Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/Archive/1

Focus on community building

I think in the next few weeks, we should focus on building a large, active community of editors, not necessarily on creating top notch articles (though we should take care to tag articles which have problems). I have therefore greatly simplified the article development process.--Eloquence 04:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Source accreditation

(from Wiki-No-News above)

3. How do you attribute articles that are difficult to attribute? This is a problem not just for original articles but also for any reference to off-line media. If I post an article that references a local newspaper that is not online - how does that get attributed. What about the minutes of a town hall meeting etc etc.? I think you need at least two elements: 1) You MUST be able to interact with the author - thus sources not immediately attributable must have a user name with an email contact address on their user page. This doesn't have to be their real name or primary email, but they must be contactable for verification purposes. 2) There should be a way of flagging references/ sources as verified or unverified to allow readers to make up their own minds as to how they interpret an article. Perhaps some sort of traffic-light code or something. As other writers corroborate this the verification status can be changed. (Karim)

Great points. I really like the idea of attributed/unattributed tags on sources. In terms of the author interaction, I know I was thinking that if we accredited reporters, that they would be required to give an e-mail address and name with their accredidation. Would that do the trick for you? DE is working like this, and it seems to do pretty well for them so far. (Lyellin)

Lyellin. Yes this would work, except I'm not sure how one person or group 'accredits' a reporter. Certainly I think providing a contact email is the minimum requirement. I think after that a writer's accreditation will be more a matter of his/her reputation. The more a writer submits, the more their pieces are corroborrated, the more their 'reputation' grows and the more confidence people will have in them. I'm not sure whether this should be implicit, or some sort of explicit system such as on eBay, Shalshdot etc. Perhaps each user should have a colour-coded 'reputation' that appears next to their username? Karim 09:18, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Index Page Navigation

Very exciting and important project, my respects to everyone's obvious hard work. My first impression as a news consumer and webdesigner is that the index page offers a lot more access to the mechanics of producing the news than it does to the news itself. This means I had to go hunting to find the actual news and it took me a while to understand I was expected to scroll right down the page to get to the site content. Could we please have links to all the major sections - not just spread out on the index page - grouped as a menu section up in the first screen? This would mean having links to

Latest News/ Ongoing Reports/ Special Reports

Politics and conflicts/ Economy and business/ Science and technology/ Disasters and accidents/ Crime and law/ Environment/ Health/ Culture and entertainment/ Sport/ Obituaries/ Weather

Regions: N America/ S America/ Europe/ Africa/ Middle East/ Asia/ Oceania

Wikinews editing: News in Brief/ Ongoing Disputes/Editing Needed/ Requested Articles

--Shan-UK 10:51, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

These types of suggestions have been discussed before, but didn't get far because the site was too new, and later on because of the page protection.

(Unfortunately vandals made it necessary to protect the main page, so most of us can't improve the layout of the main page without getting an Admin's permission.)

I'm working on a "sandbox page" right now, where I plan to show a better page design to the Admins.

I'll post a link once I have a sandbox page that is worth taking a look at.

— DV 16:17, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I set up a sandbox for the Main Page to illustrate an improved layout that addresses some of the points you made.

Please check it out and let me know what you think on the Main Page sandbox discussion page.

Thanks for your constructive feedback.

— DV 20:21, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks DV (damn holidays taking all my time). I'm trying to stay abreast of this and will put up any changes as soon as people want them up . Sorry that it had to be protected :(. Lyellin 23:42, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

--Carlosar 00:05, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC) I have a general idea to the Developing stories here

Great ideas. I left comments on the talk page. Davodd | Talk 01:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The "patrolled" feature

Has anyone else noticed the exclamation points marking "unpatrolled" edits?

I read the discussion on this feature over on the Village pump and it appears that if anyone is interested in using this feature, they can only mark "diffs" as patrolled. There is no way to mark new articles as patrolled, because there is no diff.

It appears that no one is using this feature on Wikinews, so for now, it's simply a visual annoyance that is cluttering up the recent changes log.

