User talk:CGorman/March 2005

Patriotism
Yes, I do love my country :) It would be great to have more Ireland-related stories. Ireland is a country I hold dear and visited several times. It's Celtic Tiger developments since the 1990s have been an inspiration to all of us in Romania! Cheers, Ronline 04:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good work
I hadn't noticed you were single-handedly holding both Europe and UK & Ireland together! (That sounds a bit funny, doesn't it?!)

I'm moving more and more towards localism (if you know what I mean); I may want to assist you in maintaing these pages in future if you wouldn't mind. Dan100 (Talk) 21:30, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sitenotice
I can't do it myself as I don't have sysop status, but the page you need to edit is MediaWiki:Sitenotice. If you can get the whole lot down to one line of text that would be a bonus! Dan100 (Talk) 17:52, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sgrena article
CG, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but remember we always have to strive to present a neutral point of view about an event, ie represent both sides of a story, so I've added what the MFI have been saying about the shooting to the article. Dan100 (Talk) 21:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Help
me! Dan100 (Talk) 21:44, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Courthouse shootings
Hate to say this but this was actually covered yesterday! Defendant shoots Judge, three others at Atlanta courthouse Dan100 (Talk) 15:32, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I nearly did the same thing about the new private Chinese airline yesterday - read up loads, got ready, but when I actually opened Developing stories it was already there! Thanks for stopping by with the Sgrena article, btw. Amgine did a good job of bringing some calm to the business. Dan100 (Talk) 19:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the welcome. Maurreen 23:37, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let's scrap Deletion requests
I'm proposing that we scrap deletion requests, and I'd appreciate your input! Dan100 (Talk) 11:28, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Happy St Patrick's Day!
Hey CGorman! Just want to say have a happy St. Patrick's Day! Éire go brách! Ronline 07:50, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Evolution
Question??? for CGorman (from Canada): Just wondering why you "believe strongly in the theory of evolution".

Post here!
 * Im a devout Catholic - I believe in God and the good ideals that the church preachs - but having read much of the Old Testement, I found that it should not be taking too literally - it is written in such a way that there is much deeper meaning to the passsages - I don't accept it at face value. However this is just my opinion, I also believe in freedom of expression - so your entitled to make up your own mind. I've list my beliefs to help people ensure I avoid POV. CGorman 11:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Friendly discussion to follow: The computer you're using was built by someone, wasn't it? Humans are so much more complex than a computer, does this not denote inteligent design? Could you throw computer parts -CPU, screen, keyboard, mouse, etc.-into a tornado and expect them to fall into just the right places?
 * Why do you care what my religious beliefs are? Anyways the theory of evolution is practically proven - besides i'm not going to waste my time argueing with you if your not even going to register here and display your name. CGorman 18:38, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the trophy. -- Davodd | Talk 06:42, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Speed of it all
Thanks for the greating. Wikinews is looking much better then when I looked in (and was scared off) a couple of months ago. Part of the greating message is a bit broken though, there is a link to Wikinewsie but the page dosent exist (not sure why the link is blue not red?). One question of Wikinews does stuff happen quick enough so current news can get on the frount page? I posted this story Anti-war march in London at 11:19am today (20th) and no one has made any comments on it as yet. --JK the Unwise 18:10, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews writing contest launched
Dear CGorman,

thanks for registering for the Wikinews writing contest! It now begins officially. Every day, I will try to make a tally of who has and who has not managed to fulfill their story/day requirements. If you do, however, believe I am missing something, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best of luck in the contest!--Eloquence 06:20, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Time zone for writing contest
Hi CGorman,

I'm filing stories for each day using server time, so please count me in timezone UTC 0.

On this basis, I filed the story Explosion at Texas refinery kills 14, injures more than 100 for today, March 24th. Cheers, &mdash; DV 21:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Welcoming committee
It scares me how on the ball you are. Anyway thankyou, ive already welcomed quite a few ppl, but didnt realise there was a committee. btw, what do you think of the new front page? The bellman 15:32, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome :) - third world iranian blogs
Thanks for the welcome. :) i guess we agree on some of our biases, but we disagree on at least one bias which is fundamentally important to wikinews: Digital Divide. Claiming that education is the most important problem in the third world ignores the reality of colonialism.

The world's biggest democracy is on average only about 60% literate - but it is in general in a much better state than most other third world countries. E.g. it has a much lower imprisonment rate (about 60 per 100,000 people - i'm citing from neural memory here, but you can check this easily) than many EU countries, and certainly much less than the USA/Russia, which have the world's biggest imprisonment rates, of about 600-700 per 100,000 people in prison. India is a thriving democracy, at least as democratic as any EU country, with a variety of government and corporate controlled newspapers, tv etc.

So why is India in such good condition compared to many other third world countries? Simply that it's independent and has an extremely strong local tradition of respect for linguistic and cultural diversity and refusal to accept recolonisation by corporations. It threw out the British, and it threw out Coca-Cola/Pepsi (though now they're back in again, but may be on the way out again). There was a fascist government elected at the national level for the last few years, it carried out a pogrom 2002 Gujarat violence of a few thousand people, but that has happened internally in Europe too (ex-Yugoslavia) and externally by Europe (e.g. in Rwanda, but there still have not been any independent enquiries in the role of the French and Belgian governments there, only parliamentary enquiries), and now it has been elected out of central (national) government.

