Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2012/January

Nikki Haley & Mitt Romney--- Can a person of another culture/ country, become a Mormon in the U.S.?

Just wondering & curious... (Nikki Haley & Mitt Romney)--- Can a person of another culture/country, become a Mormon in the U.S.? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.128.204.55 (talk • contribs)

Probably want to ask Wikipedia's Reference desk... this is a news wiki. Cocoaguy^talk_contribs‽ 20:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes called the "Mormon" church, has members in pretty much every country in the world, so just about anyone who wanted to could become a "Mormon" where they live. Traveling to the US is another matter entirely -- a person would need to apply for a visa, etc. Banaticus (talk) 08:08, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikinewsie.org reloaded

I've set myself the task of making http://www.wikinewsie.org/ far more useful — and not just for accredited reporters.

The wiki is a slightly lower priority than other items, but I think people will like the feed tracker; it is designed to be reasonably useful for locating sources to use in article preparation.

At-present it only lists at high-level (continents), but if you know of a feed that should be added, post the details here and I'll start it being tracked. That includes country-level feeds, although it'll be a little while until I've sussed out how to properly handle them. The longer-term goal is to have wikinewsie.org as a one-stop-shop for most sources we might use, and allow people to drill-down to the relevant region/country/category to find additional sources for any article they might be writing. I know I find using Google News a bit of a pain for some of that stuff, I hope this will make things easier for everyone.

Please do report any bugs with the [SRC] links – these are supposed to set you up with the {{source}} template code to paste into a developing article. Sadly, most feeds don't bother to give data for the author; and, to be brutally honest, trying to parse that out of the text of a 3rd party's source ... good luck! Please use Eyeballs v1.0™.

Lastly, and before anyone else brings it up, I know wikinewsie.org is still hosted on Godaddy. And, I know where Godaddy have their tongue with-regards-to the United States' SOPA legislation. When finances permit, the domain will migrate off them; it's my intention to put a "donate" button/page up, and maybe a few text adwords here and there to fund ongoing hosting and a move to a more journalist-friendly registrar/hoster/country. Some people may recall I floated the idea of moving the whole operation to Sweden with their nice press laws; that's back on the cards — when funding permits — as well as looking to get a proper SSL cert so that the whole thing runs secure.

For now, please give feedback on what's there now, and realistic suggestions for improvements. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 22:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Sweden with all its friendly journalist protection and privacy laws, is a very expensive place to host anything. Quite honestly, anything attached to the Wikimedia foundation is welcomed in the United States, and besides the stupid, stupid SOPA law being rammed through, journalists have time and time again been protected against aggressive copyright enforcers. I cite the case of right-haven when they sued ArsTechnica for a piece that contained copyrighted content: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/copyright-troll-righthavens-epic-blunder-a-lawsuit-targeting-ars.ars Phearson (talk) 02:08, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout

Will Wikinews participate in tomorrow's SOPA blackout?--William S. Saturn (talk) 18:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Not a chance. The tl;dr of the above thread is that there's definitely not a consensus to opt in.

It seems possible we could work out a sitenotice that everyone would be comfortable with, but we'd have to be actually discussing what the sitenotice should say, and there's been no discussion so even that probably won't happen. --Pi zero (talk) 18:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see that thread above.--William S. Saturn (talk) 19:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Heh. For the tolerably good reason that it's on a different water cooler. --Pi zero (talk) 19:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Editing and messaging guidelines

I am placing this question under Miscellaneous because I didn't see a better category to put it under. Where are the guidelines for editing articles? I ask because I added another site (Craigslist) that is participating in the SOPA protest to the SOPA article but this text was deleted without any explanations in the comments or talk page for the article.

I left a message on the editor who deleted the text's talk page but that message was deleted too. I don't want to just do a revision on the article text without understanding why it was deleted in the first place. I thought that the correct way to message someone with questions was to add to their talk page. What is the right way to do this? Thanks for any help -Michael614 (talk) 23:00, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Your message on my talk page was not deleted. I moved it to the bottom of the page, and then replied. --Pi zero (talk) 23:05, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Writing news articles about dates which have passed

If I write a news article or translate some news article from some other language and the article is from one of the dates before the current date then what date should I mention on top of that article? I'm writing news articles on Hindi Wikinews which is still in incubator but I'm confused which date to mention on the articles about the gone by dates. For example if I write a news article about 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami but I write it today or tomorrow then which date should I mention 11 March 2011 or may be 21 or 22 January 2012? Please help and thanks a lot in advance? रोहित रावत (talk) 09:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikinews only writes new articles on new events within the last 2-3 days. The date that goes on the top is the date the article is published to the world. I believe this is the same for most other language versions. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikinews on Serbian language all the time writing Wikinews publish date on top and the source date (with source name, etc..) on the Source section (on bottom), same as English.----László (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot

While looking for something else in mailing list archive, I came across a thread that mentioned that you guys have a need for a copyright violation checking bot?

CSBot would need to be adapted to your workflow, but I see no reason why I couldn't run it here if there is consensus to. Drop me a line to let me know if that is still relevant/applicable. — Coren ^{(talk / enwp)} 16:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Facebook

This is mainly just a note that will be of use to people on the list of admins for Wikinews' Facebook page.

I've, frequently, wondered "how do I post on the page as me, not as 'Wikinews'?" Well, here's how:

1. Log into Facebook
2. Go to the Wikinews Facebook page
3. Click "See all" in the Admins section (where the avatars are shown)
4. Select "'Your settings" in the left-hand menu
5. Uncheck "Posting preferences"

Now, whenever you go to the Wikinews Facebook page you will, by default, post as yourself.

• If you need to post something as Wikinews first select "Use Facebook as Wikinews", which appears just under the admin avatars on the right of the Wikinews Facebook wall. Then, you can post stuff like a newly-published article, notification of a just-promoted FA and so on.

One more Facebook tip for page admins, and I know I've not been the only one to encounter this… Sometimes, when you paste a link into where it says "What's on your mind?", or go to post a link, you're offered a summary that is out of date, or even not offered the full set of thumbnails from the article — Facebook have stale data cached goodness-knows-where.

• To force the absolute-latest version of the page be posted, you need to resort to the "raw" page link. For example, our Main page:

https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page

When anyone clicks on the link, the URL will be rewritten to the more normal /wiki/ form.

And, do remember to edit titles on posted articles (strip the " - Wikinews, the free news source"), and you can tweak the posted text description if it cuts off at a bad point. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:49, 30 January 2012 (UTC)