Does anyone plan to use this feature?

— DV 03:25, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think I need a computer science degree to figure out either how to use it - or how to turn it off. :-) -- Davodd | Talk 05:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would like to use this feature, and am trying to get a live RC channel set up at #enrc.wikinews right now. - Amgine 06:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tsunami Relief

Just a suggestion from a "newbie" on blogs: What if we start a groundswell suggesting that President Bush take two unprecedented stands to help the tsunami victims AND take a giant step towards peace in the Mid-East:

Have a small, simple swearing-in ceremony and send the $$millions NOT spent on an elaborate inaugeration to the tsunami destroyed countries.
Call on the warring factions in the entire Middle East (Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis) to cease fighting and send aid to their Muslim brothers and sisters in the tsunami-stricken countries.

(above edit from an anonymous IP address)

While these are pleasant suggestions, Wikinews is not a political advocacy organization.

Also, it's my understanding that the American presidential inauguration ceremony is being funded by private individuals and organizations, so President Bush does not directly control that money.

Perhaps if you could find a notable organization that is advocating the above proposal, Wikinews could publish a story about that organization's efforts should they have success with generating support for these ideas.

— DV 07:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Water cooler, FAQ

I feel this page is not easy to use for discussions, which is why policy decision making is being ignored or being done by a very limited group of the contributors. I have created a model of this page which will be easier to maintain, which keeps all the messages available on the Water cooler, and which may improve participation. It may be viewed at User:Amgine/Sandbox2. - Amgine 07:05, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Wikinews:FAQ did not exist as of a couple hours ago. This is directly linked by a couple of skins, and is a more appropriate repository than the Water cooler. (It could also be included on this page simply with {{Wikinews:FAQ}}) - Amgine 07:05, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. My edits last night were a first step in creating such a FAQ (and an attempt to wittle down the size of this beast). Be bold with your ideas. -- Davodd | Talk 07:37, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I created a beta verson of a community portal - "the newsroom"

Over the past few days there have been numerous requests (mostly resulting from talks with Tsunami Help folk) that Wikinews have a centralized community portal set up in an easy-to-use format for new users. I've taken a stab at it to create the newsroom for wikijournalists. I borrowed heavily from Wikipedia, but I'm sure as more people start improvng it, our community portal will evolve into its own "Wikinews"-flovored beast. Please visit Wikinews:The newsroom and leave your comments, suggestions and the like on its talk page. Also feel free to tweak it or boldly edit it to make it better serve the community. -- Davodd | Talk 08:02, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article / Collaboration of the Week

What do you guys think about picking a topic, one per week or so, and promoting it as a featured article. I believe Wikinews is in desperate need of some quality articles, and high quality articles will get posted around the net bringing more people to the site. This is a good way to encourge people to work together to produce a quality article on an important issue of the day. There could be a vote each week (or perhaps when the featured article that is being worked on is finished) deciding what the topic is. Thoughts? - TalkHard 03:49, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would like to suggest something a bit different though related. As a news organization, almost any article that is a day old is nearly useless from a "news" perspective; we can keep editing it for correctness or NPOV, but from a pure newsworthiness perspective it heads towards irrelevancy almost as soon as it is published. A single featured article would need to be the collaboration of the hour in order to be useful.

That said, I think we should collaborate on topics: pick groupings of events that are happening in the world that are important and cover them from various angles. I have started Wikinews:Weekly Topics (and specifically, Wikinews:Weekly Topics/January 3, 2005 for this week) in order to get this off the ground. I would like to encourage everyone to try that system out to see if we can use it to coordinate effort to actually write some news articles here. -- IlyaHaykinson 05:38, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of a featured topic, I'm just worried that at this point that there may not be enough people to create multiple quality articles on a single topic. It would be much better to produce a single high quality article than multiple mediocre ones. Personally, I would like to first try to create features articles on topics that would not become irrelevant right away. Magazines like Time and Newsweek manage to write relevant articles on a weekly basis, I don't see why we can't. Of course it's also possible to combine both ideas by changing it up depending on the subject - some weeks have a single article, others a topic. - TalkHard 07:11, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will join either TalkHard's or IllyaHaykinson's plan. Areas I'm interested or able to contribute : Social aspects of IT, media industries and regulations, intellectual property laws, & Japan. Tomos 05:49, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We will need to convince the devs to add the {{CURRENTWEEK}} magic word, which should be no problem. This will create a week number according to ISO 8601, a number from 1-54 (in certain very rare leap years, normally 1-53 depending on which day of the week the year starts on.) In other words, I've done this kind of set up before (weekly feature item on mediawiki).

