text:
Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/Archive/11

= Proposals = See also the archives.

Get rid of Country of the Week
I am not suggesting we get rid of the concept, however, we should get rid of the page. The whole voting section is completely inactive, and what would be kept can easily be merged into Article distribution. Who agrees to getting rid of the voting nonsense, keeping the information, merging the information into the Article Distribution page, and then linking to that page under the "Featured Country" section on the front page? —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 20:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I've noticed the country of the week page numerous times, but its always been someone else's problem. Perhaps change from voting to nominating and looking for objections and alternative proposals might be better.  I'm thinking on the grounds that there may be upcoming events that involve the proposed country.  I don't see there being any problem with a country being listed every three months or so to build up the article count, and if we build up the number of contributors I don't see why a first world country couldn't be listed. Brian McNeil / talk 22:05, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * A long time ago it was very active. Maybe it just needs more advertising. but then again its got a front page spot, so I'm not sre what else we can do. I like the nominating idea. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, how about we let people nominate featured countries on the talk page of Article distribution, and then randomly feature them unless there's outstanding opposition to having them as featured? Once a country is the featured country, it will be mentioned as so like how it is now on the Country of the Week page. I think featuring a country is a great idea, but the Country of the Week page is just excessive. —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 04:20, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

NGO Briefs
We should have "NGO Briefs" too, although maybe only monthly. It would give a good way to post information about all the various thinktanks & such which publish reports, but which are hard to make NPOV in individual stories. If its done monthly, it gives us more time to make it NPOV too, as it'll sit around as evergreen for a while. Nyarlathotep 23:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * What's NGO? —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 04:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Non-governmental organization. In the USA primarily known as "non-profits". NGOs are the primary source of health care and more in many countries. -  Amgine | talk 04:40, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * A brief on non-profit organizations? Isn't that a bit specific? —M ESSED R OCKER (talk) 04:48, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, think about it another way... we have a brief on nothing but for-profit organizations? I think it would be a great idea Nyarlathotep, but only if someone is willing to focus on that kind of news. Wikinews content is here because someone feels like writing it; nobody assigns stories. -  Amgine | talk 04:58, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better to create a calendar. Many NGO's and GO's do not output monthly reports or output them on an unusual timeframe.  What if we had a calendar where, at minimal, a contributor could look and see if any NGO or GO had a relevant report released recently.  --Sfullenwider 09:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * How would that work? You mean like a template for articles?
 * Basically just a page for each month listing the expected release dates of reports. This brings the NGO's into a monthly context instead of a "healthcare related NGO" or "Government Watchdog NGO" context.  This is to organize the creation of the monthly NGO catchall.  --Sfullenwider 03:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Include category and description in RSS feeds
It's nice having the RSS feeds, but unfortunately the descriptions are just copies of the title... It would greatly improve the RSS feed usability if it included the first 2-3 sentences from the article, or a short summary like the ones that appear on the lead stories.

Also, for articles are tagged with categories, it would probably be very useful to have this info available within the RSS items as well. Then aggregators would be able to sort out the news they want to carry, and/or put them into the appropriate categories on their sites. --BryceHarrington 11, December 2005

Wikinews will have a disaster on its hands unless it comes up with a new method of archiving
Imagine you go to write an article called "British Labour Party sweeps elections" but you can't, it's already been taken. No problem, you say, you can just reword it to "British Labour Party wins elections in a sweep." You see the point. In news articles, unlike encyclopedia entries, overlap is INEVITABLE. See the big picture. It's not going to be a problem now. but what if Wikinews is around 5 years, 10 years, or longer? It's going to happen. We'll get to the point where we constantly have to rename articles. It will become a hassle. Fixing it is as simple as having articles go to /wiki/December2005/ and etc. If you don't fix the problem now, think about all the trouble that will be caused when you fix it down the line. Everyone who has linked to articles will have them lost (i use wikinews links in wikipedia articles often as possible). Don't put this off. --MateoP 22:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Over the year of Wikinews, we haven't had that many name collisions — even though at first people were saying that they'd be happening quickly. If you come up with a good title, it's likely to not be a duplicate; if it is, chances are it's not really news. Some things are cyclical, like elections or deaths of US troops in Iraq — those maybe would then need dates in the title. -- IlyaHaykinson 06:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Quoting from above "we haven't had that many name collisions". So we've had some?  In just a year of operation.  So what happens if Wikinews is around for another 20 years, don't you think this probably might exponentially grow?  --MateoP 15:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Your example would be corrected to "British Labour Party sweeps 20xx elections" before it was even published. People are mindful of what you see as a potential problem, and I don't believe we need to make things ugly and complicated to avoid title duplication. Brian McNeil / talk 08:52, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not following how it would be ugly and/or complicated to put dates in the address. It would probably take 5 minutes to code out having the date appear in the actual title that's shown.  It's just for archiving purposes.  This isn't like wikipedia were the "The Holocaust" article will always refer to the same thing.  Titles get duplicated in news.  I've had to avoid duplicating my own articles and I've only been here for 1 day.  --MateoP 15:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * That would make article titles look ugly. Unforgettableid 08:35, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Can you point out where you had duplicate article title issues? As to "5 minutes to code out", I know nothing of PHP, so I can't help you with that. Brian McNeil / talk 17:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I think you underestimate the amount of work required to code what you're suggesting, in the MediaWiki platform. However, the platform is open source and you're welcome to try: I am definitely not against it at all, and I doubt anyone else would be! That said, a headline that isn't unique is problematic anyways.  I imagine once we start running into conflicts on a regular basis, we'll have to address the problem. -- IlyaHaykinson 17:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I have submitted a MediaWiki patch in the past. MediaWiki is a large, complicated piece of software and it would not take "5 minutes" to code. Not to mention that new features sometimes introduce new bugs. Unforgettableid 08:35, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Duplicates are likely if your title is not informative. Something like "Earthquake in Pakistan" may duplicate an existing article, but then, changing the title is the right thing to do anyway. I don't see where you get the idea that links will break at any point. We will never break links to published stories.--Eloquence 06:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Duplicates are inevitable in the long term as the english language is limited. There are not an infinite number of synonyms for any word.  People here are looking in the very short term.  If wikinews is around for 20 years then this will be a major problem at some point.  --MateoP 21:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Briefs - if we write them, they will come
I like the Business Briefs... I have but one question... why put them all in one article? We aren't limited in the number of articles we can create, and I reckon that the more headlines we have, the better. I'd like to see us start writing articles of one paragraph in length, and two sources, and tag them with a message that says "This is a news brief. You are welcome to expand it". If they don't get expanded, then they are just archived as part of the normal process, rather than being declared abandoned and deleted. One of the strengths of Wikipedia are stubs. They get people to the site, and suck them in to contributing. In my opinion, we should be doing the same. If we write many briefs/stubs, they will come. - Borofkin 23:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * That actually sounds like a good idea. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Article_stage_tags. I suppose what I am proposing is to create a new Article stage called "brief" (or something else - any suggestions?). This is not a stage where an article is considered incomplete, the way that a "stub" is currently. Actually, does anyone use the "stub" tag? We chould change it so it says "This Wikinews article is a stub. You are welcome to edit and expand it". - Borofkin 23:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * There is absolutely nothing wrong with a short article -- briefs are handy, though, for grouping really small articles... If a brief is longer than 3 or 4 sentences, it should become an article, I think. --Chiacomo (talk) 23:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * How do you think an article that is only going to be 3 or 4 setences should be tagged? At the moment they are tagged as incomplete/abandoned and deleted. I need a tag which says "the article is supposed to be this short, so please don't delete. However, you are welcome to expand it." - Borofkin 23:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

For short business related articles, at least, I think briefs are a good idea. The tag could be used, as could. Please feel free to edit either template to suit your proposed purpose. I rather like the expand option. How about something like: ''This article is currently a brief! Feel free to expand this article!'' with "Expand" opening the page for editing? --Chiacomo (talk) 23:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I like. I like. - Borofkin 00:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I have edited Template:Expand -- see what you think. This will add the message and include the article in the Stub category. --Chiacomo (talk) 00:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I like it. I might set myself to writing a couple. - Borofkin 00:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I think this might intergrate well into User:Zocky/News_digest Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 04:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

