[Foundation-l] Wikinews->Wikipedia bot

[Brian McNeil]

User RichardF from English Wikipedia came over to Wikinews asking if there
was any way to automatically include links to Wikinews articles in
Category/Topic portals on Wikipedia.

 

With a very short delay, user slackr (also on en.wp) has devised a bot,
which will take the output of DPLs on portal sub-pages on Wikinews and
format it into a template for use on the corresponding WP portal. One
example would be en.wp's television portal.

 

As this has all been a case of IRC and talk page "who do I ask?" stuff this
possibly hasn't had a lot of publicity. Although, on the Wikinews mailing
list there has been some enthusiasm and a suggestion it would be very useful
on other language project pairs.

 

I think this has a lot of potential - depending on where it is used. At
least on the English Wikinews many articles are primarily the work of one
contributor, Virginia Tech and the London bombings are obvious exceptions to
this. It also has the obvious advantage that with an appropriate "update
this list" invitation can increase Wikipedia contributors writing on the
Wikinews project.

 

So far we've had one French contributor say they'd like it on their wiki, I
suspect the Polish would be interested in it too, IIRC they have a deal to
dual-license some news from another source who'll also pick up their
coverage. Not so sure about the ."derivative". logo on their front page
though. http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna .

 

 

Brian McNeil