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Shortcut: WN:WC Don't forget to flush! Welcome to the water cooler, a place to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of Wikinews. This is divided into five sections; please use the table below to find the most appropriate section to post in, or just use the miscellaneous section. The water cooler is not the place to make lasting comments, as discussions are removed regularly to make room for new ones. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Policy To discuss existing and proposed policies (Post a New Message - Archive)

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Policy

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Policies and guidelines and the Style guide contain or link to most of the current en.Wikinews policies and guidelines, however policy is based on the accepted practices of the day on Wikinews, often these might not 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.

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Enable "flood flag"?

This could be very useful for administrators that are archiving articles on a large basis. Thoughts? Thunderhead 09:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support implementation of this. It would be useful, especially where we are currently going through sighting old articles. --Skenmy ^talk 17:32, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support Oh...this will be very handy. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support Per Gilgamesh. Cirt (talk) 16:36, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose This will jsut mean that admins can sneak in controversial edits - little benefit IMO Anonymous101^talk 19:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

We trust admins to not do this anyway - they have powers to delete, block, revert, protect, and whatnot. If we can't trust them not to misuse this tool then that person should not be an admin! --Skenmy ^talk 19:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose Instances where this would have been useful have been few and far between. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I can think of at least one instance where it will be useful - the tagging and sighting of old articles. That's about 20 edits, often more, that could be hidden. --Skenmy ^talk 10:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose seems unnecessary and, given the current lack of necessity, too prone to abuse. Martinp23 (talk) 12:34, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Did you even read my comments above? --Skenmy ^talk 19:03, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

• Just to clarify-This would only be used after discussion (ex on WN:ALERT I need flood flag to do blah, gets flood flag, only does stuff related to that, releases flood flag), and that if people wished to check up on admins to make sure they aren't naughty, all edits still appear on irc://irc.wikimedia.org/en.wikinews and RC if show bot edits is set to true. With that said, I more or less support, but have no strong opinion as its need cases are somewhat weak (having 20 edits in rc is not that disruptive imho) Bawolff ☺☻ 20:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Support In that case I support. As long as there is some way for non-admins to check up on them, it's fine. Gopher65_talk 16:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

What is our policy on interview formats?

There currently is a federal election campaign going on in Canada, just as there is south of the border. For this campaign, I decided to contact all registered candidates across the country, with a series of questions.

(Example: CanadaVOTES: Liberal David Remington running in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox & Addington)

The newly returned Amgine has suggested that none of the interviews should be published, as "they're all the same". (The reason for one set of questions: all candidates have an equal chance to answer; different questions for different parties can show the bias of the reporter.) On my talk page, he objected to the medium (email) and quantity of this project.

He says the article must have a backgrounder of the candidate and the riding. There are 308 federal ridings in Canada. There are two parties running candidates in 307 ridings, two running candidates in 308 ridings, and the Bloc is running about 75. That makes a potential for 1305 interviews, even before the Christian Heritage Party, Progressive Canadian Party, independents, etc respond.

I simply do not have the time to write that many profiles, and still manage to publish all of the responses.

I've election articles twice before without complaint.

The first was for 2006 city council hopefuls in Toronto, Mississauga, and Brampton, Ontario, and again in 2007 for Ontario provincial MPP candidates.

A quote from one interview was even cited in the Toronto Star, Canada's highest circulation newspaper.

Have related policies changed since 2006 and 2007? Was a policy restricting this style of article simply not enforced, the first two spurts? -- Zanimum (talk) 18:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Try to answer the questions of who, what, where, when, why and how. (Wikinews Style Guide)

Commonly, news content should contain the "Five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) of an event. There should be no questions remaining. (Wikipedia 'News')

Lesson 2: The Five Ws of Journalism (Scholastic Grade 5-6 Lesson plan)

- Amgine | ^t 19:51, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think these interviews are great asset and I have no problem with them being publish. Ideally it would be great to have a brief intro but the interview portion far outweighs any benefits from an intro. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 00:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, Patrick. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Amgine, must you be so perpetually condescending? Am I supposed to feel embarrassed that some random grade 5 lesson plan "proves me wrong"? The Toronto Star runs a special section similar to this, every year. It goes riding-by-riding, looking at the basic facts and campaign tenets of each campaigner. Are they wrong too?

