Success!
Now, one question is how do we get the revid to show up when you select a flagged revision.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Cohen
Sent: 17
September 2008 03:26
To: Brian
McNeil
Cc: Erik
Moeller; jwalsh@wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: Wikinews and Google
news
Hi Brian -
Ok, looks like we can include you. A couple of issues:
- There's a technical requirement that's going to cause some problems. We
need you to add three digits in the urls of the articles in question. You
can see more about this here: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323&topic=11665
- Also, it would be great if you could include the details you've laid out on
your site. There's a ton of information about how the site works, but not
much on your editorial process. If this is a new change, if you can add
it when it's live, that would be ideal so it's clear that for an article to hit
your frontpage, it needs to be reviewed first.
Thanks,
Josh
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Josh Cohen wrote:
Thanks Brian. Let me take a look and come back to you.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:39 AM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org> wrote:
The article is created before flagging, but is not visible to unregistered users unless they know the exact URL to get to it (eg, they wrote it). So, if I log out of my Wikinews account and create http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Pure_vandalism Googlebot will not see it. You need to know the URL to get to it, and even then you are warned it is unreviewed.
Assuming I was not vandalising and created http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Must_read then I could try to bypass the review by putting the {{publish}} template on it. This would fail, the article would get flagged in recent changes, and someone would move it to the {{review}} stage. Previously putting {{publish}} immediately got things on the front page, they now cannot get there without being reviewed and sighted.
The Newsroom (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Newsroom) lists articles that are not yet ready for publication, but this is flagged to not be spidered.
If this doesn't answer your question please let me know!
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Cohen
Sent: 15
September 2008 22:38
To: Brian McNeil
Cc: Erik
Moeller; jwalsh@wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: Wikinews and Google
news
Hi Brian -
Yes, I'm the right contact for this. One thing that I'm not totally clear on with the Flagged Revisions feature is whether these take place before or after the article is posted. Will the non-logged in user, e.g., the Googlebot and any users sent to articles we find, only see articles that have gone through this review process before posting?
Thanks,
Josh
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 6:47 AM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org> wrote:
Hi Josh,
Erik Moeller, the Wikimedia Foundation's deputy CEO, gave me your email address as a Google contact who – if not able to help – at least is someone who would know who at Google I should be talking to.
I am one of the senior editors on the Wikimedia Foundation's English Wikinews project (http://en.wikinews.org) and it has been a long-term goal of mine, and of many of the other contributors, to see our little project listed in Google's news index. In the past we've been briefly listed but dropped due to the nature of the project; as a wiki anyone can edit and this causes issues for accuracy and reliability in our reporting, something which – quite understandably – is a concern to those trying to maintain a high standard for the Google news index.
However, a major new development in the MediaWiki software has been enabled on our wiki that should address most of the concerns over the nature of the site. This is the Flagged Revisions extension which allows trusted contributors to mark specific revisions of our articles as having been checked, effectively giving us a degree of editorial control. This extension, as a privilege, has been granted only to administrators of the site and those with a well-established reputation for creating factually accurate articles. The net effect is that anyone not actually logged into the site – such as the GoogleBot – will only see versions of articles that have been checked, copyedited, and given a basic review. My personal opinion is that this technical enforcement of a 2-3 person review of each article is a more stringent standard than many of the blogs and PR-machine sites that are listed in Google news.
If you are an appropriate person to discuss this with, please let me know any questions you may have on the subject. If not, I would greatly appreciate an introduction to someone within Google who is involved with news.google.com. At the moment, the Flagged Revisions MediaWiki extension is still on the radar of the developers and there are a few options Wikinews has open to be more stringent in our editorial control. A listing is – for many of our contributors – a holy grail that should bring the publicity and exposure the site needs to draw in additional contributors and increase the breadth and depth of our coverage. I would welcome any opportunity to liaise with Google staff and make this a reality.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat and Accredited Reporter