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 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 (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. 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? 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). Would you be willing to nudge an experienced Wikipedia writer interested in this topic to consider us as a worthy subject for an article? __________________________________________________________________ ABOUT NEWSTRUST NewsTrust helps people find good journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens. We're nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to news literacy and civic engagement. Our social news network features a daily feed of quality news and opinions from mainstream and independent sources, based on ratings from our reviewers. Our web review tools enable the public to evaluate accuracy, fairness, context and other core journalistic principles -- and help people become more discriminating news consumers in the process. We also rate our reviewers based on performance, to increase the reliability of our reviews and help them grow their own news literacy. To find out more, check our site: http://www.newstrust.net/ NewsTrust has attracted a growing community of journalists, educators and citizens, who share a passion for quality news and information, serving over a million visitors last year. Our media partners include The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, the Huffington Post and Scientific American -- and our educational partners include Stanford University, Stony Brook and the University of Nevada, to name but a few. NewsTrust's Executive Director is Fabrice Florin, a former journalist and a digital media pioneer at Apple and Macromedia. Our team includes a select group of award-winning journalists, technologists and community organizers -- with advisors such as Dan Gillmor, Craig Newmark, Howard Rheingold and other media innovators from organizations like the Associated Press, Google, the Poynter Institute and Stanford University. Founded in 2005 and based in Mill Valley, California, NewsTrust is funded through grants and private donations. The MacArthur Foundation is our main funder and has awarded two multi-year grants to support NewsTrust's online credibility service. Other funding sources include Ashoka, Ayrshire Foundation, Mitch Kapor Foundation, Sunlight Foundation and Tides Foundation, as well as Google and private donors such as Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and Doug Carlston (Public Radio International). Though we are nonprofit, we aim to run a sustainable business, and plan to generate revenue from online sponsorships, memberships, licensing and partner services to support this project in coming years. For more information about NewsTrust, view our About page: http://newstrust.net/about __________________________________________________________________ THE NEWSTRUST DIFFERENCE Our collaborative evaluation system is more effective for evaluating quality information than other social news sites like Digg. Here are some key differences between our services: * we rate journalistic quality, not just popularity * we track ratings for each publication in our source reputation database * we feature stories from our most trusted sources in our daily listings * citizens using our tools can assess news quality as well as professionals * our multiple-rating evaluations are more reliable than single ratings To discourage gaming, we offer these preventive measures: * reviewers are identified by their real names * we rate our reviewers based on the quality of their work * our reviewers' ratings are weighted based on their own member level * member levels are based on activity, experience, ratings and transparency __________________________________________________________________ ABOUT OUR NEWS HUNTS NewsTrust organizes regular News Hunts for good journalism on important public issues, in partnership with leading news providers and journalism schools. Our partners so far include leading media organizations like the Washington Post, PBS's NewsHour, Scientific American, Huffington Post and the Council on Foreign Relations -- as well as educational organizations like Stanford University, Northeastern, University of Nevada and Arizona State University. A News Hunt is a bit like a scavenger hunt for quality information. For each News Hunt, we invite our partner communities to join forces with us, and review hundreds of stories in weeklong searches for good journalism on topics like the Economy, the Environment, the Middle East, and Education. Participants typically include news professionals, content experts, concerned citizens, educators and students, all using the NewsTrust review tools for this common quest. At the end of each News Hunt, we collectively recommend the best news coverage on that topic, based on ratings from your community and ours. Our News Hunts have helped hundreds of thousands of people become more discriminating news consumers this year -- empowering them to make more informed decisions as citizens. By focusing on factual evidence and constructive dialog, we hope NewsTrust can bring Americans closer together -- and broaden their perspective about journalism and democracy. Partnering with NewsTrust can help the public develop a better appreciation for quality news and opinion -- and support the core journalistic and civic values we stand for. Here are some of the News Hunts we have organized recently: * Climate Change (Link TV) * Lobbyists (Washington Post's WhoRunsGov) * Psychology (Miller-McCune) * Health Care (Huffington Post's Eyes & Ears) * Afghanistan (WNET's WorldFocus) * Pakistan (Huffington Post and Eyes & Ears) * Obama's First Hundred Days (PolitiFact and U. of Nevada) * Black Experience (PBS, Tavis Smiley and U. of Santa-Clara) * Money (Consumers Union + Stanford * Bush Legacy (Washington Post) * Economy (NewsHour, PBS and University of Nevada) * Immigration (New America Media) * Presidential Election (PBS Engage and P.O.V.) * Media and Politics (Poynter Institute and PolitiFact) * John McCain (Huffington Post and OffTheBus) * Internet/Digital Natives (Frontline and Stanford University) * Middle East (CFR.org, Global Voices, and LinkTV) * Environment (Scientific American and University of Nevada) We are discussing more partnerships with major new providers and journalism schools in 2009. We work with our partners to find the best coverage on important issues like Energy, Health Care, Human Rights, or about any topic that they think will interest their community. We also invite them to add our top-rated news widgets on their sites, where they can act as a scoreboard for our joint News Hunts. We have widgets for dozens of hot news topics (e.g.: Barack Obama, Global Warming, War in Iraq), as well as for hundreds of sources and members featured on our site, and they're a great way to strengthen our partnerships: http://newstrust.net/widgets/ Our partners typically promote our News Hunts to their communities -- and announce them prominently on their sites, blogs and email newsletters, at the start of each week. Many of them also participate actively as a reviewers, submitters and creators of quality journalism on the News Hunt's chosen topic. NewsTrust manages the projects and provides most of the legwork for these News Hunts. You can find more about previous News Hunts on our blog: http://newstrust.net/newshunt/ On Dec 12, 2009, at 6:54 AM, Brian McNeil wrote: Thanks, bawolff, that's wonderful! 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. So if you click on our NT button below this story: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Indonesian_court_overturns_Garuda_pilot%27s_con… ... you are taken directly to our review form: http://newstrust.net/stories/509516/toolbar?go=review Yeah, we figured we might as well leverage all the good work that's being done at Wikipedia, rather than reinvent the wheel ;o) We would be very happy to support any efforts along these lines, and are delighted that you find them worthwhile. 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. Our financial resources are limited, but we could perhaps give away NewsTrust mugs to the winners, if they were selected using our review tools. The mugs have a list of the core principles of journalism on the back, so they offer more value than just promoting us ;o)

