Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

[edit] Main Page

We have recent headlines usually featured on the main page. I was wondering, this is exclusively a aesthetic thing, but perhaps we could reduce it to three. It leaves a major blank side on the left when we do it the current way. Don't know what everyone idea's are but just a thought. The Mind's Eye (talk) 23:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. There's quite a bit of whitespace on there to be honest. Maybe it could do with a redesign. Majorly (talk) 23:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

A redesign would certainly work. The Mind's Eye (talk) 23:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

we ahve tried several times to redesign it, but with either no concensus, or not enough knowledge/hands to accomplish it. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 02:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Then what about my initial proposal, of changing it to just three featured articles on the main page. The Mind's Eye (talk) 03:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Used to be like that, but I think it was so hard to get 4 on there, that it would be as hard to put 3 back on. Also, I believe there was white space as much with 3. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 04:17, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem, that I've noticed, is that the damn CSS renders differently on IE6 compared to browsers like Firefox and Safari (haven't looked at it on IE7). On FF, it's all nicely set up, all squared off, and the leads are a distinct section from the following bits. On IE6, the two columns for recent headlines and write an article/featured content get caught in the div for the fourth lead somehow, and so only take up 75% of the width they should. I think I proposed a fix once, but then realised it screwed up Firefox again. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 06:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I kind of like the current setup with the 4 leads. Cirt (talk) 15:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It isn't just different browsers that is the problem, it is different text sizes, different resolutions, and different screen ratios. A 4:3 ratio screen will have different amounts of whitespace in different places than a 16:9 ratio screen of the same area. There is no way to stop this from happening, other than using a fixed layout, but that creates more problems than it solves. Gopher65_talk 19:05, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

The only way to get rid of it would be to completely redesign the entire main page. That means everything from Articles to text and so on. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I tried to use magic js tricks to automatically resize text so that it becomes resolution independent. Only sort of worked (it is in my sandbox somewhere). The biggest problem with redesigns is not technical ability, as there are several people here skilled in xhtml/css. The problem is no one can ever agree on anything new. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Call to Keyboards!!!

I have noticed how relatively small the WikiNews writing team is, and was thinking of ways to get the news out about WikiNews. Perhaps, I don't know if this is allowed but if we could email all the Wikipedia admin's, I'm sure we could get some new recruits. I mean whereas articles seem to just quickly get out there on the mainstream news, we are usually 4, 5, 6 hours behind. If we could get a fair number of additional editors we could really improve our news writing abilities. Just a suggestion. The Mind's Eye (talk) 02:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment Just a minor nit, but the "n" in Wikinews is not capitalised.

I'd like to see some of the other issues that have been raised recently addressed before we start spamming Wikipedians. Gopher65 pointed out that our informational and policy pages are not as well laid out as they could be. As a new contributor, he's likely in a good position to establish what are the key pages people should get directed to when they first turn up on Wikinews. From that the existing welcome templates could perhaps be revised. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the typo fix. I'm new here too, and I agree the policy and informational pages are poorly laid out. Especially, the original reporting page, at least in my opinion. I will leave a message on his talk page, and see what he thinks about the policy pages. Where is the link to where he stated those things? The Mind's Eye (talk) 14:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Errr, well, I haven't yet. I'm sorry that I haven't got around to starting this yet, but in RL I'm currently working on a large project, and that is eating up most of my time. If you (or someone else) hasn't started this yet by the time that I'm finished the current stage of my work, I'll start it up. But this could be a few weeks yet, depending on how things progress. Even if you start doing this though, I'll hop on and help as soon as I have some more free time. Right now it is all I can do to occasionally copyedit an article unfortunately:(. Gopher65_talk 23:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, while new contributors are always great, spamming (in the literal sense of the word) random wikipedians, might result in a small army of people hating us (if someone spammed all the wikinews admins to help out at wikipedia, I'd have a couple words with the spammer). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to revive this discussion a little...

When we had the initial article on the Large Hadron Collider there were several issues with it, and really nobody here able to properly sort it out. I 'spammed' the LHC article on Wikipedia and at least one item - the so-called scientists who said it'd destroy the Earth - was resolved by Wikipedians. This approach, inviting Wikipedians to participate on a specific article, may be the way to go for the time being. If we have a nice template over on Wikipedia to stick on talk pages of referenced articles we may be able to encourage more cross-wiki participation. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is it necessary?

Is it necessary to have a portal for every country, considering there is not news constantly about each country constantly, perhaps merging less covered portals until they get broader coverage would help with organization. The Mind's Eye (talk) 00:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to keep the portals, it's a seamless form of organization updated through categories that does not require much maintenance. Cirt (talk) 01:07, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

yes, portals we must keep the portals.Jacques Divol (talk) 20:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Some undermaintained portals could probably be fixed so that they function automatically using DPLs. But there is no reason to get rid of them, imo. --SVTCobra 21:55, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, with DPL2 we could potentially have automatically updating leads. (wouldn't that be awesome). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:49, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary trial full-protection of the 4 Main Page Leads

I would like to assess community consensus on a proposal to temporarily have a trial full-protect of the 4 Lead Article templates that are transcluded onto the Main Page - Template:Lead article 1, Template:Lead article 2, Template:Lead article 3, Template:Lead article 4.

w:User:Misza13 was very helpful once already with w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot, and he recently responded to my request to configure the bot to grab the 4 Main Page leads into a formatted page on Wikipedia - w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot/Wikinews Lead articles (updated hourly).

