[Wikinews-l] Wikinews is too rigid? Introducing some flexibility?New contributors?

Sun Sep 6 23:26:00 UTC 2009

Something else to consider,  maybe we should make some more user talk page
templates that can be used to help people along (especially if we can drop
them _before_ they goto our deletion warning messages, like {{abandoned}}.
Example: "Hey, I see you've started a new article, remember to do these 3
very important things and put it into {{review}} when you're read" --
Basically any common problem we have, we should have a talk page template
for it and we should make sure EVERYONE uses them.  If you want to mark an
article as {{abandoned}}, inform the user.  I've seen more than a few cases
where users have come back later and said "Hey, why did you mark this as
abandoned/deleted it. I was done".  Let's be fair, our way of doing this is
unique to the ENTIRE WMF community.  Additionally, I recently stole off
Commons "User Messages" Gadget (goto Preferences > Gadgets > UI Gadgets --
to turn it on).  Basically it adds a SHIT TON of options in your Toolbox
when on a Usertalk page.  This makes it _ultra_ simple to leave talk page
messages (You don't even have to remember what exactly they say, there is
help text).

I am also considering stealing off with their "Quick Delete" gadget which
would enable us to have 1 click to tag an article (for example) as abandoned
_AND_ notify to user.  Might require some fine tuning by our local JS
masters, but it would be useful.

As for {{copy edit}}.  I'm not saying make it required, but it would be nice
as an option.  I can review any article I want, because I've got editor, but
I can't copy edit for shit.  There are other people who can copy edit
superbly, but don't have Editor yet.  Make it easy for everyone to find each
other.  I realize this was shot down when the system was being developed,
but it's been around for a while, would others find this helpful? Or am I
the only failure of a writer around here?

-SGN/Jon

On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 04:35, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org>wrote:

>  Okay, I won’t dispute that the [[WN:SG]] is long, and something pretty
> difficult to sit down and go through. The old welcome template used to
> effectively tell all new contributors they had to read the entire set of
> policies, and that was why I introduced {{Howdy}} and the associated essay
> [[WN:ARTICLE]]. Despite this, and Tempodivalse’s efforts as our local
> Wal-Mart greeter, virtually nobody seems to read it – dozens of stories
> appear with Camel Case titles, people bypass article creation forms and
> don’t have date templates, and there are a lot of {{copyvio}}s put up.
>
>
>
> That’s a focus on our ‘traditional’ article, and it is what we ideally want
> a lot more of. Problem is, the reality of the world is that **most**
> people couldn’t string something like that together if their life depended
> on it. Combine that with recent media trends to dumb-down and be highly
> partisan (eg Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” myth), and you have a situation
> where most people wouldn’t know neutrality if it bit them in the ass, you
> end up with a widespread belief that news needs to be sensationalist before
> anyone will take an interest in it. Even some of Wikinews’ most prolific
> contributors are influenced by this sensationalising.
>
>
>
> So, Jon’s suggestion seems to be to diversify somewhat – and I think that’s
> worth pursuing.
>
>
>
>    - Photoessays?
>
> Yup, it’d be nice to see more photographic work featured on Wikinews, and
> ideally this would be accompanied with a short associated article that puts
> the photographs in context. It isn’t happening, so how can we lower the bar
> and get more photoessays? I’ve no problem with trimming back the writing
> requirement to the equivalent of a single entry in our current ‘shorts’
> style – as long as the event where the photos were taken is put in context,
> i.e. some attempt to cover the 5W & H.
>
>
>
> The place to recruit people for this sort of work is Commons. The obvious
> pitch to them is getting their photographs showcased, and an article
> collecting them linked to from Google News. I’d be happy to take that up on
> Commons’ equivalent of the Water Cooler and try and engage Commoners in
> working towards [[WN:PHOTOESSAY]] as an equivalent to [[WN:ARTICLE]].
>
>
>
> Perhaps for this type of article we need a slightly different {{peer
> review}} template?
>
>
>
>
>
>    - Ultra-shorts
>
> So, we’re talking a single paragraph to answer 5H&W, and some mechanism to
> present these on the main page outside the main Latest news section.
> Assuming we figure out how to do that we really have to consider that some
> of these will go on to become full articles. We don’t want the ultra-short
> bit expanded dramatically, but a complete whole article. In any case, the
> current shorts is a nightmare when it comes time to review it.
>
>
>
>    - Local
>
> Really local news has been done in the past, just not very well. There is a
> category Local news, and it’s trivial to exclude that from the main page.
> Verifiability is the biggest headache there.
>
>
>
>    - {{copyedit}}
>
> Nope. This was part of my initial proposal for an article flow, and was
> shot down. From experience of what has happened since FlaggedRevs was
> introduced I would say copyediting should be a part of the review process.
> Now that I’ve adopted the peer review gadget I frequently see myself using
> the comments parameter to tell people to look at the edits I made before
> reviewing and publishing. I think we really have to accept that reviewers
> are going to be required to do a lot of the copyediting.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Brian.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
> wikinews-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Jon Davis
> *Sent:* 06 September 2009 07:27
> *To:* Wikinews mailing list; scoop at wikinewsie.org
> *Subject:* [Wikinews-l] Wikinews is too rigid? Introducing some
> flexibility?New contributors?
>
>
>
> All,
> I've been kicking around some thoughts for a while, and I felt it was time
> to share and see if I can get some feedback on and maybe some traction for
> change.
>
> == Long Version ==
> We all want new contributors, after all, there is like 20 of us that are
> really active at any given time.  Hell, I could probably give the names of
> everyone that is reasonably active on Wikinews off the top of my head.  We
> all know when someone goes missing, because something drops, either article
> output falls a few articles a day or audio wikinews ceases to exist all
> together, or the review queue backups. Wikinews biggest problem is burn out,
> we _all_ have to contribute a significant amount of time or the project dies
> (See also: Holidays).
>
> So how do we get new contributors?
>
> KISS.  Keep It Simple, Stupid.  Our "defining guide" is [[WN:SG]].  Who
> here can honestly say they've read every single line?  I'm sure a few can,
> but I know I haven't.  It is 20 printed pages.  The only "easier" guide on
> getting started that I know of is [[Wikinews:Writing an article]] and that
> is 6 pages, that is still too length in my book.   We should have a goal
> that a new user  (who understands Wiki-syntax) can come in, read the basics
> and get started writing in less than X time.  What is X time? I'd say 15
> minutes, tops.
>
> Second part, user interest in the topic.  I'm interested in many things,
> but I'm not that much of a news writer that I think I can scratch out 3
> decent paragraphs on it, which is our minimum.  This leads to me to my next
> point...
>
> While I love what goes on with Wikinews, sometimes I get the feeling that
> we're too rigid.  As mentioned previously our Style Guide is lengthy, and
> not only is it the guide - it is basically our rules for publishing.  Part
> of that is that we must have 3 paragraphs.  While I think that is great
> because it forces us to push up the quality of articles... but we set the
> bar very high for new contributors.  You can come into Wikipedia and create
> a new article with one sentence and it might have a chance of staying around
> and becoming worth while.  Wikinews, it won't, period.  I think we might
> want consider alternatives to the "regular article" and what standards we
> should have for those.  Hopefully these can lower the barrier to entry, and
> give us some flexibility into helping people get their stories published
> rather than the flat "too short, stale, delete it" mind set.
>
> For example: Shorts, local & photo journalism.  All 3 of these types of
> news we accept in some form now, but maybe not as easily as should.  For
> example shorts have to be combined into a days worth of shorts (with at
> least 2 or 3 stories).  Local news is the same as any other news.  Photo
> Journalism?  Well I haven't seen too much of it, and that which I've
> personally submitted, I've had to beg and bribe (ok, mostly bribing) to get
> it published without 3 paragraphs of accompanying text.
>
> We could consider adding something like "Shorts: " to the beginning of a
> short story, and allowing it to go as a one paragraph story.  We could even
> have a "Shorts" category that would exclude it from being published in the
> "Latest News" section on the Main Page we have now.  Maybe it can have it's
> own little section on the front page.  Local could follow the same theory,
> allow it to be shorter in order to entice users to come and write a little
> bit about their on goings of their home town.  If they write something
> large/long/good enough we'll even remove the "hide from 'latest news' flag"
> (What ever that would be) and that would push it up out of the dark depths.
> That entices people to not only come and start (because it is easier to
> write one paragraph) but it also entices them to write more/better as they
> get more accustomed to our way of doing things because they want their
> article to get more promotion.
>
> Photo Journalism.  Basically if the user is submitting a majority of
> pictures (say more than 5-6 pictures of an Event), the requirements for
> writing anything more than clear and concise caption should be tossed out
> the window.  How many people go to events and take a bunch of pictures that
> could be turned into an interesting "Photo Essay" (or what ever you want to
> call it) that turn away from Wikinews because they don't want to write
> paragraphs and paragraphs?  I know that I personally have opt'd to not
> "cover" something because I didn't think I could manage to write 3
> paragraphs on what ever it was.  Hey, I'm a photog, not a writer.  That even
> was on my Accreditation Request, it's not like it was a secret.
>
> Something that is underlying to all of this that I haven't mentioned
> previously:  We need to make Wikinews _single writer friendly_ NOW.  It has
> long since been established that unless something major is going on, you are
> probably going to be the only one writing an article.  If we start to pull
> in people covering local events, this is going to be doubly so.  So we need
> to do everything in our power to make the process friendly for one person to
> go through.  I honestly don't have any suggestion on what that should be,
> other than to keep that in mind.
>
> Lastly, I'd like to propose the addition of one optional step to our
> publishing process.  A {{Copy Edit}} or similarly named template that
> basically states "Hey, I've finished this article, but I'd appreciate it if
> someone would copy edit this article before placing it into review".  Again,
> personal experience, I'm not a very good writer, I know my work needs to be
> copy edited.  Why not make it easier for the copy editors out there to seek
> out what they should work on.  I've got two people who I've managed to drag
> in on occasion to do copy editing because they are good at it.  I've only
> done it for my work, or what I happen to see as being egregiously bad.
>
>
> == Short Version ==
> * Make short versions of our key "getting started" documents (WN:SG,
> Wikinews:Writing an article, etc)
> * Allow single story Shorts (Won't be published under "Latest News")
> * Allow short local news (Similar to Shorts)
> * Allow Photo Journalism stories w/o text (other than captions)
> * Make WN writing process "Single User" friendly
> * Add optional {{Copy Edit}} step to publishing process.
>
>
> Sorry all that this was so long, but I've been mulling over these issues
> for a while.  I'm CC'ing scoop in hopes of getting more people to reply to
> this mail.
>
>
> --
> 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 at 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.
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