If you'd like me to do this, Ilya, contact me on my talk page. I could also build a template for you, TalkHard - Amgine 05:50, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This feature request already exists. I voted for it, bumped up its priority, and commented that we'd like it. -- IlyaHaykinson 07:40, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I know. Ashar plans on implementing in the next few days, but thanks for the bump. (my request and several others have been merged into 1206.) - Amgine 19:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea of a weekly Feature Story is wonderful. I envision something like what Amgine did with the Tsunami - except with one major indepth story as its anchor. -- Davodd | Talk 06:05, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Projects like that are a good idea, but they're really story agregators. We may want to build story aggregators occasionally, but they take a lot of maintenance so we need to use them for time-delimited news items, set up maintenance schedules (at least daily for current items, perhaps weekly for older projects, etc.) - Amgine 19:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not really pro- or anti- this particular proposal, but I think we should bear in mind that

Wikinews is still very new
We have few authors/editors
Much of our work right now is on the infrastructure, not on stories
Therefore
Building more and more infrastructure is not necessarily the answer to the problem of too few people working on stories
The answer is for the infrastructure to be finished so that people spend time on stories
So providing a minimal but effective infrastructure should be our current task

We are growing, like a snowball, and I think things are going very well indeed for such a new idea. Like the big, friendly letters say, 'DON'T PANIC'. Simeon 12:15, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

WC/Water cooler data overflow fix.

Started by --Weltonch777 22:08, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Workspace and the Editor's tasks template

I feel that the functions of the ET were often things the Workspace is meant for, and I certainly find the workspace easier to use and more straightfoward without the ET present (also thinking from a newcomer's point of view). Editing a page directly is easier and simpler than editing a template. For example, if you click 'edit' on the Workspace you can't actually edit the ET. An inexperienced user would be doing well even to spot the template text, let alone know how to edit a template.

So I've changed quite a few pages (such as the newsroom and the workspace itself) to reflect that. There's a few tasks - eg rescuing abandoned articles - that the ET does but the workspace doesn't do currently. I propose expanding the colour-code templates on the workspace to cover any tasks that are still unique to the ET.

On the other hand, I do recognize the power the ET template represents - real-time Works in Progress can be shown anywhere on the site. I just feel however that one central easy-to-edit area for working on articles (especially one linked from the sidebar menu) is just an easier way to do things. Dan100 09:30, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I was failing to appreciate the different purposes for the workspace and ET. Davodd has clarified things greatly on the workspace page, and now made the ET template much easier to edit to boot. Thanks Davodd! Dan100 10:25, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No problem. You provided some very accurate insight. If you go through the history of the Workspace page, you'll notice that it went through some very drastic changes since November (the removal of the tiered review process). And as of last week, it was quite schizophrenic - and boggling to a new user on how to use it. I think together we improved the page's usability. And I have no doubt that other editors in the future also will improve the page. -- Davodd | Talk 20:40, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Experimental Digest