Once the templates are full-protected, I will open a discussion on w:Template talk:In the news. With the added full-protection, this assures that an administrator has looked over the article, making sure that it has gone through adequate {{Review}} before {{Publish}}. Then, choosing a published article for update to a Main Page lead is an extra step of review.

If the discussion at w:Template talk:In the news is not productive, I will ask for the Wikinews Main Page Lead templates to be stepped back down to semi-protection. Thanks for taking a look, Cirt (talk) 20:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment/Questions

Comment I'm not sure I like the creep of the role of administrators which is supposed to be more like that of a janitor rather than editor in chief, making decisions about what are the most important articles. Ideally I think this should be linked to the Flagged Revisions role of "editor". I've yet to spend a great deal of time to fully understand how our implementation of FlaggedRevs works but could we have some system whereby the lead templates can have stable versions which can only be updated by "editors" but still allowing draft versions to be edited by any user (per semi protect). Adambro (talk) 21:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You bring up a valid concern but I am not sure that w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot would be able to function in that manner, I am not sure which version it would grab. I think this is worth a shot for now, at least as a temporary trial-run. Plus the added review/accountability inherent in updating of full-protected templates might help with the discussion as it progresses to Wikipedia. Cirt (talk) 21:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Question: Would this essentially mean that only the admins would be "Reviewers?" The Mind's Eye (talk) 21:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

No, other articles would appear on the Main Page itself, this would just be for those 4 templates. Cirt (talk) 21:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not liking this. Since we implimented this I have been the only one updating the leads. We don't have enough active admins to keep up with this. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 10:30, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the full protection should been downgraded if at all possible. The full protections seems to make the leads updated even less regularly. Anonymous101^talk 20:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
- Please give this a chance. I have not yet proposed this at Wikipedia because I wanted to see how it works here and also work some things out over there that I am still working on. I think it is worth a try. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 20:04, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
  - OK, I will see what happens and if the proposal succeeds on wp I will support full protection. Anonymous101^talk 20:53, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
    - Thank you, and of course feel free to comment at w:Template_talk:In_the_news#Proposal:_Wikinews_Main_Page_Leads - it's just in discussion phase at this point so there's no poll/voting going on or anything. Cirt (talk) 20:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Votes

Support as nom. Cirt (talk) 20:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Support — I was surprised that the front page was editable by just anyone. I'm almost universally opposed to the existence of admin-only edit access for user created content, but the front page is one of the few exceptions IMO. Gopher65_talk 20:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- Not the main page, the main page templates, the lead articles. The Mind's Eye (talk) 21:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Support temporary protection if it helps us get to Wikipedia. Anonymous101^talk 21:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Support I see no problem. The Mind's Eye (talk) 22:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Support but definitely step-down if Wikipedia judges as non-necessary or doesn't like the idea. TheFearow (userpage) 07:51, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Support Didn't we have this before? Thunderhead 08:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Support IMHO there should be cascading protection on the main page (well, I'm not sure how that would work with the DPL's, and the current articles, but you get what I mean). --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Update: After this proposal ran for 11 days, I full-protected the four Main Page lead templates. I will keep you updated on how the proposal fares over at Wikipedia. Cirt (talk) 06:31, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Another update: Main Page Lead templates back down to semi-protection. More Wikipedia-related updates to follow in a few days. Cirt (talk) 21:29, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Well in the end we didn't get Main Page Leads onto the w:Main Page of Wikipedia this go-round, but check out the prominent page at Wikipedia, Portal:Current events - which now includes Wikinews articles for the past week. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 21:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

<shrug> I think any time the admins give themselves control over what is Wikinews - either in substance or appearance - there is an extreme disconnect from the community. In short, it is no longer a wiki by the definition of a wiki. - Amgine | ^t 22:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The proposal for that portion of it is over, and all the Main Page lead templates have been backed down to semi-prot. No worries - :P Cirt (talk) 22:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikinews Hotline

Hi folks. As some of you may know, I've been the maintainer of the Wikinews Hotline for several years now. The hotline, currently available as a toll-free U.S. number as well as a regular U.S. number, is supposed to serve two purposes. First, it is supposed to allow for phone-based accreditation checks of accredited users. Second, it provides a place for "breaking news" reporting by telephone.

Since the hotline launched in 2005, I have paid US$880 in service fees for the hotline (it currently costs $19.98 per month to operate). I would like to stop paying for the hotline now, and offer one of three choices to our community.

Some other person takes over the payment and management of the hotline.
Someone organizes a fund-raising system to raise enough money to pay for another year of the hotline, in advance, and sends that to me over Paypal or something similar. I will pre-pay for a year of service. (I think that's aout $179.16).
We close the hotline down

While I still like the idea of the hotline, to be honest it's gone mainly unused. I could count on one hand how many times we had legitimate news stories called in -- and as far as I know there was only one article that was changed because of what was left on the hotline. To date, we've not had even one phone call to the accreditation side that was legitimate. Given the track record, I recommend that we choose the third option and shut it down.