"Local only" on main page - briefs, briefs, everywhere
It appears that there is currently no method of excluding a published article from the main page. Is this right? The reason I ask is that I'm about to start encouraging Aussie contributors to write large numbers of very short articles, using Template:expand, and thought that many would not be suitable for the main page. I also want to avoid international contributors renaming the articles to include the word "Australia", or changing "NSW" to "New South Wales". Any suggestions? - Borofkin 00:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * At this point in our development, I think all published articles should show up on the main page. Local or not. As article submission increases, it will be appropriate to segregate "local only" news, but I don't think we're there yet. --Chiacomo (talk) 00:15, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * See template:specialPublish and template:SpecialDevelop and Category:Local only. Not sure on what policy is to use these. I don't see a problem with them(the article) appearing on the main page. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:19, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know about those. SpecialPublish is used by the Quakers... if I was going to go in that direction I would create something like "australia-publish". As for "Local only", it's only useful if articles in that category are excluded from the main page, which they currently aren't. Anyway, Chiacomo is right, if it becomes a problem then we'll deal with it then. - Borofkin 00:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Category Sorting
it would be mighty nice to have a way of sorting pages with in a category by date, instead of by name. does mediawiki allow this at all? is there any reason to sort pages withing a category by their name? --Naught101 04:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Sort-of, but its really hard. theres two ways to do it:

Bawolff ☺☻ 04:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) when adding to cat use this format  However this isn't feisible because we'd have to change every article written. (Even if we got a bot to do it, it'd be hard to keep up). An example of this would be Category:Business Briefs
 * 2) Use DPLs. Limited due to scalibility issues. (will work for small categories) see Category:Google to see how this could be done. (read the topic header carefully)
 * 3) bug the mediawiki developers to implement some sort of button on categories, to sort by date added. (However they have more pressing issues to deal with probaly, so they probally wouldn't have time to do it. maybe someone could write an extention to implement this. (note:I'm not a programmer I don't know how fesible that would be, or even if they would be busy or not.))
 * Oh look, someone has bugged the developers about it: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1289 . Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 04:32, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

 * yeah, I can see it's harder than it might seem. also, sort by date added probably isn't appropriate, as some news gets added retrospectively.--Naught101 04:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes thats true. However they shouldn't be. I remember this coming up previously as well. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 04:52, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Not Wikipedia
I've seen a couple of recent edits that have made me think we need a Wikinews:We are not Wikipedia page. There seem to be a number of adjustments in the way you'd think about a wiki when it is for news, particularly to do with the time-pressure of getting things set to. Something to link to from the template, and to reference when people who appear to have wiki experience aren't fitting in. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It's already similarly defined in WN:NOT (I think it says encyclopedia), and saying that we are not Wikipedia, albeit correct, might give some an impression of tension between our projects. I don't think creating a brand new one would help solve the conflict at all; we just need some way of getting people to read what we are and what we aren't before they post an article.  --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 04:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


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Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/Archive/8

= Technical = See also the archives.

RC Patrol
Have we thought about enabling the RC Patrol feature on Wikinews? Seems like it couldn't do any harm..... - Borofkin 02:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Just wondering why it isn't at wikipedia, with the whole problems recently. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 06:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * They enabled it for a while, but this disabled it - not sure why. It's mainly to deal with vandalism - well thought out mis-truths are still going to slip through. - Borofkin 06:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * AFAIK this feature has been disabled Wikimedia wide due to some performance issues, but don't call me on that. It would also be of only limited use until user rights can be set individually. --Deprifry|+T+ 13:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting and Consensus
I'm very interested in voting systems and how Wikinews develops consensus. As I'm not an admin, I don't know how you currently work out de-admining and such things. Is there a place where such topics are discussed (not de-admining specifically, but rather consensus and voting)? I couldn't find anything built in to WikiMedia for example. --Zero 17:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * see and  specificly Polls are evil, VotingIsEvil, ArrowsTheorem,VotingIsGood Don't Vote on Everything. Voting (rule by majority) is generally discouraged and Concennsus (we all agree) is encouraged. We make concennses by writing to each other on talk pages. We vote by saying yes or no on the page. If you edit someone elses comment you get in big (trouble which recently just happened). There is no special voting software (I've heard that historiclly there has been but not currently) Some wikis also use templates (see commons:template:support and commons:template:oppose, commons:template:neutral for example) . I hope that answers your question. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Note that not everyone agrees that voting is "evil"; in fact, some people believe that voting is a crucially important element of democratic societies that also has relevance to online communities. As may not be difficult to guess, I count myself among these people, and I find the total anti-voting position not only to be wrong, but to be dangerous, because it leads to little clubs making decisions if taken to an extreme. There have been many large scale votes in Wikimedia, including the one to launch this very project. However, we do try to work towards a consensus in discussion before even thinking about votes, and the result of a vote (or any other decision making process) is always open to being questioned. We all agree on these points, I think. The Wikipedia page "No binding decisions is perhaps the most concise summary of the common ground.--Eloquence 01:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Consensus means you take forever to make up your mind. And when you finally do make your mind up, chances are it is a real good decision, because everyone agrees. Voting means the community isn't interested in consensus, so a simple majority will do... mmm.

 * Thanks very much for your answers. I've read enough now that my head is spinning. I agree that finding consensus by voting should be a last resort. But I also think that Wikinews in particular needs to avoid having the partisan image (the little clubs making decisions) that mainstream media suffers from. Perhaps there should be some sort of simple tools that allow voting, but discourage it (or allow voters to force the issue back to discussion). Also, I can imagine several technical solutions for making votes "dynamic" that would avoid binding decisions. --Zero 09:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Premise: consensus is not 'scalable'.
 * So what rules, "meritocracy"?

Comments
Not sure which heading to put this under since its a bit of tech, proposal, and policy.

I propose using Comments. People love to have they say. I belive it will increase readership, and thus editors. For example, on the infamous /. people often complain about quality of stories. In a wiki the complainer can fix it. the template I propose is User:Bawolff/comment (in action at user:Bawolff/idea) For more about this see also at template:xt. My template curently places comments in a subpage of the talk page for the article and transcludes them in the article. It has been sugested to use a new namespace with another tab, and also to use a modified extention. I hope everyone likes the idea, because I think it will benifit Wikinews. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Would anyone object to me giving this a trial run? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * If no one objects by tommorow I'll put it in an article. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 05:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Did you? Which one?  Nyarlathotep 11:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Multi-category DPLs
Somebody needs to modify the software to allow for more than one category to be able to be shown in the same list so that people can setup their own custom news feeds, don'tcha think? --Nerd42 23:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think work for that is going on at DynamicPageList2. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh good! -- 01:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

What happened to the source template?
It used to be when you created a news story, using the front page text box, you'd get the whole template deal with the source section. The source section is gone now? Why? Don't we want to encourage sourcing? -- user:zanimum
 * Please see WN:ALERT --Chiacomo (talk) 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

More discussion now up... -- user:zanimum

"podcast"
I know people have political issues with mp3, but an ogg file isn't really a podcast, since it can't be played on very many portable players (which is the point of a podcast) Can you either switch to mp3, or just hold off on making a "podcast" altogether? I know this may seem odd, but try and think of it from someone's point of view who might actually be considering using wikinews as a newsource, and not as a hobby. --anon

 * Unfortunately, the MP3 format is encumbered by certain patent protections and is not a file format that the Wikimedia Commons allows to be uploaded. Perhaps someday there will be nice automatic tools that give you this conversion ability, but for now the OGG files are it. Sorry! -- IlyaHaykinson 04:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

 * We could allow them locally to wikinews. (But I'm doubtful wikimedia-foundation would let us). Also of intreast is commons:Commons talk:File types Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 04:52, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I've tried bringing it up over a dozen times. It's a no-go; I sometimes think that convincing Microsoft and Apple to allow Vorbis support in their players would be easier than to change the foundations'.  Either way, I don't see a chance of it happening in the near future, although I'd really like to see it happen.  --MrMiscellanious – Happy New Year – 06:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio script proposal
What if we were to just move copyvios to Copyvio:Articlename and have a bot clean it once per day, based upon fair use criteria (3 days from date of move)? If the mover felt the article was worth preserving, they could always start a new stub at Articlename consisting of just the source where they found the copyvio. We wouldn't need to make this "policy" or remove the copyvio tag, as that might confuse people, but it might be a cool option which the copyvio tag could explain. This change technically gives non-admins the power to delete articles, but I think 3 days is probably a safe enough time, so long as their is a copyvio namespace list which allows people to look for copyvio articles which might be worth developing as real articles. Admins can always undelete inappropraitely deleted stuff too. Thoughts? Maybe namespace isn't the best way to do this? Nyarlathotep 18:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think works.  I've placed it on articles numerous times before I got used to them also needing listing on WN:DR, and they've all been picked up and processed appropriately.  Based on that, I can't see how a bot could help in the process, it could cause more of a problem to my thinking.  If applying a copyvio tag to an article automatically results in the deletion of said article three days later unless some action is taken, then that is a far worse result than if someone tags an article and no admin takes action in three days. Brian McNeil / talk 19:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Lead Article Template

 * I'm not sure if this is the best place to put this (if not, please suggest where to move it), but whilst the 18 killed in U.S. air strike on village in Pakistan article was the lead article on the Main Page, I thought it would have been useful to be able to link to the secondary article which focused on the reaction to the attack, Protests erupt in Pakistan over US air strike. The BBC News website seems to do this with most of their lead stories (which can have up to three secondary links in a bulleted list).

