User talk:Mrmiscellanious/Archive5

Detroit Lions fire coach Mariucci, two assistant coaches

Do you have any intention to expand this article further? I see little cause to move a short article about a relatively trivial item back to developing just because it's short. The decision to publish was made by the author and unless someone else feels that they actually want to expand the article, I think we should respect that in most cases.

For almost any article, there's something you could point out that could be done better. About half of the German Wikinews people are currently on a hiatus because of a user who kept unpublishing articles which they felt were perfectly fine. Wikinews needs the reward experience of publishing, and I feel that we must give that experience to new people who write stories here and not make it too hard, or they will not become productive editors in the long run.--Eloquence 22:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Developing can improve quality, but if there's nobody who's committed to working on the article, more often than not, it simply means the article will linger for hours or even days and then either be abandoned or posted without changes. For a news site, that's pretty lethal - we want to publish stories when they are still relevant. For a contributor, to see a story they wrote published 3 days later, when everyone else has already done follow-up stories, is even worse.

Quality, yes. I would be against publishing a story which has no sources, is blatantly POV or contains factual errors. Minimum length, yes. I'm against publishing one or two sentence stories. But when the original contributor writes a short piece that does not have serious failings but its length and publishes it, I think a good guideline is to leave it published unless you want to work on it. If you say you do, however, that's fine with me.

In practice, I'm wondering whether the current model is a bit too inflexible. Making published articles unalterable is something we mostly do because we don't want factual errors to slip through into published text. Perhaps it would make sense to create temporary copies and edit these in cases like this one. Leave the short version published, but work on a more detailed one and replace the short one when the detailed one is finished and has been checked. What do you think?

I don't mind, by the way, if you respond on your own talk page - makes it easier to follow threads later.--Eloquence 23:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Here's how I think it could work: Template:Updates. The idea is that in many cases, instead of moving an article back to developing, you would edit the new version separately. This would avoid much of the friction that results from articles being "tagged" or unpublished, I think. In serious cases they should of course still be unpublished.--Eloquence 00:06, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that the fundamental problem is how we defined "finished" and whether that is at all possible. An example is the article you just edited, Congressman Cunningham admits taking bribes, where you basically asked for more details. At the time, the article was already 3085 characters long, including a photo and four sources. I read it because it showed up in my RSS reader. I read it at the same time it appeared on CNN. That's a good thing.

You moved the article back to Develop. I understand your reasoning completely as in the current system, it's the only thing you can do if you think an article requires improvement of its contents. But for the primary author, this can feel like a slap in the face (notice that vonbergm called it "petty"). The kind of people who like to scream "censorship" get new fodder. And for the reader, it's confusing, too: An article appears, then suddenly disappears from the frontpage. They may wonder: Was it so bad that they had to retract it? This, too, is a reason the author may get frustrated when an article gets "unpublished".

In the system I propose, the article, which was already reasonable, would basically have been marked as being published, but under improvement. A reader who wants more details could check back later and see them, or even look at the process of improvement and get involved. The author would feel that you want to work with them in making the article they wrote even better -- a positive gesture. Best of all, Wikinews presents news when they are relevant, without compromising on its quality. This, I think, is an approach that uses the strengths of the wiki system to our advantage without getting its weaknesses (lack of credibility - we check the updated version before publishing it).

I'm a journalist. To get back to my earlier point, I could easily unpublish each and every single article that's currently on our Main Page and point out ways in which it could be improved. Beyond content and style changes, every article can further be improved by original reporting of our own. While pointing out ways in which we can improve things is essential to doing so, I favor udpating over unpublishing when it comes to articles which are factually correct.

If it's only stylistic changes, we already change the published version directly. Template:Updates would add a verification layer to factual updates. NPOV disputes are a case-by-case thing -- here I would say the person disputing the article must make a judgment call (this is already the case - I believe you've NPOV tagged an article without unpublishing it, for example).

So, I guess what I'm asking is whether you'd be willing to try such a system, or at least not be totally opposed to it. I'd like to propose it on the Water Cooler and see what other people think.--Eloquence 00:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

If the user who wants the article to be changed feels that it is so bad that it needs a complete rewrite, they should not use Template:Updates but resort to the old method. If the article ends up rewritten nevertheless, there's no reason why the updated version should not be forked into a new article. The old one could be redirected there or kept separate, depending on the situation. In both cases, the reader would be fairly clear on what happened. If it's redirected, and they visited before, they know that it's been rewritten from scratch. If it's kept separate, a link will be added to the original article, and they know that a follow-up article has been written.

In contrast, right now, the outside visitor has absolutely no transparency without understanding the internal workings of Wikinews. Articles appear and disappear "magically" on the frontpage, with significant changes in between, and articles are published hours or days after other news sources. This cannot be a desirable status quo, I think.--Eloquence 01:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for fixing all the wikilinks on my userpage. Academic Challenger 01:45, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

PR Website

I didn't really like inclding the PRZOOM site either... but... PR Newswire is a site that offers the same services and we have included it on the Reference Desk. Of course, PR Newswire is much better known. --Chiacomo ^(talk) 18:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I dunno.. You don't have to agree or disagree... It does appear, however, that everthing on PR ZOOM is user submitted -- just as PR Newswire. There seems to be plenty of "news" on both sites.... :D --Chiacomo ^(talk) 19:22, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

deletion of FBI before 911

You deleted this article without telling the user who created it. Now the user doesn't have a clue what happened to his article. When things magicly dissapear, generally it drives users away. please tell the user what they did wrong (on their talk page not in an edit summary). I am very doubtful that they'd know about the deletion log and go through it to find out why there article was deleted. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

thanks for postig reasoning

thankyou for posting your reasoning. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

cute paper

You might find this interesting. [1] (preceding unsigned comment made by Nyarlathotep)

Please desist from harrassment

MrM, please stop baiting Neutralizer.

