Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once again, try
and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than lipservice to
Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates

These appear to be most of the enWP templates which caution that a
section of the encyclopedia relates to *news*. You can see the additions
I've made to highlight Wikinews coverage where it exists, and if not,
urge people to contribute on Wikinews.

This went down quite badly last time. I'll bite my tongue and just
describe the reaction to such a link on Ted Kennedy's death as
"hostile". Realistically, this needs to come as a significant push from
someone like Jimmy.

Anyway, any thoughts on fine-tuning this? Please note, I've put tooltips
on all the given links. There are cases where a long Wikinews title
would mess the template on Wikipedia, so I hide the title in the
tooltip.

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion"

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:28 -0500, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> Just let me know where I can help.  I understand that some in the 
> wikinews community were dismayed at something I said in an interview 
> recently about Wikinews having "struggled" for a long time - but I want 
> to emphasize that I didn't mean to disparage Wikinews... part of the 
> problem is that people go to Wikipedia to write things that they should 
> be doing at Wikinews... and one solution is to use the massive traffic 
> power of Wikipedia to drive traffic to Wikinews.
> 
> I'd also like to have a private discussion (i.e. not on a public list, 
> because because I wouldn't like to see random ideas I might throw out in 
> a brainstorming session reported on as "news" about Wikinews in other 
> press) with leaders (admins + active editors) of Wikinews about "the 
> future of Wikinews".

I'm sure we could arrange a private list, or schedule an ad-hoc IRC
chat. And, I do know that some within the MSM will take the worst
possible fragment out of any sentence that they can - it does not seem
unreasonable that they might gleefully do so to jab at a potential
competitor like Wikinews.

The below link is - to me - the best hope we have. It offers a "fresh
field" for contributors (re: the Ortega research and chicken-little
media reaction), it covers Mike Peel's musing about WMUK issuing a press
release mentioning Wikinews as "The paper that's not paper, and won't
vanish behind a paywall".

I deliberately copied you on this because of a few things Mike Halterman
said, I thought the below proposed changes on Wikipedia fitted best with
how he characterised your opinions on Wikinews and its promotion.

> Lots isn't up to me, but I'm eager to see Wikinews flourish, and would 
> love to throw around some ideas.

From the Wikinews perspective, we kept banging away at getting WP:ITN to
more prominently feature our project. That would be a good area to
revisit; I know some Wikinewsies would like this a full list of the
project's articles, but I appreciate it is on an encyclopedia and
playing a longer game of getting people to wrie articles on Wikinews.

> Brian McNeil wrote:
> > I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once again, try
> > and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than lipservice to
> > Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.
> > 
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates
> > 
> > These appear to be most of the enWP templates which caution that a
> > section of the encyclopedia relates to *news*. You can see the additions
> > I've made to highlight Wikinews coverage where it exists, and if not,
> > urge people to contribute on Wikinews.
> > 
> > This went down quite badly last time. I'll bite my tongue and just
> > describe the reaction to such a link on Ted Kennedy's death as
> > "hostile". Realistically, this needs to come as a significant push from
> > someone like Jimmy.
> > 
> > Anyway, any thoughts on fine-tuning this? Please note, I've put tooltips
> > on all the given links. There are cases where a long Wikinews title
> > would mess the template on Wikipedia, so I hide the title in the
> > tooltip.

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:35 -0500, Alexandr Romanov wrote:
> The examples look good to me. One suggestion, maybe link "Wikipedia is
> not a news site" to WP:NOTNEWS ?
> 
> Александр Дмитрий 
> Alexandr Dmitri 
> 
> 2009/12/1 Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
>         I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once
>         again, try
>         and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than
>         lipservice to
>         Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.
>         
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates
>         

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:35 -0500, Alexandr Romanov wrote: 
> The examples look good to me. One suggestion, maybe link "Wikipedia is
> not a news site" to WP:NOTNEWS ?
> 
Nit: If I start bitching about top-posting, please check I've taken my
meds 

Unfortunately, [[WP:NOTNEWS]] is a link to a sub-section of a very long
and somewhat complex project policy page. I'm reluctant to link to that,
and instead chose to state "Wikipedia is not a news site." as a blunt
fact.

As you should see from another message, I originally BCC'd Jimmy Wales,
and there was a very prompt response. I think I messed up passing the
email through the list approval process - whitelisted the address, but
discarded the message (Sorry Jimmy, won't happen again).

Mike Peel of WMUK has already posted a "yes!" on my enWP talk page. So,
were else do we have Wikinews snuck into Wikipedia? I remember there's
something about porting links from DPLs over to Portals; can someone
comment on the techie aspects of this?

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion"

This from Mike Peel (email address removed) of WMUK.

> I've just posted a few sentences on your talk page; I think that this  
> is a great idea, and was actually something I was thinking about  
> proposing last night. It's a really suitable place for such a link,  
> and I really can't see any downside to doing this...
> 
> Has it been discussed before, and if so, where?
> 
> The barriers that seem to lie between the different Wikimedia  
> projects really need to be broken down. We're all trying to do the  
> same thing (spread knowledge freely), just in different ways; we  
> shouldn't be standing in each other's way whilst doing so...
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike

Mike can probably comment on the UK's media cover of newspaper websites
vanishing behind paywalls. I think my good friend "Dirty Digger" Rupert
Murdoch has an awful lot to do with this.

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

> 2009/12/1 Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
>         I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once
>         again, try
>         and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than
>         lipservice to
>         Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.
>         
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates
>         
On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:35 -0500, Alexandr Romanov wrote: 
> The examples look good to me. One suggestion, maybe link "Wikipedia is
> not a news site" to WP:NOTNEWS ?
> 
I think this is a point for Bawolff to chip in...

