#blog on front page
I know who past accredited reporters were, and who some of those who still are, are.
Sooner or later someone will "rant" in an inappropriate and extremely poorly thought out way. Sure, it is themselves they're opening up to comments that rip their arguments apart for being poorly thought out and not based in reality. But it will reflect poorly on us all, and look highly unprofessional. That's why I would rather have more than one blog, define a clear scope for any blogs we do have, not have them in-your-face up-front, and if anyone does feel the need to "rant" they do it on their own personal blog.
#list of accredited users on wikinewsie
The email domain is @wikinewsie.org. If you contact someone, and they decide to see who/what a "Wikinewsie" is, they'll look at that domain's website. If they're redirected to en.wn, they could attach all the "unreliable", "anyone can change it", &c connotations from seeing a wiki. Presenting the data (list of reporters & bios) in such a way that it looks 'cast-in-stone', and unalterable is more credible.
I am also on ComCom, and have access to the OTRS queue for press queries sent to the WMF. You do tend to carry out these sort of checks, you do want to "know thine enemy" before responding. Just like when someone emails from a gmail address, and says they're from the NYT, you make an effort to verify this is true. This can even be emailing back and asking for contact from a @nyt address.
#google for email
I'm doing my best to keep my email out of the UK government's super-database. I have zero assurances or trust Google won't give up that information if told "He's a UK peon, we say you're one of his ISPs, give all the data". If you think it won't happen, look at how they cooperate with China. At least USians have the current attempt to get telcos bitchslapped for warantless wiretapping, not so for many others.
I have used gmail accounts as a convenient and semi-anonymous free email address. If I ever intend to say something I would prefer difficult to pin on me, I always retrieve and send email with POP/SMTP *through Tor*. Let's see a show of hands as to how many people on this list, accredited or not, could actually do that.
I am disinclined to use Google for wikinewsie stuff on that basis, they're not really the techie "do-no-evil" company anymore, they're an advertising and marketing company. They will always collect data to make saleable statistics - I prefer to "poison the well" and skew the statistics over helpfully providing such data.
As Jon says, we've had this Google Apps argument before. I've 20 years experience in IT with a big chunk of that in cellular telecoms, I used to get my hands on 1/4" mag tapes with a full month's call details for all a service provider's subscribers; who called, for how long, which tower(s) handled the call, all the numbers dialled that didn't answer. There has never been any thought that this data belongs to the subscriber. That attitude has never changed, just a variety of concessions to stop customers running away screaming, or compliance with whatever government legislation is enacted to give the appearance of privacy.
So I'm fairly sure my position is well-informed. Google will quickly and quietly fold in the face of concerns from a sovereign government. We're trying to be journalists, using Google is like Bob Woodward faxing all his reporter's notes to a document storage company that would hand them over the second Tricky Dicky asked.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinewsie From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk Date: Sun, October 04, 2009 9:22 am To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
I like Jon's proposal. I want to keep list of accredited users on Wikinews as there's no reason it needs to be anywhere else. We can start having quick biogs of reporters on there if that's what people want. Agree with Gmail-Godaddy is forwarded to it anyway for me, so not too bothered. TBH I can't see it is worth it to get SUL-it's only a few things & you can have the same details. Thoughts on Jon's idea?
2009/10/4 Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
I was thinkin about this problem and here's what I came up with.
- Make Wikinewsie.org (main page), the blog.
- Allow trusted users to have an account on the blog to basically post what
they want. We always tell people "We don't do editorials, thats what blogs are for", well there you go. We can have our Offsite, non-official blog, where we can be POV. Well at least some people can do that stuff. Some people like me can stick to posting technical news.
- Stick to maintaining the accredited user list on en.Wikinews
- GoDaddy email/Calendar get replaced by Gmail Apps for your Domain. I
know their free version supports up to 25 users, we can probably email them and get more because we're kinda sorta non-profit.
- Keep the Wikinewsie wiki an embargoed wiki, we don't need a public
namespace on that.