The service is currently paid for until September 12th. So please add your thoughts below, and if necessary we have some time for a vote. If we choose option 1 or 2, I would prefer to have the hotline transferred or the payment taken care of at least by September 5th. If nothing else happens or we choose option 3, then I will cancel the account probably around the same time. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 08:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ilya, may I please be the first to thank you for your investment and time in managing this resource. I know your contribution does not go un-noticed, and while it may be a less-used feature, it is nice to have the feature.

However, while this may not be exactly what you want to hear (because of the amount of money you have already invested), there are ways we can do this for free, and I am willing to spearhead these. In my opinion, you can go ahead and not use any more of your hard-earned cash on this. Why pay for something we can get for free, right? --Skenmy ^talk 11:07, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right that there are ways to get something similar for free. For example, even when we started the hotline, things like Skype Voicemail were already available. The advantages of the service that I had used were a) voicemail-to-email gateways, b) a toll-free number, c) ability to have a phone tree with extensions to allow for separate phone lines. While I completely agree that one can get the single-line voicemail-to-email feature for free (via something like GrandCentral for example), there's still the core issue of whether it's even needed or not. Thanks for pointing out, though, that there are some free alternatives that we may want to consider as well. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 17:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Would the hotline be viable as just an email address, that went to a hotline maillist for writers to subscribe to? Moderated list with a decent sized pool of mods, put the address/Tip page somewhere very prominent, like a header/footer? rootology (T) 20:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The idea was that having a phone number would allow for people who didn't have access to the Internet to still submit information. As such, I suspect that Wikinews is still just a little on the small side to support such a feature, as impressive as it may be. I think it would be easier to either have a VoIP voicemail, or get the cooperation of existing Wikimedia chapters to act as proxy hotlines for various countries. For email, we already have scoop at wikinewsie dot org which goes out to all accredited reporters. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 00:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that I can't find the scoop address listed on any prominent page. If there's no objection, I'll put it on Wikinews:Contact us, although I suspect it could go in a few other places to make it more visible. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 00:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a random suggestion. Why not build something simple and cheaper that does the same (or similar) stuff? We could get an 800# DID for fairly cheap and rig it up to an asterisk box. Heck, maybe we could convince someone to let us run the copy of Astersik on the Toolserver? --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 03:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

While I have no doubt that with a bit of ingenuity we can get this service re-setup, I still question the overall usefulness of the service. We've had it on our homepage for years, and don't get useful calls. Maybe we've put the cart before the horse and should wait for popularity to rise before trying a phone line service again. Getting a DID#, getting a phone line and paying datacenter cross-connect fees, getting a dial-in card for the toolserver -- all that will cost more money probably than just paying the monthly fee on the existing service. In general, before we try to find which technical solution is best, let's figure out if we even need to continue having this service. I currently do not think that we should. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 04:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Well just as a note on the technical side... it is not nearly that complicated or expensive. We install Asterisk somewhere, pay for DID which will connect via IAX or SIP. No need for anything else - it's all virtual on our side. As for "do we need it". No, I don't think we need it, but I think we probably should have it. So it hasn't been utilized? Has the scoop@ email address been utilized? If neither are utilized then maybe we need to consider an advertising campaign of some sort to get it out there. And I don't mean just out on Wikinews - if they are here already... telling them isn't going to help. What about the other en language projects though? --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:09, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Well, barring a decision of "do we need it", thanks for volunteering to get it set up :-) -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 06:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a reminder — I will be disabling the account this coming Friday. I think everyone's ok with it. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 22:06, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I've now canceled the RingCentral account, and removed all mentions of the hotline from public pages. I've also removed the phone/fax credential verification options from the accreditation policy. -- IlyaHaykinson (talk) 19:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested alternative Have Your Say Templates

Being laid up in hospital with only limited use of one of the actual hospital computers has left me reduced to following newspapers. I spotted something in the print edition of the UK's Daily Telegraph that I think we should be stealing.

They have a HYS template which is a newsprint column wide (i.e. about the same as our {{QuoteLeft}}. Within it they pose a question aimed at having some influence over the direction which discussion takes.

The example I took notes on was

HAVE YOUR SAY

Is depression a natural part of growing old?

(URL for their HYS website)

Attached to story Two million OAPs with depression miss out on treatment.

Obvious iffy area is NPOV, but thoughts please? I think with carefully crafted questions this is going to temp people to have their say. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:45, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea from the description, but I'd have a firmer idea by viewing an actual test template. Cirt (talk) 12:20, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a template expert, but this needs to be some sort of combination of {{haveyoursay}} and {{QuoteLeft}} {{QuoteRight}}. There should obviously be a very small speech bubble graphic and a red "HAVE YOURS SAY" heading with a single parameter for the question. Then a "POST" and "READ" option with the read option hidden if there are no comments.

Ideal is for this to create a L1 heading matching the question on the comments page and users prompted to create a L2 titled response, but I don't know if this is possible. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

{{HYS question left}} is an attempt to get the template done. Speech bubble should be at top and "Comment" isn't showing. Please help! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

All fixed up. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and put into Controversy spreads over Libertarian U.S. presidential nominee Bob Barr for example. Beta testing! --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Template seems to be a hit, seeing a lot of use and some good questions coming up. Do we want to add its removal or replacement with a "view discussion of this article" template to WN:ARCHIVE? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

QUESTION: Since some people will come along and just put in a brief answer to the posed question should whoever adds it create the Comments: page with the question as a headline? Eg, as I've done here. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that does seem necessary/proper - a bot could be run to do it fairly easily (pulling the param from the template use), but just encouraging people could work just as well. Probably best to include a note on the templatePage itself.