Note that the Toronto Star needs (at its peak) 150 staff members to run content on the election, and they primarily cover 47 local ridings, ridings that they are familiar with. (public editor Kathy English, "The Star's 2008 election platform", September 20, 2008) There's only two of us, currently doing Canadian election coverage.

On another wing, Wikipedia lists news simply as: "any new information or information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience." Format of my postings aside, the interviews do present information on current events to a mass audience. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe there is a notable difference between what news is, and what a news article should include. I'm also of the opinion the style guide is a policy on Wikinews designed to ensure minimal journalistic standards and to support writers in presenting a consistent style for our readers. - Amgine | ^t 05:40, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

My view is that it does need an intro that is individual but the individualised bit need not be too long. Perhaps only a few lines, a basic word or two. We can gather the rest from the interview. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree entirely, Blood Red Sandman. "MP candidate schmoe is a businessman/opthamologist/political activist in City. Xe is running in the Blah riding, which covers portions of Province, including Popcenter and Burbia." Just a brief backgrounder with, if possible, mention of what party the incumbent is from. (For United Staters like myself, it's important to know that voters in Canada vote for the party more than the individual candidate and it's not unusual for a candidate to be "parachuted in" from some other province - they don't need to live in the riding they are running in.) - Amgine | ^t 05:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Hi, I've reviewed the conflict of interest policy and would like to propose a few revisions. A summary is available at Wikinews_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Revision.3F. Requesting feedback. Durova (talk) 19:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Date of article and date of publication - should we adopt a UTC policy?

Currently, Wikinews' official policy in the Style Guide calls for articles to be dated as: "The date given on an article is should be of the day on which the article was published." However, it leaves it somewhat open as it also says "the dateline may either refer to the location of where the article was filed from or where the event happened even if the writer was not physically present."

This basically means that someone in Hawaii (UTC-10) could contribute an article to Wikinews and have it appear further back in the archive than a story that originated in New Zealand (UTC+13 summers), but was added up to 23 hours later. To me this is absurd.

Further complicating the issue, is that some editors have taken the stance, that since Wikinews now gets listed on Google News, we cannot change the date (ie date bump to the actual date of publication) to match UTC, even though that has been standard practice in the past. This page even says "policy is based on the accepted practices of the day on Wikinews, often these might not be written down." If we can still change the content of the article why can't we change the date?

This has resulted in some minor edit-warring — see history of "Ship sunk by Indian navy was a fishing boat, says owner" for an example — but it has also resulted in some outright abuse, as in this article "UN reports condemn West Bank settlement" which was published on November 23 (UTC), with November 21 as the article date.

To solve any confusion and make it absolutely clear for everyone, I suggest that we adopt a UTC policy for dating articles. That is, the article should carry the date that corresponds to UTC, regardless of where it was written and what date it was there or the date in the locale of the article's subject. This way it will be absolutely clear to any contributor (and not just the main contributor or the reviewer) what the correct date should be. Also, it will allow the date to be fixed quickly and by anyone if it happened to be wrong when {{publish}} was added.

UTC is already on every time stamp in every log and in every signature, regardless of where that user may be.

I welcome any thoughts on this. Suggestions for how the Style Guide should word the date policy to avoid dis-ambiguity are also welcomed. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:57, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree with this suggestion by SVTCobra (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 00:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. Dates / days within the article can reference the local time zone. But the {{date}} header should be UTC. {{dateline}} is only for original reporting: we need to think hard about how we use that, as posting a UTC date would be confusing. --InfantGorilla (talk) 11:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

For our regular contributors articles will be published on the date of creation. There are eminently sensible reasons for allowing an article to be forward-dated as local sources may have tomorrow's date on them versus what is currently UTC. You must also bear in mind that the display of the main page is based on the user's timezone settings, not UTC. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:28, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

The date of creation is ideal if an article gets completed, reviewed and published in a timely manner. However, since I returned to Wikinews a couple of weeks ago, I have noticed that this rarely happens. Therefore a newly published story with yesterday's date would slip down the front page listing, and may actually go unnoticed.