Digest/1January2005exp what do you guys think? I didn't like the current digest (basically a big list), so I'm trying this out. Xcjm 18:43, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Looks really good. Be bold and go for it. I think the only resaon the digests haven't been improved so far is that there is so much work to do that no on has gotten around to it. Thanks for taking this on. -- Davodd | Talk 20:54, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the good work on the digest layout. I think that your version is definitely better than the normal one for January 1. However I think that neither is useful: they're just a step above a category for the week. Instead I think digests should be more like the older Digest/6December2004 — showing a headline and a short paragraph summarzing each news item. -- IlyaHaykinson 21:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Which reminds me, Ilya... The archives could just as easily be organized by {{CURRENTWEEK}} as not, once we get that implemented. Should we plan on an Archives/1, Archives/2... format, with yearly archives of Archives/2004? We could also use Archives/1 YYYY, which would allow further templating and less maintenances. - Amgine 06:06, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean archives of digests? I would say when we get currentweek implemented (which is not much of an "if" but it isn't at all clear on the "when" it'll actually be live for us) we should just have Digest/2005/Week_{{CURRENTWEEK}}. -- IlyaHaykinson 06:52, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The implementation should be any time now; Hashar is planning to backpart it into 1_4, and said its availability is "probably right now!". I agree about the digest setup. We could (in theory) just use the digest and do a page insert? - Amgine 01:10, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that's good news. I totally look forward to it being available then. What do you mean by "do a page insert"? -- IlyaHaykinson 01:21, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you want to include the contents of another page somewhere, you can simply pretend it's a template and put the name in curly braces. {{User:Amgine/Welcome}} is my personal message to new users. (you can also do {{subst:User:Amgine/Welcome}} and it will add the actual text when you save, iirc).

So, following the line of thought above we could use the digest page as a part of the Latest news template, simply including the archive directly. Hmm... no, then we'd end up with 13 days of news on the main page by the end of every week... Well, it's a thought. Needs work. - Amgine 05:50, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that page insert. I see, right. I think it's fine with just a link from the homepage to the current digest for now. -- IlyaHaykinson 07:15, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How many days worth of articles should we have on Template:Latest news?

There's currently nine days of articles on the template, I think that's a bit too many! I think seven days worth would be enough. But I guess there's some sort of digest system articles should be put into first (an area I haven't looked at closely) before being removed. Dan100 22:10, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My suggestion is to have the last seven days of stories or stories since the end of the last digest, whichever is greater. This way we always have a week of stories, and long lists encourage us to put older stories into digests on a weekly basis. -- IlyaHaykinson 22:53, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. Is there an established way of doing digests? Dan100 22:30, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just what you see in Digest which, admittedly, is in flux. -- IlyaHaykinson 22:43, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to lop off a day or two if the left side of the screen gets too long. -- Davodd | Talk 05:39, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

When {{CURRENTWEEK}} gets implemented, will we be able to have [[Category:{{CURRENTWEEK}}]]? If all we had to to was add that to every article, then each digest could just be the category for that week. Neat and simple, with little manual involvement. Dan100 14:22, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not quite that simple. I think it needs to be [[Category:{{subst:CURRENTWEEK}}, {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}]], but I will have to test that. It is currently active. The week is #44 (until next Monday). - Amgine 05:11, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think that will work. Give it a go and let's see what happens! Dan100 21:50, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we can make them be [[Category:Week 44, 2024]] instead (i.e. include the word Week so that it's not just a "2, 2005")? -- IlyaHaykinson 22:03, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Uh huh, I see. I'm not sure if Amigne has tried this or not but I think I'll have a crack at it. I think I will try adding the text [[Category:Week {{Subst:CURRENTWEEK}}, {{Subst:CURRENTYEAR}}]] into the byline template. Dan100 19:32, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well that didn't work :). All it did was put the week+year into the byline template, once, so it never updated again - it was just text. I think it would work with the substs removed, but that would re-print the week and year everytime the article was saved, which could see articles jumping categories when they're edited a while after creation :/. Dan100 (Talk) 00:19, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Related to this, but sort of from the other end, what do we do about articles that are just coming out of the development/copy edit embargo? For example, I just copy edited an article marked on the copy queue as Jan. 13, so I put it in Latest news template under Jan. 13. Do we want to add articles by dateline or by the "publishing" date (i.e. the date that it gets to be a "real" article?) Or has this been discuss already in some place I've missed?