Anyway, to get to the practical point: wikinews will not help people in third world countries unless we are aware of the Digital Divide and if we try to implement real programs where at least some diverse bunches of people (not just the elites) in third world countries really have good internet access and are motivated to intervene directly in wikinews.

Hmmm... i'm not sure whether Iran really counts as a third world country, but it is a place where there's a fairly decent internet development - see Iranian blogs - it also generally has a decent level of education, but at the moment its biggest problem is that the Cheney/Bush regime is intent on randomly killing lots of civilians there - and the corporate press is constantly reminding people that Iran might try to construct an atomic bomb and ignoring context (Iran is as democratic as Israel and the USA, if not more so, the democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown by the USA/UK in 1953, Israel and the USA have about 200 and xx 000 atom bombs respectively, ...).

So what is Iran's biggest problem: lack of education or the threat of invasion by the USA? Don't you think having bombs dropping and snipers randomly assassinating ambulance drivers and so on might be a social problem?

Are people contributing to the English-language wikinews willing to make the effort to search a bit through Iranian blogs http://www.blogsbyiranians.com in order to help reduce the bias due to our information sources coming largely from corporate and USA government press releases? Boud 10:24, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contest updates today
Hi,

not sure I'll have more net access tonight, could you take care of the updates for March 27? Thanks, Eloquence

You might consider gaining consensus, first...
Just a thought. - Amgine 22:07, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course I'd object to a policy proposal which had not gained consensus, and which is a question of personal writing style. It's really a matter for the style guide, of course, rather than policy, but I would at least expect someone to talk about it before implementing it on Wikinews articles. Period. - Amgine 22:14, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

breaking...
Thank silsor... he actually had it on submit-a-story even earlier. - Amgine 17:45, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Country rankings
Thanks for the country articles you sent me! Why would I take that the wrong way :) ? You've done a great job by going through all the country categories. I'm merging the lists right now... Go raibh maith agat! Ronline 06:55, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just feeling cheeky...
Wanted to say, too, really appreciate how you're getting all the categories/regions set up. 1411 was implemented, at least temporarily as a test, so I'm working on an example implementation. - Amgine 19:04, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The sun is near the yardarm here, but I'm still barely conscious. I'm on my second pint of coffee (instant may not taste the best, but it's easy to prepare en masse) But ye'll dinnae ha' me pinty!


 * Very surprised about Scottland... I check the Scottsman pretty regularly! Will try to do something in that direction. - Amgine 19:15, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 Shouldn't that be in the Wikinews: namespace, since it isn't actually news but a possible project? - Amgine 20:45, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * YES! Many thanks for the effort to track back all those countries. I think it's a great idea! There's a user on Wikinews who has been maintaining, sporadically, newslinks for an African country.. will look that page up soon. - Amgine 20:52, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That time of the year again
This is a form letter that I am putting on the talk page of every admin: As you may know, we are approaching April 1. In many cultures, this is a time for pranksters to pull April Fools jokes on others. Because of the ease of editing, wiki projects tend to fall prey to these types of pranks rather easily. Let this be a reminder to us all to keep a special lookout for hoaxes, rampant fiction and other random acts of content vandalism between now and April 2. Good luck, and hopefully not too much damage will be done. -- Davodd | Talk 06:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Romanian smoking ban
Of course I'd love to see a smoking ban in Romania! I don't know if it will happen though... Romania has quite high smoking rates and they aren't really dropping. The only hope is that if Italy can do it,so can Romania. It was really quite surprising to see Italy implementing the smoking ban. In any case, it's great to see Ireland did it and it had so much success. I see that this year many other countries will follow suit. Wouldn't it be great if there could be an EU-wide ban ono smoking in public places? Indeed Romania and Ireland seem higher up in the list. For European countries, UK is first, then Romania, then Ireland, and only a far way away are all the others. Ronline 08:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Google hits
You seem to just go to google and search for wikinews. This is the wrong way to do it as it includes our own namespace. Please follow the link provided to get the correct search. Todays count should only be 100,000, not the 119,000 or so you would get. → CGorman (Talk)  20:32, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Nope. I excluded the appropriate sites. I think when you check, you'll see that the results fluctuate from hour to hour. -- Davodd | Talk 20:42, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Remember that google uses several discrete server farms around the world. It usually routes your request to the geographically closest farm. So you two, on either side of the Atlantic, are unlikely to ever see the same result as the farms are constantly crawling, cacheing, updating etc and are never in sync. Dan100 (Talk) 21:36, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

% change on Wikinews awareness
In the first table on that page (which I've only just noticed, I'm always the last to know lol), it says '% change' in one of the column headers. Is that % change on the last month? I guess it is but we should probably be clear :) Dan100 (Talk) 21:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * BTW I've made a series of posts on the Talk page for Awareness, you might want to have a look Dan100 (Talk) 22:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Blog
What a great idea. I'm gutted I didn't think of running one back in Jan when I was much more involved here! A good way of recording 'for posterity' the early days of this site. Dan100 (Talk) 21:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)