Should the template then link to the appropriate section when you hit add comment (instead of just creating a new comment). Bawolff ☺☻ 03:46, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ReviewBot - automated changing of article templates immediately after peer review

I am willing to write, run, and maintain this bot - a bot that will follow a process of monitoring new pages for the {{review}} tag, then monitoring the talk page for that article until a peer review happens, at which point it will take the appropriate action:

Passed: bot will change {{review}} to {{publish}}, after checking for further edits since the reviewed revision ID, and that the reviewer is not a major contributor to the article (less than 20% of article edits belong to reviewer = independent). Bot will then stop all monitoring of the article.
Failed: bot will change {{review}} to {{develop}}. Bot will then start monitoring article for {{review}} again, and restarts the whole process.

Here is what I propose the bot will do in other circumstances:

If the bot detects a change in revision ID between review and bot processing that does not match any of the rules below, it will post a message to the talk page, and keep the {{review}} template in place.
If the bot detects that an article that has passed review has been {{publish}}ed - it will do nothing and stop monitoring.
If the bot detects that an article that has failed review has been put back to {{develop}} - it will start the monitoring process again.
If the bot detects that an article that has passed review has been put back to {{develop}} - it will change it to {{publish}} and leave a message on the talk page. It will then stop monitoring the page (to avoid edit wars).
If the bot detects that an article that has failed review has been {{publish}}ed - it will change it to {{develop}} and leave a message on the talk page. It will then restart monitoring of the page.

And here are the ideas I have had that might be quite controversial - so discussion must take place before these go in:

If the bot detects an article {{publish}}ed before an independent peer review - it will switch the article to {{review}} and leave a message on the talk page of the article and of the editor who published the article.
The bot will mark any article it publishes as Stable using the Reviewer status.
The bot will alert editors on IRC when certain conditions occur (e.g. {{publish}}ed without review, {{publish}}ed after failed review)

This is, of course, up for discussion. This is a small tool designed to make our lives easier. --Skenmy ^talk 19:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Support everything except "The bot will mark any article it publishes as Stable using the Reviewer status." - but would support "The bot will mark any article it publishes as sighted using the Wikinews:Editor status." -- Cirt (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Support as per Cirt. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Support I like Options #1 and #3. #2 only if we start using Stable. I still have concerns about if an article is published then pulled back later - as I mentioned on IRC - but I leave the solution of that up to you. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Oppose For the reasons I stated below. Gopher65_talk 20:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per gopher. Anonymous101^talk 20:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

- I have struck the above votes as I think there is a broader discussion to be had here and have started on it below. This is a case where I think people have jumped the gun in the move to votes and should have allowed more thought and discussion to go into the process. Revert if you strongly disagree with the striking. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Quote:

Passed: bot will change {{review}} to {{publish}}, after checking for further edits since the reviewed revision ID, and that the reviewer is not a major contributor to the article (less than 20% of article edits belong to reviewer = independent). Bot will then stop all monitoring of the article.

That means that if there are 2 edits to the article and one is review the article is failed? Anonymous101^talk 17:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

No - because the person who made those two edits (presumably the main writer of the article) should not be reviewing the article. --Skenmy ^talk 17:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I explained myself correctly. Iam asking what would happen in this situation

Edit One: User:ArticleWriter creates article, tags with {{review}}
Edit Two: User:ReviewerUser passes review and makes a minor typo correction to the article.

What happens then? Anonymous101^talk 18:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The reviewer shouldn't be making any changes. The copyeditor should be doing that. I appreciate that it is petty to cause the bot to throw a fit over publishing because of a small grammar or spelling fix, but perhaps we could make it so that minor edits (based on +/-, not whether the minor box is ticked) can be accepted as non-contributions to the article? Anything more than, say, 10 characters, should be failing review anyway. --Skenmy ^talk 18:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the 10 character thing would be good. Also, I don't think we should add a copyeditor stage. It already takes long enough to get an article published. ~~82.32.51.147~~Anonymous101^talk I forgot to log in when making this comment 19:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

<unindent>Heh, so now reviewers aren't allowed to copyedit an article they are reviewing? I can understand making content changes. That makes sense. I suppose I won't be reviewing an article... ever again... in that case. Most of the people who write articles for Wikinews have pisspoor grammar in the first place, but, even if they didn't, no one can copyedit themselves; it just doesn't work. Which means that my choices are: 1)publish an article with grammatical errors coming out its wazoo, and 2)fix the errors, then ... oops, can't publish... then wait for the article to not get published in time due to a lack of reviewers. Given that it usually takes a day or two just to get an article ready for publication, time is already short. All this is going to do is push back the publication of articles, causing even more of them to fall into the "not news (more than 48 hours old)" category. Given how many articles we already have that are days old before they're published (if they ever *get* published) I can't see this being a good thing. Gopher65_talk 20:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

