Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2012/November
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Possible religion related goals for 2013
This is probably more than a bit presumptuous on my part, but I have started a discussion at w:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion#Goals for 2013? in the English wikipedia asking what if any sort of goals we might be able to reasonably set for the next year, in wikipedia and other WF sites as well. I figured the wikipedia probably gets more attention, which is why I started the discussion there. But I would be very interested in seeing any input regarding what the editors here think might be the areas here most in need or meriting additional attention. Maybe, and at this point it is just a maybe, maybe we might be able to get some input on such topics if we have some idea what it is we really need to work on. Anyway, I would welcome any input anyone here might have. John Carter (talk) 20:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
- Eh? We do news. If you believe scripture, JC was crucified over 2,000 years ago. That ain't news.
- If you want a wish-list regarding religious news, how's about the Pope admitting the Roman Catholic Church has protected thousands of paedophiles, issuing an unconditional apology to the victims, and reforming to prevent it ever happening again. That would be news. --Brian McNeil / talk 00:13, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
- Ha! Funny stuff from Brian McNeil (talk · contribs), he'll be here all week folks. LOL. -- Cirt (talk) 05:25, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Simple Wikinews?
i requested this for discussion on metawiki. thanks. --Zerce221 (talk) 22:15, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Somehow I don't like the idea of a simple wikinews.-- CalF (talk) 00:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I have suggested that Wikinews be closed up. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Coverage of fast-paced major situations
What principles and techniques can we apply to these sort of things? To clarify the challenges involved, here are three examples Wikinews has confronted.
- The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Wikinews was just starting up when it happened. Wikinews served as a sort of common assembly point/group blog; the incident seems to have little to say to the problem of bringing review to bear on such a situation, except perhaps to highlight that for certain kinds of news information, in the midst of certain kinds of situations, the freshness window can be a lot shorter than the typical two-to-three days.
- The 2011 Egyptian revolution. A crucial time during the protests coincided with a review drought, when for several days nobody was volunteering review labor. A Wikinewsie wrote and repeatedly rewrote a synthesis article about the latest developments, pulling it off the review queue after a day —or even half a day— to update since it hadn't been published and events had moved on. Several times I thought about reviewing it myself (something I wasn't doing nearly as much then), only to have it pulled off the queue before I got to it. Once it was pulled off the queue out from under me just after I'd started reviewing it (we weren't much using {{under review}} then). I wondered at the time if we might have ended up with a number of articles published, by writing each article in a way that might still be newsworthy even after some more things had happened.
- The current events in Gaza and Israel. We got a number of solid breaking stories out of it, because DragonFire1024 was on top of the very latest developments, and I was available for review in real time, with sometimes-intense real-time negotiations between DF and me on IRC during the writing and review. But then we've got another article submitted by another user, and I wasn't able to review it when it was first submitted, and thirteen or fourteen hours later I find myself not knowing how to sanity-check its currency — DF would presumably know, but I don't.
Some questions that arise.
- How, and how much, do these sorts of factors affect freshness?
- What can, and should, a writer do to make their article more robust against such effects?
- What can, and should, be done by writer and/or reviewer to facilitate and implement sanity checks against further developments that could undermine currency of such an article?