Something else to consider, maybe we should make some more user talk page templates that can be used to help people along (especially if we can drop them _before_ they goto our deletion warning messages, like {{abandoned}}. Example: "Hey, I see you've started a new article, remember to do these 3 very important things and put it into {{review}} when you're read" -- Basically any common problem we have, we should have a talk page template for it and we should make sure EVERYONE uses them. If you want to mark an article as {{abandoned}}, inform the user. I've seen more than a few cases where users have come back later and said "Hey, why did you mark this as abandoned/deleted it. I was done". Let's be fair, our way of doing this is unique to the ENTIRE WMF community. Additionally, I recently stole off Commons "User Messages" Gadget (goto Preferences > Gadgets > UI Gadgets -- to turn it on). Basically it adds a SHIT TON of options in your Toolbox when on a Usertalk page. This makes it _ultra_ simple to leave talk page messages (You don't even have to remember what exactly they say, there is help text). <br>
<br>I am also considering stealing off with their "Quick Delete" gadget which would enable us to have 1 click to tag an article (for example) as abandoned _AND_ notify to user. Might require some fine tuning by our local JS masters, but it would be useful.<br>
<br>As for {{copy edit}}. I'm not saying make it required, but it would be nice as an option. I can review any article I want, because I've got editor, but I can't copy edit for shit. There are other people who can copy edit superbly, but don't have Editor yet. Make it easy for everyone to find each other. I realize this was shot down when the system was being developed, but it's been around for a while, would others find this helpful? Or am I the only failure of a writer around here?<br>
<br>-SGN/Jon<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 04:35, Brian McNeil <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org">brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div link="blue" vlink="blue" lang="EN-GB">
<div>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">Okay, I won’t dispute that the [[WN:SG]]
is long, and something pretty difficult to sit down and go through. The old
welcome template used to effectively tell all new contributors they had to read
the entire set of policies, and that was why I introduced {{Howdy}} and the associated
essay [[WN:ARTICLE]]. Despite this, and Tempodivalse’s efforts as our
local Wal-Mart greeter, virtually nobody seems to read it – dozens of
stories appear with Camel Case titles, people bypass article creation forms and
don’t have date templates, and there are a lot of {{copyvio}}s put up.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">That’s a focus on our ‘traditional’
article, and it is what we ideally want a lot more of. Problem is, the reality
of the world is that *<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">most</span></b>* people
couldn’t string something like that together if their life depended on
it. Combine that with recent media trends to dumb-down and be highly partisan (eg
Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” myth), and you have a situation
where most people wouldn’t know neutrality if it bit them in the ass, you
end up with a widespread belief that news needs to be sensationalist before
anyone will take an interest in it. Even some of Wikinews’ most prolific
contributors are influenced by this sensationalising.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">So, Jon’s suggestion seems to be to
diversify somewhat – and I think that’s worth pursuing.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="color: navy;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Photoessays?</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">Yup, it’d be nice to see more
photographic work featured on Wikinews, and ideally this would be accompanied
with a short associated article that puts the photographs in context. It isn’t
happening, so how can we lower the bar and get more photoessays? I’ve no
problem with trimming back the writing requirement to the equivalent of a
single entry in our current ‘shorts’ style – as long as the
event where the photos were taken is put in context, i.e. some attempt to cover
the 5W & H.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">The place to recruit people for this sort
of work is Commons. The obvious pitch to them is getting their photographs
showcased, and an article collecting them linked to from Google News. I’d
be happy to take that up on Commons’ equivalent of the Water Cooler and
try and engage Commoners in working towards [[WN:PHOTOESSAY]] as an equivalent
to [[WN:ARTICLE]].</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">Perhaps for this type of article we need a
slightly different {{peer review}} template?</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="color: navy;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Ultra-shorts</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-left: 18pt;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">So, we’re
talking a single paragraph to answer 5H&W, and some mechanism to present
these on the main page outside the main Latest news section. Assuming we figure
out how to do that we really have to consider that some of these will go on to
become full articles. We don’t want the ultra-short bit expanded
dramatically, but a complete whole article. In any case, the current shorts is
a nightmare when it comes time to review it.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="color: navy;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Local</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-left: 18pt;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">Really
local news has been done in the past, just not very well. There is a category
Local news, and it’s trivial to exclude that from the main page.
Verifiability is the biggest headache there.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 18pt;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;"> </span></font></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li style="color: navy;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">{{copyedit}}</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p style="margin-left: 18pt;"><font color="navy" face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: navy;">Nope.
This was part of my initial proposal for an article flow, and was shot down.