One more thing. Sometimes I'll do nothing to an article except add an infobox and an image before I publish. Or format the sources (add/remove whitespaces in the appropriate places). That's a heck of a lot more than 10 characters, but it doesn't add any content to the article. And my one edit may still be enough for a bot to kill my publish. This is not a good idea. Gopher65_talk 20:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Anonymous101^talk 20:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I know I sounded a little cross up there, sorry about that. Gopher65_talk 20:57, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps rather than being negative, we could engage in discussion? Nothing here is set in stone. Perhaps it will ignore the contributions side of things, and the peer review will just have to be community-vetted? I'm wide open to ideas. I appreciate that bots are not intelligent, but to be honest, I see more sheep-like behaviour on here than I do in many bots. --Skenmy ^talk 17:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> If you look at the history on Sebastian Vettel takes pole for 2008 Italian Grand Prix and the associate talk you'll see some of the potential concerns I have with a bot being involved in the review and sighting process. Like many of the issues we have on Wikinews it is a lack of manpower that leads to proposals such as this. The idea is good and relatively sound, but how much is it actually going to save us? Perhaps we need to put the bot idea on hold and work on Wikinews:Sighted revisions (forgive me if there's something similar been created while I was away for this, and create this as a redirect). There are a couple of things to set as goals with that. One is to lay out how sighting and the associated reviewing should make us more credible; the other is to lay out best practices and guidelines for those who can sight revisions. With only 20-30 regular contributors - and most being able to sight - I think we need to look to the future and say how things should be done when we have 100+ regular contributors and are churning out 20+ articles a day. From there discuss and consider the pros and cons of being more practical with current contributor levels and saying you can use {{peer review}}, sight, do trivia like add wikilinks, remove spaces between sources, add infoboxes, and generally polish a little, all followed by adding the {{publish}} template. However, in saying we will accept that those who can sight should do this then these individuals carrying out the sighting need to - not anguish over - but always be wary of overstepping a not-well-defined line. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree. There have been a few times when I've "polished" articles to such an extent that to all intents and purposes I did a minor rewrite, so I didn't publish. It is really a judgement call, and while it's best to err on the side of caution, I hope we don't end up in a situation where essential copyediting and minor polishing isn't getting done by people who are publishing articles. It's hard to pin down exactly where the line should be drawn, so I'm tempted to just say that generalized guidelines should be set up; rather than a specific line being drawn in the sand, potential abuse should be examined by the community on a case by case basis, with appropriate action being taken (in most cases just a friendly "please don't publish if you add anything significant to an article" should suffice I'd imagine). EDIT: I also don't think that a bot could ever be made smart enough to make such a judgement call. Gopher65_talk 00:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia discussion - Main Page leads

I have started discussion of including the 3 most recent Main Page leads from Wikinews at Wikipedia's Main Page in the w:Template:In the news section. Discussion is taking place at w:Template_talk:In_the_news#Proposal:_Wikinews_Main_Page_Leads. Cirt (talk) 20:46, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Update: There has been some discussion and now there is a new idea/proposal. Please see w:Template_talk:In_the_news#Update_-_Proposal_for_Portal:Current_events. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 07:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] YouTube ad

lets face it. We need contributors. I have come to believe that the people who do read Wikinews are under the impression we have everything under control. I think that the good OR stories we put out, they see those as what we do and that we are doing good with the few regular contributors we do have. They are mistaken. So here is my idea(s). And many are going to get a bad feeling simply because of the word ad. Well don't just yet. We should think about taking a montage our best work(s) and putting it together as a YouTube video type thing. At the end we can have something along the lines of "Wikinews...Something YOU can be a part of too." etc etc. Thing is we can use that for YouTube (we can get our own channel if we don't already have one), MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc. Point is...we need more than just our slogan on our own web pages. And I think at this point, an ad(s) like the above are the ways to go. What are your ideas? DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

It's something we should absolutely do. And on my account - I need videos :) Thunderhead 03:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Another thing to consider is doing a loop in of the audio we have, if any, for the select articles for the ad(s). If not, we can always have someone do some audio for the ones we choose. I wish we had some background music though. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:35, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

If this is done, do you think it should be done when/if Wikimedia does their fundraising drive? Mgray (talk) 03:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it matters really. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 07:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not incorporate something like at w:Template:Wikipedia ads? Cirt (talk) 07:19, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

That would probably be a good starting place (assuming that isn't off topic as its not for wikipedia). It shouldn't be to hard either, I could probably whip something up in gimp (aka cute slogan+logo type ad). Any ideas for a message?Bawolff ☺☻ 04:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

[other sort of random comment] this was kinda the original intent behind Wikinews:Wikinews ads. However that was more a display a cute slogan on someone else's web page (ex: Wikinews: We break the news. The mainstream media don't.). And at one point advertisements for wikinews and wikibooks did appear on Amgine's blog (that was a very very long time ago though). However i think your proposing more establishing a presence on web 2.0ish sites than traditional advertising (which considering our contributor base, might have a stronger effect). Anyways, I think its a great idea, the only problem i could possibly see from this is if it concentrates too much on audio/video, that might imply we do audio and video on a regular basis, which we unfortunately don't. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Who knows, maybe we could use w:Template:Wikipedia ads to have ad banners on Wikipedia encouraging users to contribute to Wikinews... Cirt (talk) 05:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Bawolff (talk · contribs) I have a couple Commons friends who could probably put something together if you're not super proficient at designing w:Template:Wikipedia ads, either way no worries. Cirt (talk) 05:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good. I generally use gimp like a text editor — not in an artistic manner. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, will keep you posted. Cirt (talk) 05:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

cough* [1] --Skenmy ^talk 17:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh cool. Any chance you want to upload that to commons (I can convert to theora if thats an issue). 24.65.44.250 04:28, 7 September 2008 (UTC) (user:Bawolff)

I have relicensed as CC-BY. Feel free to do as you wish with it. --Skenmy ^talk 10:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I am glad and surprised to see such an acceptance of this proposal. I look forward to hopefully getting something going. Unfortunately I don't have the experience to make anything really. But I will do what I can to help. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 17:57, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move the "other languages" list above the search box in the sidebar

Soft redirect
This section can be found at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar.

