Wikinews:WikiVoices

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WikiVoices as an ad-hoc podcast set up by various Wikipedians. In branching out and seeking to cover sister projects, Brian McNeil was asked about doing one on Wikinews. It is intended to be one encouraging people to write on the English Wikinews and would - hopefully - see several articles written and published during an hour or so of recording.

The "wish-list" of main participants is as follows:

• Durova (talk · contribs) - as host
• Brian McNeil (talk · contribs) - Wikinewsie
• Jimbo Wales (talk · contribs) - Jimmy Wales' first WikiVoices appearance
• Mike Peel (talk · contribs) - Chair of WMUK, just issued press release promoting Wikinews as alternative to 'Papers behind paywalls'
• TBA - 1 or 2 other Wikinewsies (currently hoping bastique (talk · contribs), skenmy (talk · contribs), Mike Halterman (talk · contribs))

There would likely be one other person for technical help/support. WikiVoices is done using Skype and has some limitations. The above range of participants would allow a likely maximum of 15 additional users able to listen and speak. People must be able to mute their microphones and prepared to drop out and let in new participants. Anyone who has done large participant-base conference calls will understand background noise gets very bad quickly.

Provisional scheduling for the session would be between 22nd and 24th December, starting at 8am, or later, Pacific Time (to suit Durova & Jimmy). Prior to session would be important to - if possible - have the auto-welcome extension installed and putting {{Howdy}} on pages. Any other pages that a new user would need to refer to should be highlighted and reviewed prior to the session. A makeover of WN:NEWSROOM would likely be ideal for this. At present, the header needs reworked.

Wikinewsies not participating in the conference call are urged to make themselves available for text-chat (in IRC and, if possible, via Skype). It will be important to have people quickly copyediting and reviewing things. This should be a fast-moving situation; there is no reason that 10+ articles could be pushed out in around an hour and there will be that little 'thrill' if we're getting people seeing their very first Wikinews story go up on a lead and appear in Google News. Yes, it would all be synthesis articles.

Please brainstorm about appropriate section additions and layout of this page on the corresponding talk.