One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution.
Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise.
So, for example, I would set a notice that Senator Chris Dodd is holding a public discussion about health care reform on such-and-such date in Hartford, Connecticut. I mark this as a photo opportunity and a reporting opportunity. The system sets a default radius (or better yet, users specify the radius they want to be notified within) and everyone within x kilometers of Hartford who has opted in to the notice gets a watchlist message pointing to more details. I can imagine a wide range of tips and events that could be spread to the right people with such a system.
This would do a couple things: it would draw in new users to Wikinews, and given enough participation it could provide a resource that is useful for professional journalists. Journalists are eager to figure out useful ways to tap the knowledge of amateurs, and a widely used geography-based tip-line is something that Wikimedia still has a chance to be the first organization to do well. I think finding a way to play a major part in the ongoing changes in the journalism world ought to be a high priority for the Foundation.
-Sage Ross (User:Ragesoss)
That is a great idea, which incidentely resembles my idea to geocode all commons users to facilitate photo requests. :-) The response back then was... ...underwhelming (but I'm getting used to that.. sob :-( )
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geocode_Users?withJS=MediaWiki:Geo...
Daniel Schwen wrote:
That is a great idea, which incidentely resembles my idea to geocode all commons users to facilitate photo requests. :-) The response back then was... ...underwhelming (but I'm getting used to that.. sob :-( )
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geocode_Users?withJS=MediaWiki:Geo...
I think that tagging events and having users watch zones is a better way than having the users publish their location so they can be bugged about it. It also has the added benefit of creating a log of 'what has happened in this zone' when the event finishes. I'd say go for it.
than having the users publish their location so they can be bugged about it.
The idea was to have users "subscribe" to a feed (possibly posted by a bot onto a subpage in their user space). Articles are geocoded in any case so it makes perfect sense to have users post their location and have a bot match articles with missing images to users in the area. It also would make "requests for better images" feasible if they would get pushed to the user, instead of them having to check for potential work. Why would you even call this "bugging" the users? People sign up for a reason, and that is to contribute, not to be left alone.
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Daniel Schwenlists@schwen.de wrote:
than having the users publish their location so they can be bugged about it.
The idea was to have users "subscribe" to a feed (possibly posted by a bot onto a subpage in their user space). Articles are geocoded in any case so it makes perfect sense to have users post their location and have a bot match articles with missing images to users in the area. It also would make "requests for better images" feasible if they would get pushed to the user, instead of them having to check for potential work. Why would you even call this "bugging" the users? People sign up for a reason, and that is to contribute, not to be left alone.
Semantic MediaWiki has the ability to do geocode searches within a radius of an area. That search then has an RSS feed the user can subscribe to. I'm not proposing wikinews use SMW; however, a feature like this seems more appropriate than pushing things to users.
Don't people sign up to work on stuff they feel like working on? I could see how pushing everything within a radius of them could get a little annoying.
V/r,
Ryan Lane
than having the users publish their location so they can be bugged about it.
The idea was to have users "subscribe" to a feed (possibly posted by a bot onto a subpage in their user space). Articles are geocoded in any
Don't people sign up to work on stuff they feel like working on? I could see how pushing everything within a radius of them could get a
I thought 'subscribe' was a synonym for 'sign up'. Maybe I ought to sign up on Wiktionary...
Daniel Schwen wrote:
than having the users publish their location so they can be bugged about it.
The idea was to have users "subscribe" to a feed (possibly posted by a bot onto a subpage in their user space). Articles are geocoded in any case so it makes perfect sense to have users post their location and have a bot match articles with missing images to users in the area. It also would make "requests for better images" feasible if they would get pushed to the user, instead of them having to check for potential work. Why would you even call this "bugging" the users? People sign up for a reason, and that is to contribute, not to be left alone.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Geocode_Users?withJS=MediaWiki:Geo... seem to be just a way to geotag users. I don't see such feed. Perhaps I'm missing something.
I think that a toolserver page for 'How can I help in this area?' would be preferable.
seem to be just a way to geotag users. I don't see such feed. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Yeah, the discussion on VP about the whole endeavor. Not much resonance = no point in pursuing it. You need a large userbase (i.e. spatial coverage) for this to make sense.
The Strategic Planning wiki is a good place to discuss this idea and how it changed and/or implemented: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals/Geonotice_improvements http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposals/Geonotice_improvements
-Sage
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Sage Rossragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution.
Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise.
So, for example, I would set a notice that Senator Chris Dodd is holding a public discussion about health care reform on such-and-such date in Hartford, Connecticut. I mark this as a photo opportunity and a reporting opportunity. The system sets a default radius (or better yet, users specify the radius they want to be notified within) and everyone within x kilometers of Hartford who has opted in to the notice gets a watchlist message pointing to more details. I can imagine a wide range of tips and events that could be spread to the right people with such a system.
This would do a couple things: it would draw in new users to Wikinews, and given enough participation it could provide a resource that is useful for professional journalists. Journalists are eager to figure out useful ways to tap the knowledge of amateurs, and a widely used geography-based tip-line is something that Wikimedia still has a chance to be the first organization to do well. I think finding a way to play a major part in the ongoing changes in the journalism world ought to be a high priority for the Foundation.
-Sage Ross (User:Ragesoss)
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Sage Rossragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
One of the great frustrations of Wikinews for me is that it doesn't have a system for identifying and pointing users toward opportunities to get out into the offline world and do original reporting. A fine-grained cross-project opt-in geonotice system could be a solution.
Here's how I imagine it working: there is a new opt-in geonotice (in addition to the current one that reaches everyone in the specified geography). For the opt-in geonotice (which would hopefully be able to reach across projects, since many causal Wikinewsies visit that site only rarely) any trusted user could add new items to let nearby people know about reporting or photography opportunities. For these opt-in notices, we would not need to lock down the ability to add items like we do for the current geonotice system (it's a fully protected page), since people who opt-in will expect a bit a noise.
I think this would be awesome to try out! Geonotices have proved to be wonderful for helping out with local meetups; I can even imagine having two filters, opt-into notifications for local events and opt-into notifications for wikinews stuff. Both pages to set the notifications could be unprotected, and we could just see how it went.
That is all :) phoebe
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org