Forward dating articles from the eastern hemisphere seems relatively harmless, but I don't see the benefits.

When you say 'the user's timezone settings' do you mean their browser settings, or their mediawiki preferences?

--InfantGorilla (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I was always under the impression that the only thing user time zone settings ( from special:preferences) were used for was dates on RC and diffs. I was under the impression that the main page used UTC, as we wanted it to be consistent [and if i recall, stuff like {{LOCALTIMESTAMP}} was just recently introduced, so it has just recently became possible to make it local time zone]. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Even if user time zone settings come into play, I don't thing that should preclude us from adopting a UTC policy. Afterall, I hope that we get read by people who are not advanced Wiki users who have customized their settings. Our target audience should not be each other but people who haven't registered. Also, some stories take two-three days in development. Publishing them with the date of creation seems crazy. We model many things we do after real newspapers. Newspapers don't insert articles into yesterday's edition, even if the journalist had written the article a day or two ago. It is dated when published. --SVTCobra 23:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

You're misinterpreting what I said if you think I mean publishing with a stale date. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:57, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, but what do you mean by "date of creation" then? Was "UN reports condemn West Bank settlement" published with a "stale date"?--SVTCobra 00:01, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

No, I refer to stuff that is speedily created and published. Not the horror stories that are beaten senseless before becoming publishable. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:05, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

2008 Prairie meteoroid

Wikinews: 2008 Prairie meteoroid I was in the process of relating to wikinews an article on wikipedia which was in my Saturday's local newspaper as where a meteoroid had landed had just been found!!! The search team is still there scouring for more artifacts before the snow comes. There is a $10,000 reward from meteor collectors for such meteroid finds. But the article was deleted speedily as it wsn't news for a find which just happened, they just found where it landed!!!! Article 2008 Prairie meteoroid Ah well  :-( It would have been nice to have a new Canada news story on the portal but C'est la vie. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 20:23, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• It was a copyright violation of Wikipedia content (we don't have compatible licenses).
• It was nothing like a news story, it had an encyclopedic title and was not a report, hence notnews deletion. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Technical

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FlaggedRevs

This is mega-important. If you don't have a bugzilla account, then create one and vote. If you do have a bugzilla account, then why haven't you voted already? In either case, please note your support below for a sighted+quality implementation of FlaggedRevs. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

For those who know nothing about FlaggedRevs, or the proposed configuration, here are some details. It is important that people learn something about this and are qualified to give informed input.

1. 1. The default configuration is "sighted", this means someone has looked at the version in question and said it is OK. There are a variety of configurations to manage someone being permitted to do this task, it can be something you're automatically allowed to do after your account is a certain age and has a certain number of edits; it can also be a specific privilege that people are granted.
   2. The somewhat confusing documentation can be found here.
   3. The proposed implementation on the above-linked to bugzilla entry is sighted+quality. The "quality" level would, to my way of thinking, never be granted by just having an account for a certain length of time. An article would then also have to be quality before appearing on the front page. Portals and the like, eg Portal:Science and technology could set less stringent standards and use sighted revisions.

The bug has only six votes, get your asses in gear! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Votes

• vehemently support This is the road to Google News. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Per Brianmc (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 12:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support. --Skenmy ^talk 15:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support although there might be some pain involved until we have a larger contributor base, this is the only way to provide reliable news for our readers. I know that Google New is popular, but let's not forget about other major aggregators such as Yahoo! News. --SVTCobra 15:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support Agree with Brian (I've voted on the bug additionally). Majorly ^talk 15:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support, if there's one project that can benefit from this, it's Wikinews. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 17:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support per brianmc DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:17, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Aaand a vote too late! We have FlaggedRevs! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

And how can I review articles on FlaggedRevs?Anonymous101^talk 18:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at the bottom of any article. Majorly ^talk 21:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

So now that we have it ...