 * I created a template which tries to incorporate the idea, and put a demo on my user page.

 * Does anyone else think this is a good idea, or have any suggestions as to how the template might be improved? Frankie Roberto 10:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks intreasting. The only problem with that is that often we don't have a follow up/related story. (but we could just make it so it only displays the seccond story if we have one. But we'd probaly need to use an if template or cascading templates to do it, which are generaly bad things.) Definitly looks like a promising idea. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 17:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, we don't need fancy if templates, we could just change the name of the template we're using. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 17:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I agree we don't currently have follow-up or related stories that often, but I reckon this is something we'll see more of in the future... The fact that most news websites seem to do it suggests to me that it might be a good idea...

I've added the following test to the HTML comment directions for the Lead template: You may change Main_lead to Main_lead_with_secondary_link and add a |Secondary_Article= line if you wish the lead to link to a follow up article. Nyarlathotep 21:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

 * So this is where the discussion was. You don't know how hard I looked (through archives) for this, for the third lead. Also see template:lead 2 for non main lead pages. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 21:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

www.wikinews.org.au
How would one go about setting up a portal at http://www.wikinews.org.au, similar to the one at http://www.wikinews.org, but pointing to the Australian Portal for each language project? This seems to be the logical extension of the Portal concept, and makes publicising a portal much easier.... - Borofkin 01:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * A simple Apache setup can handle a short load of traffic on a personal system behind a broadband connection that will redirect users to a given URL. There are quite a few ways you can do this; some are more efficient than others, but before anyone buys anything or does anything, you should ask the foundation if they'll consider purchasing the domain and redirecting it (most likely, they will).  --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 01:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what I was thinking. Um, so how does one make such a request of the Foundation? Email to board@wikimedia.org? - Borofkin 05:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of the costs of purchasing an .au domain, but one might consider buying for the foundation and giving it to them as a donation. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Money is no object, I have a number of sizeable swiss bank accounts at my disposal, the result of my life before I became a Wikinews contributor. My problems are technical - I don't know about domains, or how to register them, or how to redirect them, or whether I need to get permission to use the name "Wikinews", or whether I need to be a registered non-profit before I can get an org.au domain, etc. Um, I'll do some more research. - Borofkin 05:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If money is no object, I have some excellent charities you can contribute to -- including the Buy Chiacomo a laptop fund... --Chiacomo (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, so I'm looking at the domain registration thingumy now. Can I register it under my person, or do I need to justify the use of the name "Wikinews"? It's asking me to justify how "wikinews" has "a close and substantial connection to the legal entity". Should I just be able to register it as a personal domain? - Borofkin 05:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The damn thing won't let me register it without a "Company number". Or to be more specific, a "ABN, ACN, ARBN, or Incorporated Association Number". - Borofkin 05:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You might consider mailing Foundation-l to see if they have such a number in Australia.. I don't think they do, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. --Chiacomo (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * TO register an .au domain you need some form of business/organisation ID. Unfortunately as the foundation isnt an Australian entity they dont have one. Wikimedia Australia will but at present there is no link to WM in Australia. As for the redirection, you could use a free DNS service like zoneedit or get redirection with the domain - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 10:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Link to Wikinews at Current_events
Divol suggested a link from en.wikipedia's "Current_events" to our en.wikinews site; it seemed reasonable (especially since it's on the french wikipedia to the french wikinews) so I did it. I hope/think it looks ok? Neutralizer 12:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * more : we made into wikipedia a template called WN : here its code :

[ Wikinews ]

 * usage : *

Jacques Divol 13:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Template doesn't seem to be there any more. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 18:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

RDF meta data
Currently we have metadata in MediaWiki:Copyright. This allows us to be found by specialized CC content serches (see advanced search in google). Maybe we should switch to RDF metadata. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

News discussion/commentary on Wikicities
The idea of a news discussion namespace has been brought up again, and I spoke with Angela at Wikicities about the possibility of hosting the discussions on a site there. She suggested I speak with the people at http://pov.wikicities.com about the idea, and Danny was quite enthusiastic about the idea.

There are a couple of technical issues which need to be resolved before such a project could be initiated.

 * 1) Linking to the discussion space on pov.wikicities could be done several ways. Here are the ones I thought of first, but are by no means the only or even the best ways:
 * 2) * A 'discussion' tab, probably written in javascript on wikinews for each of the available skins. This solution would end up creating links for all namespaces, including Wikinews: and User:, which might not be welcome on pov.wikicities.
 * 3) * A 'discussion' template. The primary benefit is it can be added by people who wish to open a discussion, so not all articles would develop commentary pages on pov.wikicities. This is also a potential drawback as it requires people to decide to edit the article first, so the number of discussions might be reduced.
 * 4) An interwiki transclusion. This could be done using an extension, if the Wikicities people are interested/willing to do so. This may also already be under development with Wikia, a project I know nothing about. The point is to have a very recent version of the news article available on pov.wikicities, but the actual article editing happening on Wikinews.

Pov.wikicities.com is also interested in editorials about current events and topics, so this fits with some of their goals and missions.

If anyone has further ideas about solutions to the technical issues, please jump in! -  Amgine | talk en.WN 20:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the best method would be an interwiki transclussion. It would also have the section editing links if anyone wanted to edit it. Failing that, I think a discussion tab preferably with some code that only allows it in certain namespaces would be my seccond choice. Isn't wika the comercial arm of the wikimedia foundation who runs operates and hosts wikicities? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 01:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Not exactly an issue for here, but I had a related idea, which I promptly never found the time to write the extension for. Of course, my goal there was some sort of "idealized internet conversation" while the goal here is much simpler "people having a say".  I'll need to take a closer look at pov.wikicities.com to see how they handle divergence of opinions.  Nyarlathotep 17:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

It should definitely be done with only the template, not enough people are interested in doing it for every page to have a link, plus POV wikicity requires that discussions get set up, and you really want one discussion per news topic. You don't want a seperate discssion for every new story about the JP cartoons!

Just as an interesting idea, what if we didn't send the discussion to only one site? We could have a discussions infobox for some topics, inserted next to Sources, which linked to between 2 and 5 discussion sites. We need to avoid advertising any particular discussion site too much, but it might be interesting. Nyarlathotep 16:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

April Fools Prank
Would it be possible to somehow show "Comrade User:" in place of "User:" on April Fools day? It might be a nice prank which didn't involve changing any stories. OTOH, its technically difficult if you try to do anything beyond just typing Comrade User:Amgine occasionally. :) Nyarlathotep 16:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think that possible as that would involve a namespace change which would break a lot (as in a lot) of links. One could, could possibly change the name of the tabs that you see in the neat little menu on top of every page, e.g. replacing "discussion" with "ranting" (via MediaWiki:Talk) or changing the name of the user page (via MediaWiki:Nstab-user) --Deprifry|+T+ 17:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We can change mediawiki things like Deprify sugested, but i'm doubtful we can change the namespace. (However doing that may just be as well). actually there alot we can do in mediawiki: land Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 21:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I strongly discourage any April Fools' pranks. At Wikipedia, we were still cleaning up the aftermath of April Fools' Day 2005 eight months later.  This is not a productive use of editors' time.  Uncle G 23:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't see whats wrong with one controlled prank aggred on by the people who read the water cooler. Anything else should be treated as vandalism. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

As a note, I was very active on Wikinews April 1, 2005, and there were no obvious April Fools Day pranks. I personally like a laugh as well as the next person, but am leary encouraging it with such an open editing process. -Edbrown05 01:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Why Edbrown05! did you forget the "Wikipædia purchased by Britanica" article, posted to the main page by those fun-loving hoolies from #wikipedia? and a couple small stray additions here and there. Dan100 was quite focused on preventing/avoiding such pranks here last year, and I believe we had 2 or more admins on RC for more than 24 hours rather specifically watching for such submissions. -  Amgine | talk en.WN 06:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Well the question is "Do organized prank encourage or discourage prank-like vandalism?" I tend to think they discourage it, as people with a good idea figure out there is a channel for pushing their idea.

