Note, I'm 99% sure that pulling the rating data off NewsTrust using
clientside js would be in violation of the wmf privacy policy (99% as
i have not actually read the privacy policy...). It also represents
somewhat of a security risk (the usual method of doing such things is
to execute foreign javascript that inserts rating data and/or puts
data in a global variable. which is generally something we try to
avoid, as executing arbitrary code on the client that is not under our
direct control = bad thing in my mind). With that being said, that
would probably be ok as a gadget, but not ok as enabled for everyone.
However, if we were to do this, i think a better approach would be to
get someone with a toolserver account to create a tool that acts as
intermediatery. That way, only the toolserver is in the position to
potentially collect user data.
It'd go like this: Client loads page, page asks toolserver what rating
of source is, toolserver asks newstrust (possibly caching results).
I assume that'd take care of privacy issues
--
- Bawolff
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote:
Fabrice,
I've whitelisted your address for posing to wikinews-l. The mailing list
archives are here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
If I see any other posts from NewsTrust people I'll whitelist their
email addresses too. You'll only get sent copies of other messages if
you subscribe to the mailing list.
On Sat, 2009-12-12 at 14:37 -0800, Fabrice Florin wrote:
Dear Brian,
It was great to speak with you yesterday - I'm glad that we got along
so well, and that you are interested in working together!
Thank you so much for moving so swiftly to contact your community
about a possible collaboration between NewsTrust and Wikinews.
We will discuss this idea in our editorial meeting on Monday. We
really appreciate your commitment to factual reporting from a neutral
perspective, and it appears that we have many shared values in
common.
We are also honored that you are willing to consider using NewsTrust
as a possible tool for judging the entries of participants in your
upcoming writing contest (
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:WWC-2010). We
will discuss the idea of cross-promoting this contest on both of our
sites at the end of January and perhaps again in early or mid-April. A
good way to do this might be to use our News Hunt format at that time,
if you all find the idea interesting. Read more about our News
Hunts below, as well as the attached PDF with more details about
NewsTrust.
I am also delighted that you were able to install our NT review
buttons so quickly on the Wikimedia article pages. Thanks, bawolff,
nicely done! See my response to your comment below.
At your request, we already corrected the misspelling of your name on
our source profile page for Wikinews:
http://newstrust.net/sources/wikinews
Note that is is now possible for you to add one of our source widgets
on your site, listing stories for review from Wikinews:
http://newstrust.net/widgets?url=/sources/wikinews/for_review
I'm puzzling over where we could fit that in.
You can customize your widget in many different ways on that page (be
sure to click on 'More Options') and we have many topic widgets you
might consider putting next to articles that would benefit from more
related stories on the same topic.
We've also started to review a couple of your featured stories, which
we encourage you to review as well:
http://newstrust.net/stories/506880/toolbar?go=review
http://newstrust.net/stories/507108/toolbar?go=review
I noticed a few were up. Iain (User Blood Red Sandman) was quite pleased
with the review he got on the Garuda pilot story. As you probably
understand, we can have issues getting those actually involved (such as
the pilot) to speak to us.
The one I put up and admitted a COI/writing involvement saw me acting as
the reviewing editor, doing quite a lot of copyedit work on it and
bringing it in line with house style.
(if you are a co-author of any of these articles, or have any serious
conflicts of interest, please check the appropriate box in the 'About
You' section of our review form, as Brian was kind enough to do for
one of the articles he co-wrote)
Lastly, I also started a Smart Feed for Wikinews here, using your
feedburner RSS feed:
http://newstrust.net/feeds/180/show
This will make it easier for any of us to submit some of your upcoming
stories from your feedburner feed, since much of your metada is
automatically pulled from your feed. However, I encourage you to focus
on posting some of your best stories, so we don't flood our review
pipeline with too many stories from Wikinews right away.
I suspect the metadata on Feedburner is pathetic. We have an extension
for MediaWiki developed to produce RSS feeds based on categories and
(our) review process.
We are in the middle of a News Hunt on Climate Change, which will keep
us busy through the weekend, and I have to prepare for a board meeting
at the end of the week, so I will not be able to review any more
stories from you guys until the following week. Thanks for your
understanding. But if you have any good articles about Social Change,
we would be happy to have our community review them, as that will be
one of our major themes next week.
