User talk:Brian McNeil/Request for Foundation assistance

Recruitment and Retention
As I had stated before I wholeheartedly agree that both of these, equally, are key issues and very important - and will help make the other proposal easier to work with if we can address this somehow. Cirt (talk) 17:46, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Draft promotional material
This might be something that if people from Wikinews are not necessarily interested in being very active in themselves, we could get ideas from here and then perhaps help from others from another project to help with drafting the materials. Cirt (talk) 17:48, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's be realistic. Nobody is going to write the copy for us, we have to do that ourselves. We might can recruit some Commoners to help with the graphic design and layout, but the actual text on the poster has to come from Wikinewsies. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That is exactly what I was thinking actually, especially with regard to perhaps getting some help from folks at Wikimedia Commons. Cirt (talk) 20:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good
I think it looks good so far. We need all this and if WMF is willing to help, then we really need to sit back and take a serious look at this. We need to understand that regardless of the whole free news concept, we are a news agency. We have needs that have to be met in order for us to do our jobs. They are not massive things or stuff that we have to learn to do. If we, as I see it we have a small community but there are enough people here, I see no reason why we cannt start to change the things we do. We are a Wiki of the WMF yes, but our first and foremost goal is NEWS...period. And right now, we lack in that department because we don't have all the things we need to accomplish writing our own work. We need this stuff. So try and make an effort to make it happen. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 17:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Has this been sent off yet? Thunderhead 08:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Er, the draft section is blank - there is nothing to send, just all the talking points. Plus we've worked through some of these items already (eg DPL and FlaggedRevs). --Brian McNeil / talk 09:21, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Code of Ethics
Very good point, and I think getting outside help with this would be a great idea. Cirt (talk) 17:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Prior to requesting the WMF commission a code of ethics we need to discuss and work out what are realistic constraints imposed by the way a wiki works. We are all volunteers, and nobody can be made to carry out a specific task. We need a clear and unambiguous set of points - which may be our weaknesses - fed into the group drafting the CoE. What everyone has to bear in mind is that one of the key points that will be focussed on is our obligations to our readers. This takes a back seat in our current CoE draft but will become far, far more prominent in a professionally drafted version. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Currently at Code of Ethics, maybe we should have some sort of proposals/revamp/draft as a subpage off of that. Cirt (talk) 20:24, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What I'm more concerned about seeing drafted is a list of special considerations and constraints that would need fed into any think-tank doing a more professional draft for us. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That is actually pretty exciting if we could get that kind of help. Still, we should have a place to draft it. Cirt (talk) 20:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The offer on the table, from Sue, is for the WMF to fund some media think-tank producing a professional draft of a CoE for the project. This would draw heavily from the publicly available codes of major public-service broadcasters such as CBC, BBC, and VOA. As was highlighted in our meeting, a code of ethics for Wikipedia is pretty straightforward, no copyright violation and no libel is it in a nutshell. For a news service the document needs to be a lot more sophisticated and nuanced. There are times when we are going to say nasty things about people, our obligation is to make sure we have taken reasonable steps to ensure such statements are accurate and backed with evidence. All these seemingly separate strands are interconnected; my focus on the workflow was intended to provide an underpinning from which a number of these points could progress. On the technical side Flagged Revisions allows enforcement of the workflow, and the existence of the workflow allows clear delineation of roles and the obligations associated with them as part of a code of ethics. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Things we want the foundation to do on this list are either done or need wikinews comunity involvement
In this, theres a list of stuff we want the foundation to do. Most of this is [in my opinion] stuff we need to at least start do ourselves: The points on DPL, RSS, FlaggedRevs are done. The embargoed proposal is not going anywhere as it cannot gain concensuss. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Code of ethics &mdash; This is something that foundation could help with, although ultimately it is the community's responsibility
 * Mobile - Stage one (read-only) is a bot approval (which failed as no one voted) and a bug request away. While having more then read-only support would probably be useful, I don't think its reasonable to ask the foundation to help with this, when there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the community to get read only off the ground.