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:

Yes, it can detect the categories (or at least be made to do so. JS looks at categories on article, maps them to category scheme for news trust, and dynamically modifies url of button). I'll try to add that some point in the near future. Ideally if we did use the toolserver as an intermediary, it'd cache responses, so not to overload newstrust (and script on wikinews end would fail gracefully if toolserver has downtime). -- - 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 6:50 PM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote:

Hi guys, I have added our web engineer Subbu Sastry to this thread, as he would know whether or not it's feasible for us to give you this data. We don't yet have a full API, though our widgets function a bit like an API. One new widget we have been considering is a rating widget which a third-party could put on their site, to show the NT story rating for a particular story on that site. It might also be possible to show the source rating we have for that source, if known. We hadn't planned on doing this right away, but it's in the queue of things we would consider doing, if requested by one of our partners. Your request seems a bit different, if I understand it correctly: you would want to display the ratings for sources cited by your articles, is that right? if that's the case, it may be sufficient for us to get just the URL. We would then look up that URL in our DB, and if we have it on file, that would allow us to provide the story rating and number of reviews. We may also be able to provide the source rating and number of reviews for the source associated with that story at the same time. Lastly, it may be possible to provide the source rating and reviews for the source typically associated with that domain name, though this is a risky proposition, because often a story featured on a site is not really from that site. So it would be best to ask for source ratings by specifying a source name, but you would need to request the exact name we use for that source, which could be prone to human error. In any case, we should probably prioritize the tasks you are considering, so we know which is most important to you from an editorial standpoint. Is it more important for you to have your own articles display a story rating? or to give a rating to the third-party articles cited as sources for your own articles? If it's the latter, how often would you need this information to be updated? If it's an old story, its story rating is unlikely to change much after a month or two after its release, so maybe you could settle for a one-time rating -- the source rating is more likely to change over time, but not by much. So maybe a once-a-month or less frequent update might be fine. Either way, we would need to figure out how important all this is to you, and if we can squeeze in some simple technology that addresses most of your needs. But this is a good conversation to have, and we appreciate your thinking about these creative uses of NewsTrust for your site. Thanks again, Fabrice On Dec 12, 2009, at 6:02 PM, bawolff wrote: