User talk:Brian McNeil/Archive 14

Newsletter

Hey Brian.

Can you write the bit for the comp. newsletter this week ie. the my week bit(with probable/possible name change) anyway. As the instigator of the comp. and the main planner, I think it would be good. No rush, but just to give you a heads up. Thanks!    Tris   19:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Hmn, probably - but the thing just started, that's not needed until next weekend. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• You don't reckon we want one after the first week-which is probably going to be the busiest?    Tris   20:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• We don't need to do anything until this weekend. That would be for release/publication on the Monday. It doesn't take that long to write something up. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yep, that's what I meant! Was just confirming that you would be here at the weekend. Would maybe be better for sending out on Sunday evening.    Tris   20:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• You also need to update the sitenotice for non logged in users. I don't know where to find that.    Tris   20:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Just a quick reminder; any chance of something by Sunday afternoon/evening so we can send it out then. Thanks!    Tris   09:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations

[1] Did it have anything to do with Wikinews?    Tris   16:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Alas, no; and it is much lower paid than I had hoped. I start Feb 14 and I will be wearing a "No, I will not fix your computer" T-shirt on casual Fridays - the job is technical support for an ISP. What will be difficult is the six-month probationary period after which I can start looking elsewhere in the company and get away from shiftwork that could see me finishing at 11pm and getting back here around 1am. The mid-to-short-term planning is to get some capital built from this, move into Edinburgh near the city centre, then start plotting to get the company to send me back to Belgium where they also have offices.

What the shift work has going for it is free time during normal office hours; I'll be able to visit the National Archives and the Scottish Parliament when open.

Really, you would expect someone first on the Internet about 22 years ago to end up doing something like this. There were two tests for the job; data entry and technical knowledge, I got 97% and 100% respectively.

If you want more details, email me. I expect to see the first couple of months see me a lot less accessible but I am investigating getting something like a Nokia N70 and hacking my way back into my home PC via mobile Internet access. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Only 97% on data entry! Well good luck with it, hope it all works out well in the end, even it does require a few months of not so great stuff.    Tris   19:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Hey, glad to hear you found something, and good luck! the wub "?!" 10:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Scott Roeder convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller

I appreciate that this article needs to be improved before it is published—I am new to this project—however I would have appreciated it if you had edited it in some way to facilitate its rapid publication rather than simply burying it. This is a breaking news story which is of national interest in the United States and I have found it covered in major UK outlets as well (e.g. the Guardian), even if you are unfamiliar with it. I sourced the live stream where I watched the entire closing arguments and verdict announcement, as anyone could, and have added additional sources. Thank you. NTK (talk) 21:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• I can't edit something with no sources to draw material from. It was tagged with the {{sources}} template, that links to a relatively simple page that explains what is required in terms of sourcing and how to cite per the project standards. A live feed, which may well not be available outside the US, is not much use to me when I do not have the time to sit and watch the same material as you did. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Alex Reid wins UK's Celebrity Big Brother 2010

Could you please help me with verifying the information in this article? I do know that these were the results, but I need some help with the verification. --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 11:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• I'd rather have a tracheotomy with a steak knife than have anything whatsoever to do with that TV show. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

:,)    Tris   13:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ping

For newsletter thing if you have a chance?    Tris   19:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

• I mailed you a segment for it earlier today or yesterday - check your wikinewsie email. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

New user here, pls assist

Hi! I'm new here, even though I contibute occasionally at Wikipedia. Pls help me, what is the problem with the source I added, and you deleted? That PDF is from the church who supports NCLR, posted at their website, so it's authentic. It's a primary souce. Are we only allowed to use scondary sources here, citing media reports? Pls advice me! Gray62 (talk) 13:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• It is undated; it could possibly be added as an extra section for External links but that should be to the front-page of their site if possible. I'm still working through this to get it re-reviewed. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thx for your assistance! Imho it would be good if that souce could be added in any way, because it provides insight into the group's goals. And even though some of the content has been cited in the media, not all of it has. Fo instance, I haven't found a news story referencing to that partnership with the New Life Adoption Foundation yet, and that is an interesting aspect. Gray62 (talk) 13:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I also want to expand the section about the whereabouts of the kids now, and what happened after they were transferred to the SOS children's village. This source ok (it's dated): http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/haiti-earthquake/haiti-orphan-appeal-trafficked-babies-found-in-bad-state Thx for your advice! Gray62 (talk) 13:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah, I know SOS Childrens - interviewed their Chief Exec a while back. I'll leave you to it, just remember active voice. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Done that now. Tried my best to use active speech, but since I am German, pls excuse me for writing in an overly bureaucratic tone sometimes :D. Also, pls excuse any grammar or spelling errors! Gray62 (talk) 13:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How about expanding the statesments from the group now? They said in their defense they have papers fom the DomRep, that should be mentioned (only fair). And also maybe a comment from one of the established help organisations working there. Or will the stoy become to long, then? Are there restrictions on the length? Maybe a help guide I should read before going on? Sry for being such a drag on you, but I don't want to mess up the stuff here, and I lack the experience with Wikimedia, of course. Gray62 (talk) 14:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• There's no real upper limit on the length of a Wikinews article; the general "theory" is that, Wikinews is not paper - no column inches constraints. The required balancing act is to keep the story flowing so people will read through the whole thing. Assuming you have the {{Howdy}} template on your talk page, most of the need-to-know stuff is in there. Unfortunately, I'm kinda busy at the moment responding to a press query about the writing competition. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok. Well, I'll just careful add some missing info, as outlined above, but will try not to get too far ahead before the next review. Thx! Gray62 (talk) 15:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've had enough for today. Thx for helping me to such a good start here! I very much appreciate your friendly support. Keep up the great work! Gray62 (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikimania

Yes, me and user:Wyksztalcioch and others probably too :) Wyksztalcioch want to do an event special for people active in Wikinews. Przykuta (talk) 12:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Serena Williams wins the 2010 Australian Open

Hello, I think this article is a good one, but you have to publish news with 72 hours, just look how much content on the news you all miss on, which is a sad travesty with this wiki. I did this because it is historical because 5 Australian Opens is a record, and she tied Billie Jean King and Suzanne Lenglen for most all-time slam wins, and in the Open Era surpassed Margaret Courts 11 mark for solo fourth. I can help you on getting this upto par, but I may not be able to find new info in the past day or so because this event happened on Sat. By the way, I published this within three days, but it took you till the fourth day to review it, which puts this out of the 72 hour window? If this site is really about news then someone except me should have made this article far sooner but I guess it is just news to some people, which is really not news!Bluedogtn (talk) 22:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And by the way, this article is wrong on the prize money Roger Federer wins Australian Open.Bluedogtn (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

If this is what this site is about, I will just go back to wikipedia and leave here.Bluedogtn (talk) 22:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Buh-bye! Have a nice day! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Very nice wordplay

Hi Brian, I hope you are doing well. Just wanted to say that I am lovin the wordplay in the page move you did at Starr gets star; Ringo added to Hollywood Walk of Fame. Very nice! :) Cirt (talk) 22:48, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Could not resist that one. I thought "given star" was just wrong anyway because, well, he can't take it hime with him ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Also because you have to make a 'donation' to get your star. That's why so many of these stars are given out at opportune times ... new album, new movie, new book, etc. --SVTCobra 23:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Heh, good point. Cirt (talk) 23:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

File

Hmm... I must have missed a line. I won't repeat that mistake. --Mikemoral♪♫ 03:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• It's because Associated Press are 'technically' a competitor. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 03:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, would this work better? --Mikemoral♪♫ 03:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Eh? As what? Incidentally, the specific point from WN:FU, in bold, is "Photos from competing news organizations that are uploaded without permission can be deleted on sight." --Brian McNeil / ^talk 03:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The colored image I was referring to. I should review the policy. --Mikemoral♪♫ 03:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Fun data discovery

wholesale phone call prices from one middleman to their sales field. (Just amusing, not particularly secret) - Amgine | ^t 16:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

"Batuta's case became something of a milestone in the development of Wikipedia" - interview with Konrad Godlewski

Hi Brian. Could you look on this article? Przykuta (talk) 13:04, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

This hoax is here: w:Template:Wikipedia. Przykuta (talk) 13:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• What hoax are you referring to? I'm also not sure what you're asking about the article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• This interview is not published yet. I want to know if something is wrong with it. IMO this interview is nod bad. Konrad Godlewski was a person, who published info about this hoax 4 years ago. Przykuta (talk) 14:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• When I looked earlier it wasn't submitted for review. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips

It's a new day here, so I'm having another go.

As you say, I have Aussie interests, being an Aussie!, so you would think that would be an obvious starter wouldn't you... Nice example, by the way, haha! However I've been a bit sidetracked by the Haiti disaster and would like to see someone follow the situation, as it will continue and I think it deserves to be followed. Unfortunately I'm just not up to the task.

I've added a couple of sandbox pages to my userpage, but at the moment I am just previewing them as opposed to saving. I have more practise to do...

I should have done that with the Haiti article. I appreciate the encouragement. You wouldn't believe some of the nasty people online. Although not any of the wikis, that I've experienced yet.

—Soozlepip (talk) 02:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Should I answer here or my page, haha!?

—Soozlepip (talk) 02:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, don't worry about nasty - I'm an expert at that. ;-) I flame trolls and disruptive users until all that's left is a pile of ashes in a smouldering crater. If you've created sandbox pages in your userspace - do with them as you will. You can always slap a {{delete}} template on them and an admin will come along and zap them for you. If you really are so keen to cover Haiti-related stuff, look for Oz-specific things, that could even be something like a local school or college raising a few thousand dollars to support relief efforts. The concern there can be getting two independent sources to cite. Of course, once you gain a little more confidence, Wikinews allows original reporting - you can actually email or phone people related to news stories and get direct quotes from them and things like that. Answers/comments here get responded to here. If I comment on your talk I do try to keep an eye in case you respond there. Ah, wha-the-hell, most people on Wikinews make it up as they go along. :D --Brian McNeil / ^talk 02:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• I think I should leave Haiti alone, or as you say find Aussie links.

I'm finding it difficult to find one topic to address.

The 'apparently' racially motivated attacks on Indians living in Australia? Reports on the lives of Aborigines? An 'Anonymous' attack on the Australian Parliament website?

Still too big, probably. I think I'll just keep practising for a while, and not try writing an article until I do gain some confidence. And I promise not to make it up, haha!

Should I place a delete tag on the Haiti article, or just leave it?

Umm, are you awake now?