Just though I should mention this here as it is a reasonable big change to the sidebar. Anonymous101^talk 10:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I made the suggested change. Feel free to comment at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar. Cirt (talk) 13:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] School journalism project

Hello, I am working on a proposal whereby my school journalism class would write articles for Wikinews. Can I get some thoughts on this? Geo.plrd (talk) 03:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

We would love to have more contributors to Wikinews in this manner. I would highly recommend that you yourself first become more familiar with the way the site operates, perhaps through writing a few articles on news topics yourself and successfully getting them through the {{Develop}}/{{Review}}/{{Publish}} stages. Please let us know how we can help you. Do you have an idea as to how many students would be participating, and for how long the class would last? Cirt (talk) 03:17, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

If it is approved, we are looking at 8-ish Geo.plrd (talk) 04:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

And when would the class/project start/finish? Cirt (talk) 04:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

In May, with breaks for vacations. Geo.plrd (talk) 04:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

So it would finish in May? So when would it potentially start? Cirt (talk) 04:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully it would start within the next 21 days. Geo.plrd (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

As a related note. I've been talking to this user on IRC a bit. I think this is a really cool idea. If their students wrote one article a week (each) it would be a 20% increase in articles for us - even if it is just local news. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

This is IMO an excellent idea. If this works, then its an angle we can use for other schools and classes in a hope that they would be interested in such a venture. I support this idea 100% DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, it would be interesting to know the outcome of the project. I think this might be something we can write about. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we could work on something like this to help out teachers that would want to do something like this. Great idea, IMO. Thunderhead 06:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

History has shown that well-organised collaborative projects between schools and Wikimedia communities can be extremely beneficial for everyone involved. I support this effort wholeheartedly. I would suggest that, like the "Murder, Madness and Mayhem" group on Wikipedia, this project set up a page in Wikinews space both to co-ordinate their own actions and for Wikinewsies to have a centralised location to observe and contact the class. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 01:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Another thought - try contacting w:User:jbmurray, the coordinator of the project. He no doubt has some hints for running this sort of project, although admittedly from a more Wikipedian perspective than a Wikinewsie one (and it looks like he's currently a bit busy, so may not reply right away). Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 01:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

John-Beasley Murray will likely not be able to help much on this. Please get someone to pass my email address on to the tutor/coordinator of the school's project. There are specific stages must be gone through, and the earlier prospective contributors get accounts and listed on a project page the better. Then they can be given welcome messages and have the basic reading. Beyond that it is like I believe most news rooms are - you learn by doing and the old hands telling you what to do different next time.

There are specific constraints that may be placed on the students that some act as copy editors working to a specific goal on other's writing etc. If such rules are to be applied then these need outlined to the community and an internal category added to flag articles that are part of the project.

It is my opinion that we must be as flexible as possible in working with school journalism projects, they may wish to work within certain mainstream constraints that will better suit students aiming to take up journalism as a profession. [Aside: Yes, I still have an I.V. in my neck and haven't escaped from hospital - this is me "checking my email".] --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I am willing to work with you on this. We seem to be on the same page and thinking on the same wavelength. A centralized page would be of absolute necessity for this project. Also, all roles would be laid out. The two issues I see are, if we can get an override on editrights, and how to handle accreditation. Geo.plrd (talk) 15:55, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "override on edit rights". As for accred - I'm interested to hear what others have to say, but my take on it is this: Give Geo, as the "Editor in Chief" a temporary accreditation. Let his crew work as they normally would, but have Geo "stamp" the articles once they are done - before passing them on to {{review}}. That way we don't have to accredit a bunch of people - but someone is still "responsible" for their work. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 06:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

None of the students have accounts, meaning that for the first 21 days, you guys would have to poke things. 137.164.142.2 14:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC) Geo.plrd (talk) 15:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Only 2 days until I'm back on my own machine.

Get the students accounts ASAP, get them used to hopping into IRC to ask for checks/reviews, and get some help setting up templates for their user pages to highlight who they are. Accreditation is not needed to do Original Reporting, but in this case I'd say we need to have something that identifies those involved. I will help more when I can but have a lot to catch up on at home after over six weeks in hospital. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The accounts will be up as soon as I finish hashing out specifics on our end. 137.164.142.2 16:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Live commentary

Firstly, I want to say that I am very inexperienced at Wikipedia and its "partners". I have ever just created one article in Wikipedia.

But now I have an idea. How about having a Wiki-site for live-commentary on e.g. sports events. Would be great to have, and if it gets as well-known as Wikipedia, I believe this will be very good for sports interested people everywhere :) I am thinking in terms of sport, because that is my interest, but it would be possible to cover all developing stories "live", I think.