Anyway, if people are seriously worried about April 1st vandalism here, we could drop the archive protection time down to half a month around April 1st, basically cutting in half the number of messy vandalism opportunities. And it'd provide lots of time to fix things prior to future archival protection if we let it rise back to one? month durring the first half of April. Nyarlathotep 12:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yay! for once a Wikimedia Foundation project with a sense of humor. --    NERD42    [mailto:nerd42@gmail.com EMAIL ]  TALK  H2G2 PEDIA UNCYC   16:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Weather bot images on commons
Wikinews had a weather bot which reported temperatures around the globe for many months. In the process, it created hundreds, possibly thousands, of images indicating the temperatures several times a day in different parts of the world and uploaded them to commons.

Commons would like to delete these, to clear up some space.

Since the bot is not currently active (last image was 19 September 2005), and the images are a really bad way to store weather data for history, I've suggested they go ahead and delete them according to their processes on Commons but save the last image so we can see what it looked like (and to avoid breaking old test layouts). -  Amgine | talk en.WN 19:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 19:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

pl weather
The polish uses text over a map for weather. look at the bottom of pl:. Definitly intreasting. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Email this story . ..
Forgive me if this issue has been raised before, but I think it would be great if the news articles could have an "email this story" capability. Often at work, I send news stories to my friends via this method (and vise-versa) on other news sites. I have begun using Wikinews as my primary source for current events, and wonder if a similar script could be written to accomplish this (yes, I know about the whole 'permanent link' thing, but something more convenient would be nice). Anyways, just a thought. — orioneight (talk) 02:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've never actually heard somebody actually say they used thoose links! (: On most browsers there is a send page button under tools or file. I'll ask somebody who actually knows what they're talking about to see if/what can be done about it. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 06:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

 * The problem is that this is a wiki, allowing anyone to create a page that could then be sent to anyone. This, in turn, means that you would basically turn the wiki into a spam relay. We might tie it to a stable version tagging mechanism, but without any reliable way to distinguish stories from spam (which preferably shouldn't rely on Wikinews-specifics), this cannot be done.--Eloquence 07:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Whats wrong with sending a perma-linked version? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 19:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What if it was an option in the sidebar only for articles with the published tag, or maybe in a template used in the bottom of published articles. I know it's easy enough to send a permalink onesself, but I think an easy, advertised way of doing this would spread alot of publicity, in a viral marketing kind of way.  This word-of-mouth could bring new readers and ultimately new editors. — orioneight <FONT SIZE="-2">(talk)</FONT> 02:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It could just send a default template with a link in the e-mail to the Wikinews page - that way there's no text in the e-mail that could be spam, and it encourages people to visit the website. This seems to be the way that most 'e-mail this' links work... Frankie Roberto 15:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Again your(almost all) browser has this functionality built in. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

IRC
Why is it down? Can we have a back-up access? Neutralizer 10:15, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the web interface was running on Journowiki which is currently down. You could try getting an IRC client and connecting with that.  The server you'd want to connect your IRC client to is irc.freenode.net, and you want channel #wikinews. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * thanks. Neutralizer 14:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

URLs using IDs rather than titles
One of the problems with using the MediaWiki software for Wikinews is that we inherit the assumpton, which goes fairly deep into the software, that URL = page title. This is fine for encyclopedias, but for news articles it doesn't work so well. Long term, there are plenty of headlines which ought to be re-useable for new articles. Requiring article names to be unique and un-ambigous really hampers the style (IMO). There's also the problem that as pages can be moved to to new names (and often are), there's no unique identifier for the articles. This means that in RSS feeds, a page which has been moved a few times appears many times.

The only solution is to switch to using URLs with unique identifiers which aren't linked to the page name, ie numeric or perhaps alphanumeric identifiers, like /578768476. Whilst this isn't as readable, it does provide less changeable identifier, and allows two articles to have the same name.

I realise that to make this change would require a lot of work, and probably some major customisation/new features in MediaWiki, but I would argue that long term we should push for this change (allowing all the old URLs to work as redirects of course).

Agree?? Frankie Roberto 15:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Disagree. A good title is unique; otherwise, if you can't come up with a unique title, it's not really news. People have been foretelling this namespace conflict for well over a year now and it hasn't been a problem here.
 * Additionally, page moves that happen after publishing retain the original URL as a redirect. -- IlyaHaykinson 09:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ilya, no, that is an editorial policy decision, maybe a fine one for wikinews to make, but still an editorial decission. Most news sites can reuse titles.

 * Indeed, to be truly unique is pretty hard. For example, all of the following could be re-used (all taken from the same day):

 * RadioShack CEO resigns - what happens if the new CEO resigns too?
 * Tibetans protest Google on Valentine's Day - what if the same happens next year?
 * Mozambique and Zimbabwe Struck by Earthquake - earthquakes can strike the same place twice.
 * Arsenal beat Real Madrid 1-0 - this is hardly a unique result
 * An interview with Jimbo Wales - are we never going to interview him again?

Frankie Roberto 00:46, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Roberto, your talking about a major technical change which effects essentially all existing crosslinks of wikinews with other foundtation projects, and would require legacy links for off site pages too, plus it slightly complicates future crosslinking (need two pieces of info instead of one). It may or may not be a good idea, but it'd require much effort to pull off, and I'm not convinced it is essential yet. If we eventually grow to hundreds of articles per day, it's much more likely to be an essential feature. Nyarlathotep 10:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

 * Even if there simply were unique IDs for the articles other than the titles, and the URLs didn't change, that'd be useful, as it could be used as an ID in the RSS feed to prevent moved pages from appearing twice. Are there any internal database IDs that could be exposed? Frankie Roberto 00:46, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I've seen a few articles renamed from " blah Dick Cheney blah" to "blah US Vice President blah" recently, which seemed like a bad idea, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Here is the reason: US VP's change. In general, proper names are preferable to titles as they are less likely to conflict with future title. Nyarlathotep 12:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree. un-unique names are bad (Numbers are horrible). Even the above examples you could have similiar but different titles. We've already had many interviews with Jimbo:

You could also change it to exclusive interview with Jimbo etc.
 * Interview with Jimbo Wales
 * An interview with Jimbo Wales
 * Bad things are not going to happen with conflicts. Each version of a page has a revisionid. The current one for this page is . you can then use that number in the url to pick a specific non-changing permanent link to the page. (see perma-link in the sidebar). Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Need help from someone in the UK
If you're from the UK (or possibly elsewhere in Europe), I need your help. I've set up a local number in England that should be forwarding to the Hotline — the number is 0871-218-6397. I need someone to call this number and see if it works, as I've been unable to reach it properly from the US. Please report your findings, and thanks in advance! -- IlyaHaykinson 09:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Works from Germany. --Deprifry|+T+ 09:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Works via Skype from France, as +44 871-218-6397. Nyarlathotep 10:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks folks. I didn't even think of Skype (or in my case Gizmo). Number posted to the homepage. -- IlyaHaykinson 07:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I just phoned and left a test message from the UK, and it seems to work fine. Thanks for setting this up - I'll save the number in my mobile and might actually use it sometime if I stumble across a news story... Frankie Roberto 16:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC) (London)

Need to confirm e-mail address
You need to confirm your e-mail address in order to receive e-mails via the Wikinews e-mail system. To do so, visit your preferences (see the top right of each page), and click "Confirm my e-mail address". Then, send a confirmation code to the e-mail address set in your preferences. Finally, go to your e-mail and click the link given. This was enabled today by Brion due to the possibility of user-to-user spamming. Ral315 04:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikinews users should authenticate their @mail address using the preference pane if they want to receive mails. Jacques Divol

multi-lang portals
On Wikisource theres a feature for comparing different language editions of the same page. Maybe we could use this on wikinews to create bilingual portals (for countrys like Canada with two official languages). Perhaps have a link at top Bilingual version Bawolff ☺☻ 00:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

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


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/Archive/11

= Policy =

Policies and guidelines and the Style guide contain or link to most of the current en.Wikinews policies and guidelines, however most policy is suggested, and based on the accepted practices of the day on Wikinews, often these might not yet be written down. This section of the Water cooler focuses on discussions regarding policy issues.

You may wish to check the archives to see if a subject has been raised previously.

Arbitration Committee proposal and discussion
This has been relocated to Water cooler/policy/ArbCom discussion.

