Talk:Wikinews

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on April 21, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.
Wikinews is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.

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[edit] Wikinews integration in Wikipedia

You can use a Template to link in Wikipedia to specific news topics or portals in Wikinews :

{{Wikinews|Princeton media class discusses Wikinews}}

For more details see Wikipedia:Sister_projects. (User:Monoet)

News and encyclopedic content I think ought to be integrated on Wikipedia. When users are reading Wikipedia they are interested (firstly or secondly) in the latest developments/news with regard to the subject of the encyclopedic article (with more condensed background information). Wikinews (with a licence different from Wikipedia) and (to a smaller extent) Wikimedia, sister projects of Wikipedia, provide news content on a separate websites.
What follows is an (incomplete?) overview of the current state of integration between (Wiki)news and encyclopedic content on Wikipedia:
  • Under "In the News" (ITN, i.e. a template) 3 up to 5 current events and one small news photo are listed on the Main Page with a link to Wikinews and the Current Events Portal. What is included on the Main Page is determined by these criteria.
  • The Current Events Portal (previously Current events). The portal refers to Wikinews for more elaborate articles: "Visit Wikinews to read and write news articles in more detail". In the about section of the portal this is elaborated on: the portal is not a news service and not a collection of primary source material (link).
  • Wikipedia articles (or sections/other elements) that are current events contain Current templates (incl. Template:Recent death), which refer to the portal and add the article to the Current events category.
  • Current Events category.
  • Articles on Wikipedia that refer to Future events are tagged with future templates.
  • The Wikinews template. The template has been discussed here in relation to the current template.
  • Some news stories are given a place on Wikipedia in the form of a separate article (e.g. 2004 Madrid train bombings), which combines news and more background information. Only big news stories get a separate article: "unless indeed we can be very confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic" (source). This probably implies that inclusion is decided by community consensus.
  • Mostly the news is integrated in the encyclopedic article, with the main article being general and other related articles being more specific (e.g. Antarctica -> Economy of Antarctica etc.).
  • References in Wikipedia articles generally refer to (non-Wikinews) articles, which then are added as a footnote under the section "References". These are mostly quite recent articles from the 2000s.
  • More?
Proposals:
  • Proposals (1, 2) have been made to merge the Current and Wikinews templates in case both are used in one article: this way more attention to Wikinews articles can be generated in Wikipedia articles (just like Wikinews, which itself is very often referring to Wikipedia).
  • Create a separate tab (on the right) on Wikipedia which opens a page with (Wiki)news sources, the most recent stories on top?
  • More? Brz7 02:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vanity article

I reverted back to the state before the redirect to Wikimedia. I don't see why this were a "vanity article". G-u-a-k-@ 13:42, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of Wikinews

Yes I was the anonymous user who came up with the Idea, as I say I am not glory hunting, just placing the facts, I think the orignial reason why I used an anonymous user was either 1, I was too lazy to make an account on media wiki and 2, I didn't want people to yell at me if no one liked it. I think it was more because of the 1st reason. I dont know how I can proove it was me, I guess IP checks would be one way.:\ - fonzy

I believe you, but I must say that I preferred the anonymous version. While I don't deny that you wrote those two lines of text, it was me who first proposed that Wikinews should include original reporting, who rewrote the entire proposal, who debated it in great detail with the Wikimedia community, rewrote the proposal again, wrote an FAQ, created a "thinktank" to begin advanced discussion, organized the vote, started the first demo pages and wrote the first policies, created the IRC channel, and managed the creation of language editions. To my knowledge, you have never participated in any of these events, nor in Wikinews itself. I do not care whether or not this is mentioned in the article, but I do not like the fact that it now makes it sound as if you had a somehow central role in the process of creating Wikinews, which is simply not true. I have documented the early history of Wikinews and my role in it to some extent on my user page there.--Eloquence* 20:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I can understand that, so I changed it to show I took no part in the modern creation of it and gave you credit (which you DO deserve) my two sentances may need re-wroding though. - Fonzy