What do you think about my idea? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nightshadow1990 (talk • contribs) 17:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think that MediaWiki is particularly suited to any kind of "live" editing, especially if you had multiple commentators since they would constantly edit conflict each other. However, you can certainly write a report on a sports match as original reporting, and this has been done a few times in the past, and theoretically I suppose you could use a service like Skype to "phone in" the report as it happened and record the call as your reporting notes (this would also to some extent allow multiple contributors as part of the Skype call). This is actually one of the things the Wikinews hotline was developed for, but since essentially no-one used it it was recently disconnected. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 00:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Based on the 'not the Wikipedia Weekly' podcast ideas you could do a Skype call for a particular sporting event with multiple contributors, record it, and use it as the basis for an OR report on the event.

For example: We have coverage of Formula One racing on a fairly regular basis. If you could get half a dozen people who had a live feed of the race in a recorded Skype call they could do a commentary/running report and take notes. That would go on Commons as the OR 'evidence' for an article on Wikinews. Don't know if we've any w:Murray Walkers though. :-P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:28, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interview seekers

Something we all really want to see on Wikinews is more OR - lots of it. Since most folk can't buzz around their country, nevermind elsewhere, to attend evnts then the best way to do this for many people is to do interviews with people, which these days can be done long-distance without such annoying things as time zones or transport to consider.

However, there is a major problem still in the communications aspect. Contcts for people can be amazingly difficult to achieve, as can actually getting a reply back. And yet, some people seem to manage it with no bother. Obviously, an @wikinewsie.org email address must help a lot of people, but for those who aren't accredated and either don't want it or aren't doing enough to justify it. For example, setting up multiple emails is difficult for me with my setup (without giving details away) and the only one therefore must be kept seperate and Real World, forcing me onto a free web-based account. Very unprofessional.

Here's my proposal: Although we could post a messy request here or on a user talk page, most people simply won't, and people who are not used to Wikinews - who we seriously need - would never think of doing it. Instead, we could really use a dedicated system for people to request help arranging a specific interview, and people who are good at doing so to go out and get it for them. This would also stimulate a team effort, creating community interest from the planning stage and thus creating a better wiki-style joint effort, with iterested people jumping in to add their own questions. Hopefuly, anyway.

Anyone else buy that, or do I stand alone? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There should be an official on-site listing of accredited users, their home-city, interests - and possibly even links to some of their OR articles (to prevent fishing around in Contribs). Sherurcij 18:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. I would also add that it might be useful to list topics accredited users are interested in. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 00:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that's what I meant by "interests", I don't care if you like deep-sea fishing, but if you prefer interviewing sports stars, celebrities or politicians makes a difference in how much confidence I'll have in you. Sherurcij 02:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I completely miss that in your comment. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 02:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Changing vertical CountryTemplates to Horizontal

Time to get horizontal baby, oh yeah! Templates like {{Kenya}} need to be changed to a wide horizontal version which will run along the bottom beneath the Sources listed (or just above? style issue) - because right now we have to either show the template, or use a nicely-placed professional looking photograph to accompany the article, not both. Articles then suffer when photos are cramped in on left-margins or trailing at the bottom; or the template does either. Professionalism says that these templates must be uniform, and cannot be allowed to interfere with our "top-right corner" where our leading photograph/map belongs. Sherurcij 09:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why we should change these templates instead of creating a new set that can be used instead. What would be wrong with {{Kenya othernews}} as a footer with the map or other graphic, a list of the last 4-5 stories, and a summary on Kenya (this as 3 columns in the template). No, I don't have the technical skills to do this.

Incidentally, it isn't so much a WN:SG issue but such a template would go before the sources - unwritten policy on preferring local links over other Wikiprojects over external links. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

We could create new ones, I suppose it would save us running a bot across old archived articles; but it also risks redundancy; it's better to parameters at worst, rather than entirely separate templates. As per SG, yeah, I think I've heard that before; so over the sources it would go. Sherurcij 09:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The SG issue is one I've always pushed. You go to an encyclopedia for a single page hit on a topic, you go to a news site for a briefing on more general items. Thus, for Wikinews, we want to make staying on the site the easy option instead of throwing external links up too early. I already had to fix that this morning because someone put links to Wikipedia in 2 of the leads.

For horizontal vs vertical templates I'm tending towards being against a single-purpose template with an |orientation= parameter. The code would just be too complicated for over 90% of contributors to make any changes. That "OMG! scary template!" reaction likely would discourage additional infoboxes of either type being created; I doubt we'd get all countries or topics done in one hit, so if we're starting with the most commonly used where pictures are available then the bar to creating a horizontal template for a country isn't too high.

Of course, this raises another question: How do we want to arrange information for editors writing articles - specifically the details of templates and images that can be used to decorate their articles? The list(s) of infoboxes haven't really been kept up to date and they are huge pages anyways. Would turning that into a list of country/topic links with sub-pages be better? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

- Do we need to make the main namespace fixed width for this? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

No, you could just give the infobox a %, rather than a fixed width itself. So it runs along the bottom, centered, at 70% of screen width. Now with that said, I don't think {{Canada|Horizontal}} and {{Canada|Vertical}} are "overly" complicated to use for even the most inexperienced user; I'd still strongly lean towards that if possible. I may fool around with creating a horizontal box today just to see if I'm familiar enough with the layout code to make to work. Feel free to watchlist {{Canada}} and help out. Sherurcij 17:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Brian meant that the template itself would be complicated for the average user to modify (but if we put two templates inside one big switch statement, i don't see this being a significant issue). As a side note, many infoboxes also have a spot for a photo in them that can often be changed by parameter. Happy experimenting. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

As Bawolff correctly surmised, I meant that modifying the template or copying it to create a new one would be daunting where you had the complex code to do both horizonal or vertical. I take it for granted that usage would be simple.

