New subject: [Ticket#2007122810012695] E-mail this article

8 Jan 2008

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&section=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)" &lt;VChrist(a)dow.com&gt; ---

From: "Christ, Andrew (AV)"
To: "Wikinews Information Team" &lt;wikinews(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
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 ---

Re: [Wikinews-l] [Ticket#2007122810012695] E-mail this article