Wikinews

Wikinews:Community Mirror

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Why?

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We do not currently have any sort of stable versions for our non archived articles. This among other things has prevented us from being added to Google News. One commonly proposed idea is that we create a community run mirror.

TheNewsWiki

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I wrote a script that will copy an article on click and easily report the status of the article (is stored revision the latest) and prompt user to update if needed. It takes only a few seconds to update and should take care of most of Google's concerns. This script is hosted on my server using the name TheNewsWiki (from the project I was going to start before I found Wikinews). The mirror is available at http://thenewswiki.com/ . Wikinews admins can copy articles creating an account and logging in. Other trusted users who would like access to the copy tool can e-mail me.

Editorial policy

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Google News seems to require a formal editorial policy for inclusion in their searches.

[Only a draft yet: edit this viciously!]

Before uploading or updating stories, we check:

  • no dispute or single source tags, even if it is breaking news
  • the sources: to confirm the news facts again again, and to exclude any copyright violations
  • the formatting of the article: to see if the layout, date template, infoboxes etc. follow the style conventions of Wikinews
  • the edit history: for vandalism
  • spelling, grammar, tone, weasel words, ...
  • the talk and comments page: to see if any concerns have been outed

Google's reply

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Quote
Hi Craig,

Thank you for your note. We reviewed http://www.thenewswiki.com and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information. When we reviewed your site we weren't able to find this evidence of an organization. Additionally, please note that we don't include sites that are purely news aggregators, and we weren't able to find any stories on your site that weren't from outside sources.

We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.

Thank you for your interest in Google News.

Regards,

The Google Team


ToDo

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  • Add Headline and Fulltext RSS feeds
  • A better design, so that the site looks more like a conventional news site, instead of just a list of articles.
    • Links to the Wikinews main portals for the different continents and main topics.
    • Maybe a link to Wikinews in other languages?
    • A short explanation about Wikinews with a link.
    • An "About" button, with the editorial policy, list of editors, ...
    • Add a feed for Original reporting, exclusive interviews etc.
    • Find out what other components of our main page can be added: Leads? Latest audio brief, print edition? This day in history? News in pictures?

Bugs

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