—Soozlepip (talk) 03:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm in the UK - the UTC timestamp is what my clock here says. The Anonymous attack on Parliament's websites would be a good one - likely to attract some help and sympathy from other semi-anarchic Wikinewsies. Don't set yourself too high standards, look how brief my first article was (linked-to from somewhere on my userpage). Three paragraphs of 2-4 sentences each, drawn from two or three sources is perfectly acceptable and a good first attempt. If you get two or three published articles under your belt, and do your best to learn from how people copyedit and adjust the visual appearance you will dramatically improve your writing and confidence.

The idea of some original reporting on the lives of ordinary Aborigines sounds like a fascinating story that would continue to attract readers long after it fell off the list on the front page. However, you're probably right to defer that until you've built confidence, familiarity with the project, and an eye for a story. Do not be discouraged that you have no journalistic training - it is more 'craft' than taught profession - even the late, great, Walter Cronkite failed to complete his university education. If you really want to be a good writer, take Stephen King's advice on the topic; namely, spend at least one hour each per day reading and writing. And, when it comes to the writing aspect, you need critical feedback - if not an editor who is going to be pretty ruthless. Just, well, er, .... be bloody-minded about it; and, don't hide away practising. Forget the Haiti story, someone will tag it {{stale}} and it'll get deleted via standard process in a few days or so. It would have been good to have what I think is the sort of type of article you wanted that to be, just not something to start with unless you pour hours of effort into it and are already quite an accomplished writer. Let me refer you to an interview I did that made Featured Article here on Wikinews; This - believe it or not - was relatively easy. But, more to the point, the comments made by Professor Beasley-Murray's students chart how their involvement on a wiki project improved the quality of their classwork in working towards a degree. Put simply, have a go - say "fuck it!" If you get a cleanup template or a failed review; after all, trying and failing is one of the most enlightening experiences you can have - if you're prepared to learn from it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - and all that jazz. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:18, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry I haven't got back to you sooner. I've been reading. Your article writing summary pretty much spells it out, doesn't it!? I'm still going on the interview. Fascinating idea though, and should be done elsewhere. I said to my daughter yesterday, whose school wont allow them to use wikipedia as a reference in assignments, that if they don't trust it they should fix it!

Also rearranging my personal pages. I'm trying to develop my own Australian resource page of sorts. I have the idea in my head that if I gather a heap of links first and do a heap of reading, I will avoid headaches and frustration later. Kind of a um, permaculturalist attitude, if you know what I mean. Or perhaps I am just avoiding due to a lack of confidence...

And I have absolutely no training whatsoever. I'm a 37 year old mother of a 14 year old who keeps nicking the computer off me. I get knock-down ill every now and then and haven't worked for years, and the govt (and myself) want me to become more active this year. I'm hoping to learn how to research and write. Perhaps journalism...

I really love the idea of wikinews. So I would expect to be criticised. Or critiqued? It's meant to be a self-regulating um, organism, I suppose. You don't want rubbish on here! You do get the opportunity to try and fix the article before it goes stale, don't you? I get the feeling people want to see stories on here.

When it comes to Aboriginal/reconcilliation activities in particular, I'm really not familiar enough with the subject to interview people. That's something I would prefer to be more involved in before I could start asking questions. But the lives of Aborigines down here is definately an ongoing topic and one that deserves regular attention.

Geez, you keep some harsh hours! Scotland? What month does the sun come back, haha!

—Soozlepip (talk) 22:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Re:

Prior to deleting the WikiBureau, let me know, I would like to store it in my userpace as it has a collection of some links. Rana (talk) 05:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Interview notes

Could you please help out with this page? I'm not that familiar with interviews. Benny the mascot (talk) 13:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• Argh! You'd a double-whammy there; first, the article was a translation from another Wikinews edition, second something seemed to be wrong with MakeLead. Polish Wikinews is one of the versions where - if something has been published for a while - you can trust it to be okay. What I did on this article was copyedit the lede/introduction and leave the interview as-is. It may well have some odd bits in terms of awkward English, that's always going to be the case for translations that try to be faithful. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, makes sense. Should I assume from now on that translations from all Wikinews projects are ok? Benny the mascot (talk) 15:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• Well, yes and no. You need to be critical. If something survuves 12+ hours published on another Wikinews project it likely is okay - but you will have to do stuff like copyedit the lede/intro. On which point, I just added a link to the Style Guide that I think should be mandatory reading for all enWN contributors. If there's one thing I'd say about transwiki'd content it is to fail as a last resort. Always try and use things like cleanup or ask questions where the English is poor. We absolutely do not want to discourage stuff from other languages, but getting it good enough to go up here in the English version can be a fair bit of effort. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Unblock request guy

Take a look at this unblock request: User talk:Michaeldsuarez. It's entirely possible that he's telling the truth, but I don't have the tools necessary to check into it further. Gopher65_talk 03:34, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Help

I just created Wikinews:Story preparation/82nd Academy Awards and I request u to make some stylistic improvements, additions, subtractions,etc. Thank You --Adi4094 (talk) 05:17, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Not done because, as the notice at the top of the page says, I'm really, really busy. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for banning the anon. --Mikemoral♪♫ 00:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikivoices

Hey Brian,

I know you're very busy so don't worry if you can't reply, I was just wondering if you knew whether you or James Pain had made any progress on the old episode 51? Regards.    Tris   13:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

• No idea if James had - last he spoke to me was a while back, but he said we should all sound quite intelligent when its edited - give him a prod. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

In-development story

Please ignore User:Brian McNeil/Banking on the UK's unemployed unless you know the secret handshake and are invited to take part in this shadowy conspiracy.

Translation: Nothing to see here; please move along! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Single Source

Yahoo publishes stuff from other newspapers, and in this case Mingpao. Kayau (talk) 02:13, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• So you're using stuff second or third-hand? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikimania 2010 - Gdansk

I've put in a scholarship application for Wikimania. My intention would be to go and present a short session on the project's work to get Flagged Revisions, and listed in Google News.

Provocatively, I've included a suggestion that the talk/presentation have Q&A/debate at the end on if this makes Wikinews a suitably reliable source for Wikipedia; if not, why not. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:09, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Battle of the Barnstars

Sorry to take up your valuable time, but I would like to ask your opinion on which of these barnstar designs should be used when we get our top three winners at the end of the writing contest on April 18th. Please notify me (and probably Tempodivalse) as soon as you can. Thanks, --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 17:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

• Vote, or Cage Fight... Decisions, decisions.... ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:10, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. There's nothing particularly news-centric about the graphics on either. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
• Do you think that this discussion should be moved to the water cooler? (I do.) --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 20:55, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
• I vote cagefight. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:02, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
• I vote cagefight as well, noting a lack of surprise in mention of same. Calvinhrn (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper Club

Hi Brian, I know you're interested in possible projects with Wikimedia UK. Could you take a look at Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals#Newspaper Club and give your thoughts. the wub "?!" 10:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Trophy!

I hope you don't mind, but I've given you a trophy in recognition of the 100+ articles that you have created for Wikinews. I apologise for it being over 5 months late but I hope you like it anyway. --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 20:22, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiNewsProject

Just as an amusing thought, it might be interesting to attempt to 'interwiki' link Wikipedia articles to relevant wikinews articles. I'm going to try it right now... should be something like en:n:Wikinews_Article - Amgine | ^t 16:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Alas, it doesn't work... - Amgine | ^t 16:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

[[n:Article name|visible link]] ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

What do I do now?

As you may be aware, I recently finished in second place in the Wikinews writing contest 2010. I think I've won some prizes, but I don't know what I should do next. And what will I do with the barnstars? --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 17:26, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit to my own page

Until such time as I can sit down and get this nonsense sorted, can someone insert File:B. McNeil - Self Portrait, 2010 (Sepia).png as a replacement for the really bad one that used to be there. Size as-appropriate, Iḿ using a shitty skin so that I don download megabytes of unneeded stuff to my phone. ;-) --~~

{{editprotected|I have reset the password on this account; until such time as I get full access restored by one of the stewards, could the protection on my main userpage be dropped to registered users only please?}}

-- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk'} 11:13, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

• Done --Mikemoral♪♫ 22:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

• Back online as the genuine article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Welcome back. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

But are you who you say you are? And if you say yes, are you doing so in order to make us think that you really are who you say you are, but you're really not? Or are you part of a grander scheme to riddle our brains with riddles? :D Benny the mascot (talk) 03:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

"Things are seldom what they seem

Skim milk masquerades as cream."

• --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC) (Actually, the quote is Gilbert and Sullivan).

[New Albertan Lieutenant Governor takes office|[Article]] title

Brian, no one knows where the fuck Alberta is. Some person in China, a good chunk of Europe, or anywhere in the US reading that title will just go "uhhhh....". You need to have the country name in there. We have to use internationalized titles as per the style guide. Gopher65_talk 00:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Heh, just read one of your edit summaries about reading the references. I avoid sports articles because I know so little about the subject(s) that the task of figuring out if the sources are being referenced properly is overwhelming. Gopher65_talk 00:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

• Fuck, I'm stupid. I should've noticed that w:Alberta redirects to w:Alberta, Canada. Eh, no,... It doesn't. That might have something to do with it being over a quarter of a million square miles of landmass. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

How does its size change anything? Most people everywhere in the world are stupid. You can't assume that they'll know where things are:P. And this isn't Wikipedia. Gopher65_talk 00:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, as a proud albertan.... (p.s. I responded to you on my talk) Bawolff ☺☻ 03:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

• Putting the jokes aside for a moment, yes, working a mention of Canada into the title would have been better. However, not with a passive-voice title. Perhaps Canadian PM swears in new Lieutenant Governor of Alberta? Too late now, but I dislike seeing colons and such in titles; Tempo and I do tend to clash on use of more, ah, 'creative' titles. Personally, I'd say my Amazon dips into memory hole to retrieve Orwellian works is one of my better ones; at the moment, I'm not seeing that sort of intellectual effort put into headlines (but I am a Private Eye reader).. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Brian McNeil/Archive 14. You have new messages at User talk:Fetchcomms. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

Hello, Brian McNeil/Archive 14. You have new messages at User talk:Fetchcomms. You can remove this notice by removing {{replied}} from your talk page.

—fetch·comms 20:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Tempodivalse answered it for me. —fetch·comms 21:42, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Editor-in-chief

(I think you do to much good writing to deserve that title, but if it works with press officers ....)

On your user page, you say you created the wikinews.org domain. Surely you mean wikinewsie.org ??

--InfantGorilla (talk) 18:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• Nicely spotted on that little mistake, I've fixed it.

