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Talk:Activists protest against School of the Americas

I severely protest this article. The two sources used (Democracy Now! and Indymedia) are both biased to the far left. The protests may be newsworthy, but we need a balance in viewpoints here. Furthermore, the review process was completely ignored and the article plastered on to the Main Page six minutes after its first draft was complete, so there was absolutely no time for that balance to be achieved by other editors. Thirdly, it's just simply not written well enough to be a completed article. Is it "School of Americas" or "School of the Americas?" (According to Wikipedia's own article, which is linked to, it's neither at present.) The line notorious for training people who go on to violate human rights in Latin America is not explained or quantified. We're not even being told what exactly these people are protesting or why they have chosen now to do it. This is not a Wikinews-worthy article. Garrett Albright 08:10, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This article needs more context and a more explicit, factual explanation for alleged murders and why the United States would be running it then, what their response is to such allegations. --119 15:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree. Severe bias here.

I attached a template and category so that readers will not mistake this as a finished article from wikinews community. I hope it will help making it better. Tomos 19:30, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, certainly the issue is on how people define bias... If you believe that organizations such as CNN and the New York Times  portray the true and accurate perspective on world events...  then, of course, you will say that this article is written by a person with a fringe perspective. It is entirely possible, however, that if news organizations had been writing with a different frame of reference over the last several years - those here would say that this article contains perfectly legitimate facts. Indeed, the one thing this writer ought to have done was to provide a better source referencing for the facts he or she cited. Rainbird 04:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree that we need more solid sources. But I am afraid that is only part of the neutrality problem we have here. If we present a set of legitimate facts that would support only a certain view, and do not offer readers how others might contend, that may not be neutral. Tomos 12:37, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Shouldn't wikinews eventually be able to present a layout of how the pieces of the puzzle of our society fit together - and how the gears work? I grew up in Seattle, Washington, and I grew used to the Seattle Times' style journalism.  Moving away from the pacific northwest, I was really surprised by the hateful tenor of most mainstream news print journals.  I think it's far more balanced to write in terms of a bigger picture, than it is to mimic the vindictive tenor of the mainstream press of the 1900s.  NPOV is an important concept, and we have to have a standard which we can all agree upon so that we can produce a quality product... But, it's important to make wikinews a more prestigious source of journalism than the typical 1900s fare. We should envision how that is going to be accomplished.  Rainbird 20:33, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article violates Neutrality and Accuracy
I think this article violates seriouslly Wikinews policies. The article does not have a Neutral Point of View, the sources cited are unreliable and biased(this is the worst part). It seems the Wikipedia link cited in the sources section violates Wikimedia policies too. The claims can not be verified, and everything seems artificial and fake. At least, the source: Indymedia has been used as example of a Not Neutral Point of View in ThinkTank. The other cited source: Democracy Now! is a antiamerican left-wing publication and you can see this by the articles in its webpage:"Over 70 Die in Iraq in Weekend Fighting", "Report: Iraq War Is Cost U.S. $6 Billion/Month", "Malnutrition Rate Doubles For Iraqi Children"(after USA invasion), "Family of Spanish Journalist Killed by U.S. Forces in Baghdad Accuses U.S. of War Crime", "South African Poet and Activist Dennis Brutus: "People Globally Are Deeply Unhappy" with Bush's Reelection", etc. Well, for me it is evident the electronic magazine is heavilly biased. I doubt this article can even be saved for future publishing. I agree: this is not a Wikinews-worthy article. My opinion for this article is no. --carlosar
 * I think it can be saved, but it's a glaring warning of the need for a functioning review process, and one that makes sure articles like this aren't waved like a banner to our readers. Ambi 01:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suppose what we need is some sources to base some counterpoints on, to balance views.

Via google news, you can find plenty of reports on this (more than 150). I picked two (below), and the Wikipedia article. None offered any counter argumets or criticisms against those protesters claims.
 * Michigan Daily http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/22/41a1d75db3f46
 * (Columbus)Ledger-Enquirer http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/local/10242547.htm
 * I haved searched via google and I have find a lot of reports too. Unfortunatelly every report was from sources like the ones cited here: unreliable and heavilly biased. Instead of legitimizing the article, the references I have found showed many of the claims are fragile and biased, hoax like.   --carlosar
 * I think you need to support your observations with some sources. And even if it is a hoax, it is our job to report that such belief exists among certain people. Tomos 12:37, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Then I searched some commercial databases with "School of Americas" as a keyword. Very few academic paper. The following seems relevant because it has a discussion of the School's contribution to democracy. Can anybody skim through it?
 * Douglas Gibler & Tomislav Ruby (2002). Educating Foreign Officers. JFQ: Joint Force Quarterly. Winter, 2002 n.33, p.119-

I gotta go now, but if someone will work on this to neutralize, I will join later. Tomos 04:52, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I've read the above paper. The paper starts with the discussion of a coverage by The Guardian (George Monbiot, Ã¢â‚¬Å“Backyard Terrorism,Ã¢â‚¬ï¿½ October 30, 2001). The coverge is quite similar to the ones now available via google news. SoA trained dictators, death squad leaders, and other aggressors. The paper does not say that is a hoax. It does say that it is not representative of "professional military education." Major counterpoints offered, as I interpreted, are:

 * The participants, and their family members, are inevitably exposed to the U.S. society & culture.
 * According to a survey of PME trainees from 1950 to 1999 (N=648; 114 Argentines, 203 Greeks, 331 Taiwanese), "only two charged with any form of malfeasance." (Both were Argentines). Compared to the proportion of officers who were involved in the "so-called dirty war" (I don't know what it is), which is 20%, the proportion of the graduates showing wrongdoing is remarkably small - 4% among pre-1983 Argentine graduates.
 * Histories of Argentine, Greece, and Taiwan are reviewed in the paper and it was concluded that graduates of PME contributed to the emergence of stable democracy. (Hard to summarize quickly for me).
 * Even when all other countries are taken into account, countries with graduates have less than half possibilities of military coup compared to other countries.

 * We can also note that the current program emphasize human rights education among other things. It is stated on their web site.
 * That's all so far. Hope this helps. Tomos 12:37, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sources are not reliable
I think the sources are not reliable. You should find some better source at least. Even if the article is rewritten we can publish it only if you can prove that the events narrated have been ocurred.--carlosar

I am still against this article. Wikinews can not have a good reputation if we start publishing articles like this.--carlosar

After reading the above article from JFQ, I thought that it was interesting that those authors defended the School of Americas not by rebutting what people say about dictators and death quad leaders, but by placing it in a larger context and argued that more benefits arises from the program. So those news papers you found so untrustworthy may well be factually okay, but just biased in terms of the scope. Of course, it is just my non-expert guess, and could well be wrong. Tomos 03:16, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What do you think about an article from Microsoft criticizing Linux? It is the same thing. This article is unreliable and cannot be trusted, so you cannot publish it. --carlosar

Tomos 01:32, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do understand your point, of course. Otherwise, I would not have bothered to read the article from JFQ. But do you understand my point? The accusation about SoA is recognized even among the defenders of the institutions/programs. If we can balance that view with other point(s) of view, we do not have to hide it. And of course, there is always a possibility of finding some credible source disputing the accusation. Why not look for one?
 * Besides, what you did above seems to be taking a copyrighted material from MS's site and release it into the public domain.. I beg you to be more careful, in case my understanding is correct. I will request a deletion of this page.

If Biased, Just Fix It
There are going to be lots of news articles posted that have controversy around them, so let's get used to it. If you see bias, just fix it or flag it to be fixed. The power of wiki is not in the first issue of an article, but rather the result of repeated scrutiny and editing. I trust wiki to produce one of two results for an article about controversy:
 * 1) Both views will be presented with equal weight, or
 * 2) Only the verifiable facts will remain

I removed: Reason: Unrealiable and bias source.--carlosar Dez 2 09:43:29 UTC 2004
 * Amy Goodman, Headlines for November 22, 2004, Democracy Now!, November 22, 2004
 * Chris Lugo, Presente! 16,000 Protesters Gather to Close the School of Americas, Indymedia, November 22, 2004

Is it WikiNews or WikiPropaganda?
Sorry, it was 4 am and I didn't research or rewrite this article as well as I should have, but it wasn't very well researched or written to begin with. A single Google search refuted most of the claims made in this article, including the number of people at the protest and the claims of connections to US-backed murders and rebellions. The writing itself is also extremely biased to the antiprotesters, as is the Wikipedia entry on the School of Americas. My major problems were a) it focuses solely on the protesters point of view without acknowledging the school's official mission at all, and b) the claims of connections to murders was not backed up in fact. About the only real information I found was the date of the protest and the names of the movie stars who showed up. It was politics, not news. I didn't correct anything as much as acknowledged the other side of things. I found it interesting that a pro-military celebration is thrown at the same time, and it has gotten very big.

What saddens me more is that none of the reputable news sources outside of the state of Georgia that I read bothered to double-check the claim of "16,000 people", a figure which was merely an estimate given before the event even occured. I found no pictures of this gigantic crowd, no police estimates of the crowd (which tend to be much more accurate), etc. Many of the news pieces I read were merely rewrittings of antiwar press-releases. Protesters are notorious for over-estimating their numbers - I should know, I've been to more than a few protests. We get 100 and claim we had 1,000! Get 1,000 and we say we had ten!

Whether the school or the protesters are "right" is totally irrelivent. If you disagree with this statement, I suggest you start a website called WikiPropaganda so you can properly put your agenda ahead of hard facts.

