Bahraini Activist

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-- 21:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikinews

Hello, Bahraini Activist, it's nice to see you on another sister project and welcome!!! The culture of Wiknews is a bit different from Wikipedia, but I think you'll like it once you get acclimated. If you need any help, please feel free to ask! By the way, I have another student working on the Wikipedia article about the killed journalist Karim Fakhrawi. After he does his on research, I'll pass on your suggested links to him. Best, Crtew (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm welcome! Maybe if you review the article I've written and point out weak points, that can improve my writing. To be honest, I only started writing here, because I want to shine more light into the events here in Bahrain. Recently I've been trying to get to the main page via DYK, On This Day, In The News, and I've nominated one GA article - hopefully FA at one day. I noticed that there are only 2 new articles for today on Wikinews (New Pages), which is disappointing. Is there is a way to measure the number of people reading the articles daily as in Wikipedia? This might give me some motivation.

Glad you still remember that article about Karim Fakhrawi :) Recently I've written an article about Torture during the 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising and there is a section about Karim Fakhrawi, mostly cited from Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report. BICI report (download) have other detailed info about Fakhrawi which I didn't include. Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 19:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you can see how many readers you have attracted by going to the menu (in default view), choosing "View History" from the menu, and then clicking on "View Page Statistics". Just like Wikipedia but it seems to be most beneficial in the short run within that five to seven day frame when more people are seeing the article from the front page. Unfortunately, it becomes inaccurate on the change of the month. Besides the short term, you can also think of the achival value of your article. When the Bahrain template is placed on an article, your article will show up in the template links and later it will be listed under that category. In addition, your article's focus may be related to another news item and listed under "Related news". If the article is very good, you may be nominated for "Feature" status, which could generate still further views. The article's small banner may also be included in a related Wikipedia article, and the banner would have a message that there is a related article in Wikinews. The latter will give an audience with an interest in your topic a place to go here. In the short term, you could get (estimate, estimate) anywhere from over 2,000 to 4,000 views on average.Crtew (talk) 20:21, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I think what you're trying to do is to write an article like this One year on: Egyptians mark anniversary of protests that toppled Mubarak or this Egypt struggles to recover tourism; investment but for Bahrain. Is that right? Do you like these two articles?Crtew (talk) 20:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

You have two choices here. You can write about the most recent crackdown this weeknend as there is not much in the mainstream press, and in that case, you would include only the most recent information. You could also write an overview, like the two articles that I pointed out above. If you choose the first option, then you should remove all of those sources above the lower ones and keep just the most recent ones and you should also remove the background. If you choose the second option, you have an overall lead that links current events to the focus, and then you will pick two or three points and give an overview. It is more difficult for reviewers to go through many references and so you'll want to use the best ones and be economical. You do have some lead time before now and Feb. 14. Crtew (talk) 20:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what I can do tomorrow. Big protests are planned starting from tomorrow at 3pm local time till 15 February, so there should fresh news to add. This doesn't mean I wouldn't write an overview, especially since we have a good article at Wikipedia making the work load much less. Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 21:05, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Crackdown on protests in Bahrain continue as uprising's first anniversary approaches

Hi. This article was not ready on review. See review comments, and detailed history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 03:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Please don't be discouraged by the need for a rewrite, it happens to all of us. Very few writers get accepted on the first try without a rewrite. Pi knows his stuff and he will lead you in the right direction. I've read his review and he's spot on. You're right too in the desire to publish something on the first anniversary of the Bahraini protests! You also are an asset to Wikimedia in that you know Arabic! (In fact, I have a story idea for later that I would like to talk to you about when you have some time.) But first, you should work to really get this idea published. It's important that more people know about this. Focus on those protests coming up in a few days. Trust me, what you learn in this process will help you in the future! Good luck, Crtew (talk) 04:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

• The article is now published; apologies for not getting to it earlier, but a fair amount of work was required - as you'll see from the edit history on the article. There are a considerable number of comments on the article's talk page, I would hope these might help you submit copy that gets published more rapidly in future. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:43, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

{{== Video footage ==

Are you able to get any video footage of protests and police retaliation?

I'm getting quite good at converting between various formats — including those used on Wikimedia projects. Were you able to publish on YouTube, or as someone in Syria is doing - via http://bambuser.com/, I can pick them up, convert them, and put them on Commons for you.

If doing this and all that can be heard is Arabic, if you give descriptions of where things are happening and times within the video of them, I can do similar work to the clip shown on the right. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes I can get videos (up to hundreds on some days), is the standard YouTube license allowed in the commons? Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 17:59, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

If you actually shoot the video, you're not restricted to simply releasing it under YouTube's license. I'm happy to do conversion/editing work and get you to handle an OTRS confirm that you own the copyright — if that's the easiest solution. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I mean, if others shot the videos and simply uploaded them to YouTube, without changing anything in the license (keep it as standard). I'm asking, because this is the case of 99% of videos out there - sometimes they are really important. Only handful photographers know about CC licenses and only after I told them. Some photographers told me that I (and anybody else) can publish these photos/videos. In one case a photographer told me that New York Times used one of his images originally posted on Twitpic without his permission, while still mentioning his name (he didn't mind). In general any image/video that doesn't contain watermarks is intended to published widely. Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 18:40, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

For Wikinews, we can claim fair use - particularly where an image or video may be irreplaceable. However, if you can convince people to upload under the CC-BY license on YouTube, that's compatible with Wikimedia Commons and the footage can go over there to be used here and on Wikipedia.

What I use for this is as follows:

• DownloadHelper (Firefox plugin)
• OpenShot video editor
• WinFF (GUI for ffmpeg)
• OggConvert (GUI to Linux tools to convert from non-free to free formats)

These are all on Linux, and I'm looking at putting together a tweaked distro which can be booted from DVD with all of them and clips/templates to turn them into Wikinews video reports.

The most time-consuming part is editing bits of video together with OpenShot. After that, it's simply a matter of rescaling the videos and converting to OGV. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:47, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Women confronting police
Image: Mr0Ma.

Fair use sounds good. By the way, I have already uploaded a video before at the commons [1] and a video taken by me was uploaded by another person to the commons [2]. So what after getting the videos uploaded to commons? Bahraini Activist ^{Talk to me} 20:10, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
simply embed where appropriate, markup is the same as for a picture - [[File:Women confront riot police beating man in Sanabis.ogv|thumb|right|220px|Women confronting police {{image credit|1=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BxTa-AjzBU Mr0Ma]}}]] - gives what's to the right.

Obviously on Wikinews it needs to be related to the news report. However, I don't see why you couldn't put the police attack on the relevant Wikipedia article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey, I just saw this thread and I "like it" (Facebook style). Nice story Bahraini Activist! The top story, woot! woot!

Brian, can we use H.264 format instead of .ogv? If that would be the case, there are plenty of options on the PC or Mac side, such as Final Cut Pro. Also Brian, I was wondering how you want to show this video. Do you want it incorporated in a print news story or do you want it to be a stand alone, perhaps like a brief? I've wondered about the use of the space below the RSS feed on the front page and whether that couldn't be used for just this kind of project.

NPR.org had a good story on the topic of Syrian citizen journalism and streaming video this morning. I'm also under the impression that copyright is secondary since it's a revolution and the video is being streamed as a call for help. Technically, I agree with Fair Use as a description in this situation. Crtew (talk) 21:29, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Protests or Uprising

Bahraini Activist, Could you respond on my talk page to Pi's question about "protest" or "uprising" in the category. Of course, he might be right about the difference between the encyclopedia and news culture. Uprising does take the long view. Thanks, Crtew (talk) 21:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)