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-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 19:04, 26 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Rebel faction arrives in Addis Ababa for peace talks

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I'm hoping there's a more recent development that can be used to freshen this article. --Pi zero (talk) 14:47, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Not that I have found right now. But I will research for a follow up. Janweh64 (talk) 14:53, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
I see the problem (per your comments) is freshness... I will go back to see if more recent info can be found now. Before republishing.
It's an interesting story. There ought to be some sort of further developments from it, if not yet then soon.
Mostly likely the article should be refocused, so that while the existing material might remain, the headline and lede are about the latest development. Refreshing an article usually works that way, so that the focal event itself is only a day or two old when the article is submitted for review. Occasionally an article is refreshed with new information come to light within a day or two, and the focal event remains unchanged — but then the focal event still has to be within seven days, and this one seems to have happened on either the 23rd or the 25th. --Pi zero (talk) 15:28, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
I can find no new information so far. And this article does not seem to pass the Wikinews requirements for news worthiness. Even though the events occurred with in the past week (Sunday Dec 23 to be exact) there are no sources more recent than this Sudantimes article. Which was published on Dec 27 but written on Dec 25. Does this disqualify this article? If so go ahead and delete it. It was a good first article practice. I will move on or wait for more developments before republishing. I have saved a copy for my own records. Janweh64 (talk) 15:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Can you give me a full review anyway? Assuming, I wrote this say on Dec. 25. It would help me improve. I plan on writting more Horn of Africa articles which Wikinews seriously lacks. I have save the article here. ---Janweh64 (talk) 15:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Here is something interesting. This website claims this is an official press release from the ONLF, claiming that there are no peace talks and that this is a propanganda campaign. The websites reporting seems very biased. But the claim in its self seems news worthy to me. Janweh64 (talk) 15:51, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
The purported official press release is indeed interesting, and if the article were able to achieve freshness with its current focus that would probably be worth mentioning. I think, though, the article really needs a different focus; arrival for the talks appears to have happened seven or eight days ago, and more importantly the fact the talks were going on appears to have come to light seven days ago.
Here's an important thing to keep in mind about freshness: when the information comes to light is important. This isn't necessarily the same as when the event happened, and it also isn't necessarily the same as when a source article was published. Sometimes something happens and the public doesn't know about it till a few days later (if it's many days later, or even longer, one may want to explicitly focus on the announcement rather than on the thing it's an announcement of). Sometimes an article gets published days later but doesn't contain any information that wasn't already available, so as a source it wouldn't actually help to fresh a Wikinews article. --Pi zero (talk) 16:30, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
  • Since you're hanging on to a copy in userspace anyway, shall I userfy the article instead of deleting it, so you have the most up-to-date version along with its talk page? --Pi zero (talk) 13:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
That would be great thanks. For historical record! :) Janweh64 (talk) 03:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
  Done --Pi zero (talk) 12:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Categories

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We don't create a category until we have at least three published articles (not just written, but published) to put in it. When categories get created with fewer than that many articles to populate them, they're ripe for deletion. That's why, for example, we have categories for some Indian states but not for others. --Pi zero (talk) 18:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Gotcha... can we retain the associated redirects though? I don't want to a conflict of names in the future. Janweh64 (talk) 18:28, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Also can you REDIRECT | Ethiopia > Portal:Ethiopia . It currently redirects to Category:Ethiopia Janweh64 (talk) 18:31, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
I see many articles from the past that should be categorized under these state categories. Is there no way to add these categories to these articles?
In reverse order,
  • If we've got at least three articles that should go in a state category, there's no problem. Yes, we add categories to archived articles. There are, in fact, hundreds of articles [categories] we could create, the only reason we haven't done so being the labor involved (i.e., we haven't gotten around to it). For the past year and a half or two years, I've been doing a little categorization work each day, which has made a small dent in the whole of what wants doing. (For perspective: I keep track of my long-term categorization projects here.)
  • Portals are an idea Wikinews had early on, before we realized it doesn't work well for us — too labor intensive. Nowadays, when we get around to it, we systematically change redirects to go to the categories instead of the portals. There have been suggestions we should just delete all the portals... but then, there's the chance with some more automation we might someday be able to make the portals work better.
  • A key device for helping us manage our categorization of articles is the {{w}} template. If it detects its target in Wikinews mainspace, it links to that, otherwise it links to Wikipedia. So we don't want a redirect with a given name unless it has a target we want to send readers to.
--Pi zero (talk) 19:08, 30 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Iranian Navy conducts drills in Strait of Hormuz

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Congrats on publication. :-)  And thanks for rescuing the article (it's my impression there were real-world concerns that prevented IDangerMouse from revising it after first submission).

I didn't say anything in review comments, but you may (if you hadn't already) wish to take a look at the detailed history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 21:24, 1 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I just went through it one diff at a time. Wow! I do not envy you. It is not easy reviewing these articles. Is an article by a more experienced writer much smoother. Or is that typical? Janweh64 (talk) 00:27, 2 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Heh. This is why we need more tools to help with reviewing.
The most time-consuming types of problems do tend to be things that get less common with more writing experience; stuff that's a little bit out of bounds can be very difficult to review. But then again, more experienced writers may write more ambitious articles. (I'm especially proud of my part, as reviewer, in helping the On the campaign trail series happen; a very experienced writer, html comments inline to make reviewing easier, and yet those were typically about nine-hour reviews.) --Pi zero (talk) 01:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)Reply