Wikinews-l September 2008

wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org

7 participants
10 discussions

Allegations of copying from Wikipedia
by Brian McNeil 16 Oct '08

16 Oct '08

To Whom It May Concern: My name is Brian McNeil, I am a bureaucrat and accredited reporter on Wikipedia's sister project, Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org <http://en.wikinews.org/> ). I am investigating allegations that have been raised on Wikipedia that material has been copied from Wikipedia in your publication. The allegations center around the obituary for author James Crumley, the online version of this is at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html. The current version of the Wikipedia article is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley. This has undergone some revision since Crumley's death, but some word-for-word identical sections remain. While I wait on those who have made the allegations providing further information I would greatly appreciate knowing who was responsible for the Telegraph obituary, and what the paper's stance on such issues is. While the term plagiarism has been bandied about in the discussion on Wikipedia, it is more technically accurate - if true - to describe this as an infringement of the license under which Wikipedia content is provided. The license is the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL - linked to from the foot of every Wikipedia page). The terms of this license are relatively liberal in what reuse is permitted, but there is a "viral" clause to ensure that those who profit from the material share their works. The upshot of this would be that and work substantially derived from a GFDL article must also be made available under such a license. I look forward to your response on this matter, as I hope you appreciate this is relatively urgent to maintain the timeliness of the news. Regards, Brian McNeil Wikinews Bureaucrat & Accredited Reporter Email: Brian.McNeil(a)wikinewsie.org

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Finally!
by Marc Riddell 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Folks, I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, but I wanted as many people to see it as possible. Finally! Small steps, but at least they are going in the right direction. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/health/july-dec08/mentalhealth_09-26.htm l Thanks, Marc Riddell

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Claims that The Telegraph plagarised Wikipedia
by Brian McNeil 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Mr Dear, My name is Brian McNeil, and I am a bureaucrat and community accredited reporter on the Wikinews (http://en.wikinews.org <http://en.wikinews.org/> ) website. Allegations have been made on our well-known sister site, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org <http://en.wikipedia.org/> ) that the UK newspaper, The Telegraph has plagiarized from Wikipedia in constructing the obituary for author James Crumley (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html). At the moment, I am in the very early stages of investigating these allegations. The Wikipedia article on James Crumley is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley and I am looking in to prior versions of the article to try to identify which revision may have been copied from. The Telegraph obituary does not carry any byline, so the identification of any single journalist at this point is not possible. However, some indication from the NUJ as to their position on this issue would be appreciated. Should there be a spokesperson, or other specific individual it would be more appropriate for me to discuss this with, I would appreciate their contact details. Wikipedia content is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL). This is a quite liberal license and many forms of copying and reproduction are permitted. However, it is a viral license and - as I understand it - where a work is substantially constructed from GFDL content said work must inherit the license. At the very least, those who have created the Wikipedia biography would wish to see some acknowledgement of the material's origins. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Regards, Brian McNeil Wikinews Bureaucrat & accredited reporter. Email: brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org

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Beware: Previous Email Had A Virus Attached
by Thorsteinn Malmjursson 23 Sep '08

23 Sep '08

Would all users on this list please be aware that a previous email to or from this list had a virus attached, known as Mydoom. This has been confirmed by #wikimedia-tech on IRC. Any users who receive a bounce message from the wikinews-I list with an attachment, document.zip should NOT open it, but please contact #wikimedia-tech on freenode IRC or #wikinews. Thanks Thorsteinn A. Malmjursson _________________________________________________________________ Connect to the next generation of MSN Messenger http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=…

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Returned mail: see transcript for details
by MAILER-DAEMON 23 Sep '08

23 Sep '08

Your message was not delivered due to the following reason(s): Your message was not delivered because the destination computer was unreachable within the allowed queue period. The amount of time a message is queued before it is returned depends on local configura- tion parameters. Most likely there is a network problem that prevented delivery, but it is also possible that the computer is turned off, or does not have a mail system running right now. Your message was not delivered within 2 days: Server 133.224.110.253 is not responding. The following recipients did not receive this message: <wikinews-l(a)wikimedia.org> Please reply to postmaster(a)wikimedia.org if you feel this message to be in error.