List them on Latest news under the byline date. Stories listed for copyedit should be on LN already; it's just to drar attention to those particular stories needing a check-over.

Mainpage

To include/share the Template:In the news from the Wikipedia mainpage for consistency and efficiency notwithstanding that Wikinews should be the prime source!

To allow the mainpage to be refreshed automatically (either by server push or timed refresh) to allow news stories to be displayed (colour coded)

Onymous 81.217.21.244 09:39, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I started doing a daily News Briefs article just for this reason. EX: News Briefs: January 11, 2005. My thoughts were this would be the place folks could mention news stories covered well elsewhere by putting a one or two sentence recap and then links to the original story for outside sources. -- Davodd | Talk 05:38, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

how about a News briefing template, with a ready made 'sources' entry - Onymous 81.217.21.244 08:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Include a terse one line Newsflash story, brief text + source link - to be updated frequently - special template perhaps with edit tag and automatic timestamp - Onymous 81.217.21.244 08:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Use a standard Date/Time timezone and format for all articles - Onymous 81.217.21.244 08:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How long should articles remain on Developing stories before going to Abandoned?

In the Editor's tasks template - I'd suggest no more than a week, as they're already 'old-news' by then. Dan100 22:41, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've been going by edit history. If the last edit of substance was more than a week from the day I check it, I move it down to abandoned. -- Davodd | Talk 05:34, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)\

Sounds like a good plan. Next, how long do we keep stuff on Abandoned? I think I've asked that one before but can't remember where - I think another week was suggested, which sounds fair enough. Dan100 23:42, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh, it's for seven days then we list the article for deletion isn't it? Dan100 09:17, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

:-) Actually I've been lax on the listing for deletion. Usually I list on WN:DR the day after I list on abandoned to give a warning. Sometimes I do it the same day - sometimes I forget for a few days. Basically, this is only for abandoned articles that are obviously not finished (how-to notes in main space, lack of coherent structure, no WHO WHAT WHERE WHEN WHY and/or HOW adressed). And it's in really hope that someone will run in and save it. -- Davodd | Talk 10:47, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New short-cuts

I've made a short-cut to template:Latest news - T:LN and one to Editor tasks - T:ET Dan100 09:05, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Categories

I'm not sure if this is already happening or what, but the categories system seems pretty clumsy right now. Wouldn't it make more sense to use the function built into the system? The topics on the main page are too old to be relevant, to narrow to be frequently updated, and too large to be navigatable (sp?). It seems a bit pointless. Also it should apply to local news, (get rid of the news by contintent) I think we should make "reports" apply more broadly to things that may be in those categories because they, despite being older, are still of interest. This would include only a fraction of that stuff, but most of it really shouldn't be on the main page anyway. The main page needs to be re-done. I've seen some layouts floating around and they look good :-). Xcjm 02:02, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, DV and others have come up with some great replacement layouts; if others want to see, take a look at Talk:Main Page where there are links.

As for categories, maybe you should check with IlyaHaykinson about the topic discussion which was started. If you have an idea or plan, try getting explaining? Then we can help out. - Amgine 05:18, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

1. Categories are broken. UNtil we can get a sort feature that puts newest on top, Wikinews categories will be a by-hand affair. 2. Yes, a new front page layout is screaming to be done. -- Davodd | Talk 10:55, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We need to retire Template:sortedstories and take it off the front page. It's too much work to keep up-to-date/too hard to navigate/looks rubbish. The problem I find with the categories system is knowing what categories exist, and which ones to add to a story. I've linked to Special:Categories on one of the instructions pages but the list is 300 odd long! P e r s o n a l l y I don't like the category system at all and see little need for it. My first instinct when searching for a past story on a news site like BBC News is to use the search - I wouldn't go into, say, Africa and try and work my way back.