The "Editor-in-Chief" shtick is usually prepping a "To Whom It May Concern" letter as a PDF for someone to bluff their way into a press enclosure. I've done it a couple of times, and that "good writing" you mention is what - usually - makes these things work. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean you list your portfolio in the TWIMC letter, or that you use snappy prose in the letter? --InfantGorilla (talk) 20:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• Eh, likely qualifies as snappy prose (plus possibly illegal use of the Wikinews logo). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Portal madness

I like where you were going with {{newPortal}}. Unfortunately I could not follow the code at all (yay! wikisyntax). So I made a fork of it at {{Portals suck}}, kind of re-writing it into something more understandable (at least i think it is. however wikisyntax is a write once and never read again kind of language). Anyways, there's examples at Wikinews:Sandbox. So far it supports portals with 0-2 leads (we could add more, but really, do we want more than two leads on a portal?). It will auto-hide the lead if the page hasn't been edited in a week. The most pressing feature missing is the lack of dpls showing the intersection of the region category with the topic category (like how portal:Africa currently has dpls of African politics and conflicts articles). I'm thinking these should look like the boxes near the bottom of the main page that show Most popular articles, etc. This could possibly be tied into {{pagesincat:}} to show them only if the category has say over 50 articles.

Anyways, feel free to edit it/experiment, etc. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:00, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Israel vs "Freedom Flotilla"

My articles that I used when writing were: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176961 Which has "Passengers tried to grab weapons away from soldiers boarding the Gaza protest flotilla, starting the violence, Army Radio reported Tuesday morning, responding to accusations that Israeli commandos assaulted the ships guns blazing."
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=128420&sectionid=351020202 What has "Israel had earlier deployed warships and threatened to stop the flotilla from reaching the Palestinian territory where the war-ravaged residents were impatiently eying the arrival of the aid convoy."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9G1IV902 Which has "The flotilla was "fully prepared for the different scenarios" that might arise, and organizers were hopeful that Israeli authorities would "do what's right" and not stop the convoy, she said. "We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us," she said. "They are going to have to forcefully stop us." "
and "After nightfall Sunday, three Israeli navy missile boats left their base in Haifa, steaming out to sea to confront the activists' ships. Two hours later, Israel Radio broadcast a recording of one of the missile boats warning the flotilla not to approach Gaza. "If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade," the radio message continued."
and a few others, I used the AP article for most of my sources. ☠  Travis "TeamColtra" McCrea ☠ - (T)(C) 13:26, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks.

You probably now see why I was so irked at the huge number of sources. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:52, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

What is going on?

I just wrote this article with my own research. Why did you lie?

• Why didn't you sign your comment? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI: Illinois portal thingy

Hi Brian McNeil. Just letting you know that I created MediaWiki:Common.css/Portal:Illinois a few hours ago. Benny the mascot (talk) 23:59, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

• You'll likely need to re-copy from mine. I am still trying to make this portal template more flexible/powerful, and have changed the CSS again. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Human rights and poker

Not me, guv. No need to take that tone with me, really. Bencherlite (talk) 22:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Realistically, it is. Think about it. The court has ruled that the individuals who own small businesses (bars, clubs, hotels) do not have the right to stage poker tournaments. At present, the category does not have guidelines for inclusion limiting it to the 'main' rights. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 22:45, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Sports Prefixes

Could you please take a look at Wikinews:Water_cooler/policy#Sports_Prefixes. Please give your thoughts there. Calebrw (talk) 18:20, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Ban on YouTube spreads to Google services in Turkey

i tried to address the points you made. i hope you can re-review the article.

--Polysynaptic (talk) 22:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Need help

Hi, can you be more specific about the citation mistakes I've made in Facebook unblocked in Bangladesh? I'm still new here and my understanding of citation format is not enough. Thanks Kayau (talk · contribs) 08:21, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• It is quite clear in every single published article, in the style guide, and the {{source}} template. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:33, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
  • But I did use the {{source}} template. Kayau (talk · contribs) 08:39, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• You did not complete the parameters correctly; did you even look at the style guide's instuctions for it? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:41, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• Done, thanks for telling me (I made the same mistake for the previous 3 articles and nobody even bothered to tell me about the citation formats. :() Kayau (talk · contribs) 08:47, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I've been rather curt; I do think other reviewers are failing if they do not first help improve your work.

Baised on the failed/withdrawn application for editor/reviewer status, I would look very carefully at changes made to articles you submit; both those during the review process, and afterwards by well-established contributors - particularly those who have managed substantivive Featured Articles. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

WN:SG vs. releases

Re: Do press releases take precedence over the style-guide then? — μ 18:12, June 8 2010 (UTC)

• Don't edit quotes would be the rule there. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Spelling revert as per WN:SG#Spelling

Just wanted to explain my revert of your edit on the AGI talk page... On WN we use the spelling of the subject region, or the first author's spelling if the subject region isn't definitive. Thanks for helping out on Wikinews! - Amgine | ^t 21:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

<giggle giggle>

• Ooooh, snarky! I shall sacrifice a copy of Websters' in your honour. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
  • but american English is not real English :P Treason! ;) Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 04:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
    • If you burn a copy of Webster's I'm going to have to hunt you down and tar&feather you. Burning books is bad. Haven't you ever read Terry Pratchett? Gopher65_talk 23:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, I would ritually bury it in soft peat. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for the kind words, about 'Dewey Defeats Truman' incident in California State Senate election. Much appreciated, -- Cirt (talk) 05:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Noynoy Aquino elected Philippine president

The article is sighted, yet has a {{review}} template on it. What should I do? — μ 09:48, June 10 2010 (UTC)

• Shoot someone, or remove the template and kick whoever had reviewer and did that. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's what I saw: User:Matthiasb saw an error in the article, didn't understand what to do and, after leaving a note to that effect at the Assistance water cooler, depublished the article. I came along maybe an hour and a half later and saw what had happened, and started to undo it and fix the error, but got an edit conflict because Brian McNeil had fixed the error while I was being my usual slow self about it. I adjusted his fix somewhat, but failed to notice that Brian McNeil had evidently failed to notice the depublish. And then a couple of hours later Microchip08 came along and noticed the depublish, and seems to have understandably thought WTF?

Although there are clearly wall-to-wall "good intentions" here, the point we're struggling to articulate unmistakeably on WN:AGI is that we don't ever take good intentions (or writer's feelings) into account when we decide whether to sight an edit. How it is that User:Matthiasb, who clearly doesn't understand procedures at English Wikinews (and doesn't claim to), has reviewer privileges so that their depublish was autosighted? That shouldn't have happened, and this whole extended comedy sketch would have been a lot shorter if it hadn't. --Pi zero (talk) 13:33, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

• This would be why BloodRedSandman (talk · contribs) wants to do away with autosighting (See somewhere on the WC). Personally, there's some need to have a test for reviewers. I'm not sure on that, I'm thinking we can't make serious use of the quiz extension. But, that might be a good way to start working on this - 2-3 quizzes on the fundamentals of reviewing. I do find it amusing that a wiki could have to write CBT stuff before handing out privs. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:44, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Fixing Wikinews post-apocalypse

Ever one to keep trying, I have spent a significant part of this evening in IRC pointing out why I see certain things being problems. And, how there is a specific need to fix numerous items to prevent future disasters – or vindictive witchhunts – such as that of the torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob a few steps behind me.

That, at its heart, does require an acceptance that there were serious failings on both sides; that many of the attempts by certain individuals to "fix" Wikinews' standing are fatally flawed. Such need put aside until such time as, collectively, existing processes that failed catastrophically have an established community-agreed reform framework.

Quite obviously, the most important of these is not AGF or some cipher for such; it is the actual accreditation process. Should there even be such a thing as temporary accreditation? If so, and this is where things really started to go wrong, it has to be quite clear how serious a responsibility the community is bestowing upon someone who has requested, and been granted, such.

With certainty about how I would feel in the circumstances, offering Matthew Edwards any sort of collective apology, or individual one from myself for what were terribly insensitive and cruel actions, is pointless right now. It would be thrown back in our faces. The best apology is to, rationally, reform the whole process to make sure there is no fast-track to Global Thermonuclear Wikiwar.

I have to point out at this stage in drafting my thoughts on the matter, that I, too, have a few demands of people. Other people have to take on serious and significant responsibilities for aspects of the project I have managed, and financed, single-handedly for years. I, repeatedly, took it upon myself to be George Bernard Shaw's "unreasonable man", and I do not think anyone can argue that this has not yielded results that were seriously needed.

Accreditation needs to be managed by several people. They must be regularly active; they must be prepared to divulge direct (hotline-style) personal contact information. At a minimum, I believe this should include full, real names - verifiable by having identified to the WMF; a direct in-case-of-emergency telephone number in addition to a direct (non-Wikinewsie) personal email address. I certainly do not believe such details need published on-wiki; that would be an invitation to every kook in wikiland. However, this is information that each and every accredited reporter should have access to.

On the flip-side, this means there should be an insistence that, in a case such as Matthew Edwards', the card-carrying reporter is prepared to eat whatever phone or 3G costs are needed to make sure a couple of this yet-to-be-established committee know what is going on. [Aside: Yes, we should cut people some slack if their one phone call is to a lawyer; but, said lawyer should be given specific instructions to make the contact on their behalf.]

Before anyone even suggests taking this to the WMF, let me tell you that would be a waste of time. Wikipedia is all of their world; as evidenced by repeat refusals to invest in protecting the Wikinews mark through challenging the owner of wikinews.com. I can further attest to such, having discussed with Sue Gardner and Jay Walsh in 2008 gifting the wikinewsie.org domain to the WMF. The result was some polite, interested, and pleasant-ish noises; followed by ultra-risk-averse discussion of the WMF's arms-length approach to editorial control, and maintaining a status similar to that of an ISP.

In general, it would seem logical to spread out Wikinewsie and accreditation responsibilities amongst Bureaucrats; but, I doubt all would agree to the above terms. Taking on such responsibilities would also have to include being prepared to stand in court and defend a source's right to anonymity – even to tolerate jail-time over such. I have carefully squirrelled away a healthy collection of contacts that could help with such perhaps-implausible situations, and am proud to say I am in a country where I could use the law to defend myself in those circumstances.

From that foundation, I believe that a rock-solid accreditation policy and process could be constructed. I am open to discussing this, but if I consider an alternative proposal a complete waste of time discussing I will simply remove it from this page. The clock is ticking on agreeing how these problems can be fixed. It is not intended as blackmail, but this must have some form of consensus from people who would make up such a board or committee before the opening days of next month.

If you do wish to constructively work on this, please form an orderly queue, and add a subsection for your remarks to keep this page manageable! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 01:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

My proposal - Tris

Full proposal here - User:Tristan Thomas/accreditation. Cut down version below.

• No temporary accreditation or better rules on access to it, more formal process, with formal identification to someone.
• On being accredited, small fee paid for press pass and wikinewsie.org domain/email address
• Method of verifying accreditation on pass through phone numbers.

