Bluegoblin7

Welcome

Bluegoblin7, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• Audio Wikinews could always use more contributors
• And of course, stories need writing!

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Trams Portal

We do not shadow Wikipedia with our namespaces, if there is a story it goes in the main namespace and must have sources. The above links should clear some of that up.

In the meantime I will be nominating the portal for deletion, please copy what you want to keep off it, or rename it into the main namespace and convert it into an article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Welcome 2

Welcome to Wikinews

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DENDODGE 03:34, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Dendodge! ;-) Goblin 13:00, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Reviewer Promotion

I have promoted you to the Wikinews:Reviewer class, entrusting you with the ability to mark revisions of articles as sighted (review). Please take a moment to read:

• Wikinews:Flagged revisions
• Wikinews:Reviewing articles
• {{Peer review}}
• {{Review}}
• Reviewed article version
• Flagged Revisions extension information, on MediaWiki

You are welcome to use {{User Wikinews reviewer}}.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask for help on my talk page, and thank you for contributing to Wikinews! Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 10:44, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I recommend WN:Tips on reviewing articles, especially the checklist and the advice on always looking for a copyedit. (The checklist is where I go first when I'm not sure where to find something, because a lot of that stuff is scattered across the project, rather than all concentrated in the Style guide.)

Oh yeah, and congratulations! --Pi zero (talk) 11:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks guys! Read through everything, fairly sure of what I'm doing but please do let me know if I make any mistakes! Thanks, Goblin 18:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Musa Kusa defects to Britain

Hi. When you give a failing review on an article, include comments that will help the author understand what is needed to correct the problems. The more inexperienced with Wikinews the author is, the more help xe needs from the comments. (Sometimes with a newbie one guesses wrong about what needs explaining, but it's important to try.) --Pi zero (talk) 06:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Kensington Palace article review

Hey Bluegoblin, Thanks for reviewing my article on Prince William's and Kate's future move into Kensington Palace. I just added some new information about their personal staff ([1]). Is that kind of edit allowed under Wikinews policy? My understanding of policy is that Wikinews generally doesn't like to add stuff to an article after a certain time period has passed... Ragettho (talk) 15:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Not a problem at all, thanks for writing the article. I've also now 'sighted' the additional information so it is also live - major updates can continue to be made until 24 hours after the page is initially published, with minor edits allowed until two weeks are passed - so yes, those edits are allowed! Hope this helps. Goblin 15:55, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

It does. Thanks! Ragettho (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Just dropping in a comment. After 24 hours, minor edits are limited to stuff allowed under the archive policy — and that goes on forever, except that seven days after publication the article is fully protected so that the minor edits (by non-admins) have to go through {{editprotected}} on article talk. --Pi zero (talk) 16:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Noted. Thank you! Ragettho (talk) 16:57, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Trump criticizes media bias towards Obama, especially during UK state visit

I've removed the YouTube "source" (YouTube generally isn't a source), because the video looks very pirated to me. It's taped live video, and obviously not an official MSNBC outlet. I'm going to axe the paragraph that seems to be based on it, and then... we'll see. After that probably it'll all be edits submitted for peer review (removing copyvio is a different universe), unless I uncover anything else when re-verifying the whole article. --Pi zero (talk) 11:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

A very unfortunate business, but we've got it cleaned up now, even restoring most of the paragraph thanks to some very helpful suggestions by Ragettho. Well, so we learn, and try not to repeat our mistakes.

Please keep in mind (we all have to learn these things at some point) that YouTube is rarely an acceptable source. I elaborated on that theme in reply to Ragettho's query on my talk page; the one thing I'll add for you as a reviewer is that, when I asked around, I was eventually given the advice that the (rare) official YouTube outlets of News sites are carried on GNews; so if you can get to it by searching GNews, it's official.

Cheers. --Pi zero (talk) 15:14, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Heuristic: always look for at least some useful copyedit before publishing

I notice you've published three articles today —in a short period of time; two were only five minutes apart— without making any edit to any of them before publishing. I urge you to take to heart the advice (at the top of this section) about always looking for some useful copyedit before publishing. Not only is rubber-stamping itself highly toxic (of course) to the project as it directly damages our integrity and reputation, but the appearance of it is internally corrosive as well. Publishing without any edit always carries the danger of such an appearance (best countermeasure is for it to be quite rare), and combining it with short intervals compounds the appearance. I'm aware that occasionally a reviewer will look at several articles in parallel, and having verified them all, will then publish them in rapid succession — but whether the reviewer did that is not part of the appearance that's created, if there are no pre-publish edits.

There's pretty much always some low-hanging fruit, some useful copyedit that can be found readily with a few moments' search; and, separate from appearances, the act of looking for such a copyedit has the very considerable benefit to the reviewer that it helps avoid inadvertently moving too fast and making mistakes. (It wasn't all that long ago that one of our established reviewers moved too fast, and made a major publication error as a result — requiring full article deletion after publication, and resulting in voluntary resignation of the reviewer bit for what turned out to be several months before xe was ready to take up the reviewer bit again). --Pi zero (talk) 14:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Let's be blunt. Either my help is wanted or it isn't. I'm not the sort of person to make completely pointless edits for the sake of it an I'm not going to waste my time making them just to appease certain people. If the article makes sense and flows well and is backed up by sources without infringing upon them then there are no reasons not to publish; if something doesn't have a stupidly specific category or is using the wrong link template, then big deal; personally I couldn't care less. Either Wikinews wants editors or it doesn't, and I'm still doubting the project's usefulness and stupidly overly-bureaucratic ways, being completely against change and the worshipping of a dictator that on any other site would probably have been banned years ago. People bang on about how we have to do it properly and we have a reputation blah blah blah but, at the end of the day, this is a wiki and a voluntary journalism website that will never be able to properly compete with mainstream media. It just doesn't work in practice, as people keep saying. Bit like communism there really. Great in theory, crap in practice. Sorry if it hurts, but that's how I see things. Choice is yours, really. Next time I just won't waste time reviewing and we can end up with articles on the main page that are nearly due to be archived. Goblin 14:48, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have taken my comments differently than they were intended. Wikinews functions by constructive criticism, with everyone striving both to self-improve and to help and encourage others here to do the same. My suggestion was/is well-intended to help you do both.

(I certainly agree, btw, we aren't in direct competition with MSM; it's not where our potential strengths lie.) --Pi zero (talk) 16:20, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

De-reviewer, am I correctly informed?

It has been mentioned to me on IRC that you're no longer interested in having Reviewer privilege on Wikinews. And, the above exchange indicates that some concern has been expressed over this; your rather hostile response is slightly amusing, but I hate to disappoint – I don't eat babies.

If you want to resign reviewer, that's not a problem; but, for transparency, this needs confirmed on-wiki.

If you're happy to keep the privilege which is more of a curse than blessing, do let me know. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:41, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Your rights have been revoked after community consensus. To regain your rights, you will be required to go through a new WN:FR/RFP as if you were a new user. Regards, — μchip08 16:20, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Edinburgh Trams

I'm hoping you've not utterly dispared of what Wikinews can do, and might be interested in looking at a tram-related possible story.

http://www.edinburghtramfacts.com is attempting to expose some of the disaster this city has experienced, including allegations that residential streets where traffic has been rerouted through are suffering pollution levels illegal under EU legislation.

Interested? I'd welcome input from someone who knows more about trams, or light rail (as Edinburgh's system "more honestly" is). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)