to them. Articles that have been published but subsequently deleted, through WN:DR or WN:PROD, should be recreated with a notice stating the reason for deletion." ?
 * Open to thoughts. Tempodivalse [talk]  14:15, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Bump; I'm requesting further input into what appears to be a stalled discussion. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:03, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not stalled. I thought we already reached consensus! Feel free to update the relevant policy pages (WN:ARCHIVE?) if you'd like. Benny the mascot (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought the actual wording still needs to be upon, since there was a bit of confusion on that. If there aren't any objections to my latest suggestion above, I'll implement it in a few days. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy change wording
Tempodivalse's proposed insertion to the policy:
 * "Published articles deemed factually inaccurate by the community should have Correction added to them. Articles that have been published but subsequently deleted, through WN:DR or WN:PROD, should be recreated with a notice stating the reason for deletion."

I would prefer if the second sentence prescribed use of a specific template notice, perhaps entitled "Deleted", so...
 * Articles that have been published but subsequently deleted, through WN:DR or WN:PROD, should be recreated with Reason for article deletion.

-  Amgine | t 15:07, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Section break YEG2762F
Someone restore what's been lost here; those page length warnings are going to come more of an issue. Why? I'm editing from a cellphone, and the above section exceeded the browser/editor textbox limit.

On which point, Tempo stop editing the whole damn page. I still haven't found your comment I want to respond to, and that section likely wrecks cell editing too. Think, people on-the-scene pay per kilobyte to report. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 18:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Sorry, I didn't understand - I saw a large block of text had been deleted without explanation and I undid it. Must have edited the whole page by mistake. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:21, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Right. So, you didn't know that to undo what I'd done, after another person had edited the page, required editing the whole page? May I suggest attempting some editing from a mobile device, while using the secure login? You did the exact same thing, again, when I was trying to painstakingly fill in a comment on your talk page after the above, thus prompting my outburst for which The Wub has cautioned/threatened me. I, again, have an awful lot to do today. Try thinking about how we're going to have people doing on-the-scene stuff; being "helpful" may royally screw some people in such circumstances. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

The Time Has Come
Wikinews Needs A Legislature and A Hierarchy! A defined and publically availible one that is not dominated through day-to-day power struggles, intimidation and brown nosing.

The community is small, but it's big enough to no longer dance to the beat of the same drum. Call me silly and radical but I look at wikinews and I see faceless, voiceless puppeteers pulling strings of disorganisation.

Please seriously consider this - for I only want whats best for Wikinews.

BKCW8''' talk  11:49, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

p.s Shotgun Governor-General!
 * No, it doesn't. Thank you, come again. -- Sken   my talk 11:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * What. A. Lot. Of. Bollocks. Grow up kid, and learn that a wiki is generally a meritocracy. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 13:17, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * He has a point, though. Wikinews is very disorganized and can't get its job done efficiently. Actual leadership might come later, when we have so many contributors that we have to divide ourselves into teams (aka WikiBureaus) and appoint certain people to lead those teams. Benny the mascot (talk) 14:12, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Sorry, but no, he doesn't have a point. He's proposing (whether he realizes it or not) that we shouldn't have a wiki, and justifying the idea by attributing problems to wikis that are more applicable to what he's proposing.  The value of wikis for WMF projects is that they are resistant to manipulation by centralized power structures, and Wikinews exists because that's notably applicable to providing a neutral free press.  Note that there is a high degree of gullibility in the proposal.  Centralized power structures guide people to imagine that all organizational advantages flow from centralized power structures — by taking credit for what goes right, attributing what goes wrong to individual people, and claiming to be the cure for the problems that the centralized power structure creates.  There is (believe it or not) usually no malice in the propagation of these misapprehensions; they're just symbiotic with belief in centralized power structures.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Brilliant. Thank you very much; beautifully said. -  Amgine | t 15:53, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * <insert> Thank you Pi zero. Perhaps a few of the following respondents (which I've cheekily replied to before) would care to look at meritocracy; then they might see the irony in the below comment from ShakataGaNai. If people want to elect a committee to employ their friends, to examine what people want, then do something else, they should not be here. Stop shouting "something must be done!" The end result, inevitably, is "This is something, let's do it!" Regardless of whether it is a dumb idea or not. --Brian McNeil / talk 07:51, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * We can be a bit disorganised at times, but I think the suggested alternatives are worse. Having formal power structures like that, with individual people (not community consensus) telling others what they can or cannot do, is entirely contrary to the spirit of Wiki - which is that we can all help out in our own way and not be considered "below" or inferior to others - and having people with titles like "Chancellor", "Governor-General" or whatever doesn't help that. Our "wiki-politics" and processes are inherently different from those in real life and I don't the two can be compared. Introducing lots of bureaucratic "legislature" and rules is, IMHO, actually one of the biggest failings of a lot of RL governments, not something we need to copy. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That doesn't change the fact that we already have an informal leadership, however. There are some contributors who we tend to respect more than others, and those contributors as a result have more influence within the community. Benny the mascot (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe in some sense, yes, but that's the point: it's informal. Sure, some people will inevitably end up being a bit more influential, but we're not explicitly saying or encouraging that "you're not President or on the Wikinews Parliament, so you're a second-class editor and we can tell you what to do". Introducing some sort of legislature like what is being suggested is just more instruction creep - and extra bureaucracy drawing the focus away from what should be our primary goal, writing news - that we don't need. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