- The answer to the "SUL-like" question is LDAP. I know you can easily tie
Mediawiki to LDAP and from my quick google'ing, wordpress too. That being said, is it worth it? I dunno. Then you have to maintain the LDAP service too, and that doesn't even mention the mail issue (you'd have to have your own app for that, no hosted deal). Oh, and I forgot the issue of permissions.
I'd be willing to volunteer for some the technical stuff, after all servers are kinda my thing.
-SGN
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 05:46, brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I want to see the blog resurrected on Wikinewsie - and perhaps others added there too. You can pretty much forget us getting a WMF-provided blog of any particular sort until we prove such will clearly fit the remit laid out to justify 501(c) status.
The Editors' Blog did not do too well for a variety of reasons. The scope was intended to be on the details of the news reporting process, yes with posts being single author and having a clear byline there is nothing wrong with opinion that would not meet NPOV. There is a problem with ranting anger that isn't cogently justified.
A more technical blog, or one with a focus on recent meta-news might work. There certainly isn't much chance of us being able to make submissions to the official WMF tech blog. In this case, WordPress is more appropriate than wiki technology because there is little collaboration on the published item, and a need for a widely-known simple comment system.
I set up Wikinewsie.org because, despite asking again and again, nobody would agree to give us @wikinews.org or even @en.wikinews.org email addresses. The rest is just because it'd be stupid not to have a web page matching the domain in the email addresses.
At Wikimania in Alexandria, there were nods of agreement from Sue, Jay, and Michael when I said I would like the WMF to take over the domain and provide the hosting. Since then nothing, but it is clear from current discussions that Wikinews is not a remotely important project when prioritising the issues the WMF has to deal with. There is an open invitation for stuff on the strategy wiki, and I would quite like to put that up there. However, we have to be able to say what the one-off and continuing costs are.
Realistically, we have to get the Wikinewsie site to a state where we could hand it over without requiring substantial up-front costs, or high ongoing ones. Those costs will fall on the WMF techies. We need to use open source applications that are believed to have been well tested, if not actually had their code audited. Where there is custom code, it should be as short as possible and simple enough to allow a speedy review or audit.
So, the current real pain in the ass with Wikinewsie is maintaining the list of accredited users. It looks like the closed wiki on there with the Public: namespace is the best option for that. Then the number of people who can maintain the data is much bigger, and the task is less technical.
If we change the wiki to the Vector skin and tweak it to look WMF-related, but noticeably enough different, that would be ideal. Then you need a Wordpress theme that matches this. What other glue do we need to hold the whole thing together? What open source tools would we replace Godaddy's email and calendar tools with? A last point is, can we integrate Wordpress, wiki, email, and calendar login a-la SUL? Can we do so with fine-grained enough control to give accredited reporters and admins access to the wiki, but not those who are only admins email? Do we have some sort of Wikinewsie super-bureaucrats who can say, yes, Bawolff gets permissions to go almost anywhere and change technical details, or kick off bug-fix updates. But not post to blog X because he isn't accredited.
Then, is there any specific feature we need from these tools that they don't provide? Can we persuade someone to develop that? I can see a calendar for working on news reporting being very useful if anyone can propose an upcoming event be added, those proposals being vetted, then appearing on a public calendar. That could be far more useful than the current on-wiki mechanism to propose a story.
Are there enough people interested in seeing this happen to work on it on-wiki and do some of the technical work? If so, I'll create a page, lay out what I think we should have, and invite others to do the same and comment on my ideas.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Around enWikinews - September '09 From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk Date: Sat, October 03, 2009 11:22 am To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
This is a good idea, but I was thinking it would be much better if we
could
have a blog that all accredited users could post to. I know we used to
have
one that I saw linked from Wikinewsie, but it would be much better if it
was
on Wikinews itself, similar to the Wikimedia and WIkimedia UK one. This could incorporate technical, visual or news updates from anyone who
wanted
to do one. Thoughts?
