Wikinews talk:Archive conventions/Archive 1

This policy was born out of

This policy was born out of this discussion. Dan100 (Talk) 11:55, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

The debate was very brief and some good arguments were given against it. This should not be policy. Ed g2s 17:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't it? News articles have a limited life; after a while they're not news, and shouldn't need to be edited anymore. The idea of protecting them is so they won't be edited so that the content of the article is compromised. If there's an update, it should be added to a new article. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 17:20, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure the content shouldn't be chagned, but it prevents non-admins for performing maintenance tasks, such as link redirecting, categorising, interwiki, adding external links, format correcting etc. Ed g2s 20:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Currently that's not a real problem, you can post anything on WN:AAA and an admin can post it for you.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

• Plus, articles could also be vandalised if they arn't protected. —FellowWikiNews (W) (sign here!) 21:14, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Update Aug 22

I have done quite a bit of expansion on this as I feel 14 days is too long, there is no guidance on late edits for, say 48 hours after publish, and I believe some guidelines for the archiving process are required.

Below are the guidelines and my comments, I'd welcome input on them.

• Late edits should be undone, this requires that the history of the article be checked for edits more than 48 hours after application of the {{publish}} tag. Minor corrections such as spelling are acceptable but the addition of information which alters the balance of the article should be reversed.

This is probably the hardest one to get right, I don't always check the history when protecting articles, but there are frequently clues that hint at this when you read the article.

• Remove tags such as {{expand}}. Once protected an article cannot be expanded and thus this is confusing.

The converse applies too, you have to add templates, frequently related items are added as [[article name]] and this needs changed to a {{wikinews}} template.

• Remove inline references and excess Wikilinks. Unless absolutely unavoidable there should be no links to a non-wikimedia site within the body of an article. Off-site links should be restricted to the three sections listed below.

This is a pet peeve of mine, I believe any inline link to an external site is an invitation for the reader to leave. If external links are included after the body of the article then they are available to the reader after they've read our coverage.

• Section names are Related news, Sources, and External links rename accordingly and ensure in this listed order.

This has been debated elsewhere, and in related news I've been applying it as I archive.

• Date format is Month Daynumber, Year. This should be enforced throughout the sources and other sections.

Frequently contributors copy the source's date format, so you get oddball date formatting or timestamps on articles.

--Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:55, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Talk/Opinion page move protection

There was a recent discussion brought up on the Watercooler regarding archived articles and their associated Talk and Opinion pages. A user pointed out, rightly so, that he could move a Talk page even though the main article was protected. It would seem to make sense that an article's Talk and/or Opinion page should be move-protected (i.e. still editable). Not that I am looking for more archiving work, but can we get consensus on adding the move protection for the Talk and Opinion pages to the Archive Conventions? --Jcart1534 19:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Please vote {{support}} to include in Archive Convention or {{oppose}}

Comments

There are obviously very many articles that are archived/protected, but the associated Talk/Opinion pages are not. Is the required move protection something that a bot can fix automatically or AWB or...? --Jcart1534 19:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Votes

• Support --Jcart1534 19:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support Adambro 19:21, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support I fully support this and believe this aspect of the archiving process should be totally automated. There is no need for a final review of either of these pages and edits will still be possible. As a related issue - should we perhaps automate move protection on main/talk/comment at 7 days old and leave full protection for the archiver? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:40, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
• This sounds like a good idea (as long as its done by bot). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:45, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

A bot would be perfect for this. As Brian pointed out, there is no required intervention by an editor. To Brian's suggestion for the auto move protect after 7 days, I would support that as well. Jcart1534 21:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Archived articles with bad english.

For an example, see Talk:Smoke_from_massive_warehouse_fire_in_Buffalo,_New_York_USA_can_be_seen_40_miles_away. What can we do about these types of errors? Sancho 20:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Never mind :-) Realized this is like the protection policy on Wikipedia. Sancho 14:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it isn't. It may seem so superficially, but it really isn't. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:21, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I meant in so far as the manner in which one would request an edit to the page with an {{editprotected}} template. Sancho 16:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Archiving falling behind

(discussion moved from WN:AAA)

Since the archiving-bot project we have again begun to fall woefully behind in archiving. Can someone please make a DPL that does the same as what was once called Matt's DPL for listing the oldest non-archived articles. I'd appreciate it. --SVTCobra 01:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem with archiving is that it is terribly cumbersome. If AWB was available for MacOS I would probably use it but at the moment I am going through manually doing it and after sometime you just get sick and tired of it - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 09:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is cumbersome. Nonetheless, there continues to be consensus that it shouldn't be done by Bots. All I am asking for here, is a list of the oldest published articles that have yet to be archived. --SVTCobra 02:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Try this one: Cirt - (talk) 20:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

• Wikinews interviews Chiaki Hayashi, Asian Projects Coordinator at Creative Commons
• Bronislaw Komorowski wins Polish presidency in run-off
• Environmental protesters arrested at Massachusetts airport
• Lawrence Wong to become Prime Minister of Singapore on May 15
• Industry leaders see energy supply as the next hurdle for AI

Ooh, wow, March 2006, that kinda sucks that we have unarchived articles that far back. Cirt - (talk) 20:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh wait - it looks like those have been archived? Cirt - (talk) 20:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

refixed --A101 - (talk) 20:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Protected but not archived - not tagged as such and don't meet convantions A101 - (talk) 20:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, this could prove very useful. Someone should setup a subpage of WN:ARCHIVE with this dpl, with a longer version. Cirt - (talk) 20:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I added a new subsection to the bottom of WN:ARCHIVE, using that DPL but with dates as a display output. Cirt - (talk) 20:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a good place to have it. Disturbingly, however, it shows that a script that was run by Skenmy (namely the much discussed ArchiveBot) failed to archive articles that it was supposed to archive. The archive continues to be something we need to address. --SVTCobra 01:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)