Frankly, I think the entire article should be scrapped, it's almost beyond repair. Like I said, it's not news, it's propaganda, and articles like this will ruin this website. I don't want to see some tightly controlled political organization writing the news, no matter what they stand for or if I agree with it.

And I must protest to the people who agreed with me that this article was biased. The whole point for Wiki is that "you" have the power to change stuff like this. Don't sit by and complain, ACT! Research and rewrite! Without your involvement, the website will never be as good as Wikipedia.

 * Still biased as of 2:40 P.M. (U.S. East Coast Time). The chief problem is that it presents mainly the anti-school point of view while worded to suggest that it's TRYING to be objective.

 * The quick fix would be to CONCEDE that the article is presenting the views of the protestors. That is, the article should be made about (a) the protesters and (b) why they are protesting, how they view their protest target and what they hope to accomplish. Such an article would be UNBALANCED but yet "neutral".

 * The long fix would be to do the quick fix first, and then BALANCE it by covering the POV of school proponents: (a) who they are and (b) why they like the school and what they hope they school will accomplish.

 * I hope I can overcome my pro-US-military bias enough to help with this, since I trained at Fort Benning and met El Salvadorean officers who attended the school in question (one a lieutenant at the school and another a graduate, a major whose father was a high-ranking Columbian gov't official).

 * By the way, perhaps the subtext missing from the article is that the School is openly anti-communist, and that many or most of the protestors are (not so openly) pro-communist. I recall from my college days (mid-1980s) that the big political clash was between US-backed governments, constantly accused of human rights abuses -- and Marxist-inspired guerrilas (always given a pass on human rights abuses). My friend's husband (Lee Shapiro) filmed Nicaragua Was Our Home, a documentary about Mesquito Indians decimated by Sandinistas. Shapiro located a US priest whom the Sandinstas and their US boosters claimed had been kidnapped by the "contras", and the film shows him describing his escape from Sandinistas who tried to murder him; the contras gave him refuge.

 * There's a WHOLE SHITLOAD of propaganda floating around in this cesspool (pardon my French). Ed Poor 19:53, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

pls include text in critiques
Hi,

reading critiques of this article it is impossible for me to judge whether they are valid comments or not, since you have pointed out your objections, and the conclusions that led you to those objections, but have not included the text that was in the article at the time you made your comments.

Since the nature of wiki allows continual evolution of the text, your comments may, or may not, be referring to the text of the article as I view it now.

So for each objection/critique etc, please please please take the time to copy and paste short extracts, provide references etc. Of course, this may all take longer than it would take to fix the article. That's the point. That's what wiki is about.

That doesn't mean 'shut up and fix it', it means 'provide context for your critque, or fix it, or shut up, your choice, but right now I can't easily evaluate criticisms made on the article from before my first viewing.

Yes, I know there is a history page and stuff, but it's a pain to have to cross reference it with your comments. Posting context and references in your discussions will make it much easier for other people to help criticise the authors efforts.

It is also normal and polite to do this, since it is hard for people to quite figure out whether what they think you mean is what you mean if you don't spell it out for us.

Simeon
 * I think everything has been said above already. Anyway I will try to list the critics in an objective way:

I hope this help you.Carlosar 18:45, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) I agree with the critics from the user Ed Poor. You must say the school is part of an anti-communist effort from the USA and that the ativists are pro-communist. In this case the trouble is missing important information.
 * 2) The user Ed Poor said:"The quick fix would be to CONCEDE that the article is presenting the views of the protestors. That is, the article should be made about (a) the protesters and (b) why they are protesting, how they view their protest target and what they hope to accomplish. Such an article would be UNBALANCED but yet "neutral".The long fix would be to do the quick fix first, and then BALANCE it by covering the POV of school proponents: (a) who they are and (b) why they like the school and what they hope they school will accomplish."
 * 3) I think the title: "16,000 protest..." violates NPOV policy because we are not really sure how many people were at the event. Anyway, I think the problem is not so severe, so I will be not against the title case someone else think different.

biased report of a protest vs report of biased protestors
The report is about a protest. The report is not necessarily meant to cover the issue that the protestors are protesting, just in order to be an unbiased report.

The report *could* look more deeply into the issue, but generally that is considered 'current affairs' reporting, and not 'news' reporting. News takes a single event and reports on that one event.

I think wikinews needs to be cautious about alleging that the protestors are 'pro-communist'. Please provide evidence for this. Even 'mostly pro-communist' I would consider incorrect.

Even if 75% of them were carrying communist flags, I would tend to report that as 'protestors carrying communist flags' rather than 'pro-communist protestors'. This sounds over-cautious, but there are many documented cases of 'protestors' being used as agents provoceteurs, and a neutral reporter should be cautious about believing what is presented to them as evidence.
 * I desagree. If the protestors carry communist flags they are at least pro-communists. You cannot write they are against communism at the same time they carry communist flags and cry communism slogans.---Carlosar 16:46, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If protestors were interviewed, and expressed pro-communist opinions, then they should be reported as having expressed pro-communist opinions. Not as being pro-communist.

In terms of whether SoA should have been given air time, yes, their reaction or that of the Government bodies responsible for the School should have been sought, and if unavailable, the reason given. But it is safe in such a case to assume that their opinion is contrary to the protestors, and the report published without their opinion, since the primary fact being reported is the large number of people protesting, and what are those people saying.

News reporting is about getting to air in a timely manner, and obtaining response from the SoA may happen quite slowly. Their response could be reported in a later article.

Dispute/variation on the reported numbers of protestors should be covered within the article, but it's OK to use the biggest estimate in the headline, if it is likely to be reasonably accurate.

And I agree somewhat that indymedia per se is not a good source, unless the identity of the author is known, or the event is confirmed by multiple disparate sources. However indymedia I would regard as a valid related link for such a story.
 * Yes, but not for this article, alone. The evidences are weak. Maybe if you be very carefull.---Carlosar 16:46, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Simeon

indymedia et al as source
If the event is not reported in mainstream media, it would be OK to report the event as having been reorted by indymedia.

Indymedia is a large enough social/internet force in its own right that it may be considered as news that indymedia reported a protest of 16,000 at SoA. Later followup could cover any dispute over whether the indymedia report was accurate, if evidence of this came to light.

It is quite common in my experience for events of this nature to go underreported in the mainstream news, and that is one reason for the existence of wikinews. If the event flat out can't be confirmed anywhere outside of indymedia, again, that itself is news, and a better story than the simple fact that indymedia reported a protest.

But do not assume that if indymedia is the only source it did not happen, or that the indymedia report is biased. Simply report in a neutral way, and in a way that accentuates an exciting and significant aspect to an event you yourself observed s a reasonably objective reporter, whether that event that you bear witness to was just the reading of a web page, or actually being on the ground at the protest ;).

Simeon
 * I am following the Wikinews policy which states that we must be aware of biased sources and advocate sites. I think the majority of people here in Wikinews would not like to see controversial subjects supported by biased sources. Anyway I think you could create a poll about controversial sources like Indymedia. Sorry my English.--Carlosar 16:40, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Carlos,

Yes, as you can see by my two previous comments, in some ways I agree with you wrt indymedia, in some ways I disagree. What I am saying in the second post is that we can, and should on occaision, report that indymedia report something, because the very fact that indymedia reports something can be newsworthy. The example I gave is that the fact that news articles can appear prominently in one set of media and be completely ignored in another is itself a viable news story. This can go both ways, for instance the claim that 10,000 protested in support of the SoA seems to be unreported. One could write an article about this contrast in reports from internet sources, vs mainstream media. To do so, one would need to cite the internet sources. Ruling out indymedia by policy means no articles like this could appear on wikinews.

You can write a news story about bias of media, be it left or right wing bias, it can be newsworthy. You can write an article on impact of media, be they left or right wing media. So I think it is OK to say 'indymedia reported something-or-other' because indymedia is a very large media outlet, and what they say has an effect, it is valid to report that they say something, it is just important to report it the right way. I am certainly not saying we should just blindly quote their material.

In this case, indymedia is used in the current form of this article to source a quote from a protestor. I think that is valid, and it is attributed properly, ie

'Indymedia quotes Elizabeth Nadeau, a 27-year-old student, as saying "Prison will not deter us. We will be here until we close the school and change the foreign policy that it represents."'

The quote is attributed to an identified person, and is not really controversial information - it is an opinion representative of the protestors. Indymedia seems in fact a good source to use for such a quote.

Simeon

nearly ready
I've fixed up most of the story in terms of wording and sourcing of info. I have left the most generic info as not being specifically sourced, the info can be found by following the various sources given elsewhere or can be regarded as common knowledge in my opinion.

However, I did not yet find a source for the following text:

"Antiwar activists claim that the school is directly connected with United States-backed killings and revolutions in Latin America, and that its stated mission is to train militias in violence against political dissidents."

Unless someone else fixes this sentence up by the time I next edit this document, I will replace it. If this sentence can be fixed, the story is ready to go to review stage I think. It's not quite news any more, but I think useful to take to the next stage, both for developing our review system, and because news should be recorded for posterity.

Simeon

I am still against the article but...
I am still against the article but I will try to be positive about its publication. I would like to see other people opinions too. Thanks. Carlosar 18:19, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * You see, maybe I have been a little rigorous, but it is because the group is still small.---Carlosar 19:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Additional info
I did some small research again. Here are some seemingly better sources.