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Re: [Wikinews-l] FW: Wikinews and Google news
by Nicholas Moreau 18 Sep '08

18 Sep '08

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/miscellaneous#Google_news… It looks like some articles are seeping into the index, not sure how they're selected though. Hooray, Nick/Zanimum

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FW: Wikinews and Google news
by Brian McNeil 17 Sep '08

17 Sep '08

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(a)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 <http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323&topic=116 65> &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(a)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(a)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(a)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 <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

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FW: Wikinews and Google news
by Brian McNeil 16 Sep '08

16 Sep '08

Below is an email I have sent to someone at Google (a contact Erik Moeller was gracious enough to share). Keep your fingers crossed, and keep putting those review templates on the talk pages! Brian McNeil Subject: Wikinews and Google news 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 <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

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Re: [Wikinews-l] Quit for a long rest......
by Steven Fruitsmaak 11 Sep '08

11 Sep '08

Rico, I'm very sad to read this. I'm not a native speaker either, and some of my stories from Belgium are probably not important as well. You were a prolific contributor and I was proud we had a Taiwanese reporter. Bullying by local press occurs all around the world, in Belgium as well. This is, to an extent, understandable: we move into a field were professional journalists earn their money. I saw an interview with a French reporter on CNN a few weeks ago; they had difficulties reporting from the Democratic National convention because they had limited access, and had to compete with US bloggers! I've been pushed around by Reuters photographers... I just pushed back :-) I hope your experiences are a lesson for us Wikinewsies and how we should make more efforts to communicate and be more welcoming to "outsiders", who don't speak perfect English, etc. I'm glad to see you will remain active on the Chinese Wikinews, but mostly, I'm sad that it had to become such a frustrating experience. I wish you all the best in your future projects! Steven Fruitsmaak From: ricoccshen(a)wikinewsie.org CC: wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; scoop(a)wikinewsie.org To: jason.safoutin(a)wikinewsie.org Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:43:22 +0800 Subject: [Wikinews-l] Quit for a long rest...... If anyone see this e-mail written by me, it meant that I had quitted Wikinews AR from this time. Dislike to do this, but I have to do...... Since I joined Wikinewsie Team, I got more opportunities to participate in several press events especially TAITRA Taipei Trade Shows, but several things below confused me until now because.... 1. English-language skill (majorly for Wikinews) 2. I'm bulled by several local reporters especially United Daily News in several press conferences ("Serious than last") 3. I didn't believe some Wikipedians from Taiwan because of several unhappy experiences at Wikimania 2007 4. No ONE think my articles are "IMPORTANT" Because of them, I always think that the Wikinews (in any language) should have more articles related to TAITRA Taipei Trade Shows different from the other news organizations. But several postponements on my articles drove me to quit this group ASAP and start a new life for me. In fact, I wanted to make an e-book from my written articles related to Taipei Trade Shows for all Wikinewsies, but this will be no longer available because I quitted the AR although I ever did an experiment on this file (http://brockf5.googlepages.com/Wikinews_Print_Edition_2008_Taste_of.pdf). Hope my experience will be a great lesson for the Wikinewsies who is not native in English. I will start a long-time research for Taiwan's Exhibition Industry and its history and transfer my work to Chinese Wikinews. In addition, I will also prepare another Wiki site for my research at Wikia to harm my unhappy experience at English Wikinews. Regards, Rico Shen (former Accredited Reporter of Wikinews in English) _________________________________________________________________ Alle fun stuff van Messenger nu verzameld op één coole site! http://www.messengerbillboard.be/nl

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Wikimania presentation
by wikinewssvt＠optonline.net 11 Sep '08

11 Sep '08

For those who have yet to see it, here is the video of Brian McNeil and Craig Spurrier's Wikinews presentation at Wikimania 2008. The video is 33 minutes long and a 353 MB download. http://movies.archive.bibalex.org/2336.mpg --SVTCobra

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Wikinews-l September 2008