Quinton Feldberg

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-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 02:50, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Comments pages

Hi. Just wanted to note, the comment-deletion is not ill-meant; 'tis nothing personal. Remarks in service of writing an article should go on its talk page (aka its collaboration page); and we enforce a rule that the comments/opinions page for an article not be created until the article is published, so that any discussion there is a discussion of what was published, rather than part of it being about some earlier version. --Pi zero (talk) 11:51, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Thanks for taking care of it and letting me know! Quinton Feldberg (talk) 11:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

US President Donald Trump vows to 'totally destroy' North Korea if it threatens US or allies

Hi. I (finally!) took a closer look at this, and found significant "copyvio" problems (copyvio is our term-of-art covering both copyright violation and the more alarming-sounding plagiarism). I hope someday to provide a really lucid essay about how to write synthesis that entirely avoids the form of its sources — I had a great title for the essay, it was to be called "Using sources without plagiary", but the hard part is conveying the actual trick of doing it. I've seen beautifully crafted synthesis writing, in which the material is gracefully presented in a way that, if you actually pick apart the origins of the information (which a reviewer does, during review), so thoroughly redistributes everything that bits of a source sentence are likely to be scattered all over our article, and a sentence in our article is likely to pull its information from distantly scattered parts of the sources. At any rate, see my review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 16:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Trump; Korea, North; Travel ban

US President Donald Trump vows to 'totally destroy' North Korea if it threatens US or allies is no longer wn:fresh, but if we shift the focus to the new travel ban blocks North Korea, and mention about his speech in that article, it would freshen up the article. You want to write about it? (Also, North Korea's foreign minister accused Trump for declaring war: you can write about that, too)
acagastya PING ME! 17:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

YES!!! As soon as I get the chance, probably in a couple hours. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: forgot to ping, sorry. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I am almost done with the Kurdistan article -- I can move to the other article I had planned. Here is the link to the article United States: New travel ban bars North Korea, Venezuela; Sudan exempted (which is empty at the moment) We shall collaborate there. Okay with that? (Um, you should move the important bits of US President Donald Trump vows to 'totally destroy' North Korea if it threatens US or allies to that article).
acagastya PING ME! 17:07, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 17:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

userspacing articles

The thought is appreciated, of course, but best leave this task to admins; there's are some peripheral policy issues that may be touched on, and from a purely practical perspective, when it's done it should not leave a redirect behind in mainspace, which is something only an admin can arrange. --Pi zero (talk) 16:34, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 16:34, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

US rock artist Tom Petty dies at 66

Hi. See review comments. We have limited time on this. --Pi zero (talk) 01:46, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I know, I'm on it! Thanks for the quick review! Quinton Feldberg (talk) 01:47, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Done Quinton Feldberg (talk) 02:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Verification troubles. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 04:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Sources added Quinton Feldberg (talk) 04:35, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, I should be long since sound asleep. In the likely event it's still on the queue when I get up in the morning, hopefully I can process it fairly quickly. --Pi zero (talk) 05:19, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay. Goodnight. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 05:20, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Published. History of edits during review (I try to make these edits as lucidly as possible, with useful diffs and edit summaries). --Pi zero (talk) 13:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion re redirects

Not a big deal, but, for future references, when tagging a redirect page for deletion, I recommend putting the deletion template below the redirect directive. That way the page remains a functional redirect, and therefore continues to show up on special pages as a redirect (so it's indexed in multiple ways). --Pi zero (talk) 13:18, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 13:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@Pi zero: will the pages be deleted? Quinton Feldberg (talk) 13:30, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I expect I, or someone, will get to them. Probably won't happen instantly, as there are plenty of high priorities on my schedule atm (both on- and off-wiki). --Pi zero (talk) 13:37, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Salting to prevent creation

It's certainly an option. I tend to leave those open, though, so that if a known trouble-maker comes back in a new guise they can be tentatively recognized by the page names they use. --Pi zero (talk) 18:14, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Prepared stories

Just noticed you'd tagged this {{abandoned}}. That's something to watch out for — the point of tag {{prepared}} is to identify something that shouldn't be subjected to the usual abandonment process. --Pi zero (talk) 01:45, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

why do stories go stale?

How can one get answers to questions, like when FOIA attack on 'Restoring Internet freedom' is marked, "Not ready" for reasons I don't understand? I ask questions and get essentially no replies. The story goes stale, because I do not get answers in a timely fashion, the answers I get a too cryptic and too general to be useful, and I don't know how to get timely answers (or even untimely answers) to questions. Do I need to stalk Pi zero or someone else associated with Wikinews?

Far more importantly, there is a huge unmet need for news, and many volunteer journalists are being driven away from Wikinews: "In the 95 days between May 28 and August 1, 2017, the English-language Wikinews published ... only 1.8 percent of the articles submitted." If I remember correctly, I've submitted four articles and gotten two published on Wikinews. That's much higher than most contributors.

Progress on many and perhaps all substantive issues facing humanity today is blocked, because every countermeasure threatens someone with substantive control over the media. This problem contributes to manufacturing the "War on Terror" on essentially fraudulent grounds. Wikinews could help build bridges rather than walls.

What can be done to help Wikinews grow to fill a much larger part of this need? DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy: As someone once said, "Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news." Quinton Feldberg (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

@Quinton Feldberg: I'm aware of that, but what does that have to do with the fact that 98 percent of article submitted to Wikinews never get published?

What might be done so substantially more Wikinews stories get published -- if only in "local editions" with, perhaps, less stringent standards for writing style (but the same standards for writing from a neutral point of view with appropriate documentation) -- and "local reviewers" authorized to review articles only for local edition(s)?

One example is that the City of Bell scandal would likely never have occurred had someone been reporting on most City Council meetings in that city between 2000 and 2010. The same principle, I believe, applies to v:Winning the War on Terror: A strong case can be made that the "Coalition of the Willing" was stampeded into invading Iraq in 2003 on grounds that the senior executives of the mainstream commercial media in the US surely should have known were questionable and likely fraudulent.

I believe that the English-language Wikinews can become one of the leading publications worldwide with thousands of local editions.

This can happen, I believe, if people like you and Pi zero think outside the box about how to recruit a team of volunteer reviewers, perhaps with most authorized only to approve certain local content and help develop procedures, so people who try to contribute content receive more help and are encouraged more to write -- if only for some "local edition"?

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:30, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Since anyone can write for Wikinews, it should be no surprise that 98% of the articles written don't qualify for publication. User:Pi zero and User:Acagastya are themselves volunteers. The reason we don't have more reviewers is due to a shortage of contributors. If you could find a way to get more people to contribute, we might have a lot more reviewers! Quinton Feldberg (talk) 03:38, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm confused: Wikinews gets over 50 times the articles it publishes.

Are most of those contributed by bots, not humans?

If not, then Wikinews has a potential army of volunteers who could become reviewers if the existing reviewers could develop a system for qualifying and asking people to become reviewers.

This might be done in stages:

1. Create categor(y/ies) of "regional" and / or "associate" reviewers, who might be authorized to approve articles for "back pages" or "local editions": These people would provide the first evaluation. If they thought the article was good enough to be featured, they could recommend it to people like you and User:Pi zero, who could then decide if it merited that or should stay on a "back page" or "local edition".
2. After some time as an "associate reviewer" full reviewers like Pi zero and you could coach each "associate reviewer" on what they should do to get promoted to a full reviewer.
3. After more time -- whatever criteria you all establish -- an "associate reviewer" could be promoted to a "full reviewer".

??? DavidMCEddy (talk) 08:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, out of those 98%, there are many articles which did not match the style guide [are not written how a news article should ne], some failed to maintain neutrality [newbies, and sometimes experienced ones, would write in such a way that it reflects bias], some were below minimal length [lesser than three medium sized paragraphs], some could not establish a clear focus [headlines does not match the lede, or lede doesn't really focus on one incident]. Some other reasons, I will take the example of what I have written :

1. ROSCOSMOS, NASA agree to construct space station on Moon -- could not get to complete the article on time
2. Japan: Prime minister Shinzo Abe prepones election -- had everything, but due to the review queue load, it could not be reviewed on time
3. US President Trump, North Korean minister swap warlike rhetoric -- wasn't my cup of coffee, but I tried, asked for help, in the end, could not manage to get it done on time.

You know, using this account, I have created 206 pages. 53 (25.7%) were deleted as of now. What can you infer from that? We need to consider the real life, commitments, goals, Wikinews structure and many other things too.
acagastya PING ME! 10:39, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘

I agree that "We need to consider the real life, commitments, goals," etc., of all contributors.

However, I believe that with a better structure for Wikinews, we could attract thousands, maybe millions, of volunteer reviewers -- or maybe “local” or “associate reviewers” -- who could produce “local editions” and / or “back pages” that could attract volunteers all over the world to write from a neutral point of view with appropriate documentation. Some of these might not attract an audience at all but could still be very useful in putting public officials on notice that someone is watching them. An example of this is the w:City of Bell scandal: Bell, CA, USA, is a city of roughly 35,000 in Los Angeles County. In 2010 they made national news, because the City Manager was the most highly paid public servant in the US as far as anyone knew, with total compensation over $1 million per year, more than double that of the President of the US. Property taxes were outrageous, and the city was near bankruptcy. The local newspaper died around 1999, and the City Manger effectively said, “Wow: The watchdog is dead. Let's have a party!”

Many local chapters of the w:League of Women Voters have “observer corps”, who attend public meetings of local governmental bodies and write summaries of their observations for their regular newsletters.

Wikinews could provide a platform for more extensive and more available reports of this nature.

Some reports like this may attract few readers -- if any. However, they could still be valuable, because they reduce the motivation for self serving actions of public officials.

Large numbers of volunteers are coming to Wikinews, eager to contribute. In the 163 days between 2017-04-28 and 2017-10-08, my copy of the counts at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews indicates that Wikinews received 8,652 submissions, averaging 53 per day, and published 142 articles, less than one per day.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that those 8,652 submissions were submitted by something close to 8,652 different people. To the extent that this is accurate, it means that on the average day during that period, 52 new people tried to offer an article to Wikinews and were pushed away.

I believe this represents a huge opportunity: With the right structure / rules for recruiting and qualifying reviewers and contributors, Wikinews could become bigger than Wikipedia -- and in so doing could make a major contribution to reducing political corruption and violent conflict while also increasing the rate of improvement in the political economy generating faster, more stable and more broadly shared economic growth.

If Wikinews reviewers and admins can find a way develop rules and structure that retain and teach more of these potential contributors about writing from a neutral point of view with adequate documentation, it could make major contributions to improving the quality of public debate on all kinds of issues:

• Reducing political corruption.
• Making it harder for xenophobes to succeed with divide and conquer rhetoric that often stampedes too many groups into violent conflict over misunderstandings that Wikinews could help bridge.

For more on this, see the Wikiversity articles on v:Everyone's favorite news site, v:Net neutrality and 'Restoring Internet freedom', and v:Winning the War on Terror.

Most of what is "written" is complete garbage that is obviously unfit for publication. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 17:29, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Do you have data to support that?

Some of the ideologues of the Left and the Right may be irretrievable. However, I think that's a relatively small percentage of the people on all extremes of the political spectrum.

One of the presenters at the ONA17 conference described an intervention that got 19 liberals from Seattle, WA (USA), onto a bus for over 4 hours each way for a 3.5 hour meeting with 16 Trump supporters in rural Oregon. The encounter started with a tour of Oregon farms, many of which have been in the family for over 100 years. (By the way, I was raised on a farm that was homesteaded by two great-great aunts in the 1880s.) That was followed by several team building exercises that helped each side see the other as human.

I believe we can grow Wikinews and other Wikimedia Foundation projects into a major platform to facilitate that kind of bridge-building exercise.

It may not work: The presenter I mentioned at ONA17 said that part of what contributed to the success of that exercise was the 9 hours on a bus going from Seattle to Oregon and returning: That eliminated the left-wing trolls, who might have otherwise gone with intent to sabotage the exercise.

I know that many people write things on the web they would rarely if ever say face-to-face. However, I believe that the research summarized in v:Winning the War on Terror could eventually become as commonplace as the claims for which w:Galileo Galilei was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1633. (For example: Collateral that they commit is why we fight. Collateral damage that we commit is unfortunate but necessary. When most people come to understand this contradiction, I believe they will look harder for information on why their opponents in violent conflict do what they do. When that happens, each side will work harder to limit collateral damage and promote rule of law.)

DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:03, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Please explain, concisely, what you want me to do. Thank you. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 20:06, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Think about how you can foment changes in Wikinews to capitalize on this opportunity.

(and please excuse me for not being more explicit. Thanks for asking.) DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:52, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Deletion

How about creating a list of articles you want to nominate for deletion and pinging an admin? This was RC stream would be easier to monitor.
27.59.112.160 (talk) 15:32, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

There's already a list. They just aren't reading it for some reason. Quinton Feldberg (talk) 15:33, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

This is the “duh” moment. We would want to publish articles and clear the RQ rather than deletion of of articles. Those aren’t spam/test pages. That delay would be okay. But missing two articles would not be.
103.254.128.50 (talk) 15:39, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

South Korean lawmaker says North Korean hackers stole classified military documents

Hi. Turns out there was a copyvio problem lurking in this one. Review comments. --Pi zero (talk) 19:05, 14 October 2017 (UTC)