Read my linked page above for full details-comments needed. Not so pleonastic hopefully!    Tris   10:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• Tris, can you slash this down by about 75%?

• Speak to Skenmy about cards; the required printer is, new, around $2,000. Otherwise the card costs will be much, much higher than you seem to realise (i.e. outsourcing production of cards with security/ID-checking features).
• The website is also far more expensive than you realise; the private registration adds a whopping lump onto the per-annum cost.
• In the main, you're on the right track, I think. But, please take this to your own page, or a subpage, at least for the time being. If everyone else posts such a lengthy brain-dump without ruthless copyedit, I will end up with a totally unmanageable talk page. [And, if you didn't notice, I'm trying to give Amgine an infarction by writing an article :-P] --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

With regards to the cost, it would be through outsourcing. I was under the impression, through previous research that my estimate is not a massive underestimate, but will investigate further over the coming days to get a better quote.

I have no idea how much you're looking at for the private registration, but all I can say is that if you can get out of doing it with the company you're doing it with, I've done it for about 10 extra quid a year on a domain or two and so shouldn't be so bad.

I'll post a cut down version above! Good luck with the article writing!    Tris   10:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• (Gah, more pleonasm!) One other comment; I'm not totally opposed to temporary accreditation. I would say though; never with less than seven days notice, and an insistence that, within that period, local contributions for the community to assess. Banning it outright would've seen us lose the Israeli president interview. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Summary and followup

1. Temporary accreditation is only for extremely exceptional circumstances. A period of at least x days notice (five?) must be given. In addition to community support, the person seeking the temporary accreditation must demonstrate knowledge of project policies, esp. the Style Guide.
2. Conventional accreditation is valid for a period of 18 months (re-accrediting every 12 months is overkill, and contributor-time-expensive).
3. Fully-accredited reporters will be issued with professional ID cards. These must match, in terms of name and other details, with government-issued ID.
4. All accredited reporters must have identified to several Wikinewsies – The !Editors.

   Writing under a pseudonym on Wikinews is perfectly acceptable, but a picture and valid ID details must be provided for the creation of said card.

5. The !Editors must provide direct, personal, contact information to all accredited reporters.

   This may be restricted by, for example, specifying timezone and acceptable contact hours.

6. All "field journalism" should be alerted to The !Editors in advance.

The above is, essentially, a synthesis of Tris' suggestions and my own. I am in the process of having the private registration removed from the wikinewsie.org domain. All going well, I can then renew the domain. I believe the hosting and email services are already paid for out beyond that. No, it will never be going on Google. OTOH, it may move to Sweden at some point. ;-) Arr! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:57, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There needs to be an exception to point 6 that allows reporters who arrive at the scene of something unexpected to report e.g. a road accident. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:46, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

• That is why I'm adopting the language of Jon Postel. "should", and "must" have subtly different meanings ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

• Fuck. You win :p Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 18:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

• You will notice the same in the You can copy shtick linked-to from the main page. ;-) I really, really consider this guy one of the Geek Gods. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

"Accreditation of Wikinews reporters will be valid for a two-year period " WN:AP --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 19:51, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, well... That was before recent drama. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:58, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Google and de-publishing

If an article is de-published (sighted version with no {{publish}} tag), would that cause Google News to stop carrying the article, or would they continue to carry the last published version until a more recent version is published? --Pi zero (talk) 21:41, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

If they picked up the story already, they'll continue to carry it. They have no mechanism to stop carrying the story, short of us deleting the article. If the article is un-sighted, people will continue to see the latest version. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 21:51, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure whether we're miscommunicating. "Un-sighted" might be a shorthand for exactly what I'm asking about, or I may have failed to make myself clear. I'm taking about an article that has been picked up by Google, and then a sighted edit removes the {{publish}} tag so that the article disappears from the main page DPL. Does Google track the article, once picked up, regardless of whether the article appears on the main page, but only update its version when it finds that the latest sighted version does appear on the main page? --Pi zero (talk) 22:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Google does not understand sighting, google does not understand published versus unpublished versus revoked article. Google reads our front page (or possibly our RSS feed) and runs with what it finds. If an article is published, and google gets to it (there is a lag here), then it is up and we can't do anything about it being listed there. If an article get published and unpublished before google checks, then it wont be listed on google. Does that make sense? --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 22:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

That much is now clear, thanks; but I'm trying to understand how Google is affected by subsequent sighted edits after it has picked up the story. Primary scenario:

• Google notices a story on the main page, hence picks it up, and then subsequently the story is removed from the main page (by sighting a version from which the publish tag has been removed), and then Google notices that that story is no longer on the main page. Does Google stop carrying the story?

I've been assuming that if Google picks up a story, and later checks us again and there's an updated version of the story on our main page, Google updates its copy. --Pi zero (talk) 23:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• There was supposed to be a Google Sitemap extension for this, which would allow update timestamps in a list of articles. I think you may have more luck asking Bawolff what happened to that. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:16, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh. Thanks. --Pi zero (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Well google sitemap extension is cool and all (and also is somewhat abandoned; no one is working on it, but its still in svn), I don't think it would help in this situation. The moral of the story, don't publish something unless you want it to be published. Even if google magically removed it somehow, it would still be on facebook, identica, etc. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:17, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Interviews

whats the criteria of a good interview according to this page? H.R.H Sovereign King Bradley The Great, Autocrat of All Australia talk 10:45, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

• That's a rather tricky one. I'd recommend reviewing prior interviews. One or two have made it to Featured Article status. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

well considering wikinews utter rejection of my reporting, perhaps interviewing could me more my forte...do you wish to be interviewed? =) H.R.H Sovereign King Bradley The Great, Autocrat of All Australia talk 10:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

• That would be due to you having been overly influenced by in-print, or online 'coverage' of events and such which is blatant wikt:editorialising. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Mr. McNeil, Dont Make Another Mistake Again...Cause I Too Can Be Unforgiving =) H.R.H Sovereign King Bradley The Great, Autocrat of All Australia talk 11:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow that sounded threatening - unconsciously so - what I mean is I made a mistake...let it go =)H.R.H Sovereign King Bradley The Great, Autocrat of All Australia talk 11:45, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

• I don't consider that (my comment) a mistake; I would prefer you take it as constructive criticism. My point was that, for example, News International are utterly incapable of presenting coverage without bias or spin. Far, far too many people have become unaware of this.

And, no. I would, at-present, decline to be interviewed for publication on this project. Frankly, that smacks of navel-gazing. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:49, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Deleted Page

The page Prudhoe Media gets the Go - Ahead had not been finished. I was still working on the article, but I have not had time to do that recently. Please put it back on so I can finish it. Sco1996 (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

• Restored to userspace, it needs a lot of work though. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Sco1996 (talk) 10:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Linnell, ex police media director, perjury conviction quashed

This article needs to be reviewed before its goes "stale" H.R.H Sovereign King Bradley The Great, Autocrat of All Australia talk 07:50, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

• I have put the correct urgent review template on this. I would have reviewed it, but I feel I did sufficient work on it to have a conflict there. Thus, I'd want someone else to independently review it.

If you could review the changes I did make on the article, that'd be good. It was not totally clear to me reading your text who overturned what judgement, and so on. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Reply

Hi Brian. I wasn't sure if you come here first or FB, but I just want to let you know that I've replied to your message over there. Best, Matthewedwards (talk) 01:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Hong Kong Democratic Party stirs up controversy

3 out of 17 of the sources are in English. Kayau (talk · contribs) 10:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• Then, please remove every single one of the non-English sources that is not absolutely necessary for someone to fact-check the article. Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
  • But I got a bit of info from every one of the sources. It will simply make the article less verifiable if I just remove them... I will try to weed out some redundant ones though. Kayau (talk · contribs) 12:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• In that case, cite the "bit of info", which source from, literal translation, and how-worded in-article on the talk page. Yes, painful, slow, and the article may end up {{stale}}. The only realistic alternative is recruiting more speakers of that language who do have an excellent command of the Queen's English. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
• If I recall correctly, User:KTo288 knows Chinese (well, Yue, but the characters are the same) and is a fairly active editor here, maybe try pinging him over at en.wp to see if he'd like to help out? (This is why I wish people would use babel boxes and categories more...) Tempodivalse [talk] 13:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• This is why many, many people give up on the approaches you think will work. I assume you can find the contributions of the user in question, and look at the work some people did in copyediting and reviewing. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• The user does advertise that English is his native language, and previous contribs from him suggest he uses grammar usually appropriately - although I suppose, if all we want is for him to factcheck everything, someone else can do the actual copyediting. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
Pretty much, yeah. Does he have the "review" bit? If he can indeed perform part of the review checks, then I'd be more happy. But, per my initial response above, if questioned on a specific statement of fact within the article, he would have to be able to respond to it in a cite, literal translation, and how-worded manner. i.e. He would have had to, carefully, read all the sources - possibly re-referring to them as Xe went through the article several times. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he has the reviewer bit. But, supposing that he can't review for whatever reason or doesn't reply, what are we to do then? Entrust Google Translate with the task, or try to get Kayau to quote and translate everything from the sources on the talk page (methinks that's going to take a long time)? Tempodivalse [talk] 17:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow...

This is not going to fly. There are other people on Wikinews; you do not have sole authority over what is done or not done on this site, and that edit crossed the line. I've reverted. Warn me, block me, I don't care. C628 (talk) 02:19, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Sock investigation on Saki

You'll probably be interested in this: WN:AAA#Sockpuppetry investigation on Saki. Cheers, Benny the mascot (talk) 04:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Query

Have you looked into the veracity, or lack thereof, of this purported interview? -- Cirt (talk) 23:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• As far as I can. The subject is supposedly a .ja-based CC person. Photos in the interview appear, to my poor eyes, to be of someone ~5+ years younger. Associate uploads supposedly from her blog to Commons have been requested for deletion via .pk IPs. I think it is utter falsehood. I have asked for someone in the WMF to make the needed contacts to check this. Given ultra-small staff numbers that will take quite some time. Look around the painfully solitary CU skenmy confirmed. There are vast swathes of .pk blocked, many socks claiming to be in other parts of the ME. Did you run the /16 check? Did you Cu ranges for all contributors in such? Did any have a single .ja-based edit? Seriously, you'd be batshit insane, or up to no good, to sit in .ja and access the net thru .pk's sytem that hasn;t been resolved to look like a cess pool of dial-in temp leases. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:49, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI

Wikinews:Deletion_requests#Wikinews_interviews_Chiaki_Hayashi.2C_Asian_Projects_Coordinator_at_Creative_Commons. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

NewPortal

Since Infant clearly hasn't informed you that your template's auto-uptdate/lead decay functions are broken, I shall. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:23, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• They are not broken. They were never written. You cannot do that in Wikicode; you need to either scan all the relevant portal pages regularly with a bot, or use a script to maintain these pages. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:14, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

• And are there any plans for a bot/script that will do it? If not... then the portal problem remains unchanged. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:01, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

• I can ask Bawolff, and I can try to draft a specification for this. I took exception to the characterisation of my work on the issue. Nobody else even did a thing about it. As you can probably guess, I'm juggling frying pans full of part-cooked fish. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:17, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

One big local sport FA push

I just want to get your thoughts on whether this is on track for FA status. Obviously some of the info will need to be changed as needed and it isn't until September.

