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Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2022/January

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Publishing proposal


The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



  • Closing as successful. The trial will run from February 1 to April 30, 2022. I will make the changes to the policy page and put a note on the site notice later today. We can have another discussion about the trial after it finishes. [24Cr][talk] 22:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while but this discussion has prompted me to write it down.

Background
Quite a few draft articles I’ve deleted, over the past couple of years, were one paragraph long. They were started by new users, and then abandoned. If they’d been expanded, they might have become viable and publishable articles. Our current guidance at WN:LENGTH is that publishable articles should be a minimum of three paragraphs (presumably with 50-80 words each, as mentioned in WN:Lede). The deleted articles were often by newbies, who don’t necessarily want to write more than that one paragraph. We have also had a shortage of published articles recently.
Proposal
For a trial period of three months, it is proposed to suspend a couple of rules as follows:
  • reduce the minimum requirement to one paragraph;
  • at least a hundred words long;

We would still encourage people to write longer articles if they can but I think this trial might help us to publish a little more. Thoughts and modifications welcomed. [24Cr][talk] 19:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

They are the basis of this proposal. The main problem in the past has been a haphazard approach. We have had several names used including Briefs, Wikinews Briefs, Business Briefs, Technology Briefs, and Wikinews Shorts. Sometimes there have been a lot of them and other times very few. See the list I’ve put at the foot of Wikinews:Briefs. Although it is marked as historical, I’ve been trying to gather them in one place so we don’t have too much disparity. I’d also like to see the revival of other projects like Wikinews:Audio Wikinews, Wikinews:Print edition and some sort contest at some point in the near future. [24Cr][talk] 01:04, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@George Ho: I think we should give it until 31 January 2022 to close the discussion. Then we can start the trial from 1 February to 30 April, which is a clear three months. We can review the results in early May. [24Cr][talk] 10:59, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xbspiro: I had not thought much about that until now but the Czech page would look quite good if there is something published each day. I think it would make sense to publish brief articles in the list on the right side under "Latest news". I’m not sure if it would make sense to put such articles on the lead templates unless perhaps we restrict Lead 4 and Lead 5 to have just the headline, so it’s at least worth readers clicking to read a one paragraph story?
On my mobile phone, there is a large empty space to the right of Leads 3 and 5, although I won’t see it in desktop mode till I get home later today. That list of latest news is the {{Main headlines}} template, which shows 10 articles but it could be extended to show up to 20 or a higher figure. We would have to suspend the rule of 10 at the foot of WN:Archive conventions.
In the longer term, I think we should look at redesigning the main page. When I looked at it just now, it seemed to have too much prose. I feel it might be more attractive with less descriptions. For example:
  • What if we reduced all the leads to just the headline and a photo?
  • Do we need a whole paragraph in the "Write an article" box, or the "About Wikinews" box?
  • Why do we not have the three content boxes further up the page?
"Wikinews's best work", "Recent interviews" and "Original reporting".
I might add a further proposal for these thoughts. Thank you Xbspiro for prompting more ideas! [24Cr][talk] 11:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Votes

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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