Matthiasb

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

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By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! Cirt (talk) 16:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I know that. Oh I love these greetings. Thanks to SUL. Thanks anyway. ;-) --Matthiasb (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries. :) Cirt (talk) 16:49, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

RfP opened

Hey there, I just wanted to let you know of a discussion to remove your reviewer bit. You can participate in the discussion here. Regards, — μ 16:29, June 10 2010 (UTC) (clerking)

Sorry about that. Obviously I should have left a note here as soon as I opened the discussion, as a matter of common courtesy if not common sense. The discussion is here. --Pi zero (talk) 16:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a reminder

You were granted the review bit in order to sight interwiki links and corrections of typos. A comment on the talk page of the article would have been most welcome, but the community has definitely not cleared you to review articles, as I noted on the article collaboration page. Just make your remarks on the collaboration page and leave the review gadget (with which accidents are possible, it's cantankerous) alone, please.

Oh, and thanks for helping out with the article. --Pi zero (talk) 16:44, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot you're the Wikinews god in chief. OMG, what has become out of this free wikimedia project. It became an annoying crap of burocracy. Don't mention my help. --Matthiasb (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I was planning on making a comment, thanking you for your help in this (seriously difficult) piece and noting how reviewer rights have stabilised since they were given you, something you couldn't possibly be expected to know. Your unreasonably acidic response makes me inclined not to bother doing either. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, we won't discuss the lack of user activity in this project and the reasons how this all came. Because one of the reasons is how reviewer rights have stabilised lately. See, how many articles have been published in the English Wikinews in March so far? With a billion or so possible editors around the world this is a rather poor outcome. How many active editors the English wikinews community does still have? And why? Some things should be reconsidered ASAP. --Matthiasb (talk) 17:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• I've looked over your comments here, and on the article in question. I would welcome your input on what might merit reconsideration — provided you can be civil about it.

For one thing, there most certainly are not "a billion of so" potential contributors. Even amongst those with English as a first language, only a particularly small percentage are actually competent with the written form. The pool shrinks further once you exclude those who cannot tell fact from fiction, gossip, opinion, and innuendo. But, as I say, if you have any worthwhile ideas do share them on the Water Cooler. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

With "a billion of so" I was hinting on the much bigger pool EN:WN users can emerge from, in contrary to – say – SR:WP. In recent times EN:WN and DE:WN (where I am partly at home, my main focus is within der German Wikipedia) are publishing two or three articles a day in average. The serbian Wikinews version does publish ten or more almost every single day, and it does not seem that the different versions of some articles in latin and cyrillic letters are deciding in the significant higher numbers.

Though I did not look in depth into SR:WN – I can't read cyrillic and I did not compare the different article versions onto one specific news event – I wonder why "they" can reach that outcome and the English and German Wikinews cannot. ... See: there are some 7 million people living in that state. Germany is some 12 times bigger but does not produce 12 times more articles (I did not count Switzerland and Austria and some other smaller areas with german speaking populations because I am not aware of any non-german Wikinews editor in the german language version). And then: how does it come that DE and EN wikinews are more or less equal in output (with a much smaller active wikireporter number in DE) against the respective Wikipedia projects? And why and when has it changed within the both Wikinews versions, considering that the cumulated number of articles in EN is about 160 percent of the DE numbers, what actually should hint that the overall output in EN should be 160 percent of DE.

So there must be reasons which should be examined. Maybe it's just that the need for Wikinews is bigger in Serbia than in Germany or the combined U.S., U.K., Australia and the rest. Maybe it is how editors are treated. Maybe it is too difficult to find the way through the wikinews burocracy to publish an article. Maybe the overall quality in the one or the other language version is too high or too low. Maybe all of these reasons together.

And I wonder if those reasons are the same in EN and DE or if they're different. But with WMF's apparantly not-existing interest on the Wikinews projects I don't see an effectiv oue way to find out. --Matthiasb (talk) 15:13, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

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The reason for srWN's prodigious output is quite, quite simple: They cheat.

One of the U.S. State Department news services publishes in Serbian, and as works of the U.S. Government those articles are Public Domain. So, srWN imports the content automatically; no checking for bias, neutrality, or credibility.

We've had the discussion here, and more than a few fights over it. Voice of America is the equivalent of what srWN are using and it greatly upsets USian contributors when they're reminded that VoA is a propaganda outlet. That VoA 'tries' to restrict their output in saying it is "not meant for a continental US audience" just exposes the fact that it is indeed propaganda.

I have to ask, has deWN adopted Flagged Revisions and any sort of formal review process? As is required for a 'proper' listing in Google News? The fact that we use such does curtail output, but sees enWN more reliable than Wikipedia — which I would hope any, and all, Wikinews projects are.

Our biggest problem with Wikipedians is the assumptions they make when attempting to contribute here. They read nothing in terms of the style guide, or any other policies; they assume that everything that applies on Wikipedia applies here. A review of a submission, marked as "not ready", is taken as an insult, when the intent is far from that.

What's amusing to note is that LauraHale (talk · contribs) found contributing to Wikinews easy. But, she read some of the policy documents, and asked questions whilst putting an article together. The vast majority of Wikipedians assume they can throw one source and a single sentence at Wikinews and it will magically become an article. When it does not, they assume we're insular, hostile, and don't care about news production. It would seem that working to high standards is a 'WikiCrime'; but, personally, I long-ago ceased caring what Wikipedians think about Wikinews. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, the VoA trick... that's how Openglobe did get it started, eh? How simple if one knows about. – Well, writing in Wikinews is different than in Wikipedia, trust me, I covered enough events as the main author in both projects /see some examples/ and within German wikinews we have very few editors who are doing both (though all 'our' active sysops are more or less active Wikipedians). DE:Wikinews has not adopted the flagged revisions (in contrary to DE:WP which btw. was the first WM project where they have been activated). IIRC the flagged revisions have been adopted in the EN:Wikinews partly because of the intention to get Wikinews available through Google News. However I never saw any Wikinews article at Google News. Well, I may have missed some but I did not miss that Wikipedia articles are shown in Google News frequently, especially in cases of disasters or elections (example). Therefor I am doubting increasingly in the efficiency of the flagged revisions for wikinews projects. Comparing EN and DE Wikinewses, I think that the DE:Wikinews has much fewer active users. Speaking of quality, well, there are articles and better articles. Users who care on a special thema in both WP and WN tend to write more comprehensive WN articles, I think. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Policy familiarity

I note you placed an article on WN:DR, citing a policy which does not exist, or apply, on Wikinews.

Please note that WN:BLP is a redlink. That policy is only applicable In The Other Place. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:34, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Resolutions of the Wikimedia Foundation are police in every project. --Matthiasb (talk) 14:46, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Not to nitpick, but "urging" projects to have some standards isn't really a policy. And, to be honest, the only time Wikinews is liable to be publishing substantially biographical information is in an obituary. :P --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)