 * Nepstad, Sharon Erickson (2000) School of the Americas Watch. Peace Review; Mar2000, v.12 n.1, pp.67-73.

There is a reference to a report issued Feb. 1999 by 1993 UN Truth Commission on Guatemara's human right violations, and the report, according to this article, one of the key contribution to this situation is U.S. military school's counter-insurgency training of the Gatemaran officers. Other things coming from the Commission includes that many of murderers of Jesuit priests at the University of Central America (19 of 26 were SoA trainees); El Mozote massacre (10 of 12 implicated officers were SoA trainees).

Retired U.S. Army Major Joseph Blair is referred to as an example of former-instructors who are critical of the school's programs. He was interviewed by a publication named "The Progressive" in which he criticizes the SoA's teaching of torture.

 * Agency Group 09 (2000) School of Americas furls flag. FDCH Regulatory Intelligence Database, Dec 19, 2000

This is a report on the closing celemony of the SoA. Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera given a speech. He said that human right violations are done by SoA graduates, but the training is not a cause, those actions are against what's taught. Other points made in the speech included that the American values were promoted into the Latin American countries thanks to the school; the countries were in better shapes because Marxist-led forces had been prevented from getting control, again thanks to SoA.

The article explains that that part of the speech is to counter the critics who charge SoA of giving training of tortures, or training dictators.

I did not find word "revolution" or "U.S.-backed killings" in the sources I looked at. The more widely-recognized criticisms may be training dictators, teaching torture techniques. The Joint Force Quarterly article I cited previously also seem to counter that kind of criticism, again, hinting that is the kind of ciriticism circulated. Tomos 20:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another source. It is an opinion piece mentioned in the Joint Force Quarterly article.

 * George Monbiot (2001). Backyard terrorism: The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it. Guardian. October 30, 2001.
 * The tone is explicitly critical of the school. A similar piece is available here:
 * There is a number of people named as those who studied at SoA, and what they did. There are a few dictators and death squad leaders.
 * US State Department's 1999 report on human rights name two trainees as murderers of Alex Lopera (the peace commissioner).
 * A report from Human Rights Watch titled "Ties that Bind" (2000) says that paramilitary groups were led by 7 trainees and the groups are to be blamed for abduction and killing of various scales.
 * The United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador in 1993 pointed out army officers who brought worst atrocities, and two-thirds is SoA trainee.
 * There was once an attempt to close the school in the U.S. congress during 2000.
 * At least 7 of the school's training manuals were released into public, and they included arresting of witness' relatives, blackmailing, execusion, and torture.

Again, this article emphasize terrible things that SoA contributed to, not the kind of article Wikinews should strive for. But perhaps some of those facts I listed could be verified.

"Revolution and U.S.-backed killings" was not in the source, though.

Tomos 03:21, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I just noticed that Human Rights Watch report is indeed available here:

Comment
I don't know much about this issue, but the article at of now seems to have two problems:
 * many of the claims that is attributed to supporters are not sourced. We need those kind of things in the article to achieve NPOV, but can't somebody find sources to back that up?
 * "See also" section contains two sources that seem to be overtly POV.

Tomos 03:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the article is NPOV now
The article has recently been rewritten and I believe is NPOV now. Remembering that it is an article about a protest, it would be pointless not to mention what the demonstraters are protesting. As the article stands now, I don't think it can be said to be biased and should be moved to the review process. I don't know who has the power to decide that, but we shouldn't start deleting news articles that cover issues such as this, as that appears too much like censorship. jkrusky 04:13, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Still a mess, but interesting experiment
For the record, I agree with the protest politically, but think this article is still too biased to be called news. It has become something of a circus. Crowd estimates are still a big problem (can't we just admit that we don't know? All the estimates this article refers to were given before the event!) The language is still very biased towards the antiwar activitsts who first wrote it. The personal quotes are boring, they don't flesh out the facts.

However, I think the SOA march is now irrelevant. We are really working out a formula here. How do we eliminate political points-of-view and write a purely objective news story on the subject of a political rally? Hopefully how we work this out now will set a standard for the future.

Obviously the news should say WHAT happened (antiwar march, several protesters arrested), WHERE it happened (Ft Benning, Goergia) and WHEN (Nov 22). Those three are obvious.

It should state WHO showed up, both protesters and protestees. The article originally failed to mention the pro-military rally, and the piece was very different! Crowd numbers should be accurate and confirmed by independent sources, NOT estimates from the people organizing the rally! Furthermore, the news story should have the honesty to say "we don't know" when they don't have accurate figures. For example: "No concrete numbers are available for the size of the rally, but estimates given before the rally suggested between 10,000 to 17,000 people would attend." It is VERY important to have accurate numbers. I can't state this enough, if you still insist on providing inflated estimates from antiwar or pro-military sources you need your head examined.

The WHY is a little more complex. Obviously, we must know why the protesters are there in the first place. It's stupid to know that a rally was thrown but not what it is about. We must also know a little about what is being protested against. It's jsut as stupid to know that an antiwar protest was thrown without knowing the school is there. Equal space should be allowed, so I say a paragraph for each is sufficient, just enough to get the general idea across.

Some people get worked up about what order the information is provided, should the protesters be mentioned first or the school? Well, the news here is the protest itself (the school has been there for decades) so logic dictates the protesters should come first, then the school (if the school held its closing ceremony and protesters showed up, then the order should be reversed).

I personally believe you should end the article at that, no more than 3-4 small paragraphs. Links to antiwar/pro-military sites should provide more than enough analysis, in those places you expect a biased view. In a news article it's more important to be accurate and objective, otherwise you risk becoming Dan Rather.

finalising?
OK, I just made some edits:

 * removed two 'see also' links which had no direct, substantiated connection to the facts of the story, and which were mainly opinion pieces with a strong bias

 * changed 63,000 graduates to 61,000 based on figure from the WHINSEC web site FAQ, which I take to be more authoritative than the CNN source which claims to be quoting from the web site anyway. I made a direct link to where I got this figure, if someone finds 63,000 or some other number on the actual WHINSEC site, then please amend to fix it.

 * fixed some grammar and wording for greater precision/accuracy

 * put "Fort Benning, Georgia" into lead par, and removed reference to US from same, since the dateline gives UNITED STATES as location.

I am happy with the state that it is now 14:34, 6 Dec 2004 in for this to be approved, if no further changes are to be made.

Dan Rather^H^H^H Simeon

Almost good
I have made some changes. Take a look, I think it needs some small repairs. -- Carlosar 02:06, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Delete it, it's beyond hope.
I'm sorry, Simeon, you just don't "get it." This is not a forum for you to spout out your beliefs, that's not news. You've been given plenty of feedback to rewrite this objectively, but your changes are always too small and begrudgingly given. You are too close to this material and should trash the article and allow someone fresh to approach it. You're last comments, plus the comments on the deleted page prove that to me. Trash it. --Chrispet109
 * I think you are right about the article, anyway I would like to save it. But I need help.--Carlosar 02:22, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Usually I refrain from commenting on things like this, but I believe the type of comments illustrated here by Chrispet109 are extremely unhelpful and discouraging. There has been extensive effort by several people to rewrite this article. You could help too if you wanted to, instead of expending time trashing another's efforts. The article has gone from being an extensively biased piece to something very close to a news article with the help of numerous members of the community and that is heartening to see. Please let's not ruin the spirit with personal attacks. jkrusky 03:19, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How many protesters?
How many protesters? Is there some source(anyone) saying that there were 16,000 protesters?

There is a problem. The lines:"Several thousand protesters demonstrated(...)Unverified local media reports put the crowd at "up to 10,000" in number, while other sources gave higher crowd estimates of around 16,000." are not good. I think we should say who said that there were 10,000 or 16,000 protesters. Who said that? ---Carlosar 02:34, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Okay, I did a small research to find an answer.

 * Over 16K - source #1,3,8
 * 15K -2
 * not specific - 4 (This source reports about 15K came to "God Bless Fort Benning" festival), 6, 7, 9 (This source reports about 15K for the festival.)
 * Up to 10K - 5

 * 1) http://www.tnimc.org/feature/display/3680/index.php
 * 2) http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34527/index.php
 * 3) http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/soa1209.php
 * 4) http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=2594607&nav=5kZQTNzq
 * 5) http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=49556
 * 6) http://www.wcpo.com/news/2004/local/11/19/stursula.html
 * 7) http://www.tribstar.com/articles/2004/11/22/news/news02.txt
 * 8) http://www.soaw.org/new/
 * 9) http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/politics/10233806.htm

 * Combined, none of the sources I looked at say where the figures come from - either on the protest or the counter-protest festival. I think "estimates found in media ranges from 10,000 to 16,000," or something similar would be appropriate for the both events. Tomos 04:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The article can be saved
I was against the article but now I would like to save it. We just have to balance the information. If there are a lot of arguments against the school, lets give more chance to pro-school arguments. We should have both arguments, pro and against, so the reader can make a decision.--Carlosar 02:30, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Who did organize the protest?
Who did organize the protest? SOAW? "(...)is an annual event organized by the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) to commemorate..."

Is it correct? Opinions? - Carlosar 14:31, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am trying...
I am trying to collect all relevant arguments pro and against the school. Carlosar 23:21, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) Someone must check the spelling, I think there are some errors, it is not good yet. Carlosar 23:21, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removed "Manual of the Urban Guerilla"
Removed the following text from the article:

 * The Brazilian version of IndyMedia mantains at its website a copy of the Marxist publication of Carlos Marighella: Manual of the Urban Guerrilla which details techniques of urban terrorism for communism fighters. The UK version of IndyMedia distributes a copy in English of the manual. Also there is a copy of the Manual of the Urban Guerrilla at the School of Americas Watch (SOAW) website, a anti-SOA website.

