Hi,
This is just a notification that the latest edition of The Wikinewsie Group
News newsletter can be found at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikinewsie_Group/Newsletter/6 .
Highlights:
The Wikinewsie Group News Edition 6, December 2, 2013
If you know anyone interested in Wikinews, journalism on Wikimedia projects
or The Wikinewsie Group, please encourage them to subscribe to the
newsletter by adding their name to the
list<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikinewsie_Group/Newsletter>
.
The Group
- Aff-comm recommended to the Wikimedia Foundation Board that The
Wikinewsie Group be recognised as a thematic organization in early November.
[1]<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/The_Wiki…>
Education
- Wikinews Education
Program<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/12/02/wikinews-education-program/>
blog
post was published on Wikimedia's official blog.
- Discussions were had on IRC and Skype about the possibility of
installing the education extension on Ukrainian, Czech and Korean Wikinews.
While these could be used to potentially re-invigorate the local
communities and provide a cohort of new contributors, the limited
contributor base at the moment makes it difficult to implement. Greater
partnerships would need to be done with chapters to provide people to
assist local projects in running any education initiative.
- What is news?
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:What_is_news.pdf> handout
was created to supplement existing training materials as this is an area
where new contributors sometimes have issues on English Wikinews.
- Documenting your original sport
reporting<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Documenting_your_original_sport_report…>
was
created to supplement Wikinews Original Sport
Reporting<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinews_Original_Sport_Reporting.pdf>.
Assistance is requested in translating these documents into Spanish and
Ukrainian.
Outreach
- LauraHale attended Wikimedia CEE Meeting
2013<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2013> in
Slovakia representing The Wikinewsie Group. She had conversations with
people from several chapters about the potential to do things with TWG
including the Polish, Estonian, Serbian, Czech and Ukrainian chapters.
Original reporting projects
- The paperwork was submitted at the end of the month to send five
Wikinews reporters to the Sochi Paralympic Games.
- Attempts were made to secure media accreditation for the Commonwealth
Games. The application was unsuccessful.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
Hi,
Aff-comm has passed a resolution asking the WMF board to recognise The
Wikinewsie Group. It can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/The_Wikin….
This is a major milestone for the group. Thank you so much to
everyone
in the community who assisted in making this possible. :)
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
On Mon, 2013-10-21 at 10:28 +1100, David Blackall wrote:
> Thanks Brian, good idea/s. I am a baby boomer so am not much good on
> technical stuff but to make the wikinews front look and work like a
> prestigious newspaper, more interactive with page turning, might be the
> go (The Economist, New York Times, The Guardian).
I've put a preliminary site up at http://edu.wikinewsie.org
However, I've not touched a fraction of the options available in the
theme I've put on there. All I've focused on for the moment is security
and responsiveness.
> Create the sense or emotion that wikinews is as good (which it is by
> the rigour applied to reviewing) simply by a thematic look and an
> interactive flow. I am now hammering the Glen Greenwald story with my
> students, he is one of the many bloggers who have made good and then he
> gets employed by The Guardian, which says it all about how blogging can
> be as rigorous as journalism, blogging in most cases is journalism, as
> is especially the case for wikinews.
I'd disagree with that; it's more the case that 5% (or less) of blogs
are actually journalism. With the entry-barrier to publishing being
all-but-eliminated, there is a very long tail of 'blogs of dubious
provenance'. Don't mistake the mainstream adopting the format for
blogging as a form of journalism being widespread.
I've still a fair bit of trial-and-error to getting edu.wikinewsie.org
set up as I'd like. I may-well ditch the current theme (Customizr);
there are, after all, over 2,000 to choose from[1]. Those can be further
enhanced with plugins[2], which is where students who want to use a
blogging platform are going to need to acquire some technical skills.
[1] http://wordpress.org/themes/
[2] http://wordpress.org/plugins/
It should be possible, once I've a few more quirks and kinks ironed out,
to offer individual blogs to students. Beyond that, my gut feel is we'd
need to have mechanisms to import articles from Wikinews to blogs in
near-realtime. Beyond that, I don't know; plus, it's late here.
Brian McNeil.
--
Wikinewsie.org | https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."
GPG Key Fingerprint: 7C3D FFD5 5ED5 B80F 1D18 A52B E84C 8928 6ABC A7AD
I'm looking for a new WordPress theme to use on wikinewsie.org. Although
the theme used on the site ticks most of the boxes in-terms of the look
for the site, it is now unmaintained and hasn't been touched for a few
years.
There's two main criteria I'm looking for in any theme (apart from being
free). Those are that: (a) it supports floating/variable width. (b) It
supports a highly-customisable left sidebar.
I've the basics of edu.wikinewsie.org installed into a local virtual
machine at the moment. The point of this is to enable me to properly
tweak security, configuration, look-n-feel, and so prior to making it
public.