King Shaka the nth

 * I think this is a fantastic idea. I'll be happy to take up the title of Benevolent Dictator of Wikinews and take care of all your leadership needs.  Fear not, the list of people going up against the wall, after I'm in charge, will be short.  After that, I'll claim we have a democratic leadership by instituting bi-yearly elections, but I'll have the ballot box stuffed by socks and anyone who votes against me will also go up against the wall.  Please, relax and enjoy yourselves - you no longer need to worry about making any decisions.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I for one welcome ShakataGaNai as our new overlord (ha! no walls for me to worry about!) Shoone (talk) 18:20, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Um ... :b Tempodivalse [talk]  18:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Simply stated, we don't need more bureaucracy. — Mike moral  ♪♫  18:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

 * All hail King Shaka! ( Me asks for a minor post, somewhere warm, in the Ministry of Propaganda .) --Brian McNeil / talk 07:54, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Infrastructure of peer review
We want this project to keep growing, but I think the existing system for peer review of articles will not scale up well, and is already past its optimal range and is faltering. That faltering is causing incidents that themselves cause disputes within the community, and it's only going to get worse. We need to figure out how the system should evolve.

The trouble seems to me to be that the existing system puts too much on the shoulders of a single reviewer. A wiki is usually resistant to mistakes by a single contributor, and that's somewhat true here too except for the one case of the reviewer who makes the decision to publish the article. Even reviewers who edit the article after publication have a safety net now, thanks to BRS for no more automatic review. But the one person who publishes has the most to worry about and no safety net.

Here's a rough outline of one conceivable way to rearrange things:
 * The five criteria on the peer review template are handled separately, and
 * for each of the five,
 * one reviewer not involved with the article reviews that criterion initially, much as now (other than separability from other criteria), and once it passes a first review,
 * some number of additional uninvolved reviewers check the work. I imagine we'd want the number to be one for now.

Publication would occur when every criterion has passed a first review and the requisite number of checks.

The checks not only improve the odds of catching major problems before publication, but they also provide feedback for reviewer self-improvement, and statistics helpful to de-reviewer deliberations. Statistics on who checks whose work could help to detect and break up closed cliques of mutually supporting reviewers (inadvertent or otherwise).

It might, or might not, make sense to have a separate elite class of reviewers authorized to do the checks; I can see advantages on both sides.

Separating the criteria so they can be reviewed separately helps to reduce the size of the burden being placed on an individual reviewer (though, yes, it would increase the total burden distributed across all reviewers involved), thereby perhaps mitigating the obvious concern of increased review times from the additional stage of review. It also encourages reviewers to take each individual criterion more seriously. Separating the criteria has been suggested more than once before as a way of reducing review times, and rejected; IIRC there were concerns about the logistics, and the efficiency of time spent. --Pi zero (talk) 23:32, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Hmmm... it's certainly an interesting idea in theory. Separating review criteria is something I thought briefly about before and soon dismissed as too inefficient, but you've pointed out some advantages that I didn't even consider. Do you have any links to where this was discussed previously? the wub "?!"  23:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

 * Well, I knew once before it was me that brought it up, and I've found that. It's well down in this thread; it's my third comment in the thread, searchable by keyword "brainstorming".  I see direct, devastating negative responses from Rockerball and Tempo, and a sort of indirect negative from Bawolff.  (No wonder I didn't mention it again for four months. :-)

 * Now, I think I remember knowing at that time, and looking up, where someone else had suggested it previously... --Pi zero (talk) 00:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

 * As things stand, there's nothing stopping you saying "Yep, NPOV, not checked X, style fine, ....". I've already mentioned in relation to the archiving policy revising some of the processes workflow. It is easy to fail an article on one, glaring, point. Could we, somehow, change to saying "just this one issue needs addressed?"
 * My own approach is to try and c/e a submission to make sense, and be put in context, for myself. Then I check against sources. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think this is a great idea in theory. I have only one concern, but that is, unfortunately, a very big one. Try finding one reviewer, never mind five to review a criterion before the news is so old as to be hardly worth publishing. It's more a problem with the project as a whole than this proposed system, but I feel it's the biggest thing preventing Wikinews from getting the recognition it deserves. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?   01:00, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

 * One reviewer could review several or all criteria, if they so chose; my thought was to give them the option of doing a subset of the five.