We now have new user groups Wikinews:Editor and Wikinews:Reviewer. How are we populating these groups? --SVTCobra 18:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs

yo could read : "Bureaucrat accounts, by default, can promote users to Reviewer/Editor status or remove it. Sysop accounts can do the same with Editor status." Jacques Divol (talk) 19:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

For the moment we work with Editor status and people start to get a clue about what FlaggedRevs does and means. CalendarBot needs updated, there's over 10k old articles need flagged, all the country pages. Thank you for volunteering to sort all this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

ok, thanks Jacques Divol (talk) 20:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Question is there going to be a official system for giving wikinewsies reviewing/editor status or will it be based upon crat/admin discretion? The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

And follow up what about redirects, will they be "reviewed" or is there some sort of system for them? The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Pages that need to get made with explanations

• Wikinews:Editor
• Wikinews:Reviewer
• Help:Article validation
• Wikinews:Flagged revisions

Cirt (talk) 20:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, are we going to promote on discretion, or have a similar page to Wikipedia's rollback request page? I'm not entirely sure which would be better, but some sort of rule is needed I think. Majorly ^talk 21:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about Wikinews:Reviewer, but IMO the Wikinews:Editor-class should be no big deal and given out to established users on discretion, and used primarily as related to vandalism/spam. Cirt (talk) 01:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

User groups

Seriously, how are we deciding who is a Wikinews:Editor and who is a Wikinews:Reviewer? I realize that we are in the "feeling out" stages of FlaggedRevisons, but the current list of Reviewers seems to be rather arbitrary and includes users who are not yet sysops (see: group=reviewer). And who or what is Voice of All (talk · contribs)? I am not asking who has the power to promote (which was answered above) but rather how these decisions are made and by what authority. --SVTCobra 01:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Voice of All created the extension... Majorly ^talk 01:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

All sysops have the ability to promote users to Wikinews:Editor. So far, it appears that the Wikinews:Reviewer-class promotions were all made by Brianmc (talk · contribs) (save that of Brian). I agree that it appears odd to have some users promoted to this class, especially those that are not sysops and have not gone through any sort of community input on this project. Cirt (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Another point to consider is how we are going to use validated/validate on the project itself, before really getting into who becomes Wikinews:Reviewers. Cirt (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Getting "Editor"

There has been a bit of chatter about how people should be assigned the "Editor" bit. Since there hasn't been any real discussion (that I've found) I'll put out my suggestion (oh, and if this is the wrong location, sorry.): Very simply, I think the system should be modeled after Commons Flick Reviewers. I believe that any registered user should be able to request "Editor" in a community vote format. The number of votes doesn't matter, simply consensus. Minimum account age and edit count isn't necessary either, just enough contribs to demonstrate they are here to help the project. The time for vote should be fairly short, just long enough for others to see it and cast their comment (5 days, maybe).

The goal is to get people using the "Editor" powers that WANT to. The point of the software is to prevent vandalism, so we can't give it everyone. At the same time, it would be silly to make the requirements as high as AR or Admin. If the user abuses their ability, then you penalize them (revoke the bit, etc). 95% of the people that go through Flickr Review on Commons pass. The ones that don't are because the community knows they are trouble, or they haven't demonstrated themselves to be useful. I believe that is exactly what is being looked for here. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 02:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

As Majorly (talk · contribs) pointed out above, another option is to model it after w:Wikipedia:Requests for permissions, and just give Editor status out on discretion of an admin. It can be removed just as easily if it is abused. Cirt (talk) 02:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

• Comment This all sounds good, but should the user who created an article be allowed to edit at will? For updates and the like. PS: I wouldn't mind being an editor. —Calebrw (talk) 02:53, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

So a very unofficial basis is what majorly suggested am I right. Sounds pretty okay. The Mind's Eye (talk) 03:00, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

@Caleb - I think you have the wrong kind of "Editor". This is for the Flagged Revisions permission. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 03:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

@The Mind's Eye. Majorly did suggest a very informal system. My suggestion is one step above what he suggested.. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 03:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a incorporation of both some how. Like maybe a thing where wikinewsies either can be promoted to editor by a admin, or if a admin doesn't promote them on there own they could have something similar to Commons thing that was mentioned. The Mind's Eye (talk) 03:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. Cirt (talk) 03:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

