New subject: Wikinewsie

4 Oct 2009

#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 &lt;tris(a)waterhay.co.uk&gt;
 Date: Sun, October 04, 2009 9:22 am
 To: Wikinews mailing list &lt;wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;

 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 &lt;wiki(a)konsoletek.com&gt;

  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, &lt;brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org&gt; 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 &lt;tris(a)waterhay.co.uk&gt;
 Date: Sat, October 03, 2009 11:22 am
 To: Wikinews mailing list &lt;wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;

 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 &lt;brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org&gt;

 > 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 &lt;bawolff+wn(a)gmail.com &lt;bawolff%2Bwn(a)gmail.com&gt; <
 bawolff%2Bwn(a)gmail.com &lt;bawolff%252Bwn(a)gmail.com&gt;&gt;&gt;
  > > Date: Fri, October 02, 2009 11:26 pm
 > > To: Wikinews mailing list &lt;wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
 > >
 > >
 > > 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 &lt;wiki(a)konsoletek.com&gt; 
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(a)lists.wikimedia.org
 > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
 > > >
 > > >
 > >
 > > _______________________________________________
 > > Wikinews-l mailing list
 > > Wikinews-l(a)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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