Wikinews talk:Criteria for deletion

I've just scanned the page, and noticed that the lag time for the regular deletion is set at five days in this guideline. On the Wikinews:Deletion requests it is indicated as seven days. I don't have any strong opinions, but if no one objects, I would set it for seven days. Tomos 14:38, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conflict of interest?

Dan100 has been unilaterally making extensive changes to the Deletion guidelines, including making a change which would provide him with a basis to justify deleting an article which he disagreed with recently.

For example, in this edit Dan100 has unilaterally declared that articles which cover subjects that are more than a few weeks old may be listed for deletion.

Dan100 recently tried to suppress an article, largely written by a contributor with whom he has had conflicts. He later clarified that his basis for this suppression was that the news was not "new" enough.

For Dan100 to now create a "guideline" that justifies this suppression would seem to be a conflict of interest.

(I use the scare quotes around "guideline" because the page is written as if it were a rigid policy - other than the title, there are none of the standard disclaimers that the page is only a guideline, or that contributors can use their own judgment.)

In the larger scheme of things, a guideline that news must occur within a few weeks of it being reported also discourages writing stores about longer-term issues that either happen over a period of time (global warming) or are a systemic societal issue (homelessness) which has no set beginning and ending.

Dan100 has made numerous other policy changes on this page without apparently consulting with anyone.

Shouldn't policy and guideline authors attempt to build a consensus for proposed changes before making those changes?

Be bold applies to the article space. Policy and guideline pages need to be driven by community consensus.

— DV 17:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Restored until a consensus is reached

I have removed Dan100's unilateral policy/guideline change, (the page says it is a policy in places, so it's unclear if it's just a guideline or a ground rule), that declared that stories which are more than a few weeks old qualify for deletion.

Wikinews should be able to report under-reported stories, which are often discovered a while after they have happened.

A story to which I recently contributed concerned the Puru/Newmont mining accident, which happened several years ago. This story was under-reported, and socially significant and relevant to Western society, so it was worth reporting even if there wasn't all that much new to the story.

Where did "several weeks old" come from?

Why not several years or several minutes?

Surely the age of the story cannot be a reasonable basis for rejecting it out of hand. — DV 17:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Instead of discussing his proposed new guideline that news stories must not be older than "a few weeks", Dan100 has started to "edit war".

After waiting a day, I have removed the disputed guideline and renewed my call for a consensus to be built around any proposed changes to the deletion guidelines.

The questions I raised above about the arbitrary deadline of "a few weeks" still stand unanswered.

I would also like to know how stories which develop over time, such as the "Mao suits" fading away in China story I submitted today, can be covered if everything must be a "breaking news" story with a discrete point in time.

The internet is fast-paced and full of blinking bright lights. Does Wikinews have to be like that?

What's wrong with covering some of the more thoughtful news that develops in our world, that is underreported and often goes unnoticed by the major mainstream media?

This fixation on a continuous news cycle is unhealthy and does not lend itself to insightful stories which take a moment to catch their breath and look at the forest for the trees.

Just because a story is slow-paced or developing over time, doesn't make it an encyclopedia article.

Interview quotes and references to topical context qualify a story as "news" just as much as "timeliness" does another.

Please examine the "Mao suits" fading away in China story and try and imagine how it might fit in on Wikipedia instead of here on Wikinews. Sure, Mao suits have been disappearing for years. But is this story really an encyclopedia article? Or is it an interesting "lifestyle" or "culture" story that touches our lives today?

— DV 11:49, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Redirect dupes proposal

Proposal:

A number of the articles passing through WN:DR are duplicates of other articles, as titles here are not as canonical as on wikipedia. You as an ordinary users may replace an entire article with a redirect tag, such as

#REDIRECT [[Steelers_defeat_Lions_to_advance_to_NFL_playoffs]]

thus effectively "deleting" the non-developing article, without all the hassle of true deletion. An admin may eventually delete the redirect if no page links to it, but the speedy deletion process for such orphaned redirects is much simpler. Here are three important caveats to remember when preforming such article merges.

1. Please cut & paste the redirected article's text to the talk page of the deleted article. [1]
2. Please redirect the talk page too, if it is not blank.
3. Please don't preform such an edit twice to one article, i.e. avoid revert wars.

Such techniques don't hide the edit history of the redirected article [2]. Its usually benifitial to preserve histories in this way, but doing so may leave content that violates someones copyright accessible, at least until an admin deletes the redirect.

Thoughts? Nyarlathotep 01:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

<nod> This is already the case, using the several merge templates and so on. There is a slight problem in that we actually should encourage multiple articles on a single news topic where they have different angles or facets of the same story. For example, De Lay's resignation today could have been covered from the view point of the story in the Congress, or from the viewpoint of the corruption charges in Texas and through his political career.

In other words, yes this is a good idea, but how do we also say sometimes it's okay to have two articles? - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 01:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

True & I'm not sure. But it'll help if we can get it right. We might also say "If you feel such a redirect is improper, you may revert it yourself, or post a revert request to WN:ALERT. As manual reversions of such delete-by-redirect edits are painful, admins should generally respect such revert requests." But I didn't say it mostly because I wasn't already saying something about having multiple articles. Nyarlathotep 01:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, is there an existing problem where people don't know this? should we add text about merging and redirecting to some of the introduction to Wikinews articles? I'm wondering how we can get the word out to people that they can do this, if it isn't clear they can already. <should probably look at those introduction and help articles anyway; I haven't in far too long a time> - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 01:58, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Kinda, people arn't bold enough with handing of dupe stubs. I doubt it needs to go in the introductions, but it could be displayed on the deletion guidlines page (here), so people who take an interest in deletion can figure it out more quickly, and don't feel so beholden to the admins. Nyarlathotep 02:31, 8 January 2006 (UTC)