Requests for De-administratorship proposal and discussion
This has been relocated to Water cooler/policy/RfDa discussion.

Policy proposal Re; Time limit for Administrators
put forth by Paulrevere2005 19:00, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

This is an urgent issue that must be addressed now,imo, because an integral condition for exercising administrative authority here on wikinews is stipulated to be "You are trusted by the community".

I have designed a very simple policy proposal. Our past attempts at dealing with this sensitive issue(e.g.ArbCom proposals) have been unsuccessful,imo, because of their complicatedness. I would simply ask, if possible, that this proposal be given an "up or down" vote (with associated comments of course). Any attempt to complicate OR DELAY IT (especially by existing administrators) could be seen as suspicious behavior, I think. Administrators who have the community's trust have nothing to fear with this proposal.

Proposal;

 * 1. As of Feb.1,2006, adminships will be for a 1 year term.
 * 2. All existing non-Bureaucrat adminships will terminate Feb. 1st. 2006.
 * 3.Nominations for renewal of existing adminships will begin on January 24th.

SUPPORT;

 * Paulrevere2005 20:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * International 23:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Simeon 00:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * hesitantly - Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC) see my comment in the comment section I withdraw my support, as I beleive that the situation has improved, and no longer requires such drastic measures. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 05:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * MateoP 19:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

OPPOSE;

 * Oppose. This is an an all-or-nothing proposal that will do damage to Wikinews.  All admins are to be de-adminned on the same day opening the wiki to utter chaos that the bureaucrats simply don't have the time to deal with.  Nobody in their right mind would accept a nomination for adminship if this proposal was passed because they'd become the people who would, in whatever small numbers you can gather in that time, have to deal with a great deal more work to protect from vandalism and POV pushing. Brian McNeil / talk 19:16, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Brian, please allow me to explain. Since the renewel nominations begin Jan.24th. the renewed admins would all be on-board by Feb.1st. Think of it as renewal of a contract; the discussion occurrs before the expiration date of the existing contract. I hope you will reconsider and,perhaps, tone down your alarmist language above in light of this explanation. Conceivably, we could have exactly the same Admins on Feb. 2nd as we have today; if that is what the community wants. Administrators who have the community's trust have nothing to fear with this proposal. Paulrevere2005 20:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Oppose. I don't know what's up with this whole "Admin's are evil, let's throw them overboard!", but it's getting really old and really irritating.  I don't mind if you have any actionable objections, but you are treating the administrators without the respect they deserve: the exact same as other contributors.  Continuing the notions that they are evil people doesn't help the project any, and neither does continually putting things to vote.  --MrMiscellanious (talk) (contribs) 00:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Based what has transpired recently I can see why this is happening quite easily (as for explaining it - not so easy) Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 07:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Oppose. It seems a bit of a pandora's box would be opened up, and the treatment afforded to admins would come over as 'with suspicion' applying this proposal. And I don't like new rules if we can make the existing ones work. -Edbrown05 03:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support I think this will help more articles to be written. --MateoP 19:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Oppose, Brian New Zealand 23:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

COMMENTS;

 * What problem does this proposal solve/help slove? Admins are just normal users with a few extra buttons. Adminship is really no big deal. Almost any action an admin takes can be undone by a different admin or in some cases any other user. --Cspurrier 19:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This seems like a strong way to approach a problem I don't believe I see. I don't think we've discussed this proposal enough before voting on it, and honestly it seems a bit of a reaction to your Rfda proposal not receiving the support you wanted. It's also a bit underhanded to specifically only post a link to this page on the talk pages of exactly the same list of people as those who supported the Rfda for MrM. -- IlyaHaykinson 19:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ilya, I am a bit surprised, I just had a bite to eat and will now resume sending notices to the more active contributors; I am somewhat restricted in computer time because of health issues. Of course, anyone else is free to notify anyone they wish I imagine. Also, the Rfda showed me that the Rfda process is too adversarial and creates bitter personal comments and possibly polarizing effects (9 supporters were non-admins; 6 opposed were admins); the Rfda process will still exist for those rare instances where it is warrented. This new policy would, imo, do no harm at all and,perhaps, give us all a nice fresh start on Feb.1,2006, even if we have exactly the same admins that we have now. A vote of confidence and trust never hurt anyone,imo. I truly hope you will consider supporting this policy and there is no time limit on it so discussion can continue until the community feels it has been adequately discussed. But there is no reason to prohibit votes as they can always be changed(and often are) here on wikinews. Paulrevere2005 20:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

 * As much as I understand the reasons why this has came to a vote so fast. (Delay and complicate is a problem), Polls are evil pretty much sums up my opinion. Although we have to do something, and I believe this is one possible route we could go down, I don't think we should vote yet. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 22:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Now that I'm suspicious :) I changed all the proposal/comment/support/oppose things to headings, because I like headings. Hope you don't mind. by the way, the main problem I see is lack of Adequate dispute resolution. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Note If you absolutly make me vote right now I would vote yes, as something needs to be done. owever I'd prefer some other way and I don't think all at once would be a good idea. (I predict 20 some votes all at once, and a masive vandal attack.) Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 01:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * CSpurrier, I think someone once even said that basically anyone who contributes sensibly for a short time -- ie is visibly not a vandal -- should be given admin privs - since the idea of a wiki is that all readers are editors and authors by default. But that hasn't happened here in reality, the politicisation of the few admin positions is overwhelming. This is the first sensible suggestion I have seen to resolve a current problem here, which is that the few admins there are are very chummy, and i think very clearly favour some types of contributions and disrespect users who make contributions that they do not like. View numbers are down, I don't think that is coincidence, the infighting is quite repulsive. A regular vote may be a good way to get people who normally keep to themselves to express an opinion, even as little as a yay or nay, regarding admins here. Personally, I would suggest quarterly re-elections. Simeon 00:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I would rather encourage folks to nominate others for adminship -- there were frequent nominations there for a while but they seem to have slacked off... --Chiacomo (talk) 00:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * There is alot of things to be adressed and discussed about the organisation, here on wikinews. Im really worried about the signs of elitism among the administrators. The demography of the voters in the final result of RfDA against Mrm is alarming. Total polarization between users with and without administrators powers.

 * After some thinking about what to do I would have suggest a discussion before the votingprocess as a part of consensusbuilding but this suggested policy make a fair compromiss of what I might have suggested and a statusquo opinion.

 * But the best with this poll is that it bring up the issue to discussion, a very importent discussion for every comunity based on voluntarily efforts. As Wikinews may be called an informal meritocracy everyone with formal authority must be highly trusted by the community. Administrators should be janitors, not a junta, as Rcameronw formulated it.

 * I find the biggest problem with elected authorities is that they usually is hard to remowe if they show themself unsuitable for the given assignment or act in a way that electors lose their faith in them. Without a more finetuned way to solve this problem I support Paulrevere2005:s proposal. International 23:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

 * What is most interesting to me is that apparently, most of our contributors don't care... --Chiacomo (talk) 23:28, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Question: If we must do something like this (and I don't necessarily oppose it), why not hold confirmation votes in classes, much like Meta does? Also, why don't we encourage simple voting (with nothing but a brief comment accompanying the vote) rather than the long rants we've recently observed -- this would prevent some of the vitriol, I think. Extended discussion can take place on the WN:A talk page. --Chiacomo (talk) 00:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC) update... see Meta:Meta:Administrators/confirm and Meta:Meta:Administrator --Chiacomo  (talk) 01:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

