Wikinews:Water cooler/assistance/archives/2010/June

Question on sources
If a story is written by, say, AFP, published by, say, NY Times, and ends up at, say, Yahoo News, then which one is the publisher? Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 01:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The publisher would be Yahoo or whatever website the info is hosted on. The "author" would be the one who actually wrote the content. (does that make sense?) Tempodivalse [talk]  01:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Carolyn Doran article contains false allegation of hit and run fatality
Former Chief Operating Officer of Wikimedia Foundation is convicted felon

Hi. This article states that "Doran's criminal record includes four convictions... including one hit and run with fatality". This claim was originally reported in The Register, but was retracted:

From The Register article:

''Update - January 4: The original version of this story said that Carolyn Doran's hit and run DUI resulted in a fatality. This was based on two separate sets of computer records - one with the Loudoun County, Virginia Circuit Court and another on the web site of the Virginia Judicial System. But these records are incorrect. Apologies to Carolyn Doran and her family.''

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/page2.html

---

The "hit and run fatality" claim has been in the WikiNews article for over 3 years. It needs to be removed ASAP.--94.76.233.42 (talk) 18:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This has been cross-posted to Brian McNeil's talk page (diff). — μ 18:09, June 8 2010 (UTC)

Factual accuracy of Noynoy Aquino elected Philippine president
I don't know if this is the correct place to report a serious problem with that article. Whoever shot Benigno Aquino, Jr., it wasn't Ferdinand Marcos himself, as the article tells us right now. This should be corrected ASAP as the article is a lead article.

Feel free to move that comment on another place if I was wrong here. --Matthiasb (talk) 05:46, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This is a reasonable place to put it.


 * It's easy to fix &mdash; done. Depublishing doesn't do nearly as much as fixing it, and is contrary to site practice.  (We have other ways of dealing with irretrievable cases, not that this comes anywhere near that level.)  --Pi zero (talk) 08:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, I will. Guess my WB/WP ways don't work at WN. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 01:33, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Boycott of Sweden's royal wedding
Sweden is a monarchy, that's not news. There was a royal wedding in Stockholm on Saturday June 19, that's not news anymore. What is news is that three major international news agencies: Reuters, AP and AFP decided to boycott this wedding. And why? Because of the conditions set out by Swedish Television (the company is named Sveriges Television, public broadcaster, previous monopoly) for video from the event. Commercial TV stations were only allowed to show video for 48 hours after the event. Apparently, the royal court had given sole rights to Swedish Television.

I'm all new to Wikinews and I'm not going to write this story. I'm just leaving a hint so someone else can, and I hope I can answer questions. Here are some hints and pointers:
 * This is what Google results for "royal wedding" look like right now, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jocke66/4715291000/?v=1
 * The Huffington Post reported on this already, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/19/swedish-princess-victoria_n_618329.html
 * Voice of America reported on this already, http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/News-Organizations-Refuse-to-Cover-Swedens-Royal-Wedding--96722444.html
 * The three news agencies allegedly sent out a common press release about the boycott this morning.