I do think we need a simple, short list of top categories such as: Continent, country, and topic (eg politics, sci and tech, health). We could probably figure out some way to list those automatically. Dan100 16:54, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well I've had a look at BBC News and I suggest we rip them off shamelessly, with a few changes :) -

Europe
North America
Central America
South America
Asia-Pacific
Middle East
South Asia (not quite sure what countries that includes, will have to detail that)

Then:

The specific country (if relevant, see next bit)

And then and/or the following (and if, for example, it's a health story from the US, or for say an astronomy discovery):

Business
Politics
Health
Education
Science and nature
Technology
Entertainment

I suggest these basic catergories be listed prominently on Wikinews:Categories and topic pages for people to see and remember to add to their stories. Obviously other editors could more detailed categories aftwards if they wish, but these are the real basics. What would then be ideal would be have a template on the Main Page that lists say the newest five under each topic (also replacing Template:Latest news). (Just above it we could have a box for the latest lead stories (pretty much identical to In the news on Wikipedia)). As far as I know there's no current way to do that automatically (the ideal), but I don't think it would be impossible to maintain manually. Dan100 18:00, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've just spotted Davodd's experiment with listing articles in categories by date at the top of the water cooler page. If we could get that to work with my proposals above (so the newest articles under each category are listed at the top) I think it would be pretty good. Dan100 21:32, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've been having a play using sort keys. It seems it would be quite possible to sort the article entries in a category by date. The only problem is that the Mediawiki software seems to list articles by number from lowest to highest (ie 1,2,3), so entries sorted by date (which I generated with {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}{{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}{{subst:CURRENTDAY}}) get listed in reverse order of creation/addition. Darn! Dan100 22:45, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't that keep updating with every edit? Or does it put in the week number on first use of the template? -- IlyaHaykinson 19:51, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

First use. Dan100 (Talk) 11:30, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current list of regions? BBC according to the list above is Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, South Asia; while we have Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, North America, Oceania, and South America. I think our list is fine, especially if we move Category:Central America to be a top-level category under Regions, instead of being stuck under North America. Similarly, BBC's categories are Business, Politics, Health, Education, Science and nature, Technology, Entertainment; while ours are Politics and conflicts, Disasters and accidents, Crime and law, Environment, Obituaries, Economy and business, Science and technology, Culture and entertainment, Health, Sports, and Weather. I don't think that ours are any worse, and don't see why they need any reform. -- IlyaHaykinson 21:58, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There's a cuple of problems with the existing cats:

Population. India and China number about 2.5 billion people between them - they dwarf the rest of Asia, so need to seperated along with their neighbours (South Asia). That leaves the rest of Asia and Oceania, which aren't quite big enough to deserve their own individual categories - hence Asia-Pacific.
Defining news. There's just no need for categories such as 'conflicts', 'crime' or 'disasters' as people don't go looking for them. They either go for the latest news in an area, OR look for non-geographically based news stories, such as science or entertainment. Of course there's nothing stopping (and no harm in) editors adding those categories, but I'd suggest we stick to the above for, say, lists of headlines on the front page.

On the other hand I still can't see a way of having just (say) the latest ten headlines (article titles) listed automatically in a template. The best I can come up with is all stories listed in a cat, in reverse date order of publication. That's not a whole lotta use... Of course, manually updating templates is possible, but that needs a lot of man-power; man-power we don't have, as sortedstories currently lying dead shows. Dan100 (Talk) 11:30, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Integrating with wikipedia

Wikipedia articles on current events are very simmilar if not the same as what we would create for wikinews. It is counterproductive to make 2 articles about the same thing. However, I believe this is a very important project, and if we somehow integrate the two, it would allow more users to contribute. Here are just a few ideas for integrating:

Current events section of wikipedia should also be part of wikinews.
After an article is completed on wikinews, if it is good enough, it should be integrated into wikipedia as a seperate entry or as part of another article
Link related wikipedia articles to wikinews articles and vice versa

Image/Media Requests

Would people be down with setting up a "Requested Images" template, similar to the one we have for articles? It would be an interesting way to advertise for images of things we know we need, like upcoming major events, or things we need regularly, like stock photos of important places, people, things, etc. This could help us build up the Commons with Public Domain or Creative Commons work and allow for much richer and more focused media on the site. What do people think?