 * 2. All existing non-Bureaucrat adminships will terminate Feb. 1st. 2006. I dont agree with this date. We would be better off just checking back at the date they where originally admin'ed and add one year :) I suppose if a admin is a older then a year by then, maybe that date. --Whywhywhy 14:45, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment: I think it's safe to say the current actions being taken, if the whole administrator team is dismissed, Wikinews will not only fall to spambots, vandals, or malicious users - it will also fall to users who not only ignore the NPOV policy, but wish to destroy it completely. Getting rid of all administrators only means that Wikinews will fall to those who wish to exploit wiki to its fullest extent - manipulating it for their own personal forums, advertising on a non-profit website, the whole nine yards. One day makes a big difference. One day could plaster the whole site with advertisements from spambots. One day could allow all the members of the GNAA, WoW and other troublesome "organizations" who have proven their destruction of all Wikimedia projects and philosophies. Safe to say as well, if you do plan to go along with this, you are most certainly driving people away, those who wish to have an ad-free, spam-free, NPOV experience. By putting them up to 'vote' or questioning their ability to "run this site", as many of you claim, is not only disrespectful, it is utmost insulting. If the de-admin process hasn't worked yet, that means this site picks their administrators fairly. Furthermore, I don't know anyone who would volunteer to be an admin for only a year. Call this disruptive, call it whatever you want - but I honestly think that this continuous call for administrators to step down is really showing what some users are made of; whatever they feel is unfair, they round up a posse and start drafting ideas to get people out. If there was a campaign for users to only be users for one year, I don't think anyone would be supportive of that - and there's no reason why they should of administrators, either. --MrMiscellanious (talk) (contribs) 00:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * No! This is baised speculation, rethoric that is far from fair but fairly talking in it self. Who says all administrators will be dismissed, not administrated again? I think you deliberate missinterpretate Paulrevere2005s proposal. You are manipulatve in bring the focus away from the question of comunitys trust in the users given administrator priviledges to a ... insult to users and wikinews community. International 17:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There's your problem user Mrmiscellanious. You don't think of yourself as a user.  You are a user first, admin second.  You are not entitled to be admin, it's a privilege.  The problem is that some admins act without consulting talk pages or community very much, and often bring the hammer down to get what they want.  This is simply a proposal to add a check to that power.  If you think this is a bad idea, come up with an alternative check.  --MateoP 01:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You're right, I don't see myself as a user - because simply when I try to be a user, I get listed for de-admin because admins can't simply be editors, now can they? "Adminship" should only be revoked when it is in violation of the blocking policy, and when there is absolutely no good faith to be assumed from it.  If you are having a problem how an admin edits, put it up on WN:ALERT and ask for a short block.  That's what editors deserve when they go on the fritz, and it should be no different for admins.  We're here to take care of spam, and add categories to protected articles.  Not a whole lot more than that.  Almost everything I've seen the RfdA's consist of were how the admins edited Wikinews; it wasn't a violation of policy.  If you don't like how someone edits the wiki, it's tough luck - it is a wiki.  But if there is a consensus, then it should be brought before the community.  But having this large "you shouldn't be afraid to vote yes for this" pressure on people is very immature to the users who are doing this; and saying you will call disruption on an opposition to a proposal is more harmful than anything I can think of.  I am not afraid to vote no for this, and you shouldn't be telling people what to vote for here.  If admin's need to have their sysop status removed, it better be for a large policy violation and not how they edit the wiki - that's unfairly punishing them.  As users.  --MrMiscellanious – Happy Hanukkah – 15:29, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment The limiting of admin terms isn't likely to be profitable to the community. However, I can imagine recruiting more admins and placing all admins on a "rotation". But does rotation solve anything not solved by just increasing the number of admins and/or Ilya's eventual dispute resolution system? Admins are meant to be users with mops. Improving our dispute resolution system is the best solution. Nyarlathotep 19:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

changes in style guide
a recent change in the style guide has added the following statement which i think needs  a broader scrutiny by the community. As from time to time, sources may get information "wrong", or it is incorrect, it is recommended that you find multiple sources on an issue, and fact check against them before writing your article. there are some problems with the statement i think these issues need to be resolved before such changes are made to wikinews policies and guidelines. Doldrums 19:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * it doesn't belong in the style guide, belongs in the content guide, if at all.
 * "wrong" and "incorrect" are vague terms, who decides if claims by news sources are wrong? it has been insisted elsewhere (in article talk pages) that the criterion for correctness is an official statement from state bodies, which, in my opinion, is highly npov.
 * while i have no problems with trying to find multiple sources for statements in articles, there are many stories which are broken by one news source, and insisting on multiple sources can be an easy way to delay or prevent publication of such stories on wikinews.
 * "fact check"? what exactly does this involve? fact checking also flies in the face of wiki original research guidelines.

 * I agree that it belongs more in the content guide. However I disagree with the rest of the points:
 * Wrong and incorrect are potentially very exact terms when dealing with facts. What is the atomic mass of an element? What is the orbital distance of Pluto around the Sun? Those are facts that are easy to get drastically wrong; some sources we've used have gotten these kinds of things wrong.
 * The phrasing says "recommended"; this is not the same as "insisting on multiple sources".
 * While Wikipedia has a "no original research" clause, on Wikinews we do allow it and highly encourage it via Wikinews Original Reporting.
 * I support this change to the guidelines, though I'd also support a move of the change to the content guide. -- IlyaHaykinson 23:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

 * agree that multiple sources & fact-checking are desirable and that certain "desk reference" facts are easy to verify. but there are stories where
 * a single news organisation breaks the story, (others merely report what this source says)
 * the story is based on interviews with confidential sources,
 * story concerns covert operations,
 * ...etc where multiple sources and corroboration is difficult or impossible to achieve. further, the desirability of corroboration and thorough fact-checks must be weighed against the need to publish stories within a reasonable time period following the news event.
 * to reflect this, suggest rewording to (change emphasized)

 * To help guard against possible mistakes by news sources, editors are encouraged to find multiple sources on an issue, and fact-check those sources.

 * a further statement can be added emphasizing the need to fact-check the "desk-reference" facts.
 * Doldrums 11:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, its not a good idea as written. Wikinews should not *require* original research. We must allow people to just NPOV a news article they find and publish it. We are already chassing off n00bs with requirments. I've rewitten it to capture the NPOV spirit without comming off like a rule. Nyarlathotep 18:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Policy needed re;Amgine's "Dragnet" Blocks

 * I agree with Ed; in fact I was updating the running list at the top 'til I found most users were bottom fishing. But Ed, I don't think this is enough of a wiki to manage such a radical change (even if desired by most). Neutralizer 04:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

As an alternatived, one could try archiving faster somehow. Nyarlathotep 04:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

 * OTOH, we have plenty of discussions which arn't going anyplace. :)  Nyarlathotep 04:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Edbrown05, Your War on Scroll is pretty funny, but I don't think your going to win. Nyarlathotep 04:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Got sumthin to say, get up top. -Edbrown05 00:29, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

It's too USA... how do I stick my tongue out? -Edbrown05 00:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

But the MeteoP eurocentric argumentativness won't touch that ... -Edbrown05 00:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Like I really wanna see what this scroll said way down where...-Edbrown05 00:18, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

New "news" belongs on top. Where the world will see it... instead of scrolling down like ... don't make me go there... -Edbrown05 00:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Curiosity got the best of me, What are you talking about? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 07:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Log/block
 * I sincerely hope the administrative team will insist upon proof of sockpuppeting here at wikinews as Amgine may be trying to punish someone here for something that happened at wiktionary where he is also accusing people of sockpuppeting. Please don't forget Amgine often is wrong with his sockpuppet allegations;As we've seen before with the Vonbergm and EdBrown accusations,. Also, I hope something can be done to stop these types of dragnet blocks as many innocent wikinewsies are likely being blocked for no reason at all. Neutralizer 20:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I have unblocked those address (the ones that hadn't been unblocked already) as Amgine didn't provide anty proof of sockpuppetting. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 20:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I suggest we establish a policy prohibiting such blanket blocks. Sympatico is part of the Bell network and is a HUGE ISP in Montreal and Toronto. I would guess over a million innocent people were banned by this latest episode; and the perpetrator of this disruption should,perhaps, be reprimanded in some way,I think. At least that's my opinion. Neutralizer 05:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Why won't he step forth and speak for himself?--MateoP 05:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Amgine is on an extended cross-country road-trip, but he should be returning soon, I think. I'm checking on the relationship between blocked IPs and registered users. I'll report back in a few. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * As a test, I blocked the entire class C (.0/24) that my IP address is in -- when blocked, I could not edit, even though I was logged in. I don't know if this is a feature or a problem, but it appears that when a range is blocked, all users attempting to edit from that range whether registered and logged in or not are unable to edit. I would point out that entire ranges of addresses MUST somtimes blocked. I think, perhaps, this is a misunderstanding on Amgine's part in thinking that registered users could still edit even when the range is blocked -- there has been some discussion of enabling such a feature in MediaWiki I think. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks,Chiacomo for the technical update. I guess what that means is that many,many innocent registered users were affected. So, I suppose that exposes 2 situations to deal with from a policy perspective; One being whether our admins should be applying such dragnet blocks without really hard and specific evidence and the other being the technical aspect. Do you think you could make use of your friendship with Amgine to persuade him to calm down with the sockpuppet allegations ?. It's starting to look a bit phobiaish,imo. Or at the very least, have some acceptable proof of sockpuppetry here on wikinews before applying blocks. His last message on his talk page raises a new concern which is that he is now talking about and bringing to Wikinews his own personal conflicts on his many other wiki/journal type projects...and that, in my opinion, is the very last thing we need to be wasting time on here at wikinews; we've had enough conflict of our own and I, for one, now want to just go back to writing articles 100% of my time so unless he keeps finding evermore creative ways of blocking me; I will be of no more trouble to him at all (e.g.I have given up entirely on rfdas etc.) Lets all just have some wikipeace; but maybe we do have to address the dragnet blocking as a policy issue because of the effect on so many innocent users (registered or not).Neutralizer 15:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * As a note, I yesterday blocked an entire range of IPs from Spain which have been the source of much Wikispam. It is my HOPE that a legitimate user will complain to us and their ISP so we can get some response from their abuse department -- as I've had not luck in contacting them. I think it's too late to be concerned about bleed-over from other projects as Amgine's most recent RfDA here at Wikinews and his RfA on Wiktionary show. He's extremely active on many of the least active projects (reverting spam and vandalism) and has worked tirelessly to establish new Wikinews projects in other languages -- he should be commended for his dedication. All this activity, of course, will produce some conflict from time to time and we've seen that spillover here to en.Wikinews. I really would like to see Neutralizer and Amgine "bury the hatchet" (and not in each other). Let's all take a breath and understand that he did have reasons for his actions as it could appear that there has been some sock-puppetry (I love that word) afoot. I have satisified myself, however, that at the very worst, we've seen some meat-puppetry rathan socks (and meat-puppets are part of the Wiki-way, sort of). --Chiacomo (talk) 15:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly agree and embrace your assessment,Chiacomo, here are 3 links which hopefully indicate I have begun to implement suggestions that I concentrate on articles and reject conflicts. Neutralizer 15:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Also this peace pipe; Neutralizer 23:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Disagree. There is never an excuse to block an entire range and therefore block potentially thousands of innocents. --MateoP 23:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Clarification; I don't agree with the range blocking- that is indefencable imo, I do agree with the suggestion that Amgine and I kiss and make up. Neutralizer 14:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I wish Chiacomo would quit making sense... all the time that happens... -Edbrown05 23:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * lol, indeed :) --Deprifry|+T+ 23:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