I want to prepare it as thoroughly as possible, so queries and suggestions are welcome. --RockerballAustralia c 10:30, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, too busy with other things to look closely and critique. I do wonder, though, when "preparation" is misspelt. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

  Heh, I'd not noticed that, but it is indeed spelt wrong. Now fixed. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Good close

Good close [2], and notice [3]. I also agree with the indef full prot, also a good idea. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 19:29, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Not acceptable

This kind of comment is simply not acceptable, especially regarding an accidental edit conflict. I strongly suggest you take a break from Wikinews to calm down Brian, I know you have been under stress recently, but that's no reason to take it out on other users. More in this vein, and I will make sure it is a forced break. the wub "?!" 20:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

• It was perhaps a bit strong, but I'd already lost 40+ minutes of edits, including a quite civil response on Tempo's page outlining several issues he chooses to overlook, or is otherwise unaware of. I have asked him previously to use the [edit] links, and all-too-often, Xe does not. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:15, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• Tempo has already said that he normally uses edit section links, but changes the summary to give more room, something I often do myself. It would be impossible for you to tell whether he's using them regularly. Either you are just ignoring his comments, or you are accusing him of lying. I realize it is frustrating editing on a mobile device, I pretty much always wait until I have access to a proper computer. Would it be possible to prepare extended comments in your phone's note program, then copy and paste them? the wub "?!" 11:30, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• If you do not append your "appropriate edit summary" to the "/* Section name */" part of the title, then you do not actually leave a link in Recent Changes which is clickable, and a "view diff" option where you can instantly go to editing the touched section. I would expect both of you, as experienced wiki editors, to be fully aware of that. MediaWiki works the way it does for a reason, even if it does not appear particularly "designed". --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• Might I add, I rest my case? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Dispute resolution

Hi Brian. You may be interested in this. Regards, Tempodivalse [talk] 22:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

If you want to talk to me...

.. Then don't go magic-retired on me. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Shut up, Brian, and listen. Someone's finally had the guts to tell you exactly what your problem is and you revert them? No wonder you still fail to comprehend everything you've been told about calming down, you don't even listen to it. C628 (talk) 22:32, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

1. [4] is curt,not snippy.
2. [5] is childish, and immature.
3. [6] does not comply with the style guide.
4. [7] does not bring it up to project standards.

Their problem, not mine. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly how difficult would good manners have been? How difficult would it have been to have asked me to reconsider my review or, heaven forbid, fix the bloody problem yourself? While I concede the manner in which I made my previous comment was a little unnecessary, I stand by my point and you do need to get over yourself. From what I've observed myself and from what I've been told, I'm not alone in my opinion. And fwiw, I haven't "magic-retired". I've been largely inactive for quite a while, I just thought I'd put a template up while I was in the area. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:49, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, if you'd come on here, roasted me for being curt (after fixing the problem), but not done the semi-retired thing, I would not have zapped your comment off here, but responded.

If I wanted to be a complete B'tard about it, I would have corrected the article, and nominated you to be stripped of the reviewer status. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:53, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• The "See also" was my error... :( <skulks off> Matthewedwards (talk) 04:18, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• It should have been a red flag to a reviewer, that was my point. As it stands, I look at the articles sitting up the top pending review, and "Talk Show to Replace As The World Turns" does not even have a title that complies with the style guide. People wonder why I'm grumpy, stressed, curmugeonly, and likely to use foul language. There would be no need if reviewing, and copyediting, was being done to a high standard. It is not. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

<followup> God only knows what would've happened if I'd flagged this instead, which should have been failed on NPOV. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

FYI

This and this might be of interest to you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• Well, it is entirely up to you how you handle that. I'll keep out of it. Perhaps bad days for both of us, and it sometimes seems like I'm the only person defending what should be the project ideals. This is not Wikipedia. A trite response, perhaps; but, "See also" is one of those things that really, really gets me. The single-source issue is a much more involved, journalistic, conundrum. Suffice to say, if News International will retreat behind paywalls, perhaps taking others with them, what motive - other than a political one - can you attribute to someone publishing news under a licence compatible with Wikinews' CC-BY-2.5? Which, in itself, leads into questioning the political bent of contributors themselves. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:00, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

OR from a phone?

I honestly never heard of someone contributing Original Research from a regular mobile phone, but I have to say it makes sense if someone is on site. However I'm struggling to see some of the practical side of the exercise. How many letters or words would the they cut off at? Would it meet our three paragraph minimum? --RockerballAustralia c 01:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, it's a smartphone. But, even then there are restrictions in editing similar to those on some browsers about 10 years ago. It will, when I've finished a spot of soldering, also be able to do photos, video, audio segments (with all the audio taken at broadcast quality). I'm using an on-screen keyboard with it, and haven't fully explored editing limitations. Bluetooth would be a huge step-up, then I'd have the { and } characters relatively easily accessible.

I could, probably, put in a feature-length piece from it; but, that'd be a little hacking, and require the reviewer remove temporary editsections, which was what I was trying to put in on the WC before Tempo double edit-conflicted me and provoked a particularly harsh response. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• EDIT FROM DEVICE. I can edit this section while standing, waiting, at a bus stop. That while listening to a 192kbps MP3; some have better than the 2megapix camera in this, but send me a reminder by email and I'll email you a sample video clip from tonight's ZPZ gig. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 05:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Additional. The two photos on my userpage were taken with this phone. At the Windmill gig I recorded about 1.5GB of video. Since I'm now, supposedly, on an unlimited data bundle, I'll try something to make my point... -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 06:17, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• Google is being helpful; I managed to create a YouTube account, but mobile devices seem only meant to consume. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 07:10, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• Absolutely no time yet to get near an 'open' PC, tweak that YouTube acct I've created, and try a video upload. I've a short clip, captured in Edinburgh, I want to try uploading. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:08, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm in about an hour, and tired. Was at the Glasgow Zappa Plays Zappa gig this evening. I came home with about 30 minutes of YouTube quality video, and 1½ hours of audio. Looking at a reasonably modern 3G phone, I see enormous potential as a reporters' tool. I hope to use it for such in October. It is things like this that are going to distinguish us from other sources; if one or two contributors can make effective use of 3G devices to get on-the-scene stuff, we do have a chance to solicit competition sponsorship from contributors. I can easily imagine Nokia putting up a couple of their bleeding-edge phones as prizes if our contributors are really pushing existing kit and providing an advert to them. I can well imagine you, Rockerball, filming a sports match and adding video of the winning goal/try. Wikinews has, at least for the last five or so years, been a "bleeding edge" project (Flagged Revs, Vector skin, ...). Wikipedia is musing over video being "nice". Potentially, we could blow away many, many mainstream sources. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Interesting bits of commentary. Now to get decent quality video on my iPhone that I can upload to Commons. :-) --RockerballAustralia c 11:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

• Think heading to the limit of a from-device section here, but I've seen many shorter articles. I'd ditch the iPhone unless you jailbreak the hell out of it. I've had zero luck pairing with them, Apple sells a very pretty gilded cage.

As a non-insane evening, can probably sort that YouTube account. Then I'll look into a toolserver utility to take proprietary video formats and auto-convert for Commons. Right up Shaka's street that one. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 17:57, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

• Zero luck with attempts to get the phone uploading to Youtube. Seems my tweaks to secure the phone, and minimise data use, mess with that. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sanseman press release

I just read the original. Here is the link for your information:

• http://www.sansgov.com/mediaets.html

--InfantGorilla (talk) 06:27, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

• I managed to pull that page up at work, but handled about a dozen escalations, and sundry other calls. Can you do two things for me? Sum up your, to date excellent, detective work. And, bug the crap out of a WN veteran you respect for a second opinion? I had zero time to look at this issue before leaving for work this morning; an 'archive bot' related issue took the hour or so I'd between getting washed and leaving. I'll be on a real PC late n my time, the aforementioned may take some time, but if you can advise as to any update I should give to Matthew about the problems an iffy review gave his organisation, I'll make that my second priority.

For want of a better way of putting it, I've been forced to move beyond being "pissed off" at the well-intentioned 'ignorance' of some of those who've come over from The Other Place. The cleanup operation has to take priority.

I hope some of the 'snipers' on the vote to de-priv me actually take note of that. As far as I can tell, they would not have had the first clue about how to handle the article you rapidly flagged as problematic. I'm not religeous, but "thank god you'd kicked that off when you did". The risk immature contributors such as 'King Bradley' can put themselves at reminds me, unpleasantly, of a 2am phone call from Mike Godwin about someone else risking libel action from a WMF staffmember. At least then I could oversight the offending in-development article; not because I'd back down, but because Mike was right. Give me a heads up if something requires urgent attention (I want to sleep before 1200UTC tonight). And, document this time-consuming disaster as a saluatory lesson for those who didn't see it coming. Then, get someone to challenge the sock-creating Pakistanis I noted in RC. Might not be Saqib taking advantage of my limited free time but experience says otherwise and that some use of CU may be in order. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 17:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I didn't do any research. I read The Australian source out of interest, and I recognised the one-word quotes. --InfantGorilla (talk) 10:09, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, that puts you up in my esteem. You were sharp enough to catch something not-quite-right with limited information. Trust me, that's good. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Re: C'mon

You know, when I was active, being told that we were accessories to murder was the worst drama we had here. --Thunderhead ^{(t - e - c)} 07:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, we can do better than that,... But, I may be getting into some undercover reportage in a few weeks. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Re InfantGorilla's talk page

I replied there. C628 (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

• I'll try and find that via RC, on my phone, and found myself in the middle of a film set in Edinburgh. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

RFCU?

Cirt has given us a list of alternate accounts that the rest of us need to watch for suspect edits. Job done, right? --InfantGorilla (talk) 06:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, monitor. They came out of an enWP CU investigation that matched a suspected sock of Saqib/Saki I listed; can now assume it is just even more of xyr sock army, and a cross-wiki problem. -Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Intern?