Thanks. As far as I'm concerned, I do not care whether the article does present the history or not, but if it does, it should do so fully and correctly. Since I'm biased, I'm going to stay away from that part of the article.--Eloquence* 18:12, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Only reason I added my self was because someone said anonymous user and as I know who that was I added it, I wont say anymore as I dotn know enough. BTW good to see your steal on this project :) - fony

[edit] Neutrality Dispute

Wikinews editors and admins regularly edit news articles appearing on the site, contrary to the organization's masthead, the stated goal of which is to allow users to independently edit and create news stories without bias.CelebritySecurity 16:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

First I don't understand your comment, second this isn't really the place, perhaps wikinews:wikinews talk:Neutral point of view or something at wikinews. Bawolff 04:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Graphs

These graphs are old. Can we get newer ones? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC) I 2nd that

Totally agree, person who made it is here [1] if you want to add some gentle persuation ;)Pluke 10:04, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, NGerda left wikinews, and is now at never again wiki, so you're proablly not going to get more graphs out of him. Bawolff 08:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RSS Feeds

I put together an RSS feed of the "Original Reporting" section. The feed is available at http://www.inic.org/wikinews.xml I also added an external link to the feed in the external links section of this article. If you do not have an RSS reader, you can view a web based version of the feed at Wikinews Original Reporting RSS Feed Please let me know what you think. I will try to update it daily. Inic 23:00, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is Wikinews an external site?

The first word in the article is "Wikinews" with a link to the Wikinews main page. It is not marked with the external-link icon, so has the same appearance as a link to a Wikipedia article. Should there be indication that it is a link outside the English Wikipedia articles? (SEWilco 05:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC))

It shows up as a different colour like all interwiki links. I don't know what wikipedia's policy is on this. Bawolff 04:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

I'm obviously biased, but I would prefer the criticism section to have at least a single source. Who says that? The main criticism I've seen of Wikinews is that it is "boring" and gets too much of its information content from other sources. See this Alternet story for an example. The original reporting we do has to follow a strict policy. Sources have to be documented and potentially controversial statements are attributed. This is the English version -- the policy varies for each language edition. For example, on the German Wikinews, you have to go through an accreditation process and publish your address on your user page before you can do reporting. Furthermore, if we cite criticism, we also need to define who would be a legitimate source to counter that criticism.--Eloquence* 14:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I could certainly provide a ton of criticism if you really feel it is a bare section, Eloquence. ;) --Mrmiscellanious 00:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Seriously over half the articles are about Australia or New Zealand, not that I don't mind those articles, but we need more stuff from the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa. 71.56.121.28 13:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

I have made a few minor edits to make this page a little more accessible to non-Wikipedians, but fundamentally I think there is a more basic problem of notability. I will write a more substantial comment about this on Talk:Wikimedia Foundation shortly. Arbitrary username 21:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo as creator

I'm definitly not an expert on wikinews history, but... I was alsways under the impression, Erik Möller more or less created, and Jimbo just gave the okay to start it. Bawolff 08:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Different licensing?

When I read that Wikinews is under a different license, unlike most of the other Wikimedia project, the first question was "Why?" Can anybody answer why Wikinews is CC while the rest of them are GFDL? Hbdragon88 23:30, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

This page may help explain it some.--Cspurrier 16:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

Sources for improving this article, from AfD:

--h2g2bob 12:29, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not a valid primary source?

Considering the fact that wikinews itself operates under the same method as wikipedia, should it not be the case that no article on wikipedia can use wikinews as a primary source? It appears to be little more than a news aggregator, and surely no one here would suggest digg or fark would be a primary source..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.100.182.91 (talk) 18:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You obviously have not dug deeply enough into what Wikinews is. This is the only Wikimedia project where original research is allowed. That should be sourceable material, although I can understand if for our derivative reports only the {{wikinews}} template is used on WP. --Brianmc 20:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)