From the look of it, "Editor" is a bit like "Autoconfirmed Premium", so I agree that the requirements shouldn't be discouragingly more than those for autoconfirmed. A system like Wikipedia's RfP should be fine - if you meet some basic standard and there's no significant opposition, you get the bit; if there is some opposition, then you need to get some consensus. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 05:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think something like en.wps request for rollack would be better. Admins can approve users who they tink can be trusted. Anonymous101^talk 06:01, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah en.wp Rollback. That was a master f**kup when it was released. I realized they changed the system later, but every time someone mentions that, I think back to the fighting, the page blanking.... the rollback cat. But basically, yea. It is something akin to Autoconfirmed premium, at least I think so. Personally I prefer something slightly more structured than "Just let the admins give it away" (Which, to be fair, is how I have permission already). IMHO it is too easy for a bad apple user to befriend and admin and then get on the "inside" (extra permissions and what not) when a simple community survey would have turned up what a terrible idea this was. That being said, WN might be too small still for that to be a real problem. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 06:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, if there is a problem, any admin c an jsut remove the editor rights. Anonymous101^talk 06:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for policy on assigning permissions

Here's what I'd propose for the reviewer and editor rights. For editor I recommend that any user who's been autoconfirmed who requests it should add their name to a request page. If some time passes (say, 3 days), and nobody challenges the request, the rights may be granted by any admin. If there are some challenges, then it is up to the admin to either grant the right anyways (and leave and explanation for the reason), or deny the rights. If rights are denied, the user may ask for a vote; in that case, an admin-like vote takes place for some time (7 days? 14 days?) and the result is our usual consensus-based approach. Any editor is subject to recall, and only violations of editorial rights are cause for the right's removal given consensus. I recommend that the editor right be granted initially to all admins. For the reviewer role, I recommend that users self-nominate, and a 7-day admin-like approval period be instituted. Only users who've been around for, say, 1 month or more can be reviewers. All reviewers are subject to recall, and only violation of review rights are cause for the right's removal given consensus. Both rights are granted in perpetuity, and not subject to removal for inactivity etc. Loss of admin/other status should not have any effect on editor/review status. I can codify this on an actual policy proposal page if there's some agreement with the above. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 07:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with this. At the moment getting the Editor bit should be trivial, but people need more experience of how this extension changes the wiki. I've updated all the day pages through to the end of the month to ensure that only sighted articles will show up. This is a first step. We now have a mechanism that means some idiot can't come along, post their press release (or Pelican Shit) and slap a {{publish}} tag on it. Well, they can, but no anon will see it, and it won't show on the front page.

In the past couple of days I've seen one or two things that mildly concern me that this will sometimes be abused by people who lack patience. Changing ready to review is a small step in the right direction, but I've seen people tag stuff as review, then - a couple of hours later - just publish themselves because nobody had reviewed the article; that's not acceptable.

Erik has provided me with a name and an email address for someone at Google, so... Under no circumstances should anyone try to submit us to Google news!. Let's work on getting to grips with this and how it is going to work, then I will try some quiet diplomacy (I can do that as well as rabid flamethrower-wielding Scotsman :-P). Discussion with Google may require we do some fine-tuning on how the FlaggedRevs system is used, but we need to get to some point where we can say, "We've upped our standards, up yours!". A parallel suggestion from Jay Walsh is that we also look at Yahoo! I'm going to be busy with non-Wikinews stuff for most of today, can someone look into that and add a new subsection to this discussion on the topic? Again, don't submit the site to their review process, for it and Google we need a checklist of their listing criteria and solid arguments detailing how we meet these. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the process suggested/laid out above by IlyaHaykinson (talk · contribs). Let's set up a request page for it somewhere - I would have already but not sure what to name it. - Wikinews:Flagged revisions/Requests for permissions or something like that maybe? Cirt (talk) 12:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yet it happened again, with OR that consists of "I watched TV" no less. --SVTCobra 13:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Changed to {{review}} and warning placed on article talk.