According to the young man's bio, he was a legal intern a number of years ago.

It appears he now works for the recently created WMF community department, with a reader relations portfolio. Which means that internal project politics might well be his new bag.

Hope that helps.

--InfantGorilla (talk) 20:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. Obviously Dan would not remain an intern forever; and, IIRC, he's completed his law degree. Let's not dig into the issues of the WMF needing law grads for reader relations. What would be a more salient point is project interference. Dan, in the position you ascribe to him, will report to Phillipe who, in turn, reports directly to Sue Gardner.

I'm sure you have some knowledge of "safe harbour provisions". They are, in effect, laws that apply in many countries to protect ISPs from legal action on the basis of what their users say or do. This is where there is a serious risk to the Foundation. If they involve themselves overly in the day-to-day operations of any project, they can be said to have assumed editorial liability. In plain English, it will have to be donor funds fighting off lawsuits. Keep a healthy distance; it is you or I as authors or reviewers face legal action.

This puts Dan, Sue, Mike Godwin, and sundry others over a barrel. Need I explain further? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Dan is not an intern of, or employed by the Foundation. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 06:17, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

• Well, as IG points out, I have not been keeping up with things there. However, there are limits to the 'plausible deniability' you can claim through use of volunteers. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 11:58, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I think, actually, that InfantGorilla is perhaps conflating Dan and myself. The only staff member with a Reader Relations portfolio is me. In addition, to correct something above, I do not report immediately to Sue Gardner. I report to the Chief Community Officer, Zack Exley. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for clearing that up Philippe. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 21:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
• Thanks from me too. I thought Brian had been discussing you, and added to that by confusing your election committee role with Dan's internship. Sorry. --InfantGorilla (talk) 14:43, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Proxies?

I'm looking at 79.85.113.115 (talk · contribs) and 79.85.113.253 (talk · contribs). Both on long blocks, so can wait till morning. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

• Neither give the slightest indication that they're proxies. If there are indeed hosts up there, they are well-cloaked/firewalled. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /^{alt-talk • main talk} 05:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Ubuntu scripts - note to self

This is essentially a note for myself; details how to set up an ISO image tailored to suit audio work, including with specific settings for the Terratec DMX6Fire 10-channel card. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:20, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

1. /Initialisation
2. /Prerequisites
3. /Env-prep script to prepare environment inside chroot jail
4. /Customise-build customise the built enviroment, mainly for Audio tools
5. /Zap-pulseaudio revert back to ALSA for sound
6. /Close-jail close out of the chroot jail NOTE! some processes may be running inside it and need killed
7. /Make-ISO Make an image, recognisable for writing to a stick or DVD (too big for CD folks)

• This is only partially tested, don't mess with it unless you can read the scripts and accept it might a'splode! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:35, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

---

For the Terratec soundcard, a comple of lines need added into /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

#
#
## Customisations to make TerraTec DMX6Fire work (hopefully)
#
options snd-ice1712 model=dmx6fire
install snd-ice1712 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-ice1712 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-alsa ; : ; }
#

The above should go pretty close to the top, and you should not boot the machine with other audio kit (eg USB) plugged in/active/available. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 07:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

RE: Category:South Thailand insurgency

I am sorry, I did not understand why you asked me to look at the category. --Srinivas 17:24, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

• No matter. It was after that I noticed you'd put the article in it; there's a huge amount of backgrond material in it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

MORE

• "We need MORE: More Original Reporting Editors" Maybe not for Fundraising 2010/Messages‎... Przykuta (talk) 23:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

• Uhm,... Thanks? I'm curious if you're suggesting something to rework as a slogan, or chiding me to get back to OR. I am looking at a few possible stories. I just painfully lack the time. Maybe in October. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Frank Ryan

Hi, I did not place the image in question on Commons, I just got the image from his Wikipedia page.

Cheers, Chandlerjoeyross (talk) 10:32, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

<dorp>

tsia - Amgine | ^t 13:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

• Eh? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

  I reverse-engineered your prod. - Amgine | ^t 14:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

• Just, sneakily, read your feedback - not supposed to have "active" phones in here. (Plus, the one that's supposed to constantly ring, hasn't. I've been logged in since 1300, had a 15 minute break, and not a single call to handle.) In any case, the publication in-question is www.socialistworker.co.uk. They asked for a one-off to highlight that Network Neutrality is a 'looming' issue. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:07, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

  Okay. Would you like me to tear it apart? Want me to stand behind your shoulder and be rude and insulting about everything you write? Want to write an outline of what you already wrote? - Amgine | ^t 14:23, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

• In this case, I don't mind it being dissected. It's to get into doing stuff like that prompting me to go to the Napier open day on Thursday. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:29, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
• Moot point anyway. Charlie's accepted it, just wanting to insert a couple of explanatory clauses and run in the next issue. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:32, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

  'K, good, in the midst of a row with the kid over Uni (and being responsible, yadda yadda yadda...) Gods I feel old. Will shred later. - Amgine | ^t 15:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

┌───────────────────┘
Kids... A telling comment, for me at least, was that one of the people who tried to set up "The Long-Term Planning Committee for the Human Race" on Facebook has sworn never to have any. Seems a bit short-sighted to me. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:47, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Username change

I have posted a request at Wikinews:Changing username, which suggests I "post a note on the talk pages of all bureaucrats" so here is said note. Thanks, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 16:41, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

• I'd want to change username too - if I'd saddled myself with a straight-to-DVD sequel to the most illiterate action hero ever.

Per note at top, I'm doing on-loc/field (literally) research. This can wait. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay thanks. Just to clarify, I do not want this account (Rambo's Revenge) moved. I just want the other Rambo account to be usurped so I can obtain it as an alt account. Best of luck with research et al. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 15:19, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Unblock request

Please unblock User:Chobot. Chobot is a global bot, and it adds interwiki links only. -- ChongDae (talk) 12:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

• Per block reason, raise this on WN:AAA. enWN uses Flagged Revision. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:42, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Is there any guides about global bots for wikinews? I cannot find anything. -- ChongDae (talk) 05:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• Almost all global bots must be cleared for this project. Interwiki bots are usually allowed, but they must work with Flagged Revisions and sight their changes where it is appropriate to do so. Yours was not doing so, which is why I keep saying raise the issue on WN:AAA for a full explanation. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

To add to this, having just had another bot hit a similar issue; a global interwiki bot which makes edits in a namespace where flagged revisions is in-force will require Reviewer rights. Once it has such, the following rules need applied in deciding to sight a revision:

1. If the prior revision is sighted, sight the new one.
2. If the prior revision is unsighted, but some earlier ones are, do not sight the new revision.
3. If no prior revisions are sighted, only sight if all prior revisions predate Flagged Revisions being switched on for the namespace in question.

Hope that helps, Diego can probably clarify further as he's to do the same. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hmm. I'm not a good coder. Will ask some pywikipedia dev if the last option is possible. --Diego Grez ^{return fire} 16:11, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

• Diego, I strongly suspect the python framework has little, or no, support for FlaggedRevs yet. Do be nice to the devs on that one; Wikinews is a good test case for them, but there might need to be some centralised list of when FR has been switched on, broken down by namespace, for all WMF projects. We've also got an 'odd' tweak here, courtesy of BRS. That is, if you've reviewer, on most projects you auto-sight your own edits to a reviewed version. Here, you must do so explicitly - hence chatting with the framework devs may be a really good move. It'd likely also aid in toolbuilding for enWP. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Sidenote: Any bot with bot rights will work with flagged revisions. Bots without bot rights will not (even if they have reviewer rights). Bawolff ☺☻ 11:30, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

How about to change MediaWiki software that bot user does not alter the "sighted" flags by default. BTW, Chobot does not change any (Main) namespace articles. And in Wikinews:Blocking policy, initial block should last 24 hours. Could you unblock Chobot? I'll not run Chobot in automatic mode in en wikinews until Flagged Revision issues are resolved. -- ChongDae (talk) 02:17, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Note, normal users don't even have permission to sight things, so having bot not modify flagged stuff would be not the desired behaviour either. We want bots to have autosight, which the bot group gives. ChongDae, perhaps the best way forward is just start a request on WN:BOT. Bawolff ☺☻ 11:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• Bawolff, my point was that the pywikibot framework may not yet have support for Flagged Revisions. That'd be needed as well as the bot account having appropriate privs.--Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The default behaviour of mediawiki for clients that don't support flagged revs (and have auto-sight, like the bot group) is basically what you describe (example [8]), except for your third point (if no prior revs sighted and all prior revs before flagged revs turned on, then sight revision), which I'm not entirely convinced is a good idea as: Do we really want an interwiki bot to sight old articles from before flagged revs as it adds interwiki links? I'd imagine that'd be something we'd want to do explicitly, or not at all. It would also be difficult to implement that (generically) on the client side (or server side for that matter) since the turn on date for flagged revs is not recorded anywhere afaik. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• Is that really a malfunction, or merely something that ought to be improved upon? The bot's been doing this since long before FR iirc (I may not). We should prolly lift the block. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

ASB

• Chobot does category pages, not main namespace. So, Bawolff's concern doesn't apply. The point I'm making is that, ideally, the bot would sight all these 'historical' date categories as it updates them; we end up with a huge reduction in unsighted pages, detect those with unnoted vandalism, and make many more FR lists of unsighted stuff useful (vandalism jumps out at you). --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh wow, yet another interwiki category bot? (seriously, we have one bot adding a whole bunch of interwikis to the categories (ZachBot), then we have GordinBot remove some of the ones ZachBot adds, and add some more of its own... /me grumbles about interwiki bots in general). I still think a better approach would be to run a bot that sights all articles in category namespace (there's about 4500 categories, with 5.12% currently sighted). It'd take about 5 minutes to write such a bot, and probably about half an hour to run. Bawolff ☺☻ 21:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Internet cafe?

After reading through WN:AAA, I'm begining to wonder if there is an internet cafe near you or if you're able to access the internet through a computer. Such access would be benifitial I think. Secondly, without the diffs, I can't really comment on the disputed blocks. So please address both - if physiclly possible - asap. --RockerballAustralia c 07:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Note: I saw your post Diego's talk page after posting this --RockerballAustralia c 07:56, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• The edit-warring is in the SG page history. I've already mentioned the 'outraged' response to Diego removing a post by an unapproved bot; it is fairly clear from the edit histories of the users in question why I concluded they were not being constructive.
• I may get access to a library PC later today, but had intended such to be for further research into social housing; I interviewed Prof Jones of HW university on the issue last week - so I am carrying out journalistic work. It just so happens I've picked a topic that has mushroomed into something very complex. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:25, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• • Is it possible to give us some "progress" reports?--RockerballAustralia c 10:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• Absolutely not for publication:

1. 4.6 million entries on waiting lists for social housing in the UK.
2. All high-availability areas are very undesirable due to low local uptake of the Right to Buy.
3. In Edinburgh alone, emergency temporary accomodation is provided thru use of 15-20 Bed & Breakfast establishments, each grossing in the region of £150k per annum of taxpayer money.
4. 2012 sees all local authorities legally required to house people who present as homeless - with no public stock to put to use for such.