2009/10/3 brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org
In IRC, shen Shaka mentioned doing a newsletter type update I thought
it
would be a good idea to incorporate this into {{Howdy}} - give it an extra tab for "News" and embed another page or template with stuff
like
the below bulleted list.
Adding the extra tab is not a problem, but {{Howdy}} is already displaying badly in Firefox on Ubuntu. When I looked at it to see
about
adding an extra tab it is displayed such that the tabs along the top
are
wider than the box containing the currently displayed message. I can't see an obvious way within the {{Howdy}} template to, say, increase the template width to 90% of page width.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Around enWikinews - September '09 From: bawolff <bawolff+wn@gmail.com bawolff%2Bwn@gmail.com <
bawolff%2Bwn@gmail.com bawolff%252Bwn@gmail.com>>
Date: Fri, October 02, 2009 11:26 pm To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
In the interest of fairness, only one of thoose gadgets are mine.
The
other one is the original version stolen from the french
wikinewsies.
Cheers.
- Brian
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of
85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
wrote:
> I've been told at one point in time, we had a regularly scheduled
newsletter
> of the important goings on at Wikinews. I can't find it in the
list
> archives, but no matter. I figured it was about time to
start/resurrect
> it. After all, we do important things around here and if you
aren't on
the
> Wiki 24/7, you might miss something. So here are the important
highlights
> from last month: > > September 12th we had a banner day with 20 published articles in
one
day.
> [[Category:September 12, 2009]] - http://enwn.net/A029 > The RSS feed has been truncated to a more reasonable number - > http://feeds.feedburner.com/WikinewsLatestNews > We started a page to help Wikipedians better integrated with
Wikinews -
> [[Wikinews:For Wikipedians]] - http://enwn.net/197b > [[Wikinews:Make Lead]] has been integrated into Easy Peer Review
by
Bawolff
> - http://enwn.net/b05f > Bawolff also gave us not one but two different gadgets that
integrate
to
> Wiktionary [[WN:WiktLookup]] - http://enwn.net/F52b > As of September 16th, we're not being carried on Google News, due
to a
> change in MediaWiki. Bug #20818 - http://enwn.net/246c > Some article statistics were made [[User:ShakataGaNai/Statistics
Project]] -
> http://enwn.net/5967 > The [[Main Page]] is getting an overhaul, with the new design to
show
up in
> the next 24-48 hours - http://enwn.net/h > Policy proposed & passed to "Expire" Accredited Reports after 2
years.
> http://enwn.net/6972 > All the Water Coolers are now being archived (by month)
automatically.
> New Administrators: 1, New Editors: 5 > > Something important get forgotten? Want to help participate in
next
months
> newsletter? Stop by and leave a note on the respective months
entry:
> [[User:ShakataGaNai/Around_enWikinews]] - http://enwn.net/D132 > > > -- > Jon > [[User:ShakataGaNai]] > http://snowulf.com/ - Blog > http://snowulf.imagekind.com/ - Pictures > This has been a test of the emergency sig system. > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikinews-l mailing list > Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l > >
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
<hr>_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
-- Jon [[User:ShakataGaNai]] http://snowulf.com/ - Blog http://snowulf.imagekind.com/ - Pictures This has been a test of the emergency sig system.
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
<hr>_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Those points make sense-however the only issue with having multiple blogs is they look unused and dormant If there are too many.
On Sunday, October 4, 2009, brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
#blog on front page
I know who past accredited reporters were, and who some of those who still are, are.
Sooner or later someone will "rant" in an inappropriate and extremely poorly thought out way. Sure, it is themselves they're opening up to comments that rip their arguments apart for being poorly thought out and not based in reality. But it will reflect poorly on us all, and look highly unprofessional. That's why I would rather have more than one blog, define a clear scope for any blogs we do have, not have them in-your-face up-front, and if anyone does feel the need to "rant" they do it on their own personal blog.
