User talk:Tictacgo

-- 06:25, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Ramdev's agitation against black money forcefully broken up in midnight raid
This looks interesting, but will not be reviewed - or will be failed - on several grounds: Hopefully these points will help you to improve the article, reduce the cited sources, and make it reviewable. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:58, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Title is meaningless to an international audience
 * 2) Overloaded with sources, including Wikipedia which is not considered reliable
 * 3) Doesn't appear to follow the Inverse pyramid structure
 * 4) Uses absolute dates
 * 5) Lacks relevant wikilinks, and categories
 * 6) lede is overloaded and imprecise

Hi Brian,

Thank you for your comments. Hopefully you can help me improve the article. I have a few questions regarding the points you mention:

# Title is meaningless to an international audience Well, "John Edwards indicted on felony charges" is also meaningless to those who don't follow American politics. But I can change the title to something like: "Indian yoga guru's anti-corruption agitation broken up in midnight raid". Does that help? If not, please offer some suggestions as to what would be a more helpful title.

# Overloaded with sources, including Wikipedia which is not considered reliable I thought that having more sources would help rather than hinder. But I see your point. I'll edit the list and also remove the Wikipedia links.

# Doesn't appear to follow the Inverse pyramid structure I did start off with a "what, who, where, when and why" structure in my first para and then gave some context before proceeding to the details on the event in question. I'm reading the Wikipedia page on "inverted pyramid" and will edit the article to conform to those guidelines as best I can.

# Uses absolute dates # Lacks relevant wikilinks, and categories I'll have to educate myself about these points. What is a "relative date" for instance? I'm assuming all the relevant information can be found somewhere on this site.

# lede is overloaded and imprecise I'll fix the lead paragraph to be more in line with the usual understanding of Lede

Hopefully changes along these lines should meet your criteria. Thanks for your feedback. This is my first attempt at writing a wikinews article so I can use all the help I can get. Cheers!

Tictacgo (talk) 10:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I have made substantial edits to the article in order to make it conform to the Wikinews style guidelines including adding Wikilinks and Categories and to follow Inverted Pyramid scheme. I've fixed the format for time of day and modified the lede to make it more to the point.

I haven't been able to figure out what Brian McNeil meant by "absolute dates" and I can't find a field which would allow me to change the title. Barring these two points I have made a strong effort to edit the article to conform to guidelines and am once again submitting it for review.

Tictacgo (talk) 12:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A relative date is one such as "Last Friday" instead of an absolute date - "Month Day, Year". The latter are not appropriate for a news article. The option to move the article is available via the extended menu on the page (small down-pointing arrow along the top). Wikilinks are where you put "India", or "Indian"" instead of plain text. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:25, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for those clarifications Brian McNeil. I have a few observations. For an article containing a timeline absolute dates are very helpful to someone reading the article sometime in the future. "Last Friday" has significance for us. But two months or two years from now, readers would have to work backwards from the date of publication to figure out exactly what date "Last Friday" was. I'm no journalism major, but I have also seen plenty of news articles which use absolute dates. Besides if someone feels they are inappropriate then they are free to change them to relative dates. That's the whole point of wikinews, right?

The article has plenty of wikilinks and references as of now. Putting any more would be overdoing it IMHO. But thanks for your clarification regarding the same.

I looked all over the page, several times and failed to find the "small down-pointing arrow along the top". Also, I have seen several articles whose titles are about as informative as mine. "Duke and Duchess of Cambridge ..." etc. Unless, the assumption goes that the "Duke and Duchess" are somehow more relevant than "Ramdev". I'm sure readers have the discrimination to read the first few lines of any article to figure out the exact context. The title would become unwieldy if I added too much detail. I would also rather not use something like "Indian yoga guru", because that seems to downplay the significance of the individual(s) in question, much as if someone used "English Prince and Princess ..." Again, this is my opinion. If you or someone else feel otherwise then I'm sure they can make the desired changes.

My aim was to get the news out because it is of great political importance in India and the english news-media in India are not doing a very good job of communicating a "fair and balanced" or even a complete version of the events in question to the rest of the world.

So, the article is there. I made major revisions in response to your original suggestions. It might not be good enough for say the NYTimes, but all things being equal, its a pretty nicely written piece if I may be allowed to toot my own horn. In the best of all possible worlds, I would like to see it be reviewed so that it can be where it belongs - in the News! To summarize - '' :-)

Cheers,

Tictacgo (talk) 11:00, 7 June 2011 (UTC)