Wikinews:Water cooler/miscellaneous/archives/2018/January


On showing your work in 21st-century journalism

http://pressthink.org/2017/12/show-work-new-terms-trust-journalism/Justin (koavf)TCM 02:47, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

16:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

18:45, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

News writers union

Los Angeles Times writers vote in favor of unionizing. —Justin (koavf)TCM 22:27, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile, at The Washington Post. —Justin (koavf)TCM 23:44, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

23:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

A tiny fix

See phab:T185455. —Justin (koavf)TCM 09:19, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: Curious. Was done to four pages in 16 August 2005 based on this water cooler thread: diff. Four pages were changed: MediaWiki:Previousdiff, MediaWiki:Previousrevision, MediaWiki:Nextdiff, and MediaWiki:Nextrevision. --Pi zero (talk) 12:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi zero: So I'd noticed. Bizarre. In case you or someone else reading this are not familiar with HTML, the problem was that someone wrote "&rarr" instead of "→". Just a small typo: the former actually displays "&rarr" and the latter displays the arrow →. Can you please delete these? They will fall back to the default arrows. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)TCM 18:29, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  Done --Pi zero (talk) 18:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! That has annoyed me for 12 years (almost 13)! —Justin (koavf)TCM 19:38, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: What puzzles me about this is that I have found no direct evidence on this project of any such typo. The indirect evidence is so strong that I've gone back several times to the revision histories of those pages, but the typo just isn't there. --Pi zero (talk) 17:23, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi zero: Well, you can't find that anymore, since MediaWiki:Previousdiff, MediaWiki:Previousrevision, MediaWiki:Nextdiff, and MediaWiki:Nextrevision were all changed--that will change the layout of the entire site, including in revisions (just like how if you change a template now it changes all of the previous revisions if you try to review them). Does that clarify? If you're still trying to piece it together, I can help. —Justin (koavf)TCM 18:39, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: I'm not sure what you mean. I have looked at each revision of each of those four pages (more than once, because it makes no sense to me that the evidence wouldn't be there somewhere). Because those pages existed when the problem was observed, the wiki software should have been showing what was in those pages, so if the phantom typo were visible, it should have been in a revision of those pages. Unless, of course, there was some sort of bug in the platform at the time; the evidence suggests some such bug. --Pi zero (talk) 18:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Pi zero: Hm. Well, I can't see the page history of course as I'm not an admin and can't see deleted pages. But it used to be the case that MediaWiki:Previousdiff had "<-" as its text. The default in MediaWiki is "←". Now, page diffs display with the proper Unicode arrow character but they used to have the ASCII hack. —Justin (koavf)TCM 19:47, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Koavf: Indeed they did have the ASCII hack. And the hack was put in place because, as testified by the archived thread, somebody was getting the exact behavior one would observe if the typo were present. And, the hack eliminated the problem, just as it would if the typo were present. Except that the revision histories of those pages do not support the hypothesis that such a typo was present. Well, there's no problem now. --Pi zero (talk) 19:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Australia criminalizing reporting on leaks

Really shocking stuff for anyone who might write for this site from down under: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/25/coalitions-security-laws-criminalise-reporting-media-companies-warnJustin (koavf)TCM 00:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty interesting, to say the least. Personally, I don't believe it is going to play out in the "doomsday scenario" portrayed in this article. The Aussies themselves didn't bother to write about it for a month is seems. --SVTCobra 00:48, 31 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]