Talk:Wikinews interviews specialists on China, Iran, Russia support for al-Assad

Reporter notes
All transcripts forwarded to "scoop". --Computron (talk) 09:09, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Further transcripts forwarded to "scoop".--Computron (talk) 22:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Mitter quotes, from 4 questions on China, confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:41, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 2) Posch quotes, on Syria, confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:43, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 3) Farhi quotes, on thirteen!?! questions, confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:59, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 4) Kamrava quotes confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:59, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 5) Brown, quotes confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 6) Martel quotes confirmed (working backwards through my mailbox, will need to check not another round of questions earlier). --Brian McNeil / talk 21:02, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 7) Roggeveen quotes confirmed. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:03, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 8) Blank quotes confirmed, from an email address 'out the ark'. :P --Brian McNeil / talk 21:04, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I speed-read; and, I'm going to email them all a thanks and, please confirm your intended meaning is not corrupted" email. --Brian McNeil'' / talk 20:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I've now emailed all interviewees, asking them to confirm their meanings are unchanged by the extensive sub-editing work I did earlier (CC'd scoop, Computron). --Brian McNeil / talk 21:06, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Sub-editing
Time constraints in writing questions, and - to some extent, I guess - with the responses of our interviewees meant that I believed this needed quite a lot of sub-editing work.

There is the concern that this may have, unintentionally, altered the meaning intended by interviewees. I've done a bit of IAR on our interview guidelines &mdash; because the alternative might-well have been [sic]'cing our interviewees into never answering another emailed question from Wikinews.

Another point I addressed, raised as a constructive criticism in IRC, was the "alphabet soup" of initials. Most interviews are with one, perhaps two, people. This is more in the manner of a "panel interview". Too easy to lose track of who says what if you're just looking at XY says, PQ says, ...

So, I chose to follow the Wikinews convention on using peoples' names: Full name on first mention, and 'notional' surname for each subsequent occurrence. In this case, all interviewees have Western/anglicised names. We don't go into that too-heavily in the relevant SG section; but, most Wikinewsies are smart enough to know that, as the Thaksin example there shows, a lot of Asian names have the convention of using the first name in a similar manner to Western surnames. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:35, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I've always been fairly comfortable when it comes to style/grammar/spelling edits to people's answers. I tend to think that falls into the realms of what's to be expected; personally, I don't even feel these need to be run past the interviewee. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:38, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Rana Mitter Image
If it is appropriate should the image now that OTRS has been approved on it be added in the article. The only question is where in the article? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RanaMitter.jpg --Computron (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to adding in whatever relevant free images we can get our hands on; if it's only one interviewee, so be it. I propose finding a bare patch in the article at a question Mitter answers and adding it in. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:34, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking at it as placed in the article, I've no objection. --Pi zero (talk) 21:16, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

FA
Promoted today. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Categories
edit protected Please move this article from Category:Syria to Category:Syrian Civil War. Thank you. Green Giant (talk) 16:56, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Added to the latter. --Pi zero (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)