"You are nothing but a disrespectful, evil troll. I hope that you never come back to Wikinews."

"If you want to make yourself look like an idiot, go ahead. But be respectful of others when you do it."

You should show some yourself.

If you don't get on with the guy, why did you post a comment on his page just recently deriding his latest story interest?

I understand you have disagreements and I don't even want to know what's at the bottom of it all, I just want Wikinews to be a place where people work on news stories, and if you don't really agree with a story, but have nothing to actually contradict it, please just keep quiet and let people work.

Perhaps you (and everyone) could have a look at some stuff from meatball wiki, which I think encapsulates well the way a wiki should work together to minimise harm, not maximise it, when people perceive disruptive behaviour on the part of other wiki users: MeatBall call their collected insights SoftSecurity -- Simeon 10:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

User talk pages

While you're probably right about copying from source to source, I don't see a problem with Neutralizer removing your comment from his talk page -- it's not as if your comment is important to an ongoing discussion. Removing comments from a talk page to manipulate or deceive would, of course, be inappropriate. In this case, perhaps it's best to let things go... to let sleeping dogs lie? --Chiacomo ^(talk) 02:39, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I see your point, of course, but in this particular case it's unimportant. Were the comment important to an ongoing discussion, I would want to make certain it was retained. Again, in this case, let's allow Nuetralizer to do as he wishes. --Chiacomo ^(talk) 02:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

You Misspelled Your User Name

Hi,

It's miscellaneous, not miscellanious. Hey: At least you learned something!

199.77.129.53

Gud greif, how would won fix a typa in there user kname?! -Edbrown05 01:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

via Wikinews:Changing username. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

useful stuff to know. -Edbrown05 01:23, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Not possible once you have more than 5000 edits, but MrM doesn't yet. -- IlyaHaykinson 01:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Last I checked, Mrmiscellanious was very well aware that his name is spelled wrong. —MESSEDROCKER (talk) 01:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I am very aware that "miscellanious" doesn't equal "miscellaneous". But, I do have to say that the word miscellaneous has absolutely nothing to do with my username, and is actually a coincidence that it came to be that way. Then again, someone cloaked behind a proxy wouldn't know that unless they were stalking me or something. --MrMiscellanious (talk) (contribs) 03:31, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Nice excuse. Is it an acronym? 85.226.168.107 05:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Now, if you'd stop using open proxies to communicate with me, this conversation would go much nicer. --MrMiscellanious (talk) (contribs) 19:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Check my new talk page for possible rudenesses?

Oh and, uh, I think you misspelt your username. (note new siggy, too! ->) Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 03:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

edit to your comment

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews:Administrators&diff=next&oldid=176743

Was this you? - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 04:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

unblock user:67.165.217.42

Blocking IPs indefinitly is a bad idea and against policy, IPs are ussually dynamic and change. Therefor I unblocked user:67.165.217.42 (Unfortunatly, since In my personal opinion he should be blocked forever.) Bawolff ☺☻ 11:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry didn't realize it was static. Bawolff ☺☻ 11:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Bush secretly authorized NSA domestic eavesdrop of international conversations without court warrants

You said:

You need to ask the originating user for more information, and it is not common courtesy to dismiss such a tag so unilaterally. The user feels that he has a point, and as a contributor you should respect that claim and work with him to understand what he is saying. Removing a tag because you disagree with the claim isn't being very respectful, especially when you so easily dismiss the claims on the talk page.

While I understand that you have sympathy for someone who apparently makes no effort to read the sources, I am surprized that you ask people to show curtesy toward new contributors. Maybe that is because a "contributor" in your eyes is someone whose sole edit on the main namespace is to add an NPOV flag, not someone who actually helps to write articles? The comment left of the talk page did not amount to any "actionable objection" but merely reflects that the person leaving the comment does not only not contribute to wikinews, but also does not read either the articles nor the sources. --vonbergm 00:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Swim-Sites

Sorry for the confusion. I run swim-sites.com and as a long time wikinews advocate and member I publish all news articles on wikinews also. I usually leave a notice on the talk page, but it slipped my mind this time. → CGorman (Talk) 17:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

3RR notice

Hi MrM. A user involved in a little renaming war with you a couple of days ago brought up that you had renamed a page more than three times within a 24-hour period. (1 2 3 4). The matter is settled now, and the user bringing it up went past the 3RR too, and I really don't want to stir up emotions with blocks etc, especially as the article is in the past now. But as a long-time contributor, I urge you to be very aware of the policies: your actions help set the example that others can follow. Cheers, -- IlyaHaykinson 07:32, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

46 degrees

The further south I go, the warmer it gets! I get slush! You probably have snow! Merry Christmas to you. -Edbrown05 03:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Spinning globe on WN:A

[Copied from my talk page]
Hey, I've reverted your image addition on WN:A because of the animation; I found that the image was quite annoying, personally, and felt as if it really didn't have much to do with the page itself. I did like your analogy, however, and felt as if we could use it as a quote on the page (which I will bring up on the talk page as a suggestion). --MrMiscellanious (talk) (contribs) 00:43, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

No problem, After looking at it today I almost did the same thing. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)