That IndyMedia has a copy of this Manual is irrelevant to the news of a protest ocurring in Georgia. That SOA Watch carries the text of the manual is factually incorrect. The SOAW website carries the text of a manual used at the SOA called "Terrorismo y Guerrilla Urbana" (Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla). Part II of this SOA manual mentions Marighella's "Mini-Manual del Guerrillero Urbano" (Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerilla), mentioning its influence and the importance of studying it in order to understand the urban guerilla. The SOA manual also says the full text of the Marighella manual has been included (in the SOA manual), but the Marighella manual cannot be found on the SOAW website. (Either the SOA manual did not include the Marighella manual, or SOAW does not include the full SOA manual.)

In any case, the removed section is either irrelevant or incorrect. -- Jeortiz 11:01, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I added the link to the "Manual of the Urban Guerilla" (Indymedia site). It is relevant because it supports the claim:"The SOA mission was to counter the influence of Communism in the region". -- Carlosar 00:49, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry...
...for editing a comment above rather than posting a new one.

This is a beta site, with beta users posting beta news ;)

Interesting discussion though.

The article goes back again
I have re-submited the article to review because I think there are not any protest against its publication anymore. Are people using review tag anymore? I did not put the review tag because I did not know wether I should did it or not. I dont know if I should have re-submited the article or I should have let the article as it was. Let's see what happens. --- Carlosar 16:03, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Carlosar - the item is a news item, not an encyclopedia item. The background of the school's history is not news. It is background. It goes late in the story. News is written in what we call 'inverted pyramid' style: most important and new aspects first, less important and background aspects last.

 * This is for two reasons: readers skim news and move on from one story to the next very quickly. They may only read two paragraphs. If the information at the start of the item looks old, they will skip the entire item.

 * Second reason is so that editors can easily modify the story to make it shorter. This is maybe not obvious here on the internet where we can make stories any lenght we like, much more important in a hardcopy paper where space is limited ... but even so, it matters as other people may be adding more stuff to the story, it's length may grow, and if the story is written properlyt in inverted pyramid style, we know easily that the later stuff is less important and can be chopped to make the story shorter if it does grow too long.

 * What the activists claim is of primary importance to the story, since the event being reported is the protest. This is the news event, that a bunch of people went out on the street to shout and sing about something. Then explain, what was it that they shouted and sang? Then explain why they may do that. Then for balance cover why they may be wrong, since they are expressing an opinion, and opinions may be wrong, so cover the other side.

 * Look again at the version I left, it is much better than this version for a news story. In the current state, the news is lost amidst a huge attempt to cover every aspect of the school's reason for being and struggle for identity.

 * I am not going to fix the article, since I think my last version is OK, apart from one small typo in the reference number 1. I have fixed the reference and the intro paragraph in the current version, but the rest of the article is too hard to read now, and not written in news style.
 * You see, a lot of people protested against this article because it was missing the background information. Besides the only way I think I could publish this article is like it is now. I dont think the article is very long. Besides I think it is perfect for Wikinews. In Wikinews we cannot do better than other media about publishing news quickly because the overall process is slow here. Nevertherless we can publish a story with some background information, so the reader gets intested about reading the story. I can even agree with you about excessive background information in some cases. But I think the news and the background information are in a good balance here. Anyway, case you have other ideas, I suggest you put your thoughts at the Water Cooler or Main Page discussion page, so other users can give a opinion and we can discuss about it. I didnt want to cover up any side, but on the contrary show both sides. This article shows some opionions but it is because the news itself is a opinion. The protest itself represents a opinion of a group of persons. So if we want to be NPOV we have to publish the other side opinions too. Thank you very much for your critics.--Carlosar 19:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I think your claims should be discussed at the Style Guide, it is a discussion about style and it is not about only this article in particular.--Carlosar 19:39, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * This article is a difficult one because there are at least two contrary point of view. If you have some ideas about how to manage different point of views I think you should say. I tried to do my best. Anyway I think it was a good exercise for us. -- Carlosar 19:53, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text:
Wikinews:Bureaucrat log

09:12, 4 Dec 2004 Eloquence Rights for user "Lankiveil" set "+sysop" 22:19, 2 Dec 2004 Eloquence Rights for user "Lyellin" set "+sysop" 17:10, 23 Nov 2004 Eloquence Rights for user "Jimbo Wales" set "+sysop +bureaucrat"

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

title: Wikinews:Bureaucrat log


text:
Dan Rather resigns as anchor, to stay on as correspondent

November 22, 2004

has announced that he will retire on March 9th, 2005 as anchor of CBS Evening News. He will continue to be a correspondent for both of the 60 Minutes shows.

It is reported that Rather's leaving has nothing to do with a report in 2004 regarding US President Bush's National Guard service that was widely reported to be factually false. A CBS panel is looking into that report.

Others believe that Rather is stepping down due to this report and investigation. Howard Kurtz, a reporter for the, states that "It's pretty clear that Dan Rather faced a very unpalatable choice... His contract had at least two more years to run. [Should he] step down now before the outside investigative report, commissioned by CBS News expected in the next few weeks about his botching -- and the network's botching -- of that story about President Bush's National Guard service? Rather [decided] today that it would be better for him to step down on his own terms."

Dan Rather, 74, has been the anchor for CBS Evening News for 24 years, succeeding. Rather is the third most watched anchor on United States television.


text:
Ukrainian opposition leader calls for police and army to join revolution

Monday proposed holding a new election to end the political crisis threatening to tear the country apart, according to .

Mr. Kuchma's remarks, which came as Ukraine's Supreme Court heard complaints of involving perhaps millions of ballots in the, represented the collapse of what had been the government's united position that  Viktor F. Yanukovych won the election.

Amid protests of up to 200,000 over Ukraine's disputed presidential election, officially declared loser Viktor Yushchenko has called on the army and police to join a revolution against the government.

This comes after Yushchenko was symbolically sworn-in by deputies this weekend.

Western election observers have expressed doubts over the vote's credibility.

Viktor Yushchenko is a banker seen as pro-Western. His opposition is the incumbent Mr Yanukovych, who is seen as pro-, a sensitive issue in a former territory of the.

The Daily Telegraph quotes Yushchenko as saying to deputies: "Ukraine is on the threshold of a civil conflict. We have two choices: either the answer will be given by the, or the streets will give an answer."


text:
User:MichelleG~enwikinews

Mainly active on :af, you might also catch me on :en every now and then.

title: User:MichelleG~enwikinews


text:
User:Wpopp~enwikinews

I'm a relative newbie here. All you might want to know you can find on my user pages in Wikimedia Common, and the German, French, and English Wikipedias.

wpopp-commons wpopp-en - wpopp-fr - wpopp-de

title: User:Wpopp~enwikinews


text:
Talk:British-Iraqi careworker Margaret Hassan reportedly killed

What is the source "Spits"? Lyellin 02:25, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Typo
editprotected

'a a' => 'a' Van der Hoorn (talk) 19:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Done — Gopher65talk 01:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


text:
Internal emails expose Boeing-Air Force contract discussions

November 24, 2004 Emails exchanged among officials regarding a USD$23 billion dollar deal with aircraft manufacturer  have been entered into the public record. (-AZ) entered them into the during a speech last week against the now-cancelled deal to lease 100  aircraft from Boeing.

Congressional lawmakers rejected the proposal in October, although industry experts say the deal had been killed by the because of reports stating that the deal had favored Boeing. Senator McCain has been the deal's most vocal critic.

The original negotiations with Boeing were over a. Such contracts are often justified by the speed they offer, eliminating a preliminary bid and selection round that may last months. However, no-bid contracts are only open to the company selected by the procuring agency. This leaves no-bid contracts open to accusations of among the procurement personnel. Such accusations have previously been leveled against Vice President for a no-bid contract to, and are now being made against senior Air Force officials for choosing Boeing to replace its tanker fleet.

In the released emails, Air Force officials responsible for the awarding of contracts appear biased against Boeing's main competitor, and its.

is owned by European Aeronautic Defense & Space Company (EADS). Airbus manufacturers a number of passenger and military aircraft and has gained market share in passenger aircraft over Boeing in recent years. The following is a sequential email exchange regarding Airbus as recorded in the Congressional Record:
 * Special Asst. to the Secretary and Director of Air Force Communications Bill Bodie: "We don't have to turn the other cheek, you know. I'm ready to tell the truth about Airbus's boom, footprint, and financial shortcoming. But maybe we should sleep on it."
 * Secretary of the Air Force James Roche: "No, Sir, save it and blow him away. He admits that they were not technically qualified! And, we keep their record of bribes as our trump card! Jim."
 * Civilian Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Darleen Druyun: "I read with disgust the article on Airbus tankers from the new EADS CEO of North America. What BS . . . should not have been surprised at the slime . . . his day of reckoning will come hopefully."
 * Secretary of the Air Force James Roche: "Oy. I agree. I had hoped you would have stayed and tortured him slowly over the next few years until EADS got rid of him! Jim."