And perhaps the best part of it: There are 200 free images from the event on Wikimedia Commons, under commons:Category:Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling. --LA2 (talk) 21:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Non-English sources
Recently I wrote an article Hong Kong Democratic Party stirs up universal suffrage reform package controversy. The verifiability has been disputed because only 3 out of the 16 sources are in English. However, I do not, as a complete newbie here, think that the lack of English sources is at all a reason to dispute its factual accuracy. First, we can always use Google translate for this. Although Google translate is not the best translation in the world, we can always use commons sense to make sense of what is going on there and compare it with the article. Secondly, the article is also based upon three English sources from the Standard, so a portion of the article can be verified by that. In Wikipedia, some people even simply assume good faith (though this is not how Wikinews works I'm told) and let your DYK nomination go through even if the source that the hook cites is in a foreign language. Without implementing AGF of course, is there a way that articles based on non-English sources can be verified? PS I do know there is a reviewer who speaks Chinese here... Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 01:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Kayau. As far as I know, it is being discussed on Wikinews talk:Assume good intentions that stories are false until it is proven otherwise. Also, Chinese is sometimes a problem, because it is a completely different language to English, and Google Translate isn't accurate (I remember it translating "mice" as "mouse" [computers one]). What you can do? Translate some portions of the sources, preferably the parts it claims to source something, to make our work easier. It takes a lot of work to review an article, and sometimes when it's a foreign language (scratch Spanish), it makes it much longer to review them. Hope this explains it all to you. --Diego Grez return fire 01:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC) P.D. Also note Wikinews is completely different to Wikipedia. Wikinews accepts original reporting/research, Wikipedia doesn't. That's the main difference. Since that, we can't have exactly the same policies for everything. --Diego Grez return fire 01:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) We should assume good faith, but only to the contributors themselves, not for their edits, which have to be rigorously checked lest something incorrect falls through - so that's not really applicable here. If anything, we have a policy of "all edits are incorrect unless proven otherwise". If a large portion of the article is from the English sources and there are only a few bits here and there taken from Chinese sources, then it probably is okay to use Google.
 * An alternative might be to just tell us on the talk page what bits you extracted out of the Chinese sources - the original text excerpt, along with a literal translation. It may be time consuming, but could help remove any doubts about Google's accuracy. Tempodivalse [talk]  01:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not the first time this has happened. --Brian McNeil / talk 01:30, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And, I did make a reasonable effort to lay out what needed done:

3 out of 17 of the sources are in English. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 10:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Then, please remove every single one of the non-English sources that is not absolutely necessary for someone to fact-check the article. Brian McNeil / talk 12:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But I got a bit of info from every one of the sources. It will simply make the article less verifiable if I just remove them... I will try to weed out some redundant ones though. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 12:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In that case, cite the "bit of info", which source from, literal translation, and how-worded in-article on the talk page. Yes, painful, slow, and the article may end up stale. The only realistic alternative is recruiting more speakers of that language who do have an excellent command of the Queen's English. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly, User:KTo288 knows Chinese (well, Yue, but the characters are the same) and is a fairly active editor here, maybe try pinging him over at en.wp to see if he'd like to help out? (This is why I wish people would use babel boxes and categories more...) Tempodivalse [talk] 13:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is why many, many people give up on the approaches you think will work. I assume you can find the contributions of the user in question, and look at the work some people did in copyediting and reviewing. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The user does advertise that English is his native language, and previous contribs from him suggest he uses grammar usually appropriately - although I suppose, if all we want is for him to factcheck everything, someone else can do the actual copyediting. Tempodivalse [talk]  16:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much, yeah. Does he have the "review" bit? If he can indeed perform part of the review checks, then I'd be more happy. But, per my initial response above, if questioned on a specific statement of fact within the article, he would have to be able to respond to it in a cite, literal translation, and how-worded manner. i.e. He would have had to, carefully, read all the sources - possibly re-referring to them as Xe went through the article several times. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, he has the reviewer bit. But, supposing that he can't review for whatever reason or doesn't reply, what are we to do then? Entrust Google Translate with the task, or try to get Kayau to quote and translate everything from the sources on the talk page (methinks that's going to take a long time)? Tempodivalse [talk]  17:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This has nothing to do with your pet project, Tempodivalse. --Brian McNeil / talk 01:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sixteen or seventeen sources, even if they are understood by a reviewer without having to go via Google translate makes an article extremely time-consuming to check. We have to check each fact and that's more investment than I personally am prepared to do. We reviewers don't even know which article to check for each fact as the sources are not cited inline. Secondly, Google translate has its good and bad days. Having picked an article at random, I am trying to figure out what "His ideals may not be generous Person Die generous ideals, if I must insist to do by my heart, I approach Li moments when good results may impede the La Department of step had to." means in English. --Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 08:48, 23 June 2010 (UTC)