Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2010/April

Android App
I am currently learning Java to make Android apps and I would really like to make one for wikinews so people can get their wikinews on the go easier. Thoughts, opinions, comments, votes? Irunongames •  play  00:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * When you click "New Comment" it auto adds the section header you fill in. Anyways, go for it.  I too am learning android and was planning to try something along these lines once I got proficient enough.  I knew java once upon a time, but it is a wee bit rusty.  You can either build a "Stripper" in the device or my preference is server side.  I wouldn't worry about including anything other than latest news and the article text themselves.  I dunno if you've checked out other news apps (like for the iphone), most of em are purdy simple.  Worse comes to worse and we both write something, we can mash both apps together and convince the foundation to make an SVN slot for us. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 00:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * In RE to Water_cooler/technical -> http://code.google.com/p/enwikinews/source/browse/#svn/AndroidReader/trunk  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 06:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiNews TV
Hi. I have interviewed a woman today, affected by the Chile earthquake. She has not house now and the department she lived is completely destroyed. It is just an example of many cases that happen here in Chile. The point is, that I'm planning to edit this video and post it to YouTube. YouTube has a partnership program and 'partners' receive royalties for every single video watch. It can be useful for Wikimedia UK or the Foundation. What do you think? The account should be created as WikiNewsTV. --Diego Grez let's talk 22:51, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmmm...interesting idea! Do you have any specifics? Is there a Youtube website that we can see? Benny the mascot (talk) 22:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have the Wikinews Youtube account. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 22:59, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * For the partners program, would we need to poke the Foundation to set this up? Now I see why you wanted my voice. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  23:07, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know really how does it works, since Chile is not included on the royalties program :( --Diego Grez let's talk 23:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Umm... Isn't Wikinews American, technically? -- Mike moral  ♪♫  23:18, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It is. I said that because my account was rejected many times :( --Diego Grez let's talk 23:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes...Wikinews already has videos posted on YouTube, btw. There's a woman that apparently used to do newscasts, and another user that made promo videos. Benny the mascot (talk) 23:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Any videos posted to youtube should definitely be posted locally. (in commons:Category:Wikinews videos). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but I'm not going to upload the videos twice ;-) (connection sucks) --Diego Grez let's talk 00:01, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've created an accout called WikiNewsTV but Shaka has another one. Which one shall we keep? :-P --Diego Grez let's talk 17:40, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The EnWikinews account is the account I created to be our grand unified google services account. It currently runs our Buzz. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 17:45, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

OK. --Diego Grez let's talk 17:47, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikinews is not WikiNews. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk &bull; main talk'' 14:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper Club
Has anyone else seen Newspaper Club? They've been getting quite a bit of publicity recently, and were nominated for a British design award. Basically they will take either PDFs, or stuff designed with their own tool, and turn them into a 12-page newspaper, either black & white or full colour. They can do relatively small print runs, though the more copies you print, the cheaper it gets. This might be a good way to promote Wikinews, and it seems like an ideal thing to ask Wikimedia UK about funding.

Unfortunately the turnaround time seems to be quite long, so I thought about doing a "best of Wikinews" compilation (featured articles, exclusive interviews etc.) rather than just recent news. I've already got a beta invitation to Newspaper Club, and would be happy to put a PDF together if people think it's a good idea. Then we can see about approaching WMUK. the wub "?!"  10:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, Best of Wikinews as a bi-monthly magazine type thing might be cool. Typically in a two month period we have some OR pieces which are not really time specific, so stil relevent even a month later. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * To be honest I was only thinking of doing this as a one-off promotional thing, to give out at events or whatever. Sure, if it's successful we can think about making it a regular thing, but 12 pages of newspaper is a surprisingly large amount to fill (especially when you consider the amount of an average paper that is taken up by adverts). And then there's the cost issue. the wub "?!"  23:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There's also MagCloud which Wikia has a bulit in extension, not to mention the MediaWiki book tool. However, I agree, I've been thinking of doing something similar, mostly as one-offs. --Patrick M (TUFKAAP) (talk) 06:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks interesting. One point to note from my experience in Alexandria is, you have to have the print edition ready every single day, at around 9am local for where the conference is. The organisers will happily cover photocopy costs, and give you printer access to run off the initial copy. They just kept vanishing at Wikimania, doing the same for all wiki-related conferences would be ideal, and our license would allow conference sponsors to use a custom template with a couple of adverts in it. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

CAT: forward to Category namespace
I propose we have CAT: forward to the category namespace, like WN does to the Wikinews namespace. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  19:56, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 19:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Bawolff ☺☻ 19:59, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Tempodivalse [talk]  20:04, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Benny the mascot (talk) 22:41, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If no one objects, I'll file a bugzilla request after midnight UTC. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  23:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * --Thunderhead (t - e - c) 13:00, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Bug 23218 filed. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  04:28, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * devs did it. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:13, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Contest 2.0
So we've got the writing content, it worked out well in the beginning...but kinda fell off. This is expected (in my book) since people tend to lose interest in things like this quickly. I've mentioned this before and I'll mention it again, the next contest should be short - like a week. Make them shorter and more often. Can have one a month. On top of that, I have a suggestion for a concrete reward: "Featured Wikinewsie" (Trademark pending). I think it would be nice to replace a box on the homepage (for say a week) with it, Tempo disagree's. We could have a WN:Featured or something similar. Anyways, it wouldn't be a big huge thing. Their name (username), picture (if desired) and a short bio or article interests or similar (Ex: "Tempo won the May Wikinewsie contest for his cutting use of the word fellatio in reference to an Icelandic Volcano", ok, that might be a little odd, but you get the idea). In the end, the person who wrote the most would be featured for a short time and if it was fairly high profile, it would be a draw for people (especially those outside of wikinews "Hey, I could get recognition for my hard work"). -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 19:49, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've thought of suggesting something like this in the past too, like a "Wikinewsie of the Month/week" to give a certain user special recognition/perhaps a barnstar. However, I'd have to disagree with putting a user's bio or devoting a lot of space on the main page - I think there are more useful things we can devote the few available slots to (maybe add a link to Wikinewsie of the Month somewhere on MP, i.e. the header, but no more).


 * I do like the overall idea of this, though. We could determine a winner by number of articles created, and use a scoring system similar to the current contest's one. Perhaps also give out barnstars and keep a list of past winners to help encourage more contributions? Tempodivalse [talk]  20:45, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't mind doing two week long competitions. I could hold one every once and a while, using our rules now of course (maybe a little extra for OR). I like the idea of a Wikinewsie of the month thing too. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  23:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Me too. --Diego Grez let's talk 14:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If anyone's interested see User:Mikemoral/Sandbox. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  22:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Count me in. I wouldn't mind putting something on the main page, maybe in place of the "in development" section; some of the links there are really embarrassing, copyvios, articles that failed review, painfully stale stuff, etc. C628 (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Geocoding?
We have Location thanks to me from time long past (Stolen from commons or wp... or somewhere). Anyways, the idea was to geotag our news based on it's location. Some of the news isn't applicable or too large of area to be tagged, but a lot of it is. Looking at the main page now, articles like Chinese earthquake and Icelandic Volcano are really easy candidates. Some of them you could fudge, like the Twitter/LOC story you could tag with the LOC's location. Previously this idea never really gained ground, but I thought I'd mention it again and see if others were interested in helping/gaining some traction. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 05:34, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good idea. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  05:39, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, I will definitely use this where possible. Geotagging is great, I don't know why other news services haven't adopted it. the wub "?!"  15:08, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record. