Yurtletturtle

Crystal Clear app wp

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Archive: 2010

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Stale tagging

I think tagging articles stale is a tricky judgment call best left to reviewers. (I've see articles tagged stale at the two-day mark, occasionally seen synthesis published on the shady side of three days (when review was sluggish and output low), and of course original reporting is subject to different standards.) I've noticed you helping out with tagging articles with stuff that uncontroversially needs to be done, and it's appreciated — staleness is kind of inherently controversial, though, even when it isn't. --Pi zero (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's true Pi zero. I've published synthesis articles at 3.5 days before (well, once I think?), but only when I thought it was a great article, and that it would be a shame to let that much work go to waste just because the review queue was backlogged. There's definitely a certain amount of personal judgment in staleness. Some stories enter the news cycle and no one cares about them a couple hours later, whereas some stories (often momentous events) can be in the MSM for a week, even though no updates have come forward. It's variable, because it's more audience dependent than it is a strict policy issue, IMO.

Personally I don't think I'd tag an article stale until it was at least 4 days old, but that's just me. I'm sure opinions vary. Gopher65_talk 23:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the heads-up. I'll leave the tricky stuff for you. =p ~YTT ^{T | C} 01:44, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Review

I've replied to your question on my talk page, very belatedly. In retrospect, it seems I missed it entirely at the time because Rayboy8 had left me another message between when you did and when I next checked the page (so now I'll know to watch out for that in future). --Pi zero (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey Pi, that's totally fine (and thanks for the response). ~YTT ^{T | C} 04:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Canadian devastated by Aussie floods

It is unclear from the weird tags I found from the numerous links in the email, but it looks as if my article has been deleted as "not newsworthy" and I am accused of "spamming" the newsies email.

I don't understand how a disabled man victimized by a foreign government after being victimized by an Act of God is NOT newsworthy. And yet if Paris Hilton's Australian mansion had been bulldozed by the government instead of a neighbourhood of destitute nobodies, I'm certain that would have made headlines. As to the 'spamming", I do not have explicit permission to reveal my friend's identity, so I privately sent copies of his facebook posts in a SINGLE email as evidence that I did not invent this story.

It's a shame that news organizations seem to want all their news supplied to them, for free, in neat packages complete with verified sources. The best articles start with a "story", and then someone looks into it to find out what's really going on, and continues to investigate until the whole truth is brought to light. Ah, the good old days. Now it seems if it doesn't come from a press release, it isn't relevant.

Kjsmith20 (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kjsmith20,

Firstly, I never accused you of spamming the Wikinewsie email, some users didn't class it as a "genuine" scoop and just called it spam. I'm positive you sent the email (and started the article) all in good intentions.

Now to the article. Wikinews has a policy on sourcing. All articles have to be fully sourced or written with original reporting in order for them to be verifiable. The reason there are such high and strict standards is that this is what Wikinews relies on to distinguish itself from other, commercial, news organisations.

I can also see how you wanted your article published. The reason it was deleted, though, was because of another vital Wikinews policy - NPOV. We also rely on this to set us apart from commercial producers. An article that is fully unsourced or has no evidence of original reporting cannot be verified and often leads the article to be particularly POV.

I'm sorry we weren't able to publish your article, but the lifeblood of Wikinews is strict publishing conditions (after all, this is what we are about - being an alternative to commercial producers who often fill their article with POV and incorrect or misleading information). If you need any help, I would be happy to assist. Just drop me a line here. :) Thanks, ~YTT ^{T | C} 21:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Irish Prime Minister steps down as party leader

On reflection, please don't remove articles from the review queue when you aren't a reviewer. It's finally come home to me that this has a real likelihood of harm — it could result in potentially viable articles never getting published.

Of course, anyone is surely free to put comments on the talk page of an article waiting for review. But when you remove an article from the review queue, you are

• claiming to have more authority than you actually have, which a newbie won't know better than;
• telling the author that nothing else about the article should be addressed until after the things you've listed have been fixed; and
• postponing when the article will be examined by a reviewer, and thereby postponing other important advice that a reviewer might give. Given the time constraints of freshness and of the people involved, that could indeed damage the article's chances of ever being published. Not only is it less likely a reviewer will look at the article while it's not in the queue, but when it goes back into the queue it's lost its seniority, further delaying when it may get a reviewer's attention.

The general principle stands in any case — don't de-queue articles as a non-reviewer — but it also happens that in this particular case you failed the article for superficial reasons. It would be strange for a reviewer to halt xyr review at that point, rather than continuing on to give the author feedback on more important issues; and if xe didn't find anything else wrong, xe might choose to just fix those things and publish on the spot. --Pi zero (talk) 03:44, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

• Sure thing. No one else had given me that impression yet. As to the claim that the unofficial reviews indicate "more authority", I never meant to signal that. My actions had good intent - I was only trying to help. You bring up valid points and I should probably step back from the project a bit. Thanks, ~YTT ^{T | C} 05:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't doubted your good intent for a moment. Stepping back just a bit is what I meant to suggest.

• I was worried about this particular case, because it looked like the article has other problems that need to be pointed out sooner rather than later, but I didn't think at the moment I was up to the intensity of a full-blown review myself, leaving me to hope that another reviewer would get to it.
• IMHO I overplayed the point about claimed authority. I am (and was) aware you were trying not to claim more authority that you have; my concern was that newbies wouldn't be in a position to pick up on nuances that you, as a Wikinewsie, are aware of.
• You will, presumably, have observed Amgine's revert of my revert of your de-queuing (try saying that three times fast) on the accurate (if slightly knee-jerk) grounds that there is no actual policy against non-reviewers doing failing reviews. (I don't think the question has been raised since flaggedrevs was adopted.)

--Pi zero (talk) 07:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that Pi. As to unofficial reviews, I am just adopting a practice brought in from BarkingFish (since he lost reviewer). If I ever do another, I'll make sure I do a full review with all points addressed. (It's also nice to know I'm no longer referred to as a newbie anymore =p) On a side note, I have just created another article (Premier of Tasmania, David Bartlett, resigns and I, if you don't mind, I would like you to review it to highlight issues etc which may assist in my path to becoming a reviewer. Thanks again, ~YTT ^{T | C} 08:36, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I am only doing "Unofficial reviews" to show that I can safely review articles with a view to getting my reviewer status regranted. I made a massive mistake in reviewing one which lead to the complete eradication of the article, and it being hidden from view. It's purely to indicate that I am making an effort to check the article in full before I try again to get my review status back. I don't actually remove the article from the review queue, just check it to see whether it has any glaring errors and stuff! This is part of what Brian McNeil asked me to do when I screwed up - "tag articles as if reviewed". You'd be welcome to check them and mark a manual review if you wish, but don't take them out of the queue please :) BarkingFish (talk) 12:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Pseudodelete

Hey there,

Just to let you know that Pseudodelete is now in gadgets, if you would prefer to use it that way. (Pseudoprotect, however, is not — does that actually work? :P) — μ 00:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up! I'm busy with school at the moment so I don't often check my talk page. I'll be back again in about four weeks time. ~YTT ^{T | C} 10:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

{{semi-retired}}

Sorry to see you go. It always pains me to see helpful users like you leave due to the poor contributing environment. There might be a day when I'll tire of the negative atmosphere enough to retire too. Good luck, anyway. Feel free to ping me on any other WMF project anytime if you need help. Tempodivalse [talk] 15:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Retired

I'm sorry to see you go. Hopefully your burnout will fix itself in a couple of months, and you'll be back:). Gopher65_talk 15:08, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. Diego Grez ^{return fire} 16:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)