An email from Burkhardt & Associates to James Roche advises the Secretary to release fiscal numbers favorable to Boeing, apparently regardless of the facts: "I'd distribute a one page memo saying the per plane cost of the lease will not be greater than x and have x be less than the last lease Boeing did for some commercial entity--or that x is y dollars less than the cost of a new tanker," it said. An additional email by Roche provides a stark contrast to his criticism of Airbus, as he talks to Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Marvin Sambur about Boeing, saying, "I love Ya, Big Guy. Give it to the Blue Eyed Arabs of the North (the expression we used for Boeing)."

GovExec.com quotes a "Senate aide" as saying: "The House language [of the spending bill] ignores an analysis of alternatives called for in last year's authorizing language and by Pentagon Acquisition Director Michael Wynne and the DSB. It precludes such an analysis and predetermines the outcome in favor of the Boeing 767 before the study is even initiated." The activist organization the Project on Government Oversight has called it "a textbook case of favoritism to a single defense contractor."

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Marvin Sambur defended the Air Force's exclusive consideration of Boeing, saying, "This was not a competitive bid process. The Air Force was ordered by Congress to work with Boeing on the new tanker program."

Boeing had previously hired Civilian Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. This caused a controversy over conflict of interest and led to felony charges against Boeing Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears for illegally hiring her. Former military personnel are often hired by defense contractors to lobby for contracts.

Days after Sen. McCain's remarks, the Air Force said the tanker replacement contract would be revived as an. Deputy Defense Secretary published an open-article in the Congressional Record, saying: "After we have selected an appropriate alternative, we intend to require competition."


text:
Ukraine political crisis

November 25, 2004

Background
In Ukraine, a dead heat in the October 31 election between current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko resulted in a runoff election on November 21. The runoff was plagued with allegations of large-scale voter fraud, particularly in the oblasts (regions) of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine where Yanukovych had the strongest support. Election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) state that the election did not meet international standards and was subject to wide-scale, planned election fraud. On the other hand, some groups of international observers such as British Helsinki Human Rights Group give a quite different picture of massive violations in Western Ukraine, and pro-opposition bias of local media there: BHHRG Report(The report is discredited in this Guardian article ).

The declaration of Yanukovych as the winner of the runoff by the elections commission set into play mass demonstrations and demands for a recount or outright revote from Yuschchenko supporters. The result has been widely criticised by Western media as fraudulent.

 * Ukrainian presidential election, 2004- from our sister project at Wikipedia.

Timeline

 * Sun. Nov. 21: Runoff elections take place.
 * Ukrainian opposition leader calls for police and army to join revolution
 * Thu. Nov. 25: Ukraine election results delayed by court. Protests continue for a fourth day, while Ukraine's highest court delays announcement of the final election results until it can resolve a dispute over the legitimacy of those results. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko praises the court's action. According to The Times of India outgoing President Leonid Kuchma met with pro-Russian officials who had threatened to declare regional autonomy but said after the meeting that any breakup of the Ukraine was unacceptable.
 * Sat. Nov. 27: Ukraine parliament declares election invalid. In a non-binding, symbolic gesture, the Ukrainian parliament votes to declare the election results invalid, as well as passing a vote of no confidence in the elections commission.
 * Tue. Nov. 30 Ukrainian election negotiations break off. Yushchenko broke off from negotiation talk with incumbent Prime Minister Yanukovych stating that the negotiations were one-sided.
 * Ukrainian election negotiations restarted
 * Wed. Dec. 1: Ukraine parliament sacks government. Ukraine's parliament passes a vote of no-confidence in the government of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
 * Fri. Dec. 3: Ukraine Supreme Court orders new election.
 * Sat. Dec. 4: Election reforms fail in Ukraine parliament.
 * Sat. Dec. 11: Ukraine opposition candidate Yushchenko is suffering from a Dioxin intoxication, doctors say. This is reported as being the second highest level of Dioxin ever found in a human.
 * Mon. Dec. 27: Yushchenko claims victory in re-run. Pro-government candidate Yanukovych refuses to accept results.
 * Fri. Dec. 31: Yanukovych declares his resignation from his post as Prime Minister.
 * Sun. Jan. 23, 2005: Yushchenko sworn in as president of Ukraine

Blogs

 * A Fistful of Euros
 * The Periscope - particularly Victor Katolyk's running updates here here and here
 * Postmodern Clog
 * Abdymok
 * Neeka's Backlog
 * SCSU Scholors
 * Europhobia
 * Orange Revolution
 * OrangeUkraine
 * Ukraine_Revolution
 * Foreign Notes
 * Tulip Girl
 *  Ukraine, Russia, Europe, the US, Oh My!
 * Tsymlyakoff's Blog
 * International Support for Ukrainian Democracy
 * Vladimir Ivshin's photos
 * Kyiv, Maidan Nezalezhnosti(Independence Square). Web-cam.
 * Maidan
 * http://hotline.net.ua/eng
 * LJ community dedicated to 2004 elections

Wikipedia

 * Ukraine

title: Ukraine political crisis


text:
User:David Vasquez

To the crew here on Wikinews,

My offers to help track down the source of the daily vandalism on this site have been rebuffed or politely ignored. Combined with the other issues that have limited my participation on Wikinews, I decided to contemplate whether it made sense to continue as a regular contributor.

Here are the components I believe are necessary for a successful citizen journalism site:

 * uses all technical and legal measures necessary to suppress vandalism (all other issues on a site are moot if it is unable to control the appearance of its front-facing pages)
 * How does it look these days?
 * accepts alternative viewpoints, even when they are controversial (NPOV probably prohibits this)
 * See your point on editorials, below. Does this have to affect articles as well?
 * hosts a "fair use" or "editorial use only" image repository (incompatible with "everything must be free"?)
 * Fair use images can now be uploaded here.
 * offers a Chinese language version to get around China's state-controlled media (probably not possible without risking the Chinese Wikipedia)
 * People seem to be coming around to this idea, slowly; see the votes for having a zh: wikinews by the zh community members.
 * We now have zh: Bawolff ☺☻ 06:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * hosts attributed editorials, as well as culture and entertainment reviews, to provide a human face to the site (definitely not possible without violating NPOV)
 * A fine idea, not at odds with the Wikinews concept. Has there been a good editorial column attempt so far?
 * Not yet. NGerda 07:55, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * There's some stuff in userspace. see category:Editorials. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

 * video reporting in all popular video formats (not compatible with the prohibition against using file formats with patents)
 * This may be possible right now in MPEG, since Theora is still tentative, but content that's goig to be kept for a while should probably be reencoded later once Theora is more solid and better-supported.

Most of these goals are at odds with Wikinews (or the Wikimedia Foundation), no two ways about it.
 * Aside from the "accepts alternative, controversial viewpoints" goal [presumably you mean in articles, without attribution], which I think can be addressed by having editorials, all of these goals seem achievable within Wikinews. Just my two cents... but I'm very glad you made these points here.  Sj

It's time for me to find a new home to pursue my particular brand of citizen journalism.
 * Where did you go?? :)

This was not a snap decision. I recognized that I was on the wrong track when my lame attempts at "original reporting" were limited to rehashing the Wendy's chili finger incident to avoid getting entangled in NPOV infighting. Even when I went out into the field for that story, I was still rewriting news stories written by other reporters and not reporting anything truly original.

Wikinews has been a great learning experience, but it's time for me to grow and pursue authentic original reporting that is a bit more serious than my previous efforts.

My hat is off to the regular contributors at Wikinews who have shown their dedication to the goals of this project. Keep up the great work!

To Ilya and Eloquence - you've helped me to learn so much I have a special debt to repay to you. I still plan to develop a simple "map" extension, for earthquakes, fires, explosions, and other breaking events, which I will submit to the MediaWiki developers once I have it working. And I'll keep the WeatherBot running until it can be rewritten as a server-side control, or someone else volunteers to keep it running on their own machine.

To the developers - even though I have decided to move on, my offer still stands to help you catch the vandal who has taken to defacing this site on a daily basis. I volunteer to write letters to service providers, help to get a court subpoena or a warrant, or find the appropriate law enforcement agencies to help Wikinews fight back. To the naysayers who think it's hopeless - I don't care if this criminal is using dial-up, open relays, web cafes, or a laser bouncing off the moon - anyone can be traced if enough of a stink is raised with the owners of every IP address he is using. This vandal is deluding himself if he thinks he can't be traced. Give me a list of those IP addresses and the exact UTC time (to the minute) they were used, and we can get results.

Wikinews will continue to be a great resource for many reasons - my leaving will just be a minor blip now that there are so many contributors. I just don't fit in here, so it's time for me to go.

Thanks for all the news! Regards, David Vasquez San Jose, California May 7, 2005 P.S.: Here are some links to articles about Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, brainstorming with former San Jose Mercury writer Dan Gillmor, founder of Grassroots Media Inc, about their take on the citizen journalism movement:

It doesn't look like Craigslist or Grassroots Media is ready to launch a citizen journalism site this week, but these quotes from the article made me think:

"...(Newmark) believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying - merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an 'open source' model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists."

"People are looking for attitude and guts in reporting - not full-on gonzo journalism, but hey, tell us what you think," said Newmark.

P.P.S.: Alan - your check is on the way!

title: User:David Vasquez


text:
User talk:David Vasquez

I am no longer a regular contributor on Wikinews. Please read my user page for details.

If you want to contact me, please feel free to click the "E-mail this user" link in the "toolbox" menu to send me a note. — DV 03:52, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Serbian Wikinews
Can you add serbian wikinews to your Weatherbot, template is sr:Template:CurWeatherMapImage. Thank you.

