Wikinews:Water cooler/assistance/archives/2017/August

Bassel Khartabil / Wikipedian and more / Wikimania 2017

Today I have written this article in Dutch language (English sources) on the death of Bassel Khartabil (25 languages on Wikipedia, 2 languages on Wikiquote, and a category on Commons). He has disappeared in October 2015 (and probably was killed that month in a Syrian prison as well). His wife got the message about 10 days ago of him being executed. His death was published on August 1, 2017. He was a known open software pioneer initiating Creative Commons in Arab language, programming and initiating several other open software projects. He was also regularly participating at Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales has replied several times on Twitter and the Foundation issued a press release on August 3 (see here). My question is on freshness: can I still translate my article into English? If so, after having translated it, I would like to seek participation from the people at the "Editathon for Bassel" Saturday (tomorrow) at Wikimania in Montreal. Maybe they want to correct something or make a news article in other languages too. But I first would like to be informed if it is OK over here because of the deadlines. I'm pretty sure Jimmy Wales would advice to accept this article. Ymnes (talk) 14:14, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: It depends on what the article is focusing on. If the article is about his death, an obituary, (his wife was notified ten days ago, so it is not fresh) Anything which happened in the last three days is fine. But for obituaries, the only recent thing is who announced the death, and cause of death and perhaps who survived. The rest of the article is obviously what they did in their life time which is totally okay. As far as Jimmy Wales is concerned, they a) do not really understand how Wikinews works and b) do not ave special rights to bend rules on the project just because he is a co-founder (I read this on Wikipedia, I don't know which page exactly) By the way, if the attenders of Wikimania paid tribute to them, you could refocus on that, and add the obituary in it. That should do.
acagastya PING ME! 15:27, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I hoped the elements of Wikipedia, the Free Bassel Khartabil campaign that has been on dozens of Wikimedia projects and the special press release from the Foundation would give this subject an opportunity to be accepted under the freshness rules of Wikimedia subjects. Ymnes (talk) 15:45, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: The part most of us forget that along with the word wiki, in this project's name, there is a word news, which has to be new. For articles mentioning about other Wikimedia projects, the standards are set high so that "not-news" type articles are not submitted which are primarily targetted to advertise about other wikis. If you are following the Wikimania, and if they pay tribute to them, which I feel they would, focus the article to "Wikimania pays tribute to XYZ" and that would be totally fine.
acagastya PING ME! 15:55, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Thank you for your reply. I'm not there in Montreal, by the way. Ymnes (talk) 16:07, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: You could follow the live stream. Else, you can ask other Wikinewsies who are attending the event. (Just in case you were in that group, you would have known, but) User:Ezarate of Spanish Wikinews (who speaks English) is attending the event.
acagastya PING ME! 17:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, I have pinged him too. I'll wait if they need my help at all. It must be crowded there with wiki geeks :-) Ymnes (talk) 17:28, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

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@Ymnes: Okay, I would notify them off-wiki about this discussion.
acagastya PING ME! 17:44, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: is this what we are looking for (series of three tweets)?
103.254.128.118 (talk) 19:43, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Who are you? The tweets were at August 1th, scroll back here. The press release was here Ymnes (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: No, the tweets are of yesterday. The blog article that is linked is dated August 11. It mentions

During the ceremony, Maher joined Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley, Mozilla Executive Director Mark Surman, and representatives from the #NEWPALMRYA Project to announce the inauguration of the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship. The fellowship commemorates Bassel Khartabil, Syrian Wikimedian and global open culture advocate, who was recently confirmed to have been executed in 2015 after being detained by the Syrian government in 2012. To honor Bassel’s contributions, the fellowship will support the work of outstanding individuals developing culture under adverse circumstances.

The article can focus on this, and you could also include the obituary -- but the focus has to be on their inauguration -- at least a couple of paragraphs should suffice. Obituary can be beneath in. And to answer "who are you?", it was my IP.
acagastya PING ME! 05:44, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Can you write it and someone else make a review right afterwards? This article would be a nice template to be translated into other languages at the Wikimania workshop. Please don't forget to mention the existence of your article at the project there. It would be great if you would. Thank you in advance! Ymnes (talk) 07:56, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ymnes: I can. But I should ask if someone else would like to write about it so that even I can review it. If nobody does, then I would try.
acagastya PING ME! 07:59, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Acagastya: It would be nice when the article is written and reviewed before the editathon in Montreal starts. Do you think this will develop so expeditiously? Ymnes (talk) 08:38, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

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@Ymnes: I really doubt that. Even if someone else submits it, I would need assistance from an experienced reviewer as it involves WMF. If I am going to write about it, it would be reviewed by Pi zero, and this isn't the time they would review.
acagastya PING ME! 09:50, 12 August 2017 (UTC)