#list of accredited users on wikinewsie
The email domain is @http://wikinewsie.org. If you contact someone, and they decide to see who/what a "Wikinewsie" is, they'll look at that domain's website. If they're redirected to en.wn, they could attach all the "unreliable", "anyone can change it", &c connotations from seeing a wiki. Presenting the data (list of reporters & bios) in such a way that it looks 'cast-in-stone', and unalterable is more credible.
I am also on ComCom, and have access to the OTRS queue for press queries sent to the WMF. You do tend to carry out these sort of checks, you do want to "know thine enemy" before responding. Just like when someone emails from a gmail address, and says they're from the NYT, you make an effort to verify this is true. This can even be emailing back and asking for contact from a @nyt address.
#google for email
I'm doing my best to keep my email out of the UK government's super-database. I have zero assurances or trust Google won't give up that information if told "He's a UK peon, we say you're one of his ISPs, give all the data". If you think it won't happen, look at how they cooperate with China. At least USians have the current attempt to get telcos bitchslapped for warantless wiretapping, not so for many others.
I have used gmail accounts as a convenient and semi-anonymous free email address. If I ever intend to say something I would prefer difficult to pin on me, I always retrieve and send email with POP/SMTP *through Tor*. Let's see a show of hands as to how many people on this list, accredited or not, could actually do that.
I am disinclined to use Google for wikinewsie stuff on that basis, they're not really the techie "do-no-evil" company anymore, they're an advertising and marketing company. They will always collect data to make saleable statistics - I prefer to "poison the well" and skew the statistics over helpfully providing such data.
As Jon says, we've had this Google Apps argument before. I've 20 years experience in IT with a big chunk of that in cellular telecoms, I used to get my hands on 1/4" mag tapes with a full month's call details for all a service provider's subscribers; who called, for how long, which tower(s) handled the call, all the numbers dialled that didn't answer. There has never been any thought that this data belongs to the subscriber. That attitude has never changed, just a variety of concessions to stop customers running away screaming, or compliance with whatever government legislation is enacted to give the appearance of privacy.
So I'm fairly sure my position is well-informed. Google will quickly and quietly fold in the face of concerns from a sovereign government. We're trying to be journalists, using Google is like Bob Woodward faxing all his reporter's notes to a document storage company that would hand them over the second Tricky Dicky asked.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinewsie From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk Date: Sun, October 04, 2009 9:22 am To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
I like Jon's proposal. I want to keep list of accredited users on Wikinews as there's no reason it needs to be anywhere else. We can start having quick biogs of reporters on there if that's what people want. Agree with Gmail-Godaddy is forwarded to it anyway for me, so not too bothered. TBH I can't see it is worth it to get SUL-it's only a few things & you can have the same details. Thoughts on Jon's idea?
2009/10/4 Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
I was thinkin about this problem and here's what I came up with.
- Make Wikinewsie.org (main page), the blog.
- Allow trusted users to have an account on the blog to basically post what
they want. We always tell people "We don't do editorials, thats what blogs are for", well there you go. We can have our Offsite, non-official blog, where we can be POV. Well at least some people can do that stuff. Some people like me can stick to posting technical news.
- Stick to maintaining the accredited user list on en.Wikinews
- GoDaddy email/Calendar get replaced by Gmail Apps for your Domain. I
know their free version supports up to 25 users, we can probably email them and get more because we're kinda sorta non-profit.
- Keep the Wikinewsie wiki an embargoed wiki, we don't need a public
namespace on that.
- The answer to the "SUL-like" question is LDAP. I know you can easily tie
Mediawiki to LDAP and from my quick google'ing, wordpress too. That being said, is it worth it? I dunno. Then you have to maintain the LDAP service too, and that doesn't even mention the mail issue (you'd have to have your own app for that, no hosted deal). Oh, and I forgot the issue of permissions.
I'd be willing to volunteer for some the technical stuff, after all servers are kinda my thing.