Unless the user is flagged as an editor they would not be able to get this up on the front page. If they're an admin they could make themselves an editor, and - harsh though it may sound - I believe abuse of editor privileges should be grounds for desysopping. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with all of this. On the editor abuse, we should set up a policy on what is and is not considered abuse. I know most experienced Wikinewsies know, but it would also put at ease the newbies and anon's who know we have this new system, but may not or lack trust of the process. I do agree that it should constitute de-admin, but I also think it should go through the revocation process like anyone else woould. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a general sort of question, what exactly are the reviewers going to be doing? I mean i think there is a general consensus that editors just make sure articles aren't spam or vandalism, but what really is the reviewers jobs. The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Summary: Fill in {{peer review}} and make sure subsequent changes by non editor-status people do not break compliance with the template (eg, updating a death toll but not providing a source for the new figure). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

<unindent>I have a response from Josh at Google News, question:

...

One thing that I'm not totally clear on with the Flagged Revisions feature is whether these take place before or after the article is posted. Will the non-logged in user, e.g., the Googlebot and any users sent to articles we find, only see articles that have gone through this review process before posting?

...

I have given an answer that you can find others if you go looking and added the NOINDEX magic word to the newsroom, we may need further cleanup to make casually stumbling over unreviewed articles more difficult. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

2 Admin Proposal

I'm not sure what your opinions on this will be, but here goes. Let's create a request page like Cirt said, but instead of needing a bunch of community consensus, all that is needed is 2 admins approval. That way we at least partially eliminate the whole scratch my back scenario by having to seperate people approving the editor status. Another alternative is to simply use admin discretion but with 2 admins approval as well. The Mind's Eye (talk) 17:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

That sounds a bit too gracious. Like accreditation, I don't think editor should be handed out on a silver platter. People need to be trusted users/contributers. If we were to just start handing out editor status to almost anyone who wants it, then that will not get us anywhere in terms of Google News etc. The biggest and main reason we are not grabbed by them and others is because our process(es) are too open, and not, for lack of better terms, professional enough. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

So your saying for google news to potentially awknowledge us we need a more set system for giving editor status? The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

That and not everyone on WN can be an editor or reviewer. We need to be very very thankful we have gotten this system and not try to take advantage of it by making everyone an editor. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 20:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

But if we have a system like the one suggested above won't the typical backscratching thing happen? The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikinews:Editor status, IMO, should really be no big deal and only used to combat spam/vandalism/blatantly obvious COI, etc. As such, I think it should be given out liberally - and taken away just as quickly in cases of abuse. It is the Wikinews:Reviewer status and Article validation process and marking articles as validate which will hopefully eventually control what articles appear on the Main Page. Cirt (talk) 20:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The point of editor, is not to have dozens and dozens. That is one reason why we cannot get in Google News. not everyone on CNN and etc are editors, so we shouldn't see how big of a list we can make. We need to make an effort. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 20:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

But see DragonFire all editors really seem to be doing is saying this article is not spam/coi/vandalism. The Mind's Eye (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that is the point of Wikinews:Editor. IMO what DragonFire1024 (talk · contribs) refers to as "the point of editor" should really be the point of Wikinews:Reviewer. Cirt (talk) 21:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree entirely. The Mind's Eye (talk) 22:01, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You know in actuality reviewer may have been better name for what we call editors, and editor may have been better named reviewer. The Mind's Eye (talk) 22:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, but oh well. Cirt (talk) 22:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The point is that in the traditional sense of the word, all contributors to Wikinews are editors. Anyone can edit someone else's article and fix it (or vandalise it). I believe the difference between an editor and reviewer on WN is going to be minimal - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 09:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> My vision is for a system where editor status is given fairly freely. After all, at the moment sysop is given without seriously onerous requirements, there are options to auto-grant editor status based on age of account and number of contributions without blocks. At this time I certainly would not advocate changing the FlaggedRevs setup to work this way, we're still working out what it all means, who needs it, and how it is going to make our output higher quality and more trustworthy.

Right now, reviewer status is not really in use. Ultimately, I want to see it being the people with this priv bit deciding what is good enough for the main page. However, as this is going to be a small subset of users it needs to be something where other people can give input and aid reviewers in their decision making. This was very much where I was going with the proposal for {{factcheck}} and {{copyedit}}, perhaps we need templates for talk pages where someone can explicitly state that these tasks have been carried out. For stuff written off the wire and from secondary sources this is going to be fairly straightforward, but for Original Reporting I have a gut feeling that we're all going to need to pull our socks up and provide more detailed notes.