There are a few special pieces of Javascript active on enWN which try to
detect incoming Wikipedians and caution them about editing on Wikinews,
i.e. articles are a "snapshot", not to be encyclopedic, &c.

IIRC the flow is as such:

1. User reads Wikipedia article, sees link to Wikinews article
2. User clicks link, reads Wikinews article
3. User selects to edit Wikinews article, a custom WP-specific edit
   intro is displayed.

Any intermediate steps between 2 and 3 will see the "Referrer:" lost and
the custom edit intro not displayed.

Oh, and as some will recall, {{Howdy} }[1] has a "quick guide" for
Wikipedians; I'd really love Jimmy and Mike Peel's input on this.

[1] http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Howdy

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

On 1 Dec 2009, at 15:18, Brian McNeil wrote:

> There are a few special pieces of Javascript active on enWN which  
> try to
> detect incoming Wikipedians and caution them about editing on  
> Wikinews,
> i.e. articles are a "snapshot", not to be encyclopedic, &c.
>
> IIRC the flow is as such:
>
> 1. User reads Wikipedia article, sees link to Wikinews article
> 2. User clicks link, reads Wikinews article
> 3. User selects to edit Wikinews article, a custom WP-specific edit
>    intro is displayed.
>
> Any intermediate steps between 2 and 3 will see the "Referrer:"  
> lost and
> the custom edit intro not displayed.
>
> Oh, and as some will recall, {{Howdy} }[1] has a "quick guide" for
> Wikipedians; I'd really love Jimmy and Mike Peel's input on this.
>
> [1] http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Howdy

Is it a reasonable assumption to assume that all newly created  
accounts and anonymous editors will be familiar with Wikipedia but  
not Wikinews? If so, could something like that "Used to contributing  
to Wikipedia? See here." link on the howdy template be displayed  
automatically on the edit intro? Possibly with a "hide" button for  
those that don't want to see it. Javascript tracking shouldn't be  
necessary...

BTW, some of the landing pages could really do with a rewrite. e.g.
"We put our pants on one leg at a time, just like you, but our jeans  
are cut faster and have some specializations that you might not know  
about."
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:For_Wikipedians
I think that manages to be sexist and language-ist (colloquialism)  
simultaneously, aside from being more broadly insulting... 

Mike

Re: Rebooting the "Wikipedia invasion

Yes, that is correct. {{Editintro from wikipedia}} is shown to anyone
who hits edit from a page on wikinews, when there referrer starts with
http://en.wikipedia.org  which covers most, but not all (ex secure or
mobile wikipedia) traffic from en'pedia. (unless the article is old,
in which case {{editintro notcurrent}} is show). As brianmc mentions,
if the user browses around, the referer header is lost. See
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Javascript#Custom_Editintros for
the gory details.

As for wikinews articles on portals - there is a bot run/developed by
Miza13 ([[w:user:Wikinews importer bot]]) that copies various DPL's
from wikinews to various portal pages & templates on wikipedia. This
can be most commonly seen from [[Portal:Current events]] on wikipedia,
where wikinews content is displayed quite prominantly (I think Cirt
set that up, if i recall). Wikinews content is also dynamically added
to several other pages. most portal pages have a small this topic in
the news section, and some articles on major topics (typically major
countries) have a {{Wikinews}} like template that updates dynamically
by the bot.

Of course there is also the manually added {{wikinews|Some article
name}} template that is added by hand like the other sisterlinks
templates.

----

As for this idea in general, I think this is a great idea, but we
should make sure to try and get wikipedians on board in so it doesn't
look like somebody from the outside is changing all these templates.

--
- Bawolff
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org> wrote:
>
>> 2009/12/1 Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
>>         I've decided that now is a *very* appropriate time to, once
>>         again, try
>>         and restart discussion on Wikipedia paying more than
>>         lipservice to
>>         Wikinews as the appropriate venue for news coverage.
>>
>>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brian_McNeil#.22Recent.22_templates
>>
> On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:35 -0500, Alexandr Romanov wrote:
>> The examples look good to me. One suggestion, maybe link "Wikipedia is
>> not a news site" to WP:NOTNEWS ?
>>
> I think this is a point for Bawolff to chip in...
>
> There are a few special pieces of Javascript active on enWN which try to
> detect incoming Wikipedians and caution them about editing on Wikinews,
> i.e. articles are a "snapshot", not to be encyclopedic, &c.
>
> IIRC the flow is as such:
>
> 1. User reads Wikipedia article, sees link to Wikinews article
> 2. User clicks link, reads Wikinews article
> 3. User selects to edit Wikinews article, a custom WP-specific edit
>   intro is displayed.
>
> Any intermediate steps between 2 and 3 will see the "Referrer:" lost and
> the custom edit intro not displayed.
>
> Oh, and as some will recall, {{Howdy} }[1] has a "quick guide" for
> Wikipedians; I'd really love Jimmy and Mike Peel's input on this.
>
>
>
> [1] http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Howdy
>
>
>
> --
> Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
> Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official
> position of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikinews-l mailing list
> Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
>
>

Re: Office hours next Thursday, December 3

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 16:32 -0800, Cary Bass wrote:
> Next Thursday's office hours will feature Jay Walsh, the Foundation's
> Head of Communications.  If you don't know Jay you can learn all about
> him at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:JayWalsh>.

Correction: If you don't know who Jay is, you've a nerve calling
yourself a Citizen Journalist on a Wikimedia project! :P

--

-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil <at> wikinewsie.org>|http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brian_McNeil
Content of this message in no way represents the opinions or official position
of the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its projects.
* Problems replying? Forward bounces to brianmc <at> skynet.be to raise with Godaddy Hosting.

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Test

_______________________________________________
Wikinews-l mailing list
Wikinews-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l