-SGN
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 05:46, brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I want to see the blog resurrected on Wikinewsie - and perhaps others added there too. You can pretty much forget us getting a WMF-provided blog of any particular sort until we prove such will clearly fit the remit laid out to justify 501(c) status.
The Editors' Blog did not do too well for a variety of reasons. The scope was intended to be on the details of the news reporting process, yes with posts being single author and having a clear byline there is nothing wrong with opinion that would not meet NPOV. There is a problem with ranting anger that isn't cogently justified.
A more technical blog, or one with a focus on recent meta-news might work. There certainly isn't much chance of us being able to make submissions to the official WMF tech blog. In this case, WordPress is more appropriate than wiki technology because there is little collaboration on the published item, and a need for a widely-known simple comment system.
I set up Wikinewsie.org because, despite asking again and again, nobody would agree to give us @http://wikinews.org or even @http://en.wikinews.org email addresses. The rest is just because it'd be stupid not to have a web page matching the domain in the email addresses.
At Wikimania in Alexandria, there were nods of agreement from Sue, Jay, and Michael when I said I would like the WMF to take over the domain and provide the hosting. Since then nothing, but it is clear from current discussions that Wikinews is not a remotely important project when prioritising the issues the WMF has to deal with. There is an open invitation fo> >> bawolff%2Bwn@gmail.com bawolff%252Bwn@gmail.com>>
> Date: Fri, October 02, 2009 11:26 pm > To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > In the interest of fairness, only one of thoose gadgets are mine.
The
> other one is the original version stolen from the french
wikinewsies.
> Cheers. > -- > - Brian > Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of
85
> million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight. > > > > On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
wrote:
> > I've been told at one point in time, we had a regularly scheduled newsletter > > of the important goings on at Wikinews. I can't find it in the
list
> > archives, but no matter. I figured it was about time to start/resurrect > > it. After all, we do important things around here and if you
aren't on
the > > Wiki 24/7, you might miss something. So here are the important highlights > > from last month: > > > > September 12th we had a banner day with 20 published articles in
one
day. > > [[Category:September 12, 2009]] - http://enwn.net/A029 > > The RSS feed has been truncated to a more reasonable number - > > http://feeds.feedburner.com/WikinewsLatestNews > > We started a page to help Wikipedians better integrated with
Wikinews -
> > [[Wikinews:For Wikipedians]] - http://enwn.net/197b > > [[Wikinews:Make Lead]] has been integrated into Easy Peer Review
by
Bawolff > > - http://enwn.net/b05f > > Bawolff also gave us not one but two different gadgets that
integrate
to > > Wiktionary [[WN:WiktLookup]] - http://enwn.net/F52b > > As of September 16th, we're not being carried on Google News, due
to a
> > change in MediaWiki. Bug #20818 - http://enwn.net/246c > > Some article statistics were made [[User:ShakataGaNai/Statistics Project]] - > > http://enwn.net/5967 > > The [[Main Page]] is getting an overhaul, with the new design to
show
up in > > the next 24-48 hours - http://enwn.net/h > > Policy proposed & passed to "Expire" Accredited Reports after 2
years.
> > http://enwn.net/6972 > > All the Water Coolers are now being archived (by month)
automatically.
> > New Administrators: 1, New Editors: 5
I'd suggest 3 wikinewsie blogs, for the reasons specified by Tristan and Brian (rants look unprofessional, but unused personal blogs do too, if they're associated with Wikinews). Blog 1: technical stuff related to Wikinews. Blog 2: strict editorial content. Rules are much the same as they are with an on-wiki article, but the NPoV requirement is dropped (and probably a few of the other reqs as well). Blog 3: Combined personal space for accredited reports, for any crap that doesn't fit in either of the other 2 blogs (including the occasional inappropriate rant that we *know* will happen whether we want it to or not).