One thing that needs killed off is the idea that this control and consideration is hurting Wikinews. I look at how some people have reacted on-wiki, and in IRC, and I see bitching about "I can't get my article up!" Yes, our output will fall while this is implemented and we learn to live with it; when I first got involved with the project, a day with five articles was a good day. There certainly is a chicken-and-egg scenario associated with this; we need it to be listed in Google news, and we need listed in Google news to get the number of contributors that can make it work. I've even seen people demand FlaggedRevs be removed and we go back to what I will call "the bad old days", this will not move the project forward, this will not increase our credibility, this will not encourage people to contribute, and getting a poorly documented piece of OR on the front page is not a project goal; this last point is - yes - people being possessive over their contributions, right now we're in a situation where people need to look beyond the horizon and their own work; right now we need to be concerning ourselves with where Wikinews will be in 5-10 years. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree almost 100% with you Brianmc, but my opinion on what "Reviewers" should do is slightly different. First of all, going back to "editors", I think that very simply all they are doing is saying this article is not spam/vandalism/coi/etc. That "Editor" status can be given out on admin discretion. The only real "rule" I feel should apply is that it shouldn't be given out just because a friend of yours comes over from Wikipedia. The people who receive it should have at least shown a commitment to edit and particapte in Wikinews. Now on to "Reviewers." My "dream" so to speak would to have Reviewers be the people saying this article is ready to publish. They are the final copyeditors, factcheckers, etc., before they decide it gets published. I certainly think there should be some community consensus system for Reviewers, so that people in general agree this person it trustworth enough to be one. Finally, as to the Template main page system, I think that anyone once a article has been published should be able to put it up there. I believe the reviewers are the ones who will help us get up on Google News.The Mind's Eye (talk) 15:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with both of ya. The short version is that almost anyone can have "editor" and if they abuse it, beat them with a wikitrout and move on. "Reviewer" should be incorporated into the current review proccess. Instead of any old person reviewing and {{publish}}ing, only certain people can properly review and mark the version as "Quality". Once that is properly introduced, we can change the front page to only list "Quality" reviews articles. The proccess for getting "Reviewer" should be more stringent, like AR. If people can demonstrate that they understand how to check sources, check the facts, do grammer/spelling checks and all those other fun things (oh and wont abuse the system) then, great, have "Reviewer". Obviously there isn't a _huge_ community, but there will need to be a decent amount of people with "Reviewer" if the main page moves to list quality versions only. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a question: is there a list of pages that need to be "sighted" or whatever it is called? Like on the Newsroom page? Cause if there isn't one, we need one. Otherwise an obscure article could end up falling down the Recent Changes list and get lost in the hustle, especially when we get more users. Gopher65_talk 14:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I proposed last night having perhaps a "bot" do it. But yes there is a page, Special:Unreviewedpages. Be warned it is massive. The Mind's Eye (talk) 14:48, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Reviving the discussion on Editor/Reviewer

I would like to see where people stand on this now. There have been a number of failures with the current setup at just editor level, and I simply do not think Wikinews is ready to move on to having reviewers.

First off, I am of the firm belief that editor should not be given as freely as it has in some cases. There needs to be a clear indication that someone is going to follow process, not sight articles without {{peer review}}, and only sight changes they have checked. If this can be adhered to, and there is more of a willingness to remove the privilege where this is not the case, then I think we can live with editor until we have a larger contributor base.

Secondly, software developments aimed at having our articles listed in news aggregators are assuming only editor is required. This means that the first application of sighting must be far more than the casual 'vandalism/POV/COI' check some above propose. Yes, once an article has passed {{peer review}}, that will be the main use.

Lastly, reviewer is - in my opinion - out the window for the time being. We'd have what? 20 people with that status, and the front page would only show what they approve? Where's the point having editor then? Perhaps when we have instead of 20-30 regular contributors some 100+ we can revisit this, but in the meantime I am strongly opposed to trying to implement reviewer. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. Hopefully with all these changes going on lately we might get those new contributors we are discussing. :P - Cirt (talk) 09:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

We're picking up commentators, which I think is a good thing. This seems to have sprung out of the new HYS templates and a few of these people are obviously regularly checking the site. Someone beat me to setting up {{hello-comment}}, we perhaps need an anon version as well. What seems great is that there is minimal trolling/vandalism (and what trolling there is is well done and generally appropriately provocative). What I would point out is we still really need the "Wikinews for Dummies" page that tells someone how to start a basic story; there is a buzz from getting something on the front page and if we can capture one in twenty or so of these commentators we'll build the contributor base faster than people get bored and leave. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we should perhaps be a bit more selective in granting Wikinews:Editor status, but I don't really see a problem there. However, Wikinews:Reviewer seems to be much more contentious. First, there doesn't seem to be an urgent need for this user class. Second, the list of such users (see list of reviewers) seems to have been rapidly and arbitrarily assembled. I suggest we depopulate this list immediately to include only Wikinews bureaucrats/stewards, until we figure out how we will use this class. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I think part of the problem (probably a large part) was that the rules were changed in mid-stream. So people were being given editor status, told "sight anything that's not vandalism", and then they find out two weeks later that the rules were changed so that only reviewed articles should be sighted. I suspect that this particular problem will quickly go away as word of the requirements for sighting ripples out through the grapevine. It's easy for those of us who sit in IRC all day to keep up with the latest changes, but not everyone does that. I think much of this is just a result of the poor inter-community communication. Gopher65_talk 00:56, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with SVTCobra (talk · contribs) that the Wikinews:Reviewer class should be depopulated to Bureaucrats/Stewards, until such time that we can determine consensus about what to do with it. Cirt (talk) 02:26, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Brian makes a compelling argument. I agree with him, all points expressed so far, and also support the depopulation of Wikinews:Reviewer. Editor should be given to trusted users, much like a level below Administrator. Writer -> Editor -> Administrator. --Skenmy ^talk 20:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

move search box up

I was thinking, the search box is pretty far down the page (between regions and toolbox). I think perhaps it would look better between navigation and wikinews box, or between wikinews and regions. Its position can be modified using mediawiki:sidebar. thoughts? Bawolff ☺☻ 16:08, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I personally never use the search box, but I understand what you're saying here. It would be better higher up. Majorly ^talk 08:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe between Wikinews and Regions would be good. Cirt (talk) 08:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Done Bawolff ☺☻ 04:39, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I regularly use the search box. It can be particularly useful just to go there and type 'Template:whatever', or 'Special:checkuser' and get to the page you want. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs reader feedback module

The FlaggedRevs extension has a module for reader feedback, which was rolled out with the latest FlaggedRevs upgrade on Wikinews. You'll see it as a user who is not logged in on the bottom of all article pages. I'm not sure there has been any discussion on the Wikinews community about this feature. The idea is to collect reader opinions over time, and to plot them on a graph which can be accessed through a "rating" tab.

The feature is still in active development, and there'll be a public testing period on Wikimedia Labs. But, since it's already enabled here -- do you want to continue using it for the time being, or would you prefer it to be turned off until it's been fully tested and discussed? A quick straw poll would help me to let our developers know what to do. Thanks, --Eloquence (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

• Well, I am pretty sure we would want to keep FlaggedRevs. I am not sure if you are talking about turning off the feedback feature separately, but in my opinion I don't see a reason to do so. I would love to know how to view any such feedback as soon as it is available. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
• Agree w/ SVTCobra (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 20:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• Feedback! As Number Five says... "need more input!" so keep it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Enabled again. Voice of All (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

infobox

I've changed the infobox template to deal with a problem with it conflicting with the sighted box (made it clear right). I don't think this will cause any problems, but if it does please find me and yell at me. If it were to cause a problem, it would most likely cause one in a page using either very weird layout tricks, or the if the box is on the left side of the page. Thanks. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

How to get 2 categories to output in the same DPL?

Wikinews:Wikinews Importer Bot/Latin America

Categories that I want to be included all together in this DPL (as in "OR" any o