There came MateoP, (out of order), because Haiti is out of whack. I actually think all new posts should be on the top of the discussion, because maybe I think new "news" comes first.

But I am sure that ideas are a "ever-mind". And as to the objection, valid. Nothing is known until the unknown is pushed. -Edbrown05 00:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I never could understand, upon my first brush with Wikinnews, why a discussion post would come at the bottom of the page. That's where the whales do their business. -Edbrown05 00:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

 * New issues go to bottom because thats where the post a new section feature of mediawiki puts 'em. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 07:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Adminship
There is no set-in-stone policy for how many votes are necessary for adminship. Currently it is done by vote, where the bureaucrats get to make the final choice. The bureaucrat gets to decide whether or not they believe consensus has been reached.

This could vary from anywhere between 51% to 80% depending on the bureaucrat and the person up for adminship. This policy is unfair to all parties. It is unfair for the person up for adminship who might get unlucky and run into a bureaucrat who is more strict on their definition of consensus. It is unfair to the bureaucrat who is forced to make tough judgment calls on whether the community trusts a person or not. And lastly it's unfair on the community whom the decision is taken out of their hands.

This is not a poll - This is a discussion on what should be done so that he community gets to decide what its will is.

 * Acknowledges that consensus as defined on Meta can not apply to adminship, as compromise is not possible. It is possible for users to "agree to disagree" or "respectfully give in" but this isn't the same as a compromising form of consensus.  It works in article talk pages; it doesn't here.

Include comments and suggest in the area below the line.

 * I believe that some numerical value is the only possible way to reach community consensus without giving bureaucrats the ability to decide for themselves. With that being the case, I'd chose a numerical value.  I would say that 80% is a good number, but could work around that number through compromise here.  --MateoP 01:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

 * maybe, a numerical value, will do, but lets not set in in stone. anywere around 70%-80% in an RfA should be fine. But as long as its not less than 70%.
 * Just for clarification, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean. And so other users will understand better... Are you saying that anything about 70% is fine?  Or that anything within the range of 70%-80% then goes to the hand of the bureaucrat?  That would mean that anything below 70% is automatically no-consensus and anything above 80% is automatically consensus and only that within those two numbers is able to be decided by bureaucrats.  Is this a correct assessment of what you mean?  I don't want to misinterpret your words, before we carry on.  --MateoP 02:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For the removed of doubt: anything within the range of 70%-80% it then is up to a bureaucrat; to decide on it; keep going, or wind the RfA up. If it is over 80% consensus has been reached and a bureaucrat is to be made into an admin. And if it is below 70% it becomes automatically no-consensus, however at the bureaucrats; decision; the RfA and be continued, until consensus has been reached, either, support, or oppose. Hope that clears it up. Brian New Zealand 03:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Thats sounds fair to me. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:41, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't like this idea. It just seems to make vagueness an official policy. Anyone between 70-80 percent gets decided by bureaucrats, and anyone below 70% (how low?) can have their RFA continued at the arbitrary decision of the bureaucrat? That seems to give them even more power than they currently have. It allows then to continue RFAs which are below even a simple majority, something which they would currently not do without looking like fools.

This seems to take the decision away from the community too much. It also is unfair to potential admins. There needs to be a hard and fast rule that prevents people from being able to complain about biases. I don't think bureaucrats should have any say in this, aside from the say that they have as regular users. --MateoP 05:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

How about this instead, as a compromise for what user Brian New Zealand suggested. Anything over 80% is automatic consensus. Anything below 70% is automatic no-consensus. Anything between 75-80 percent is up to bureaucrats to decide if there is consensus. Anything from 70-75 percent is up to bureaucrats to decide whether or not the RFA should continue. I think that is a fair compromise. --MateoP 18:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I would disagree with this change to policy, it is a solution in search of a problem. Bureaucrats are elected to help decide if consensus exists. We have several bureaucrats to help if there is any doubt consensus exists. If a person is denied adminship by one bureaucrat due to a believed lack of  consensus they may ask either of the other two bureaucrats. If there is a somewhat weak consensus I would suggest admining the person anyways unless there is a lot of opposition (imo anyone with less then ~65% support should never be admined)  or the oppose votes are based on a lack of trust(imo a vote for adminship should be based upon trust nothing else). Andminship is not a big deal, there is nothing an admin can do that can not be quickly undone. --Cspurrier 18:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Currently the system is set up so that it is very easy for a person to become an admin and very difficult for a person to lose adminship. That's a recipe for disaster.

 * Currently admins have a great deal of power because there is low oversight of their actions and policy is worded very vaguely which allows them to do mostly as they wish. Until this is changed either through an increase in users and/or through more restrictions in policy, it should be difficult to become an admin and easy to lose it.  This is simply a matter of checks and balances.  I believe my above proposal is a good compromise for which myself, user Brian New Zealand and user Bawolff have been discussing.--MateoP 18:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think that is a fair compromise, of what I proposed before. However should there be a change to policy? That is the question that needs to be asked? Are their cases where; a bureaucrat has made an admin without community support (i.e. less than 74 or 75 %) ? As it stands, should/if there is an change in policy, the one proposed, is what it should be. As was said before Adminship is no big deal. But still we don’t want the wrong person/people, to become admin.

Also even through I am fairly new, to wikinews, I am yet to see, an admin (new or old) abuse his/her power, and anyway if you think and admin has done wrong (yet to see) most of the day, the wikinews IRC channel has admins and regular users, on it. So you could go and talk about what happened, if there was wrong. I can not speak for them, but I am fairly sure, one of them will fix it.

Even so, I do think that it would be in good idea to have an set-in-stone policy. But let any numbers be moveable, i.e. if someone had 74.5% support let that through.

Well that’s all I can think of tonight. Brian New Zealand 10:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC) PS If I can be convinced otherwise, I will be more than happy to change my opinion

Well according to Meta, bureacrats are only supposed to have the technical power to grant adminship. That means they are the button pushers. But they don't decide whether or not the button is pushed, understand? Giving them this huge range of decide making (anywhere from 50-80) takes away power from the community, which is who deserves it. It makes a hierarchical structure that is anti-wiki.

Movable numbers creates a Sorites Paradox. If you're going to grant 74.5 now, who not 74.0? That wouldn't be fair. Then why not 73.5 and then 73.0? See the point? Set-in-stone numbers is the only way that no one can complain. --MateoP 15:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Blocking policy page
The following line is not only vague, but gives admins unlimited power to block whoever they can claim are "trouble-makers" or are "not contributing to our goals". This allows for blocking abuse.
 * Are trouble-makers who are not contributing to our goals.