Have a great summer...
I hope you find another community journalism site that suits your tastes, and that you come back and visit Wikinews again once many of your objections have been addressed. It was great having you around. Sj 07:40, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Nice to see you around
I never had a chance to talk to you, but I heard a lot of nice things about you. Please note the changes that have taken place since you left. Today I even proposed Wikinews Editorials. Hopefully I'll be able to chat with you, as you seem like a very interesting person. Oh, and I live in California too. NGerda July 8, 2005 07:34 (UTC)

WeatherBot
Hi David. Are you still running Commons:User:WeatherBot? It is in danger of being blocked. See Village pump. Dbenbenn 14:32, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I commented on the "vote" page with more details, but the most practical idea I could come up with on short notice is to start uploading the weather map images to the Wikinews wikis. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, each wiki has its own image repository, so each wiki would need to have its own redundant copies of the weather map image. (Someone please jump in and correct me if I am wrong on that count.)

 * If the Commons folks are so annoyed by the weather map images that they must be stopped at all costs, then perhaps the Wikinews community needs to decide if it wants to have the weather map images redundantly uploaded to each language version of Wikinews (that is, the ones that use the weather maps), or if the preference would be to shut down WeatherChecker for now, until such time that a more permanent, server-side implementation can be developed. (A project that I am presently ill-equipped to undertake, due to a lack of knowledge about how to implement server-side wiki extensions.)

 * If each Wikinews wiki really does have its own image repository, perhaps another Wikinews image wiki could be set up that is shared between the various language versions? (Ideally, the map would be localized for each language, but that isn't practical until it is generated on-the-fly instead of uploaded as a static image.)

 * Perhaps Ilya will have more to say on this subject. — DV 07:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Japanese wikinews
Thank you for adding Weatherbot on Japanese Wikinews. Could you add a region around Japan such as East Asia?--っ 00:05, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews Logo
Hey David Vasquez ... I was looking at the Wikinews logo and once again thinking about it, "That is a really slick logo." So, I decided to find out who made it and thank them for it --- so, thank you! It is very well designed, simple enough, and very professional looking. Good work! --Fotinakis 21:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Script grur asking script gurus help
Hi! I am a contributer in en I have a working mIRC script detecting vandalism. I am trying to code something that will adjust the defcon meter depending on the level of vandalism. The "minor" problem is that I know knothing in coding wikibots. I need a way to adjust template:wdefcon --Cool Cat 01:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure what is the best way to approach the issue so I am open to all sorths of ideas. --Cool Cat 01:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

WeatherBot for Serbian
I see that WetherBot on sr: doesn't upload images with temperature even in Belgrade. It would be useful to have ;) Is it possible to make so? A lot of cities from Serbia can be found using network services. (I.e., I can choose a lot of cities and locations from Evolution mail client.) Do you need some help from my side to implement that (I can program in Perl or Python if you need such kind of help)? --millosh (talk (sr:)) 14:45, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I sent a reply to Millosh by e-mail, asking for the name or code of a nearby airport. — DV 01:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Hiya DV!
(as one self-exile to another, of course) - 24.85.70.132 01:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

(oops - Amgine, not logged in, of course.)

Weather Maps also in Wikipedia
Hi David. Cool service - i was first wondering about all these thousands of images on wikicommons, but it's a cool thing you've created. Do you know if there's a way in linking these temples into the wikipedia? As i've figured out you've created templates like these here:
 * English WikiNews
 * German WikiNews

I've created a template on the German Wikipedia
 * German Wikipedia

But you need a bot to update them. And i've not really a clue how that works :). Can you add the different template-locations to your bot somehow and tell him where to update, or do you need to create a bot on every single langauge or project-site?

Hey Buddy; get your ass back here
You are needed and you can't say no; even if the Pope is anti-Mason :) Neutralizer 01:28, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

video
Hey dv,

I would be happy to try and get the wnn project up and going again - I am good with graphics and can work with green screen - we should try to get the project going with a daily update - not a constant or regular (hourly) feed

--Symode09 03:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know if he still checks this page [see his userpage]. I do have his email if you want me to forward something to him. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Weather weather, all together, what's it going to be
David, in the hope that you still periodically check this page (you've disabled email) I'll ask about how you were running WeatherChecker. I have it up and running for the European region but lack a tool to auto-upload the images. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

the greenscreen
hey, could you possibly pop me a copy of the image for the newsroom you useD? 66.30.237.244 00:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Logo for Czech Wikinews
Hello. I saw your logos for Wikinews. It is great work. Can you create logo for czech wikinews please? It is called Wikizprávy.Thank you for answer. --Orange.man 14:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Copyright Assignment for Wikinews Logo
Hi David Vasquez,

As you may have seen, we have started a process to change the copyright status of the Wikimedia logos to CC BY-SA 3.0 on Commons: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070632.html

In my review of the history of the Wikimedia logos, I found that you helped design the Wikinews logo. Thank you so much for your work on the logo!

I was hoping that you would be willing to grant the Wikimedia Foundation an exclusive license for the Wikinews logo (using the attached copyright assignment agreement) so that I can change their copyright status on Commons to CC BY-SA 3.0. While it would be great if you could fill in your real name and address in the agreement for our records, we will edit out all that information if we ever post the agreement on wiki to preserve your pseudonymity.

Please send me an email through my User Page or to jjung@wikimedia.org so that we can get started, and please let me know if you have any questions about this.

Thanks,

Joseph Jung | Wikimedia Foundation | 149 New Montgomery Street, 3rd Floor | San Francisco, CA 94105 | jjung@wikimedia.org

 * David hasn't been active on Wikinews for over eight years, Wikipedia for over seven years. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Bot flag remotion on it.wikinews
Hi, if you don't confirm your will to operate on it.wikinews with your bot within two weeks, your flag will be revoked. Thanks for your work on it.wikinews.--Ferdi2005 (talk) 21:11, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

title: User talk:David Vasquez


text:
Talk:Internal emails expose Boeing-Air Force contract discussions

There were inconsistent references to both the "Congressional Record" and the "Congressional Review". I changed all the references to "Congressional Record", as that is the actual name of the publication in the external links. --DV 16:29, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)


text:
Talk:Digest

Proposed voting method for determining what articles are informative/fair/etc. enough to be on a weekly Digest of articles, a rough example of which is here.

16,000 protest School of the Americas

 * 22 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Dan Rather resigns as anchor, to stay on as correspondent

 * 22 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Ukrainian opposition leader calls for police and army to join revolution

 * 24 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Internal emails expose Boeing-Air Force contract discussions

 * 24 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Australia in a good position after first day of Adelaide test match

 * 26 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Record computer outage at UK government department

 * 27 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Indonesian police arrest four suspects wanted over Australian Embassy bombing

 * 24 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

170 workers trapped in Chinese mine after explosion

 * 28 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

Researchers discover high temperature enables more efficient hydrogen generation

 * 28 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

American teenage girl charged with murder of her own mother

 * 29 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

World's Largest Ball of Twine Turns 50

 * 29 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

USL v. BSDi settlement agreement unsealed

 * 28 November

Approve:

Dissapprove:

Comments:

comments on voting
Do we need to have a vote onwhich to include if we "Publish" articles? If we use a review process of any kind, could that just take the place of this vote? That at least, is how I see it. Lyellin 00:42, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * If an article was under review for four or eight hours and was "published" by the author, I wouldn't really have confidence in it through that alone. I tend towards having some kind of separate weeding for a Digest, though what I don't know. --119 02:14, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I feel like having affirmative opinions at talk that "this article is ready" is a better way to assure the reviewed articles are really reviewed.
 * Also, when I think about potential bias in selection of stories on the weekly, it might be good to vote for a set of articles, not individual ones. At this stage, though, this is not that important because the pool of the articles from which we can choose is not that big. Tomos 07:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, if voting as it is now is worth a shot, let's try it out. I don't want to vote first because I'm all over this Digest format. --119 07:21, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nobody's voting on what should and shouldn't be in, so I'll just put up a complete list of articles for the sake of being able to find them later. --119 22:43, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Digest


text:
Ukraine election results delayed by court

Ukraine's has banned publication of  due to possible. As the court announced its decision Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko spoke to thousands of his supporters telling them that "This was only the beginning".

According to , the Ukrainian Supreme Court will resume its investigation of this issue on Monday. While the decision was being made, reports were released stating that the foreign policy chief for the European Union,, will visit the country in order to meet with the central figures in this crisis.


text: Category:MST in Brazil

title: Category:MST in Brazil


text:
User talk:Mxn

Photo placement on main page
Mxn, I appreciate your striving for consistency with Wikipedia for image placement, but the change you made, to right float the main page image instead of letting it stand alone with a break, is causing the text to be extremely narrow if the user's window is around the standard sizes of 800 to 1024 pixels wide.

Please try resizing your window to one of those sizes (if you are on Windows, you can use the Display control panel to set your monitor resolution as a guide) and let me know if you would be agreeable to going back to the previous image placement style, or if you have a better idea to solve this image placement issue.

One other alternative would be to use a style that at least allowed the text to wrap to the full paragraph width once the text reached the bottom edge of the image, but I don't see any examples of this in the Picture tutorial.

Thanks.