I've read blogs before that attempt to combine those 3 separate aspects of blogging into a single blog, and it does indeed look unprofessional (see the badastronomy blog for an example. You have Science posts (good), editorial posts (the author can do as he pleases I guess), and rants (bad) all in one section). I think we should attempt to avoid this problem by separating out our ranting, editorials, and technical content. That way people can *choose* want parts they read and what they don't.
gopher65 -------------------------------------------------- From: brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2009 6:13 AM To: "Wikinews mailing list" wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinewsie
#blog on front page
I know who past accredited reporters were, and who some of those who still are, are.
Sooner or later someone will "rant" in an inappropriate and extremely poorly thought out way. Sure, it is themselves they're opening up to comments that rip their arguments apart for being poorly thought out and not based in reality. But it will reflect poorly on us all, and look highly unprofessional. That's why I would rather have more than one blog, define a clear scope for any blogs we do have, not have them in-your-face up-front, and if anyone does feel the need to "rant" they do it on their own personal blog.
#list of accredited users on wikinewsie
The email domain is @wikinewsie.org. If you contact someone, and they decide to see who/what a "Wikinewsie" is, they'll look at that domain's website. If they're redirected to en.wn, they could attach all the "unreliable", "anyone can change it", &c connotations from seeing a wiki. Presenting the data (list of reporters & bios) in such a way that it looks 'cast-in-stone', and unalterable is more credible.
I am also on ComCom, and have access to the OTRS queue for press queries sent to the WMF. You do tend to carry out these sort of checks, you do want to "know thine enemy" before responding. Just like when someone emails from a gmail address, and says they're from the NYT, you make an effort to verify this is true. This can even be emailing back and asking for contact from a @nyt address.
#google for email
I'm doing my best to keep my email out of the UK government's super-database. I have zero assurances or trust Google won't give up that information if told "He's a UK peon, we say you're one of his ISPs, give all the data". If you think it won't happen, look at how they cooperate with China. At least USians have the current attempt to get telcos bitchslapped for warantless wiretapping, not so for many others.
I have used gmail accounts as a convenient and semi-anonymous free email address. If I ever intend to say something I would prefer difficult to pin on me, I always retrieve and send email with POP/SMTP *through Tor*. Let's see a show of hands as to how many people on this list, accredited or not, could actually do that.
I am disinclined to use Google for wikinewsie stuff on that basis, they're not really the techie "do-no-evil" company anymore, they're an advertising and marketing company. They will always collect data to make saleable statistics - I prefer to "poison the well" and skew the statistics over helpfully providing such data.
As Jon says, we've had this Google Apps argument before. I've 20 years experience in IT with a big chunk of that in cellular telecoms, I used to get my hands on 1/4" mag tapes with a full month's call details for all a service provider's subscribers; who called, for how long, which tower(s) handled the call, all the numbers dialled that didn't answer. There has never been any thought that this data belongs to the subscriber. That attitude has never changed, just a variety of concessions to stop customers running away screaming, or compliance with whatever government legislation is enacted to give the appearance of privacy.
So I'm fairly sure my position is well-informed. Google will quickly and quietly fold in the face of concerns from a sovereign government. We're trying to be journalists, using Google is like Bob Woodward faxing all his reporter's notes to a document storage company that would hand them over the second Tricky Dicky asked.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Wikinewsie From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk Date: Sun, October 04, 2009 9:22 am To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
I like Jon's proposal. I want to keep list of accredited users on Wikinews as there's no reason it needs to be anywhere else. We can start having quick biogs of reporters on there if that's what people want. Agree with Gmail-Godaddy is forwarded to it anyway for me, so not too bothered. TBH I can't see it is worth it to get SUL-it's only a few things & you can have the same details. Thoughts on Jon's idea?
2009/10/4 Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
I was thinkin about this problem and here's what I came up with.
- Make Wikinewsie.org (main page), the blog.
- Allow trusted users to have an account on the blog to basically post
what they want. We always tell people "We don't do editorials, thats what blogs are for", well there you go. We can have our Offsite, non-official blog, where we can be POV. Well at least some people can do that stuff. Some people like me can stick to posting technical news.
- Stick to maintaining the accredited user list on en.Wikinews
- GoDaddy email/Calendar get replaced by Gmail Apps for your Domain. I
know their free version supports up to 25 users, we can probably email them and get more because we're kinda sorta non-profit.
- Keep the Wikinewsie wiki an embargoed wiki, we don't need a public
namespace on that.
- The answer to the "SUL-like" question is LDAP. I know you can easily
tie Mediawiki to LDAP and from my quick google'ing, wordpress too. That being said, is it worth it? I dunno. Then you have to maintain the LDAP service too, and that doesn't even mention the mail issue (you'd have to have your own app for that, no hosted deal). Oh, and I forgot the issue of permissions.
I'd be willing to volunteer for some the technical stuff, after all servers are kinda my thing.
-SGN
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 05:46, brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I want to see the blog resurrected on Wikinewsie - and perhaps others added there too. You can pretty much forget us getting a WMF-provided blog of any particular sort until we prove such will clearly fit the remit laid out to justify 501(c) status.
The Editors' Blog did not do too well for a variety of reasons. The scope was intended to be on the details of the news reporting process, yes with posts being single author and having a clear byline there is nothing wrong with opinion that would not meet NPOV. There is a problem with ranting anger that isn't cogently justified.
A more technical blog, or one with a focus on recent meta-news might work. There certainly isn't much chance of us being able to make submissions to the official WMF tech blog. In this case, WordPress is more appropriate than wiki technology because there is little collaboration on the published item, and a need for a widely-known simple comment system.
I set up Wikinewsie.org because, despite asking again and again, nobody would agree to give us @wikinews.org or even @en.wikinews.org email addresses. The rest is just because it'd be stupid not to have a web page matching the domain in the email addresses.
At Wikimania in Alexandria, there were nods of agreement from Sue, Jay, and Michael when I said I would like the WMF to take over the domain and provide the hosting. Since then nothing, but it is clear from current discussions that Wikinews is not a remotely important project when prioritising the issues the WMF has to deal with. There is an open invitation for stuff on the strategy wiki, and I would quite like to put that up there. However, we have to be able to say what the one-off and continuing costs are.
Realistically, we have to get the Wikinewsie site to a state where we could hand it over without requiring substantial up-front costs, or high ongoing ones. Those costs will fall on the WMF techies. We need to use open source applications that are believed to have been well tested, if not actually had their code audited. Where there is custom code, it should be as short as possible and simple enough to allow a speedy review or audit.
So, the current real pain in the ass with Wikinewsie is maintaining the list of accredited users. It looks like the closed wiki on there with the Public: namespace is the best option for that. Then the number of people who can maintain the data is much bigger, and the task is less technical.
If we change the wiki to the Vector skin and tweak it to look WMF-related, but noticeably enough different, that would be ideal. Then you need a Wordpress theme that matches this. What other glue do we need to hold the whole thing together? What open source tools would we replace Godaddy's email and calendar tools with? A last point is, can we integrate Wordpress, wiki, email, and calendar login a-la SUL? Can we do so with fine-grained enough control to give accredited reporters and admins access to the wiki, but not those who are only admins email? Do we have some sort of Wikinewsie super-bureaucrats who can say, yes, Bawolff gets permissions to go almost anywhere and change technical details, or kick off bug-fix updates. But not post to blog X because he isn't accredited.
Then, is there any specific feature we need from these tools that they don't provide? Can we persuade someone to develop that? I can see a calendar for working on news reporting being very useful if anyone can propose an upcoming event be added, those proposals being vetted, then appearing on a public calendar. That could be far more useful than the current on-wiki mechanism to propose a story.
Are there enough people interested in seeing this happen to work on it on-wiki and do some of the technical work? If so, I'll create a page, lay out what I think we should have, and invite others to do the same and comment on my ideas.