I think this is an easy remove, but let's discuss it first. --MateoP 19:41, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

 * That sounds like a good idea, but I'm more or less neutraal either way. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 08:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I think that through precedence, there has been enough examples for administrators to realize (quite easily) what is and what isn't disruptive. I don't see how this is blocking abuse - Wikinews does have goals, and some users are here to do almost everything in their power to make it work for them, and not for the goals.  --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 04:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

 * can u list/point to those "goals". i must say i have little faith in the ability of administrators who don't know the difference between style and content, to "realise" (by divine insight?) what is a contribution and what is disruption. wiki policies are are meant to be formulated by consensus and implemented by rules, not by the favour and wrath of a bunch of courtiers. i have still less faith in "precedence" which has, for instance, established that admin abuse such as wrongful blocking attracts no penalty whatsoever.

 * i stand against any attempts to word wiki polices vaguely and give admins the discretion to rule on them and then use that ruling to penalise other editors. Doldrums 09:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

 * If you honestly cannot find a "goal" in Wikinews, I'd honestly have to ask you the question of "why are you here?". To quote the about page:

 * Those are the goals. Not only do the changes in the style guide reflect this goal, but so does this statement.  So, as to your "admin abuse" attack, I will state that everything you have tried to bring up as an attack is well documented in site policy and guideline.  So, please, stop trying to stir a crowd.  --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 21:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

the "goals" u point to are part of core wikinews policy. the blocking policy already provides for blocking users who Excessively and consistently break site policy. Admins should only do this as a last resort - efforts to educate must be made first, followed by warnings. so please explain the need for an additional "troublemakers" rule, one that doesn't carry the safeguards against admin abuse that the above rule does, to address the same violations.

[aside to mrm, if you want to discuss ur edits to the style guide, i believe there's a thread elsewhere on this page.] Doldrums 08:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

You're not making any sense in this discussion. You ask what the goals are, then you say they are just policy. I quite frankly am not understanding this. The goal of Wikinews is to provide NPOV news that is factually correct that anyone can edit. Those are the goals; that's what they always have been, that's what they'll always be. --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 21:28, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

 * mrm, what exactly don't u understand? u claim that a rule is needed to block users who "make trouble" and "don't contribute to goals". when asked what it means to "make trouble" and "not contribute to goals", u say it means not upholding npov and not citing sources. there are already plenty of ways to address violations of these "goals", from pointing out policies to newbies, tagging & reversion of articles to blocking users who persistently & excessively violate these policies. when all these rules already exist, i want to know why another vaguely worded rule is needed to do exactly what all those other rules do.

 * finally, i must ask you to stick to discussing the topic at hand. water cooler/policy is not the place to talk about what u "honestly want to ask me" and whether u think i "make any sense". Doldrums 08:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Country names in articles
Should country names be included in articles when they are about:
 * Politicians
 * Cities

Discussion

 * I say politicians, yes, cities, no. --MateoP 00:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I say it depends in both cases. If the politician or city is known worldwide, like Mao Tse-Tung or Cairo, then the country name may be omitted.  Otherwise, it should be included. StuRat 00:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * How do you propose to determine whether a place is known worldwide? --MateoP 00:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * If anyone says they don't know it, that's a pretty good indication it isn't known worldwide. If everyone says they do know where it is, that a good indication that it is known worldwide. StuRat 01:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * No place is known by everyone, so that's no good. you're always going to find someone who's unaware of a place.  according to surveys, most people from the U.S. can't point out the U.S. on a map.  --MateoP 01:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * You're exagerating. I'm sure their are some people in any country which can't locate their own nation on a map.  However, anyone who reads a newspaper, online or not, is unlikely to be that ignorant.  That is why the opinions of the readers of an article should be used as the standard for whether the place is known well enough to omit it's country name.  If any say it isn't, then the name of the country should be added.  StuRat 01:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * At this point in the discussion, I would like the participants to consider taking a break for tea, and cool off for a short while. -  Amgine | talk en.WN 01:34, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems to be progressing civilly enough, no? Am I missing something?  Nyarlathotep 18:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Country names should only be included if the article is of clear international interest. Rapes in some city in Mexico and occurances in the Australian parliament are not, and therefore the titles should not be cluttered up with unnecessary words. - Borofkin 01:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Wow, very good point actually. --MateoP 01:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I would agree with this policy if and when we divide articles up by region and only put articles of worldwide interest on the main page. But, for now, since everybody has to look at the title, it should be meaningful to everyone.  You can actually make an article local only, by adding  .  I don't think your article on the murder suspects in Mexico should be considered local only, though, since I have heard the story on US news (which identified the country in the title, of course). 01:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure its feasible to say whether an article has international interest or not, partly due to our questionable understanding of the impact of "globalization", but also due to general human curiosity. I think the distinction between "local news" vs. "global news" is merely a matter of presentation, i.e. choice of intended of audience. And I feel you should judge a given audiences knowledge base by existing news targeted at that audience, an fairly objective criteria.
 * But we've stumbled upon one serious wiki-problem here. Who is to say what target audience is "better"?  I currently generally feel that international audience is always preferable.  But such a view is based mostly upon the small size of wikinews.  And such a view naturally becomes less and less valid as wikinews grows.  And some valued contributors currently disagree with this view.
 * So I suggest two things:
 * Everyone should respect the rights of a article to assume local knowledge, i.e. its best to ask on the talk page before retitling or rewriting a  article for an international audience.
 * Authors who get offended by the "internationalization" of their articles or titles should istead view such modifications as: others attempting to push my article on a more international audience, not necessarily for the benifit of the article, which may get tied up in details, but at least for the benifit of wikinews. I'm not saying you should agree with them, just recognize that their aims were noble.
 * Ideally, such debates should take the form: A writes an article assuming local knowedge & tags it ; B asks if we can change the title & remove the  ; if A refuses, then B begs by saying how its such a nice article; etc.  :)  B may choose to develop an international version in a subpage, as proof that the internationalized version won't suck.  Nyarlathotep 18:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

To answer MateoP's original question: Why not try to use google searches on proper nouns in the title? People will generally be confused if google is confused. People will also be confused if your title contains no proper nouns.

For example, the first two hits on a search for Jersey identify the British island, while only the third mistakenly identifies New Jersey. So a title about Jersey, UK, might reasonable say just Jersey, while a title about New Jersey, USA should say New Jersey. However, a title about New Jersey, USA could say just Jersey.

OTOH, I feel Australians should be permitted to say "Oz", even though google doesn't place Australian very high in the results (note: no preceding results refer to real places). Mehh. Nyarlathotep 18:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

title: Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/Archive/11


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler (news)

= News =

Local reporting
I'd like to ask/encourage everyone to watch Indiana over the next week. I think what I'm setting up there could serve as a model for other local reporting sections (at least in the US)...and if you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them.Kurt Weber 05:27, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

title: Wikinews:Water cooler (news)


text:
Wikinews:Water cooler sections

These are subsections of the Water cooler.

 * Policy - discussion of existing and proposed policies.
 * Also see Category:Wikinews policy thinktank for a list of proposals and polls.
 * Technical - discussion of technical issues.
 * Bugs and feature requests should be made at MediaZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.
 * Proposals - new ideas and proposals that are not policy related.
 * Assistance - requests for assistance.
 * Miscellaneous - Questions and discussions which don't fit elsewhere.

Check related changes to see changes to all sections. The original watercooler layout (and archives) is stored for historical reasons.

title: Wikinews:Water cooler sections


text:
Template:Wikitip

Be polite to the newcomers
Remember, Wikinews is different from most news website, and new users might not know how things are done at Wikinews. If you see a newcomer do something newbie-like, be polite in pointing it out to them and try to cite a guideline or policy on the user or article talk page.

More info: Don't bite the newbies

zh:Template:Wikitip

title: Template:Wikitip


text:
Template:Polls

Open polls

 * Weather poll
 * Polls/Arbcom→official

Closed polls
Polls ended February 20, 2005: Polls ended January 20, 2005:
 * Should Wikinews have crosswords? Crossword poll
 * Should British or American-style English be used in Wikinews, or a combination of both? – English spelling poll
 * How should headlines be capitalized? – Capitalization poll
 * Should Wikinews allow opinion columns? – Opinion articles poll
 * What should the function of the Main Page be and what should it include? – Main Page poll

Results: Polls

title: Template:Polls