--DV 02:41, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * See User talk:David Vasquez

 * Thanks a lot for taking a look at the image placement again. By the way, is there a way to standardize any of this with a style sheet so authors don't need to remember how to keep the formatting? --DV 08:08, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * See User talk:David Vasquez

title: User talk:Mxn


text:
User:Sj

de:Benutzer:Sjes:Usuario:Sjfr:Utilisateur:Sj&zh:User:Sjhe:%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%9E%D7%A9:Sjar:User:Sjsimple:User:Sjnl:Gebruiker:Sj sw:User:Sjnah:User:Sjpl:Wikipedysta:Sj

About
 * Beauty
 * Output
 * EnMe | MetaMe | wikt | wb

 Board platform · Questions · Suggestions · Experience · On the Projects · Support future elections

About
I am an active Wikipedian, Global Voices reader, and news junkie. I started the "press corps" on meta before Wikinews had taken form. I'm mainly interested in underemphasized international stories, initiatives like the local in-country news depots, and reporting on technology and innovation (particularly social networks and massively-parallel collaboration; but there's too little of that these days).

Activity: meta|wikimania!|translation > wp > wn > wb > wikt Contact: See meta.sj and Sj for meta- and wikipedia content, respectively. See also User:Samuel Klein. Projects: Daily throughput. Please help me process and classify these stubs. Paused for a while for classification. Recent work: E3 reports and images | Boston T turnstile upgrade (if I can find that elusive camera...)

Beauty

 * Wikinews turns five
 * ~Everyone talks of the weather... noone does a thing about it...~
 * Spring 2005 Design contest

Past

 * EmTech, MIT | EmVent, Boston. Annual MassTLC Meeting
 * meetups near Boston : Boston | New York

Contributions
to come
 * Writing_contest/chart
 * Daily throughput
 * raw list

Events attended as a Wikimedian

 * Harvard University commencement 2004 (pp,WP | 1 blurb, 2 US-celeb photos)
 * Accelerating Change 2004 (WP | 3 tech-fan photos)
 * ILS 2004 (WP | law-fan photos)
 * Signal to Noise 2005 (Signal to Noise) (pp,WN)
 * SLA 2005 conference (WP | bio/org updates)
 * MIT Tech Review Emerging Technologies Conference (TRETC 2005) (pp,WN, 2+ stories, news photos)
 * Dow Jones Emerging Ventures conference, 2005 (upcoming) (pp,WN)

Interviews

 * Ward Cunningham (Wikimedia Quarto #1, September 2004)
 * Larry Lessig (Quarto #2, January 2005)
 * Brad Fitzpatrick (unpublished; all but hasty notes lost to hard drive failure)
 * Jimmy Wales on the history of Wikipedia (unpublished; for the Quarto retrospective to be polished up this year)
 * Upcoming, not yet scheduled; to coordinate with breaking news : Negroponte (via email); DOW Jones startup VP

title: User:Sj


text:
User talk:Sj

Leave news-related content here! Other comments may be more regularly read on my meta talk page. Email is now enabled; you can mail me directly via the sidebar.

Other mes: 140.247.242.224, var IPs when roaming. | Archives: through summer 2005

Pope
NB: Im giving this message to the 10 or so people I suspect may be on Wikinews when the event occurs.

I've created a story announcing the Popes death - when the Vatican or BBC/Reuters announce he is actually dead please insert the date & time and publish - we will be the 1st news group to break this story (besides our source)! The story is located here User:CGorman/Sandbox. Whilst waiting please improve the story. → CGorman (Talk)  22:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WikimediaMention
The template has been used in other articles and has generally appeared at the top of the article. I personally feel that disclosure is just as important for Wikinews as for any other news outlet -- perhaps more so. The template I referenced above appears to be the "standard" template and based on my observations, it generally appears at the top. It's certainly "no big deal" -- I was just attempting to follow existing convention. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I was just going by what I've seen in other pubs... We're welcome to create new standards here, particularly for openness and disclosure!  Sj

Accreditation
Sorry this has taken so long, to receive Wikinews credentials I need your Location, Areas of coverage and whatever Contact information you want published --Cspurrier 01:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Gotcha :) Leaving them on your talk... Sj 01:47, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
 * You are now an accredited Wikinews user :). Most user do not include a phone number, just e-mail and IM. --Cspurrier 05:18, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Sj 22:00, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Currently active articles
Too many WMF articles:
 * Wikipedia suffers outage
 * The Independent questions Wikipedia's accuracy

One edit war
 * Dick Cheney shoots man in hunting accident

Yet another pot article (we have 3 or 4 which are recent)
 * Australian PM links cannabis use to mental illness
 * Melbourne police raid hydroponic cannabis growers

Excellent news brief
 * First of the Bali nine sentenced

re Wikinews print, and mania
I plan to attend, but I have a few more things I have to work out before I can be 100%. What sort of thing would you like to do about print edition?--Cspurrier 01:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the slow reply, I will definitely be attending Wikimania. If it is not to late, I will be glad to do something on the Wikinews print editon. --Cspurrier 20:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * sorry likewise that the daily newslet didn't work out quite as planned. The first day's work was interesting, and shared digitally at least; but the layout didn't get done.  I hope that wikinews can field a real delegation next year, with a distributed layout team, and an audio/video mixing team for live podcasts and videocasts.  Now *that* would be something noone's ever done well.  Sj 09:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Accreditation Expiration
Greetings, I wanted to let you know that our policy regarding accreditation has recently changed slightly. Specifically we've enacted an automatic expiration of accreditation after 2 years. You can very easily "re-up" your accreditation should you choose to, but at this point in time you're on the Inactive list. As such your accreditation will automatically be revoked on March 15th unless you request otherwise. Currently, posting to the following thread will keep your accreditation. At a later date, all Accredited reporters will be put in for that "re-up", at which time you'll be notified. Thank you, and should you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 20:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:Sj


text:
Talk:Ukrainian opposition leader calls for police and army to join revolution

See Ukrainian uprising sources for more.


text:
User talk:Lankiveil

Weather
Lankiveil,

Thanks for updating the Weather section to have a more international perspective.

As for keeping it updated in the future, I currently receive Zhong Tian, BBC and The Weather Channel, but only the Weather Channel is continuously updated. May I inquire as to what source you used for your updated weather report?

Perhaps we could share the work of keeping that section up-to-date, if your source is available online.

Weather news coverage is one of those mundane, everyday things that everyone takes for granted, it's kind of expected of a full-featured news site. Wikinews will be much more credible with weather reports.

In the long term, I'm going to investigate scraping some online source to get raw weather reporting data automatically, which we can then wrap with our own wording via a PHP script to make original weather reports.

But for the short term, I don't mind sharing the effort to take a minute or two a day to write a quick report.

Regards,

--DV 08:20, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * G'Day,

 * I used the BBC World Weather continent pages to grab that weather info. For example, the one at:

 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/australasia/

 * I sort of just flicked through them. I think that perhaps a daily update, with one "point" for each continent is a good thing to have.  Unfortunately, BBC World's information is given graphically, so it will be difficult to program a script to render it into text.  I've had a look around for other, similar sites, which give a continent-by-continent breakdown, and there don't seem to be any others.

 * So, in the short-term, I guess it'll have to be done by hand. I've got a few ideas for ways we could possibly get regional breakdowns by scraping city weather forecasts, but they're quite lengthy, and quite boring too ;-)

 * Lankiveil 11:44, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Admin status
Hello Lankiveil,

I've made you an administrator. You know the drill - please only delete or protect pages in accordance with community guidelines, only ban users in cases of clear vandalism, etc. Have fun!--Eloquence 09:18, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bureaus
Not at all Lankiveil! I keep on meaning to do more work, but the holidays and family have intruded on my wikitime ;). I'd really be thankful if we can do some discussion as well- what else does it need, how can we manage them all, where to put links to them, that kinda thing. Lyellin 18:01, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews:Speedy Deletion Proposal
It appears Policies and guidelines/Deletion guidelines/Speedy deletion was accidentally blanked out. -- Davodd | Talk 08:32, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tsunami Blog In The Media
Hi. I'm trying to get a concensus as to Tsunami Help/Tsunami Blog In The Media. And I thought I would ask your opinion as well on Deletion requests.

There is a related discussion on Talk:Tsunami_Help.

Thank you in advance for your attention. :-) Tomos 08:24, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More ideas on main page layout
Please see Main_Page/Sandbox3 and Main_Page/WideSandbox3. They're a pair that link to each other via the monitor icons at the top of the navigation bar. Ilya has started a discussion on the wide version's talk page. — DV 08:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Lankiveil, as a note to you in your role as Admin, both of the Sandbox3 pages show an example of a more compact version of the site banner. I am hoping you or one of the other Admins will consider using this new version on the MediaWiki page which hosts this notice, as the current version uses more space than is necessary at the top of every page.

 * For your convenience I have placed the proposed changes in a template called "SitenoticeSandbox", which expands out to the following appearance:

Feedback/chat: Water cooler - Wikinews mailing list - #wikinews on irc.freenode.net - Site news

 * It's a small thing, but the couple of lines of space saved by this new design make a difference.