Brian.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Around enWikinews - September '09 From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk Date: Sat, October 03, 2009 11:22 am To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org
This is a good idea, but I was thinking it would be much better if we
could
have a blog that all accredited users could post to. I know we used to
have
one that I saw linked from Wikinewsie, but it would be much better if it
was
on Wikinews itself, similar to the Wikimedia and WIkimedia UK one. This could incorporate technical, visual or news updates from anyone who
wanted
to do one. Thoughts?
2009/10/3 brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org
In IRC, shen Shaka mentioned doing a newsletter type update I thought
it
would be a good idea to incorporate this into {{Howdy}} - give it an extra tab for "News" and embed another page or template with stuff
like
the below bulleted list.
Adding the extra tab is not a problem, but {{Howdy}} is already displaying badly in Firefox on Ubuntu. When I looked at it to see
about
adding an extra tab it is displayed such that the tabs along the top
are
wider than the box containing the currently displayed message. I can't see an obvious way within the {{Howdy}} template to, say, increase the template width to 90% of page width.
Brian.
> -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Around enWikinews - September '09 > From: bawolff <bawolff+wn@gmail.com bawolff%2Bwn@gmail.com <
bawolff%2Bwn@gmail.com bawolff%252Bwn@gmail.com>>
> Date: Fri, October 02, 2009 11:26 pm > To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > In the interest of fairness, only one of thoose gadgets are > mine.
The
> other one is the original version stolen from the french
wikinewsies.
> Cheers. > -- > - Brian > Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent > of
85
> million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight. > > > > On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Jon Davis wiki@konsoletek.com
wrote:
> > I've been told at one point in time, we had a regularly > > scheduled newsletter > > of the important goings on at Wikinews. I can't find it in > > the
list
> > archives, but no matter. I figured it was about time to start/resurrect > > it. After all, we do important things around here and if you
aren't on
the > > Wiki 24/7, you might miss something. So here are the > > important highlights > > from last month: > > > > September 12th we had a banner day with 20 published articles > > in
one
day. > > [[Category:September 12, 2009]] - http://enwn.net/A029 > > The RSS feed has been truncated to a more reasonable number - > > http://feeds.feedburner.com/WikinewsLatestNews > > We started a page to help Wikipedians better integrated with
Wikinews -
> > [[Wikinews:For Wikipedians]] - http://enwn.net/197b > > [[Wikinews:Make Lead]] has been integrated into Easy Peer > > Review
by
Bawolff > > - http://enwn.net/b05f > > Bawolff also gave us not one but two different gadgets that
integrate
to > > Wiktionary [[WN:WiktLookup]] - http://enwn.net/F52b > > As of September 16th, we're not being carried on Google News, > > due
to a
> > change in MediaWiki. Bug #20818 - http://enwn.net/246c > > Some article statistics were made > > [[User:ShakataGaNai/Statistics Project]] - > > http://enwn.net/5967 > > The [[Main Page]] is getting an overhaul, with the new design > > to
show
up in > > the next 24-48 hours - http://enwn.net/h > > Policy proposed & passed to "Expire" Accredited Reports after > > 2
years.
> > http://enwn.net/6972 > > All the Water Coolers are now being archived (by month)
automatically.
> > New Administrators: 1, New Editors: 5 > > > > Something important get forgotten? Want to help participate in
next
months > > newsletter? Stop by and leave a note on the respective months
entry:
> > [[User:ShakataGaNai/Around_enWikinews]] - http://enwn.net/D132 > > > > > > -- > > Jon > > [[User:ShakataGaNai]] > > http://snowulf.com/ - Blog > > http://snowulf.imagekind.com/ - Pictures > > This has been a test of the emergency sig system. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikinews-l mailing list > > Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikinews-l mailing list > Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
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-- Jon [[User:ShakataGaNai]] http://snowulf.com/ - Blog http://snowulf.imagekind.com/ - Pictures This has been a test of the emergency sig system.
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