• Or, were you looking for a different update? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• That's fine. I was begining to wonder what exactly it was you were investigating. I'm guessing FOI requests are lagging? --RockerballAustralia c 00:18, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

• I gave up my small window of PC access opportunity today because I got full access to very old maps; 1852-on, showing local building activity, size/location of poorhouse, eventua conversion to hospital, and substantial parts of Edinburgh's build-out that coincides with slum clearances at the start of the 20th C. As some of the earliest working class schools are part of the build, and it coincides with the Enlightenment (all in one of Scotland's five World Heritage Sites), this is great background. Alas, back to work in the morning so no more time to dig into stuff. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:34, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• Rockerball, I'm in a 'delicate' situation as far as submitting many of the FoIA requests goes. To get some of the real insider information I had to declare myself homeless. I'm in emergency acommodation, most of my belongings are in storage - including my PC. Work is a secured area - I can't even have my mobile on; plus the "free" PCs in the canteen are so locked down I can't dump stuff to/from memory stick with them. In the library on Monday I actually got to see pre/post WWI building in Edinburgh, the conversion of the city's poorhouse to a hospital, and the grand opulence some residents lived in. BRS will be doing many of the FoIAs, and I'm recruiting a couple other people to work on this. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

section break

Well, being homeless in Scotland seems completely fucked. Howw does the government expect people to get work and get ou of the poorhouses?-RockerballAustralia c 23:36, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• I'm in work and homeless. :P Besides, they demolished the poorhouse around 1930 (actually, incorporated it into the hospital as the infectious diseases unit). What, at the moment, makes it difficult to get out the poverty trap is the cost of temporary accomodation; due to my salary (a lower hourly rate than I got ~25 years ago part-time in a supermarket) I'm expected to pay £130/week 'rent', have no cooking facilities other than a kettle, and a "good week" is circa 70 social housing properties that people in Edinburgh can bid for. Bids are weighted by a priority points system - my 2008 open heart surgery helps enormously on that front. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

About the news article "Turkey's telecom watchdog bans Vimeo website"

hi Brian. i have edited the article considering your recomendations. --Polysynaptic (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

List of all users

Sorry....I've tried like heck to find my own answer to this, but have failed. I stumbled onto the list of all Wikinews registered users the other day...just regular, plain-old users.......I wanted to look at it again, but can't find it! Can you help, please?Buddpaul (talk) 00:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Special:ListUsers? (Another interesting page listed on Special:SpecialPages is Special:ActiveUsers.) --Pi zero (talk) 01:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Request??

Hi, could you help me with my request at Wikinews:Changing username? Thanks in advance.Buddpaul (talk) 15:18, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• Done And, welcome to Wikinews, get stuck in. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Squirelly??

I'm trying to get a jump on an article I'm prepping........Wikinews:Story preparation/Non-traditional Methodist Church holds 3rd Anniversary Celebration......I've gotten about 3 sentences into it......so I'm a little early here......but I don't want to waste me time on something that doesn't pass review. Would you take a look at this, please and give me your opinion re: style, tone etc.? I will be attending/reporting on the event (coming up this weekend).Bddpaux (talk) 16:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

• I can't judge if this would qualify as newsworthy. I'd seek another opinion. I'm not in a position to carry out thorough reviews, so I'd see if you can line up someone who'd be prepared to do that. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

....thanks anyway.Bddpaux (talk) 23:08, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Brian Can you help out

Hello I hope this link goes through I am not very good on computers so I am hoping that you can help and post this story on this site.

http://www.agoranews.org/news/no-justice-no-peace-october-update

You can feel free to contact me through my email for further info. There is a tonne of it. timmoorley@hotmail.com

Timothy moorley (talk) 17:32, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

• I'll see if I can take a look tomorrow Tim, but as the note at the top says, I'm kinda busy. You might do better laying out a synopsis in email to scoop @ wikinewsie.org. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 23:27, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Checkuser on Self

It may not give you all the detail you wanted, but you might like the speed of response of a sites that reflect your IP address and user agent string back to you, such as http://www.whatsmybrowser.com/ --InfantGorilla (talk) 13:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

• It's also an easily listed site where a compromised piece of hardware can lie. No desperate rush on this,... Device has 'issues'. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The edit on that last page

Why did you revert my spelling correction from rôle to role? I've never heard of rôle being an english word or spelling...what am I missing here? Ks0stm If you reply here, please leave me a {{Replied}} message on my talk page. 14:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Because, with the accent is actually correct. You will find that word in Wiktionary too; its rare usage is due to too many people with under-endowed keyboards. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Hmm, ok, I can see that now. Thanks for explaining. =) Ks0stm If you reply here, please leave me a {{Replied}} message on my talk page. 14:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner dies aged 87

EPR didn't sight. --Pi zero (talk) 15:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Tell Bawolff, I assume you've fixed it. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Russia may declare war against USA

Hi. Without sources. It's not news. Przykuta (talk) 10:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• Without a review, it will never be "published". ;) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Brian McNeil (talk • contribs)

Block notices

Brian, can I just check with you about placing block notices? I notice you deleted the one from the user I blocked during the early hours of yesterday morning. I thought that when I blocked someone, I was supposed to leave one of those notices, or is that not the case? BarkingFish (talk) 02:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• You'd leave a block notice on someone claiming authority, or using a company name. When it comes to obscene usernames, you don't give them any more publicity. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Cheers Brian, thanks for the clarification :) BarkingFish (talk) 17:18, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: Bug testing

Just to let you know, I replied at my on talk page. Cheers, Soccer-holic (talk) 21:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Article Help

Hi Brian,

Could you please clarify on my article what you mean by "baffling title" and how it could be improved?

Thanks, ~YTT (talk) 10:34, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• 'revealed' is usually reserved for an exclusive exposé. It is a RedTop term, and tells nothing about the actual story. --Brian McNeil / ^talk

• Thank you very much for clarifying that. I'll change it now. Thanks ~YTT (talk) 11:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Could you also clarify one more thing? Can you give an example of where the tenses need fixing in the article (I have made some edits and I am wondering if it is all fixed now - I don't want to send to peer review as of yet). Thanks ~YTT (talk) 11:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I went through and tried to fix the tenses and other grammatical errors. I must say that with the way the article is structured, it's very difficult (or even impossible) to maintain a constant tense throughout the article. This is because the article is talking about both events in the past (the mere existence of the legislation, and the conditions that led to it being created) and events in the future (what will happen as the legislation comes into effect). I'm not sure I succeeded in correcting the tenses, but I think I increased the readability of the article. Gopher65_talk 13:34, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Latest 'CableGate' disclosures hint at US diplomatic tactics in Spain and beyond

This oughtn't have been self-sighted. It would certainly be beyond the pale for an archived article. --Pi zero (talk) 20:58, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• I disagree. It clarifies the lede as-opposed to being a substantive change. Of course, had the article been more critically reviewed prior to publication, this might not have been an issue. Instead, this edit was the result of consulting someone I trust off-wiki who highlighted shortcomings in the prose, and points, of the lede. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:27, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Would [you] make a change of this size to an archived article? --Pi zero (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• That strikes me as a question to lead in favour of your opinion. So, politically, I will reiterate that no addiional facts or information were added through my change. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:26, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a question by which I hoped to get a clearer understanding of where our thinking on this case did and did not diverge. I asked it because I don't know the answer. I would still like to know the answer. What I'd usefully do with the answer, I figured on waiting to worry about after I knew what the answer is (an old-school debugger's instinct, though unfortunately prone to be mistaken for "debating"). --Pi zero (talk) 01:33, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Hmmm.... you know, you could have just pinged somebody in IRC to sight it - such as the user who suggested it. ;) Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• What?!? Make Amgine do "real work"? :p --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:03, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• lol Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 22:19, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

May your family have
a joyous holiday season
and a new year blessed
with hope and happiness.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Ceremonies for Christmas Day (Robert Herrick) Kindle the Christmas brand, and then    Till sunset let it burn; Which quench'd, then lay it up again    Till Christmas next return. Part must be kept wherewith to teend    The Christmas log next year, And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend    Can do no mischief there.

If you don't celebrate Christmas ... Happy (belated) Hanukkah! Happy Eid al-Adha! Happy Kwanzaa! And of course, Happy Festivus! May this holiday season bring you the music of laughter, the warmth of friendship, and the steadying hand of love. ☃

—fetch·comms 22:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• Nice card. Thanks! But, I'd rather celebrate the solstice - it's an astronomical event. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:22, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikinews reporters' workshops

• Planned to be a 4x3hr course, carried out once per week.
• Developing on Wikiversity, at their Journalism school. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Indef IP Block

That indef block was an accident. It was suppose to be 24 hours. Thanks for catching that. I've changed the block to 3 hours from right now. Gopher65_talk 19:59, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Accreditation Requests

Hi Brian, I thought I would just drop you a note to let you know that the 2 AR requests are still open. I have asked various admins about their closure but either they do not know how to close it or they were involved (somewhat) in the voting process. I was wondering whether you would be able to close it for me (and Bobby's too, I guess). Thanks, ~YTT ^{T | C} 11:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

• I'll close them; contact me byemail about getting on scoop and Wikinewsie email addresses. That'll likely be sometime in the next couple of days. If you need help with business cards or whatnot, let me know. BRS will testify as to how effective those can be. I do intend to put tees up on my 'shop', but that's more long-term. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for that :) ~YTT ^{T | C} 23:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

WN:CHU

Hey Brian, could you take a look at my last rename request ? :P Diego Grez ^{return fire} 18:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• What do you want this time? My Name is Legion (talk · contribs)? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Lol. No, I'm back at Diego Grez. Thanks anyway. Diego Grez ^{return fire} 16:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Time to vote?

As far as I can tell, you are the only Wikinews user who has objected to my article, entitled "Wikipedia celebrates its tenth anniversary", because of what you claimed to be problems with style, NPOV and 'navel-gazing'. Do you think that we could have a public vote on the Water cooler to decide whether or not this article is suitable for Wikinews? --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 08:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

• Voting is evil, and Voting != Consensus. If you know what navel-gazing is, you'll understand my concerns; if you don't, then sit back and think long and hard about the conflict of interest in reporting on Wikipedia; if substantial mainstream coverage is forthcoming, the article's newsworthiness is validated - otherwise, I'd say I'm fully vindicated. So, no vote. If you submit the article for review, you better go above-and-beyond in being neutral. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:55, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Wish me luck

Well, it needed done. I've submitted my application to one of the local uni's journalism degree courses.