It is a 'multisite' install, so will happily support
foo.edu.wikinewsie.org. That will allow any educational institute using
Wikinews in the classroom to blog about their experiences. Or - perhaps
of more-import with the push for more of a focus on original reporting -
the issuing of email addresses to students.
We know that firstname.lastname(a)wikinewsie.org increases responses from
people we'd like to question for Original Reporting. By the same logic,
the likes of firstname.lastname(a)foo.edu.wikinewsie.org (albeit long)
should help students try their hand at getting people to give them input
for original reports.
Similarly, one of the issues spotted with one round of UoW students was
mixing up editorialising with reporting. Having a WordPress instance for
each educational institution working with Wikinews would allow them to
do that.
Multilingual comes under 'nice to have' for any suggested WordPress
themes; but, please let me know of any you're aware of that fit the
above criteria.
Brian McNeil.
--
Wikinewsie.org | https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."
GPG Key Fingerprint: 7C3D FFD5 5ED5 B80F 1D18 A52B E84C 8928 6ABC A7AD
Laura is signed up as a speaker for this, and I've just paid the
registration fee to attend.
As an easy introduction, looking at photoessays has been suggested. That
has far more re-use potential. What we do need is to know of any events
in the Cardiff area where it would be worthwhile going with cameras and
so on.
Brian McNeil.
--
Wikinewsie.org | https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
"Facts don't cease to be facts, but news ceases to be news."
GPG Key Fingerprint: 7C3D FFD5 5ED5 B80F 1D18 A52B E84C 8928 6ABC A7AD
A copy of the most recent edition of The Wikinewsie Group newsletter can be
found at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikinewsie_Group/Newsletter/4.
This month's edition includes information on:
* our progress with aff-comm application.
* research being conducted by the group.
* education outreach being worked on.
* planned original reporting at the Sochi Paralympic Games.
* technical updates to e-mail, servers, translation tools, etc.
* information for reporters on oppprtunities to report at the United
Nations and get more recognition for their work.
* technical issues in regards to conducting outreach.
* a list of original reporting completed in the past month-
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
FYI
Nemo
P.s.: P.s.: You can check whether the WMF protects the logo of your
project by seeing if it's listed as "registered trademark" on
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_trademarks>.
-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: [Wikimedia-l] It's time to reclaim the community logo
Data: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 12:16:16 +0200
Mittente: Tomasz W. Kozlowski
Hello community,
this is to inform you that in response to the trademarking of the
Wikimedia community logo[1], created in 2006 by Artur “WarX”
Fijałkowski, which was discussed on this mailing list[2] as well as on
Meta[3] back in March, a small group of community members—Artur, myself,
Federico Leva (Nemo) and John Vandenberg—have initiated a formal process
of opposition against the registration of the trademark by the
Foundation in order to *reclaim the logo* for unrestricted use by the
community.
We appreciate the Foundation’s protection of the other trademarks they
have registered so far, including the logos of Wikipedia, Wikisource and
some other sister projects. In the case of the community logo, however,
it is our belief that the Foundation’s actions are exactly opposite to
what the community logo stands for and contradict the purpose behind its
very existence.
We would like to make it clear that it is not our intention to damage
anyone; our actions are a challenge against what we perceive as
unilateral declaration of ownership of an asset that has always belonged
to the wider community, and not to one or another organisation that is
part of the movement. By formally opposing the registration of the
trademark we hope to ensure the history of this logo is not disregarded,
and we wish to protect the community against unnecessary bureaucracy
and, to use another quote, let “groups who do not purport to represent
the WMF”[4] to continue to be able to freely associate with a logo that
has been part of their identity for so long.
We also want to note that this is in no way a legal action against the
Foundation, but a simple notice of opposition against the registration
of the logo in the European Union. If we assume good faith, we can only
be confident that the WMF, having now a formal occasion, will withdraw
its registration of the logo rather than continue using movement
resources to force the community into lengthy, expensive proceedings.
We invite all community members interested in this issue to express
their opinions at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo/Reclaim_the_Logo
If any of you would like to help us in any way (covering the costs of
the opposition, promoting the discussion, etc.), please feel free to
contact us off–list.
Artur Fijalkowski (WarX)
Tomasz Kozlowski (odder)
Federico Leva (Nemo)
John Vandenberg (jayvdb)
== References ==
* [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
* [2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124715.html
* [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo
* [4]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124730.html
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For our next newsletter, The Wikinewsie Group is looking for people to
contribute essays (or links to your essay posted elsewhere) that defines
news and explains how Wikinews delivers it.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
Hi,
For the next The Wikinewsie Group newsletter, we want to have a few essays
on why people contribute to Wikinews (in any language) or why you love the
project or why you support the project.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikinewsie_Group/Newsletter/2 is where
you should link your essay. It is a nice way of understanding why people
contribute and participate.
I encourage everyone to encourage others to participate. If you can post
to water coolers on Wikinews in non-English projects in the projects own
language to ask people to assist us by writing an essay, that would be
appreciated. Non-English language essays are highly encouraged. :)
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
mobile: 635209416
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
