Talking about social networking, Whats peoples thoughts on the
ShareThis extention. (Its some where on the mediawiki website, you can
see an example of it in action on the wikileaks site). Doing stuff
like that has been rejected before to fears that it might look tacky
and make us look like a blog, not a "real" news site. But "real" news
sites now seem to be doing that, so I think we should follow suit.
As for technocrati, I don't think they index us anymore. I think
Amgine might have been working on something to make them love us
again, I'm not really sure.
-bawolff
On Jan 8, 2008 2:35 AM, Wikinews Information Team
<wikinews(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Andrew,
I've my fingers crossed you don't mind me changing over to the gmail email
address so I can move this over to the wikinews-l mailing list and get a few
more people to give you their thoughts and engage in a conversation.
To subscribe to the list see here,
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l>. If you do and say
hi, we can close this ticket out of OTRS where I'm bending the rules a bit and
trying to juggle getting suggestions and ideas shared where there's a
potential conflict with the privacy policy.
Anyway, Technorati is one of the places where we try to get our coverage
displayed, as well as on Slashdot - more geeky sites than the average blog,
but we can always do with technical people to help us keep the site looking
good. In exchange those of us who are less technically inclined can fix the
grammar they weren't shot for at school or college. ;-)
We also have a new little piece of software that automatically updates parts
of Wikipedia with lists of latest news on a topic from Wikinews. We have our
fingers crossed this will encourage Wikipedia people to make the jump to
working on Wikinews and increase rankings and visibility. If you look on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Television> you might can find the links
to Wikinews.
Incidentally I've also forwarded this on to someone in the office so they can
see the full exchange. You missed the comments when I forwarded my last mail
onto the mailing list, there were several people complimented me on a well-put
together invitation - and it worked. So, I'm hoping it can be worked into a
few of the boilerplate responses.
If you sign up for the list, remember no question which you need an answer to
is too stupid. I don't know if you've dipped your toe in the waters editing
over on Wikipedia, but if you haven't it can be a little odd getting used to
editing with the MediaWiki software. I don't think we have our Welcome
messages for the site well enough set up, but try this for size...
This page,
<http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&type=signup>
allows you to sign up for an account.
This page,
<http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Brianmc&action=edit§ion=new>
will allow you to add a message to my talk page. I can then give you an
on-wiki welcome which you would be *very* welcome to critique.
Yours sincerely,
Brian McNeil
--
Wikinews -
http://en.wikinews.org
---
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses
are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation.
For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at
<http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.
---- Forwarded message from "Christ, Andrew (AV)" <VChrist(a)dow.com> ---
From: "Christ, Andrew (AV)"
To: "Wikinews Information Team" <wikinews(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: RE: [Ticket#2007122810012695] E-mail this article
Date: 2008-01-07 16:43:48
Thank you for the invitation. I'm sure
it's a great and delightful
opportunity.
Have you considered
www.addthis.com? It's a social bookmarking tool.
I'm sure a similar button for e-mail is more sophisticated, but I'm also
sure
Social bookmarking sites are increasingly popular and influential.
Anyway, I'd love to get my feet wet helping out with Wikinews. I'm not
much
Of a newshound so I'll be happy to to do cosmetic stuff with grammar,
punctuation, etc.
If you're looking for more volunteers to contribute articles, where are
you looking?
I would think there are a great many blog writers who would be glad to
help out.
Also, and I hope I'm not saying too much here, but it seems to me
Wikinews
Has a great opportunity here to promote issues over events. The power of
Media is in framing the events. That's why I like Wikinews by the way -
it's
Effort to be neutral is a worthwhile one.
All best,
Andrew Christ
P.S. You can also reach me at an alias mailbox I created
wllmstafford AT
gmail.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikinews Information Team [mailto:wikinews@wikimedia.org]
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 5:48 AM
To: Christ, Andrew (AV)
Cc: wikinews-l(a)wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2007122810012695] E-mail this article
[[LIST MODERATOR:PLEASE EDIT OUT ANDREW'S EMAIL ADDRESS]]
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your mail.
Your email was passed around and there's some Wikinewsies working on how
can
we have the email an article feature - although it is likely to be an
ugly
javascript hack that activates the feature in your browser. Email this
page is
- as far as I know - a feature in every browser, but one of the last
things
you'd think of. People are now used to websites making this easy. We
should
too, so you were right to email us.
I've copied this response on to the wikinews mailing list where the
aforementioned people who might can do this are. Fingers crossed we can
get
something to make life simple.
In any case, it's great to see someone taking the Wikinews coverage as
something they'd like to mail on. We strive to be neutral in our
coverage and
do well balanced reports. We don't have enough people on the project to
cover
every issue and sometimes our front page can look odd because of people
covering what interests them. I'd like to take this opportunity to
invite you
to get involved. It can be as much or as little as you want. Correct
grammatical errors, change passive voice to active, or be really bold
and
start your own articles. Wikinews tries to be a welcoming international
community and we have editors all over the world. For obvious reasons
the
English project is among the most active, but French, German, and
Chinese
projects also manage a respectable article count. What makes me smile is
when
we have coverage in multiple languages; we certainly aren't as organised
as
Wikipedia is with that, but we try.
Again, thank you for contacting us, we really should publicise this
email
address more.
"Christ, Andrew (AV)" <xxx@xxx> wrote:
Brian,
I wanted to send the article about the burial of the woman leader in
Pakistan who was assassinated.
After I sent that e-mail, I can understand why Wikinews wouldn't want
an
'e-mail article' button. It's one of
the ways I keep in touch with a
friend. Some people will want to know whether Wikinews uses the info
about which articles get sent in their decisions as to which articles
to
write. Wikinews wouldn't be able to prove
that the info isn't used in
making such decisions. I had forgotten about my browser's 'e-mail
page'
feature.
Andy
-----Original Message-----
From: Wikinews Information Team [mailto:wikinews@wikimedia.org]
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 9:25 AM
To: Christ, Andrew (AV)
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2007122810012695] E-mail this article
Dear Christ Andrew,
Thank you for your mail.
"Christ, Andrew (AV)" <xxx@xxx> wrote:
> Please consider adding a button to your news articles. By clicking
the
button, a
reader may type in an e-mail address of a friend and send
the
news article to them. Thank you.
Andrew, looks like you'll get your wish. One of our Serbian
contributors
who
is more technical than me is working on some code so we can have a
"mail
this
page" link in the left-hand sidebar.
Out of curiosity, can you say which specific article you figured you
had
to
mail on? Just want to know some more about what makes our readers want
to do
more than just read.
Yours sincerely,
Brian McNeil
--
Wikinews -
http://en.wikinews.org
---
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and
responses
are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at
<http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.
Yours sincerely,
Brian McNeil
--
Wikinews -
http://en.wikinews.org
---
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and
responses
are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at
<http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.
---- End forwarded message ---
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