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Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2009/July

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This is an archive of past discussions from Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2009. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current page.


Wikinews:Citation guidelines

Do we have anything like this?

I ask because I have a Wikinews OTRS ticket from someone seeking permission to use a screenshot of Wikinews in a book. The ironic part is, this is as a labelled graphic to illustrate how to cite a wiki.

I'd like to see something like the above, and link to it from the Mediawiki:copyright message - perhaps "Citing or copying from Wikinews? See here." --Brian McNeil / talk 09:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone near Netherland?

Anyone going to be near enough to do a report from Netherland if/when Michael Jackson's body is put on display there-rumoured to be Friday? Sounds a bit weird I know! Dotty••|☎ 12:32, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Netherlands is a country to the north of Belgium that is better known to the English speaking world as Holland. Neverland is the warped playground Michael Jackson built for himself and those with the same mental age. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:01, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops!    Dotty••   15:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GLAM -Challenge

On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the supported by the

In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnangarra (talk) 12:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Umm...

Maybe I'm missing the point, but why does this branch of wikimedia exist? That is, why do we have a website that just summarises news that is readily and freely available from other news sites? I mean, say something newsworthy happens. Then news people write things and put it on the internet, in essence putting themselves between me and what really happened. Why do we need another layer of journalistic agenda to go between us (the public) and the events?

Put another way, wikinews seems like those stupid commercials that try to advertise high-definition television on people's crappy televisions! The only way you can see the high definition is by having the high definition. Okay, bad analogy, but does anyone see my concern? 128.194.39.104 (talk) 19:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Why does Wikinews exist? To provide a proper framework for news, once which Wikipedia does not properly provide for. Why does Wikinews exist when there are other free (as in beer) new sources? Because they might not be free (as in beer) for very long, and they certainly aren't free (as in speech). Why does Wikinews exist exist? Because we pride ourselves on being NPOV, something you sure as hell aren't going to get from major media like say... Fox. Another thing you seem to forget, we're not here just to rerun other news - we write our own.

    As for your analogy, no that doesn't make a damn bit of sense. Unless you mean that Wikinews is the superior new source and most people are too damn stupid to realize how slanted major media is - in that case it makes sense. --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 20:17, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    • Yes. It seems as though my problems lie not with Wikinews, but with the process of journalism in general. (Maybe it would be better if you guys had a big flashy display and a fancy ticker at the bottom!) I'm sure that if I called Fox News and asked them the same questions, they would claim that they had a neutral point of view as well. But I guess you have to trust someone. And that's all I'm going to say so as not to appear troll-ish or whatever it is you call it on these sites. 128.194.38.162 (talk) 16:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wikinews should be an attempt to get around some of the issues with mainstream news outlets. Look at the current efforts to dig into the UK's National Portrait Gallery threatening to sue someone in the U.S. There is original reporting in this, and more analysis than sites such as Slashdot give this. --Brian McNeil / talk 16:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • why do we have a website that just summarises news that is readily and freely available from other news sites? — Given that we don't have that, that is a loaded question that is unanswerable. What we actually have, here at Wikinews, is a free-content news service that provides a mixture of news summaries and original reporting. (See Wikinews:Mission statement and Wikinews:Content guide.) And it's a news service that has, right next door, an encyclopaedia, a dictionary, a source text library, and a free content image repository all available for use and linking to, giving us backgrounders, file images, and the like that a standalone user-written news service would be hard pressed to create by itself. Uncle G (talk) 05:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

VOA

Can someone explain the rules with regard to VOA articles? Can we just copy them in wholesale? Is there a template to show we have?    Tris   09:29, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's {{VOA}} and {{VOA-by}}. The biggest concern is the VOA-POV. They're a lot better than the likes of Fox, but VOA are still US Government funded. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, I was just looking for things like the shuttle launch delay etc. which are pretty NPOV.    Tris   11:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quantity/Newsworthiness of updates lately

There seems to have been a distinct reduction of updates on the Mainpage recently, compared with only a few weeks ago. Several stories I would classify as large have been picked up on by Wikipedia and displayed on the front page In the news, that Wikinews doesn't seem to even have articles on; such as the crash of Flight 7908, the election of the new President of the European Parliament, and the Winter Deaths in Peru.

Further more, several of the handful of stories that have been published recently seem trivial and/or commonplace incidents without total representation; such as Roller skating babies become YouTube sensation, 'Monster' fish killed in Swiss lake after biting swimmers, and Firefighter killed while tackling pub blaze in Edinburgh, Scotland.

What's been happening these past few weeks? Is this the result of a policy change? Or have several of the core contributors vanished? 92.13.86.204 (talk) 17:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

NEED FR->EN translation, help need please !

The recently done interview on fr.wikinews French workers put gas canister around factory's vehicules to get fair extra cash need translation, please help need. If need, Can you copy this help-request post in better place. Tonneins (talk) 00:23, 18 July 2009 (UTC) (French author of this article)[reply]

Wikimania 2009

Wikimania 2009 will be here soon and I wanted to get an idea of how Wikinews will be represented. Please let me know/post below if you plan to attend, so we can coordinate our coverage, as well make sure we know who we should be looking for. I am definitely going to be there and unless we have several more active Wikinewsies planning to cover it, I attend to apply for a press badge again.--Cspurrier (talk) 05:07, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Election notice: please distribute widely

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may be aware, there is concern that the sitenotices regarding submission of candidacy for the Board of Trustees election were not seen anywhere but Meta after the 11th of this month. Because of the potentially massive consequence of this, and to encourage a full and active election, the election committee has determined that:

- Candidacies will be accepted through July 27th at 23:59 (UTC)

- The period for questioning candidates begins immediately. Candidates that are "late to the party" will, no doubt, be scrutinized by the community. The Committee hopes that the community will work to actively ensure that all candidates receive equivalent questioning.

- The dates of election will not change. The election will begin on 28 July and end on 10 August.


Please know that we recognize the radical nature of altering the schedule in the midst of the election and would not do it if we did not absolutely believe that there was a possibility that others may be interested and qualified and may not have known about the key dates.

For the committee, Philippe (talk) 09:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the notice. :) Cirt (talk) 11:13, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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