I would also like to introduce our associate editor Kaizar Campwala,
who is our point person for News Hunts and partnerships. Kaizar can be
reached at <kaizar(a)newstrust.net> and can answer any other questions
you might have about using our service.
Look forward to continuing this discussion in coming weeks.
All the best,
Fabrice
P.S.: Do you guys know how we could encourage a Wikipedia writer to
write an entry about NewsTrust on their site?
Have you independent press reports on NewsTrust? That's the key thing.
There's a few Wikipedians also contribute to Wikinews, they might know
if there is still a "requesting an article" page on Wikipedia (and where
it's hidden).
We understand and respect Wikipedia's rules against writing entries
about yourself -- or asking your friends to do it -- so we have not
made any attempts to have an entry written about us to date.
But we do think that it would be reasonable for someone to write one,
given all that we have contributed to this field over the years (see
attached project overview).
It's all down to, unlike Wikinews, Wikipedia having a policy against
original research, and being a tertiary source.
If there is a press release or two for NewsTrust then any board or other
people might get their Wikipedia articles updated to reflect the
position. You can go right ahead and ask for that on an article talk
page as long as you disclose your interest.
Example:
"I'm XXX of NewsTrust (
http://newstrust.net), this article on <someone>
does not mention that he is <positionholder> at NewsTrust. This is
verifiable in <link to press releases> and <links to news reports>. Can
this detail be added as a redlink to [[w:NewsTrust.net]], or that
article actually started? --~~~~"
Would you be willing to nudge an experienced Wikipedia writer
interested in this topic to consider us as a worthy subject for an
article?
I think I just did. I'll point a few other people at the mailing list
archive, it might encourage them.
<snip>
Brian, to answer your question above, clicking on our NT review button
on a story that has already been submitted will take you directly to
our review form.
Great!
> I've had encouraging feedback off-list
about tying into NewsTrust's
> source rating system. Here's how I see us using this:
>
> {{source}}[5] is modified to have an optional "|NT" parameter. Where
> present, the URL for the cited source is checked for on NewsTrust,
> the
> story rating is retrieved, and a (likely smaller than NT uses)
> graphic
> of their trust level for the story is displayed somewhere. If
> NewsTrust
> doesn't have the story, the ideal is to fall back to their trust
> level
> for the source that published the story. Here we're going to run
> into
> the usual headaches with wire reports that are everywhere and end up
> cited as published by Ya-who?
We would be very happy to support any efforts
along these lines, and
are delighted that you find them worthwhile.
Still waiting to hear if we can pull that information off NewsTrust
without having third party site requests that might violate policy.
Now, I pointed Fabrice at the writing contest[6]. I would be very
interested in getting the NewsTrust community to review the rules
we're
running by (the ever-popular "anyone can edit" including, at the
moment,
the competition rules). It may be possible to do some collaboration
on
that. NewsTrust could feature our competition a few days before the
start, Wikinews invites readers not in the competition to look at
ratings on NewsTrust and possibly contribute their own.
We are very happy to support your contest in any way we can, using the
current NewsTrust review tools.
But we will let you guys decide how you want to
calculate the final
scores and award the prizes, as this is a bit outside of our area of
expertise.
> NewsTrust, I think, would be an ideal group
to bring in on the
> post-competition Featured Article section. That is, all competition
> entries scanned for FA candidates on Wikinews, and in some way
> highlighted for review on NewsTrust. At the moment my penned-in idea
> there is to invite some of the WMF Trustees (a few have journo
> backgrounds) to get involved in that. The big question is, will
> offering
> just five points for an article that gets promoted be enough of a
> game-changer at that stage? Should it be higher - say 20 points?
>
> I didn't ask Fabrice if they could help out with sponsorship for
> prizes,
> so we're still begging for that. Anyone think it would be worth
> asking
> on the Wikipedia rewards board if a few of the people who put cash
> up
> there might chip together to have a netbook for the outright winner?
Our financial resources are limited, but we could
perhaps give away
NewsTrust mugs to the winners, if they were selected using our review
tools.
I don't see any reason why the mugs couldn't be awarded to the top-rated
articles from the competition end-stage after submissions are closed and
we're looking for those to promote to featured article status.
The mugs have a list of the core principles of
journalism on the back,
so they offer more value than just promoting us ;o)
I've pointed people at Kipling for that ;-)
--
Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org>|http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official position
of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
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