 * Actually, separability of the criteria (which is sort of the less frightening half of my original proposal, but that's okay, it's what we're discussing) — separability of criteria is a potential cure for the problem of not enough reviewers. There are some unknown number of reviewers out there who rarely do peer review because it's such a massive job, but who might be more often willing to undertake the smaller task of checking a subset of the criteria.  If those people spend peer-review time inefficiently, it's pure profit for the peer-review system, because the alternative would be that they didn't spend the time on peer-review at all.  There would have to be enough such people to make it a significant effect; and the system would have to operate very smoothly, to minimize the burden on low-impact peer-reviewers.

 * Here's an awkward point; at first I thought this was a fatal flaw. When reviewing any one criterion, one is likely to make edits to the article; and those edits could invalidate a previous review of other criteria.  Therefore, it seems one would have to certify that one's further edits have not invalidated any previously reviewed criteria.  --Pi zero (talk) 03:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure why I was indirectly negative last time :P, but just wanted to say I think its a good idea. Wikis are not good with single points of failure. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

 * The conversation may be a bit off kilter because it's been mostly talking about the first of the two halves of my current suggestion. The first half was what I suggested before, and it fell very flat.  The whole single-point-of-failure angle, and the second half of my suggestion, are new as far as I know.  --Pi zero (talk) 13:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

In the past, I've heavily c/e'd stuff from non-native speakers, then kicked it back to them to confirm it matches reality on primary points. I think, to address part of what you're producing, some thought has to go into the order in which review items are carried out. My internal thinking in such situations is to try and avoid referring to the sources, c/e hard, ask the author's opinion if I've made it misrepresentative, then I am - hopefully - still independent to fact-check and complete the review process. Of course, that just highlights how hard a task it is. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

current arbcom motion
ArbCom is currently considering a motion, but since it's going to be replaced by a new committee tomorrow, what should we do about the motion? WN:ACE10 says: "If the incumbent Arbitration Committee is conducting business on July 31, then it will continue to serve as arbitrators until such business is concluded. The new Arbitration Committee will consider requests that are filed on or after August 1." That election rule obviously is not going to work out too well in this case, since Brian McNeil and Tempo are no longer on the committee, and BRS is on vacation. That leaves us with Cirt and Cspurrier as the only active ArbCom members considering the motion, and even Cspurrier hasn't been active that much. So...what should we do? Benny the mascot (talk) 16:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

 * I think this one is pretty easy: Elections rules (created by the committee) cannot actually govern the ArbCom or the community in general. ArbCom can just ignore the rule. Normally an arbitration committee or court requires refiling any motions when the committee or court changes, but they're rather busier than en.WN ArbCom. I certainly don't think the previous ArbCom would have either standing or interest in continuing work on the motion, but just let it go for now, and see how things develop after the election is finalized. -  Amgine | t 16:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

 * ArbCom motions are a matter for the ArbCom, not the election officials. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:44, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * - It is quite a simple matter. The ArbCom active members that were active at the time the case was filed should determine the outcome. -- Cirt (talk) 23:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom motion
Note: Out of 5 active arbitrators, 4 rejected a full case, and supported voting on a motion. One abstained. Proposed: The Arbitration Committee recognizes the outcome of consensus after a deletion discussion (July 2010), where the community determined to delete the page Userbox Policy. The community may propose, discuss, and adopt a new Userbox Policy if members wish this. However, there is no need to modify the existing prior case from 2006, Requests for arbitration/Brian New Zealand vs. Amgine. The determination at Requests_for_arbitration/Brian_New_Zealand_vs._Amgine deferred development of policy to the community, and with the community it still remains. The ArbCom notes that it is still the final decision-maker, but reminds that strong community consensus may be presented as evidence to encourage overruling an unpopular decision.
 * Requests for arbitration/Benny the mascot vs. Arbitration Committee
 * Motion

3 voted in support, 1 opposed, 1 recused/abstain due to conflict-of-interest. -- Cirt (talk) 14:49, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


text: User talk:Kreisleriana

title: User talk:Kreisleriana


text: User talk:Bentley24

title: User talk:Bentley24


text: User talk:Thuwal4

title: User talk:Thuwal4