As the ancient Chinese curse goes,... "May you live in Interesting Times." --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Goodluck. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Luck. --Pi zero (talk) 02:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

+1 --InfantGorilla (talk) 17:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Concerning your suggestion at AAA for a new WN:NOT :)

Hi Brian. I thought i'd just drop this to you to let you know that I've actually put thought into a WN:NOT for this (the conspiracy theorist thing) and posted it on the Talk page for What Wikinews is not. If you want to comment, it's here. Best wishes. BarkingFish (talk) 11:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikinewsie/scoop

Hi Brian, just dropping a line to see what's happening with the Wikinewsie/scoop email.

(ps. Best of luck with your university application). ~YTT ^{T | C} 12:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• I've all day off tomorrow, so I can sort that then. I hadn't forgot, just been very busy. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. :) ~YTT ^{T | C} 21:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

interwiki bots

Since I know you dislike the large mass of interwiki bots, I thought you might find [9] interesting. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:59, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

• You know me; one bot to rule them all. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Strange comment

I don't understand this comment. I blanked my talk page because it was old. I am not a new user, in fact, we've had many interactions on here. You should read the interview I just did, it is very engaging. Additionally, I sourced the lead section and added interesting background material.--William S. Saturn (talk) 23:07, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Mmm? The comment seemed reasonable when the sequence of events was you subbed article for review, it was failed, you blanked your page. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:30, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Except that the second part is completely wrong: the article was never failed; I'm just waiting for it to pass. I sent the verification e-mail, I don't understand the delay, I've done this numerous times in the past.--William S. Saturn (talk) 00:53, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

THe article itself, in my opinion, is rather POV. There's no balance, and rather a platform for fringe beliefs. Put something in for the other side, and it'll look more promising. — μ 01:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not an article, it's an interview. Plus, that is not a legitimate criticism, we are attempting to learn about the views and campaign of the candidates, not enter into a political debate with them. Please review previous interviews with presidential candidates.--William S. Saturn (talk) 01:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Thermometer

I made User:Microchip08/thermometer to see how everyone's edits stacked up. Automated writing contest, perhaps? — μ 01:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

AR

I'm sure you've noticed. — μ 09:30, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

#wikinewsie

Hey there. I've just noticed that you're the only user with +f in #wikinewsie; it would be useful to let others have that flag to enable them to give out permissions: we're having to set up a separate #wikinews-private channel to serve the same purpose otherwise! — μ 00:59, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• I thought I'd dished that out to BRS. I'll look into it later on. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:19, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

-ChanServ- Entry Nickname/Host          Flags
-ChanServ- ----- ---------------------- -----
-ChanServ- 1     brianmc                +vVoOtsriRfAF (Chief-Executioner) [modified 30 weeks, 2 days, 05:20:35 ago]
-ChanServ- 3     BloodRedSandman        +vVoOtriA (Mafia) [modified 32 weeks, 2 days, 00:45:09 ago]
-ChanServ- 9     Zuzak                  +vVA (OB-SERVE) [modified 30 weeks, 2 days, 05:19:23 ago]
-ChanServ- ----- ---------------------- -----
-ChanServ- End of [abridged] #wikinewsie FLAGS listing.

— μ 16:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• Okay. Whilst $work block just about every discussion site, webmail, and so on - they (a) let us at Wikipedia, and haven't a clue about the secure interface. But, if caught in IRC I'd get my fingers chopped off at the armpits. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Accreditation request

My accreditation request was accepted. Diego Grez notified me that I must contact you about a Wikinewsie account.--William S. Saturn (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Yup. Do you want william.saturn or william.s.saturn @wikinewsie.org? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:23, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the first.--William S. Saturn (talk) 18:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Should get this done today; only noticed it after was out of work last night. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AR stuff

• /wikinewsie To-do

About to build a to-to list for wikinewsie.org on the above sub-page. Items will be ticked off as-completed.

Please list additional suggestions in the below section after the list is populated. For sections which accredited reporters can assist with, please volunteer on the sub-page. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Additional site reqs

Good to see you

I'm happy to meet you again. Saw you in Recent changes very near to me triggered me to say you ciao, but I don't want to bother one of the most important people of Wikinews ;) I'm working to a new project that waste my time, as the life is time-consuming. Congratulations to you for what Wikinews is today, a great was job done! Yesterday I was searching news about the earthquake and my preferred site was Wikinews! So, I must return to study now, but I'll return here more often. Ciao! P.S.: It's nice to see you after 10 years :) --Trek00 (talk) 12:41, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Request to review

If possible, could you please review my latest article as soon as you possibly can? It's called House fire in Bristol, England kills two. --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 18:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the pass review. I appreciate it. --Rayboy8 (my talk) (my contributions) 01:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

EFF Presser on US Gov vs Twitter users

/EFF Presser

Seems a no-brainer for easy OR. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

• Have emailed both contacts, plus Eddan Katz; CC'd scoop.

Might need to hammer a few USGov email addresses once have responses.

This could be interesting to work on, and very much so for readers. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

• I am working on this under embargo, and with comments from experts who declined to be named on certain items. Recipients of scoop emails should verify these aspects. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 13:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Think tank

OK, I've got a tentative proposal for an IRC discussion group. Since you cite editing problems due to length, I thought I might repost stuff over here in case you want to comment.

• It will be called a "meeting" or "think tank". The goal is to discuss and brainstorm ideas for improving the project. Everyone, from established contributors to newbies, can chime in and provide suggestions.
• The meeting will be held once a fortnight, at 20.00 to 22.00 UTC, every other Sunday. According to my calculations this is the time when the most Wikinewsies will be available. (NZ and Aussie contributors will be at a disadvantage, but we can't please everyone.)
• The atmosphere should be casual, but with a clear purpose. Users shouldn't let discussion veer off-topic.
• There could be a list of agendas to tackle on an on-wiki subpage, to help discussion be more focused. (Optional.)
• Logs from the meeting will be published on the wiki.

What do you think? Workable? Tempodivalse [talk] 21:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• It sounds workable, but I wouldn't have a static time going forward, it should look to give an overlap for the southern hemisphere sometimes. I think there should be an agenda of-sorts; if people want to propose items, then it can be whittled down to most important/most manageable. But, yes. I think it's worth pursuing. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
• "Think-Tank" does, however, make it sound like a forum for dramatic changes or brand new ideas. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

• OK, good to hear some feedback. We could alternate the schedule, one time it'll be 20.00-22.00, and the other ~13.00-15.00. I'm struggling to find a time convenient for everyone: 22.00-00.00 was the original idea, it would catch morning in Sydney but be uncomfortably late for anyone east of the Meridian.
• I still like the idea of a "think tank". We are thinking of ways to better the project, no? "Meeting" is okay but doesn't give that impression of energetic collaboration and brainstorming. (I actually think of Dilbert whenever I hear that word nowadays.)
• If someone could post a message up in #wikinews-en regarding this, and maybe publicise it on wiki a bit, that'd be appreciated. I want to get a quorum right off the bat, just to see how effective the idea is. (We don't have to tackle any dramatically new things during the trial.) I probably won't be present for the trial, I may have limited on-wiki activity ability for the forseeable future. Tempodivalse [talk] 14:52, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

On Strategic Planning office hours, they held 1 meeting a week, but switched the time back and forth biweekly. In my local time zone one meeting would take place at 1000 on Tuesday, while the next week it would be 1800 on Wednesday. I'm not sure how those particular times were selected, but they were intended to give as many people as possible around the world the option of visiting at least one office hours every couple weeks. This may not apply to Wikinews' situation, but it's one example of how this issue was handled by others. (Personally I thought once a week was too often. We had nothing to talk about most of the time, because so little usually changes on a week-to-week basis.) Gopher65_talk 15:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────┘
I attended a couple of Strategic Planning 'office hours'. Tend to agree with Gopher65 that they rapidly became a waste of time. I'm not too happy how this has been announced on the mailing list; this, in my opinion, "think-tank" is simply asking for a swathe of uninformed and misguided policy changes trying to turn Wikinews into the In The News section of Wikipedia. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

WN:AP pseudonyms

Hello, I have placed a request for accred. However, the policy is not clear on how to exactly provide a agreed upon pseudonym. Phearson (talk) 03:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

• The policy is, shall we say, 'deliberately vague'. We've only ever had one approved pseudonym - David Shankbone.
• Don't be surprised if this request fails; I see one howling error in the title of this section that will not endear you to many - the first two letters. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 05:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that my request will fail, based on a simple error that can be corrected by any editor. Phearson (talk) 12:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

• Maybe, maybe not. It's not a 'good' mistake to make though. ;)

Now, working on the assumption it goes through, what do you propose on use of a pseudonym? Have you thought of one? Would you want your email to be your real firstname.lastname@wikinewsie.org, or the pseudonym? If you're going for on-the-spot reporting, such as an accident or fire, then you might be asked to provide official ID to get past lines and speak to people like the fire chief. In those circumstances, the pseudonym could complicate things. So, whilst the vote is open, give this some thought. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Moot now, as I have given my real name. Phearson (talk) 00:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Complied with your suggestions

I changed the things you recommended in the article now named FDA issues proposed rules requiring calorie content on menus

But I don't understand your edit changing 20 to twenty, as in Wikinews:Style guide it is stated: Where numbers are in the "teens" it is generally preferred that the number be spelled out, but above that actual digits are the norm.

Thanks, Mattisse (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a personal preference, and was in an earlier incarnation of the SG. However, I would concern yourself more with the issues raised by BRS. The new developments are the news; as-presented the article can 'technically' be said to be stale. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so I changed it back to 20 which is correct by most journalistic standards. Thanks for your suggestions that FDA issues proposed rules requiring calorie content on menus was 'technically' stale. Fortunately, it turned out others disagreed and it is the 40th article I have published since February 20.

As for the comment you just posted on my talk page, I don't know what to think. That this is a UK site and to participate a write must assume a UK mentality as represented by UK called "Drop The Dead Donkey"? It certainly does make me look at the site in a different way, as you suggest. It explains the cabal-like mentality of this place, and why it is not welcoming to editors who have no desire to take on the mentality of "Drop The Dead Donkey". So how many articles do I have to publish to get it, from your point of view? Mattisse (talk) 22:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This very comment is a perfect example of why you're needlessly coming into conflict with people. Take a long, hard, look at the tone you've used with it, and the dozen or so ways it can be misconstrued. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 06:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)