What the proposal makes me think we need is something like the "FEATURES, VIEWS, ANALYSIS" box the BBC uses (See foot of this article for example). The key feature there is that the horizontal box is divided into three main horizontal sections, and here's how I'd lay it out:

Section 1, a map or other representative file photo to use as a default illustration. The infobox/template should support an optional "photo=<imagename>" parameter to replace this.
Section 2, the latest news from the appropriate category. To keep this manageable it may need kept to only three stories and there may not be room for the dates these were published. I would also assume this would be small text, not large.
Section 3, a link (or links) to the appropriate Wikipedia article(s). In some instances (eg, a country template, it may be required to take some fact about the country to fill up the space. With the switch feature several facts could be randomly included and the bottom half of this section becomes a trivia/did you know portion.
Heading 1 - a heading section that goes at the top of the box but which the content of only spans section 1 and 2 as detailed in the prior points. This would be something like "Wikinews: United States" which wikilinks to the appropriate portal.
Footing 1 - a footing section that goes at the bottom of the box, which is right-justified. Content would be an appropriate link to encourage readers to get involved with Wikinews.

Any ambitious template designers want to have a go? Try {{United States footer}} or {{Politics and conflicts footer}} as a template to see what others think? (Don't auto-include cats so it can be shown here first).

Drawback: The template will need to be a percentage width of the page - probably around 80% - but it should not shrink to silly-small (i.e. must have a minimum width). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I made some experiments - User:Bawolff/sandbox/horizInfobox (note: at this point in time i don't think it works in all browsers. if it blows up for you, please let me know.) Bawolff ☺☻ 23:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

The example is not what I've tried to spec above. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What's the point of the template if you have a proper image? I mean, you want to see the recent articles? That's why categories were created... And the image of the flag of a country hardly adds anything... So what's the point? - Julián ^(reply) 01:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps creating a photoshop (gimp!) image of what people have in their mind would be useful in making this happen. Bawolff ☺☻ 08:24, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mockup #1

Hmmm...

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:57, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

~~Obviously the image and sections within it should be shaded~~, I did this in a hurry (but not fast enough to still catch Bawolff online). If you want to be really fancy about it you could have curved corners round the edge and the header and footer as sections that stick out above and below the box.

One thing I think this may prompt revisiting is the idea of a fixed page width in main namespace. This is how the BBC manages having reliable/consistently formatted 'horizontal infoboxes'. They recently increased the width, and it would be good to know what the most common small width is.

Please re-read the above spec I wrote once you've looked at the above mockup. The finished infobox(es) should allow the image to be replaced, so we might need to be able to vary the title as well as the image. I'm also wondering if we want to be able to vary the third (right) section content and possibly stick things like HYS in there instead of default content. Looking at discussions about Economy and business stuff, this may be a must-have for substituting in stock market index or currency rate information at time of publication. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:28, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Shading added, all corners should be rounded and the header and footer might be better with a slightly darker grey background marking them off from the main part of the IB. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:06, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mockup #2

Here's a less garish mockup with some corners rounded...

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:01, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

If the image does not look pretty (eg fonts a mess) click through to the full-size version. I'm working on a 1280x1024 display and scaling down can mess with this - hence my above comment about setting main namespace to fixed width. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep looking at this second one and think - if done right - it'll be cooler than what the BBC does. :-P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:44, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

The examples I have seen, even kamnets, are nice. I am just afraid they might be too big. But aside from that I think they look more modern, a refreshing look. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:03, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mockup #3

[edit] Short 2 column infobox

Some extra long headline about Canadian stuff

Location of Canada	Other Canadian stories Wikinews Shorts: December 4, 2008 Dad sells $90 video game for $9000 after catching son smoking pot Calgary Stampeders win 2008 Grey Cup in Montreal Guns N' Roses' 'Chinese Democracy' released after 15 years IPhone sales exceed BlackBerry ...More articles here
To write, edit, start or view other Canada articles, see the Canada Portal

Here is the template that DragonFire1024 was referring to. Unfortunately it is done entirely in HTML tables because of the differences that FF, IE7 and IE8 have in rendering the wikitables. This implements all the current sub-templates used in the current vertical infoboxes, so there would be no need to have to change anything. kamnet (talk) 19:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

How would this render {{Avian Flu infobox}}? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:55, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

This might look better if (a) The dates were dropped so it could be less wide, (b) The text on the DPL was smaller, (c) DPL and image vertically centred against each other. It's also missing a "More... >" link to go to the Category/Portal. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:08, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Added the "More" link, removed the date. The table's width it set at 80%, I could move it down to 50% and just let it stretch as needed. Trying that now. kamnet (talk) 20:20, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Long 4 column infobox

Avian Flu

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