User talk:Webbfooter

-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 05:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Jim Webb campaign addresses first 2016 presidential election controversy
Thanks for taking the time to try and contribute to Wikinews. Since you seem to be more-familiar with the way Wikipedia works, I think it is important I explain why your well-intentioned changes were reverted. The primary reason is archiving considerations; which, I believe, you should have been given an automatic caution on at the time you edited the article.

As a news site, the peak interest in an article is 12-36 hours post-publication. Those who read it within that timeframe expect, and are entitled to, find the same version (barring corrections) if they come back weeks, months, or years later, and dig it up in the archives. Think we can be fairly happy we have so few articles which have been hit with corrections.

Reverting your second addition is the less-controversial of the two. Should readers wish to know more about Webb, that should be a click or two away, so adding an extra job he's held is less important. That's not the case here because Category:Jim Webb isn't linking across to Wikipedia, nor does it have a short summary of who he is. Our failing on those is they could readily get painfully out-of-date, and main namespace is where out limited time gets pointed.

Now, "attacked"? Tricky one. Wikipedia would certainly agree with your wording choice; however, with a PAC called "Born Fighting" I think the word-choice is appropriate. The character of the response is important in reporting on this as a news item. My own word selection might have been "harshly criticised", but the current word-choice went through editorial review. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:41, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Brian. I was just trying to keep it neutral. Now that I understand, I wished I had seen it sooner and changed it to, "fired back." :)