Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2014/April


Category usage

Hierarchy I went to add a category to Spain's_men_remain_on_top_of_FIFA_global_rankings_for_April_2014 and noticed that it is in both the broad Category:Sports as well as the more refined Category:Football (soccer). Why is this? Isn't the function of subcategories to diffuse larger ones? Are all news items expected to be in as many levels of categories as possible? I have to admit that I'm mostly an en.wp editor rather than en.wn so I guess I have a lot to learn... Thanks. —Justin (koavf)TCM 03:59, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • That'd, largely, be for use with intersection/DPL. A drill-down category style is indeed more-encyclopedic, but also less-readily manipulated with DPL.
For example, the below list is built on that lower-level category "Football (soccer)", but a similar list for "Sports" and Spain wouldn't work if articles were not also in the top-level category ("Sports").


Hopefully that clarifies somewhat. --Brian McNeil / talk 06:01, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, we have in the past usually not created a category until there are three published articles already to do in the category. Some of us have have informal discussions about circumstances under which, with suitable software support to make it useful, we might create whole sets of categories that might be either empty or almost empty, but the software support isn't there quite yet (I'm working on it, but it's very slow going). --Pi zero (talk) 11:12, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • These pretty much cover it. Doing it this way allows lists of articles relevant to any given subject, or subject combination, to be wizarded up. Also makes for ease of news browsing, people looking back in the archive for related/similar content. Wikipedia has (no?) need of such things, so the hierarchical classification system they use is perfect for them. BRS (Talk) (Contribs) 11:31, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warning amendment

There was a discussion a few years back regarding adding a warning to MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning (the bottom of the edit window) about copying from other Wikimedia sites. Someone else recently requested a similar change; what are everyone's thoughts? Microchip08 (talk) 20:50, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • The way the request is written, it's a repeat of a previously unnoticed or ignored request.
Summed up: Replace the following text:

Do not submit copyrighted work without permission

  • Your work will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License and will be attributed to "Wikinews".
  • You must have written your work yourself or copied it from a compatibly licensed resource or public domain resource.
  • If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.
With this:

By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.
You agree that credit to "Wikinews" is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Due to incompatibilities between their licensing policies, copying text from other Wikimedia websites, including Wikipedia, is considered to be a copyright violation.

Most of this is (scroll to the foot of the page before clicking edit) already displayed in the the page footer copyright message. The warnings in the proposed revision are appropriate, but the word-choice is quite harsh.
That can, probably, be improved on. Without being the legalistic bludgeon that everybody ignores. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:41, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We can do away with the "inappropriate material"; the problem we're trying to catch is more likely to be an experienced Wikimedian copying across a template or two, not a random person pasting an encyclopaedic article; and the page footer isn't displayed on edit pages as far as I can tell. Microchip08 (talk) 21:59, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hm? Copying stuff from Wikipedia (sentences, not whole articles) seems likely to be more frequent than copying across templates (and is, realistically, likely to be more of a problem when it happens). --Pi zero (talk) 22:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd expect an experienced Wikimedian to take heed of material being "incompatibly licensed". However, they're just-as likely to need reminded why Wikipedia content shouldn't be copied into news articles. The originally proposed version 'points the finger' at licensing policy, not at the more-philosophical reasons not to import Wikipedia content. --Brian McNeil / talk 05:59, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
E/C But not every edit is to a news article, so the link isn't going to be relevant every time (unless, I suppose, you added an {{#ifeq: or something). I don't think people need to know the reasons behind a rule (at least, not through an interface message; they can look it up if they want). Thinking about it, do we actually need this amendment? Reverts are cheap, and adding yet another explicit rule just makes this all-important new user gateway slightly more daunting. Microchip08 (talk) 11:46, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe a historic blind eye was turned to both template copying and the use of (often unsourced) background info copypasta'd from Wikipedia. So we actually want to catch them both. Preferably, keeping it simple/clear/concise. We want something that unfamiliar newcomers will find as accessible as experienced Wikimedians. BRS (Talk) (Contribs) 11:42, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you're going by that (I was the one who drafted the original version), I'd rather go with this

By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license, and agree that your content will be attributed to "Wikinews". You must have written your work yourself or copied it from a compatibly licensed resource or public domain resource. Do not copy text directly from Wikipedia to Wikinews; it is a a tertiary source whose style is inappropriate for Wikinews, and it is also incompatibly licensed.

ViperSnake151 (talk) 16:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]