 * Regards,

 * — DV 14:40, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

WN:WBDU
G'day mate, I noticed your conversation with Lyellin re:WikiBureaus, and decided to be bold and make an aussie one myself at WN:WBDU. Please come and have a look, and invite any other aussie you might know to come join in aswell. The bellman 03:50, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That time of the year again
This is a form letter that I am putting on the talk page of every admin: As you may know, we are approaching April 1. In many cultures, this is a time for pranksters to pull April Fools jokes on others. Because of the ease of editing, wiki projects tend to fall prey to these types of pranks rather easily. Let this be a reminder to us all to keep a special lookout for hoaxes, rampant fiction and other random acts of content vandalism between now and April 2. Good luck, and hopefully not too much damage will be done. -- Davodd | Talk 07:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Signature/Journowiki
Journowiki is a testbed wiki, designed to give high school journalism students and instructors a place to produce news portals for classes or school papers. It's similar in some respects to Wikinews, because I think Wikinews is the best model in general. However, it isn't open for business quite yet, and we won't be interested in recruiting contributors because it's there to support students, not to produce comprehensive news coverage.

While I have curtailed my involvement on Wikinews by a considerable degree, compared to my usual, even that level of involvement is rather a large number of daily edits on average. I feel it's inappropriate to suggest someone should give up their adminship if they are consistently active as an admin and are an asset to the site. -  Amgine | talk 03:58, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

 * You might want to consider that I am active on many different wikis and sites; I'm hoping to return to an even more moderate involvement on Wikinews, while still being available as an admin and resource. I believe people will prefer to have a relatively speedy response by leaving me messages where I will be most active, rather than a longer delay waiting for me to respond to notes left on Wikinews. (This is why many WN contributors redirect their user pages and their signatures to other WMF projects or, like mine, to external sites.)

 * Also, Journowiki is not competitive with Wikinews. Quite the opposite. Due to compatible licensure, Wikinews can (and has) carried articles originally created on Journowiki, and the opposite is equally possible. Journowiki is not interested in carrying the same kind of content, but instead is focused on being an education site. I prefer to think of them as complimentary, but they needn't be at all related. Koolaid is a beverage, but it isn't really in competition with beer or tea. -  Amgine | talk 04:34, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Rfda
This is a message to inform you that I have added every administrator to the Rfda section on WN:A. This is not personal and I feel as if the community, who did not have the option of voting for or against most of the administrators, should be able to choose who they want to be in charge. I also want to say that I value everyones work on this site and I know that everyone does their best. I hope that none of you will take this personally and I hope that all of us will continue to work together. Jason Safoutin 12:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

New Policy has users up in smoke
Hello. I am not sure if you check this page anymore, but I thought you might be interested as to what is going on here at Wikinews: Image use policy/New wikimedia policy action plan. I am outraged as well as others...do you have an opinion? DragonFire1024 09:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikinews Editorials
Hello. You asked to be included on the discussion about Wikinews Editorials. I have begun such discussion here: Please feel free to comment. --David Shankbone - (talk) 16:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

re Quick Currency Question
Australian dollar - Symbol: $, A$ or AU$. Cirt (talk) 08:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay. Cirt (talk) 18:07, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

You have been put up for desysoping due to inactivity
Hi Lankiveil, just as a heads-up, you have been put up for deadminship based on your recent inactivity. If you wish to comment on this, please leave a message here. Thanks, Tempodivalse [talk]  01:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

privs
'''Note! Your privileges on English Wikinews have been reduced.'''
 * Under the Privilege expiry policy (enacted October 13, 2012) the rights held by your user account have been reduced due to inactivity, or lack of privilege use.

 * The privilege reduction is in no way intended as a reflection on your past work, or to imply you are unwelcome. The aim in curtailing privileges is to address security risks, and concern that a long period of inactivity means you may not be up-to-date with current policy and practices.

--Pi zero (talk) 00:45, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:Lankiveil


text:
User talk:119~enwikinews

I added a reply to your concerns about misleading file imagery and "infotainment" on the discussion for the Main Page.

I think we share the same goals, so I hope you'll hear me out. --DV 10:44, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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 119. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name 119~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 23:11, 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) 06:27, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:119~enwikinews


text:
Australia in a good position after first day of Adelaide test match

At stumps on day one, Australia has opened a commanding lead in the second cricket test against New Zealand.

The laughter started soon after Australian captain Ricky Ponting won the toss and elected to bat on the hard, dry pitch. Openers Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden got off to a flying start, achieving 0/19 off the first two overs. Hayden was later caught and bowled by Paul Wiseman for 70. Although Hayden was clearly out, he refused to walk, insisting after the incident with Craig McMillan in the previous test, that the field umpires called for the video replay, which quickly ruled that he was out.

Ponting then came out to replace Hayden, and quickly took a fancy to the New Zealand bowlers. He eventually misjudged a spin delivery from Daniel Vettori and was stumped for 68. Damien Martyn briefly stepped in, but was cheaply dismissed for 7, only to be replaced by Darren Lehmann, who is not out on 28.

The best performance of the innings though, came from Justin Langer, who is currently not out on 144. Australia, at the time of writing, are 3/327, putting themselves into a commanding position for the second day's play.

Australia has already won the series with their previous victory in Brisbane, and this test is widely regarded merely as batting practice for Stephen Fleming's New Zealand side. Key bowler James Franklin is returning from injury in this game, but has had a poor start, with figures of 0/84 off of 14 overs.


text:
User:MilesTeg

wikipedia:de:Benutzer:MilesTeg

title: User:MilesTeg


text:
170 workers trapped in Chinese mine after explosion

Around 170 workers were trapped in the Chinese Chenjiashan mine, early Sunday morning, November 28th, the BBC reports.

Chinese state officials said that 123 workers managed to escape the facilities. Many of those who escaped the mines are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Since the accident, there has been no contact with the 170 workers trapped inside, although the initial number of 183 people still in the complex was revised downwards.

China has had a long history of mining accidents —its mines are known as being among the most dangerous in the world. Last month, more than 150 people died after a gas explosion in a mine in the Henan province. The official tally of 4,153 mine fatalities during the first nine months of this year is actually a 13% improvement over the same period last year, which had a total of 6,246 mine worker deaths —4,620 of them coal mines. 5,203 deaths occurred among workers in other China industries.


text:
Talk:170 workers trapped in Chinese mine after explosion

How does one rename this article so that the misspelling in the title "170_worked_trapped_in_Chinese_mine_after_explosion" is fixed? "worked trapped" should be "workers trapped".

Thanks.

--DV 03:52, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks to Foeke for fixing it. --DV 04:03, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It seems ok
I think the article is ok. Carlosar 02:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text:
Ruling party ahead in Romanian elections

Romania's ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) has emerged ahead in yesterday's legislative and presidential elections. The voter turnout was around 57% of all eligible voters, which number 18 million people in a country of 21.7 million.

However the PSD did not gain the vote majority needed to declare an outright victory, and it will now proceed to a run-off election against the centre-left opposition. Called the Truth and Justice Alliance, the main opposition is a union of candidates from the National Liberal Party and the Democrat Party.

While PSD+PUR is currently leading, the most hotly-contested election in Romania's post-Communist history may come down to the run-off, to be held on December 12. The winning presidential candidate of the run-off will not only become the country's president but will also appoint a prime minister to lead the government.

In the presidential election, Adrian Năstase, the PSD's presidential candidate, won approximately 42% of the vote, while Traian Băsescu of Truth and Justice obtained around 35%, according to exit polls.

Năstase led the exit polls due to greater support in rural Romania, as well as support from the urban poor, due to his policy of boosting the economy. Năstase's PSD+PUR coalition was also supported because they are credited with saving Romania from economic collapse during their presidential and legislative term from 2000 until the present time. During his term of prime-minister of Romania, from 2000 to 2004, Năstase not only boosted the economy but ensured that Romania entered NATO and progressed towards its accession to the European Union, expected to occur in 2007. In 2004, the economy is expected to grow by 8.6%, the highest rate in Europe.

Băsescu won a majority in Bucharest, Romania's capital, as well as in the wealthier cities of Transylvania. Băsescu is supported by the educated middle-class, who take a favourable view upon his policy of stamping out corruption in one of the region's most corrupt countries. Băsescu has also received a boost due to his liberalist policies and his proposal for tax reform and the introduction of a flat tax.

In the legislative election, the PSD+PUR coalition obtained 40% of the vote, while the Truth and Justice alliance trailed with 35%. Because the PSD+PUR coalition did not gather the majority of the votes (50%+1), it will have to form a governing coalition with the minor parties, a process which is expected to be tedious given the fact that both of the major parties have ruled out entering into a coalition with ultra-nationalist The Greater Romania Party, which obtained around 12% of the vote.


text:
Talk:Ruling party ahead in Romanian elections

See Review guidelines.

Comments
Add your comments below.

Article looks very good; well-written and appears to be correct. -- IlyaHaykinson 08:08, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text:
Researchers discover high temperature enables more efficient hydrogen generation

November 28, 2004

A more efficient way to produce useable hydrogen has been demonstrated by researchers. It uses very high-temperature electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water, so that hydrogen may be used for energy production.

Electrolysis is one method by which laboratories and factories produce hydrogen. An electrical current is passed through water, breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which are then collected above the water reservoir.

Researchers in Salt Lake City, Utah, at Ceramtech Incorporated, in collaboration with workers at The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory report that when water is superheated to 800 degrees Celsius, far less electricity is required to produce the same volume of hydrogen. The researchers envision that future nuclear fission plants could be used both to heat the water as part of their cooling system, and generate the needed electricity.

Concerns have been raised regarding the safety of such arrangements, however. Jeremy Desterhoft, an independent consultant on nuclear energy safety, warns the "elevated levels of radiation required to sufficiently lower the atomic separation point is beyond the current capabilities of any recent cooler." He does not believe that economically viable cooling technology will be available for at least four to six more years.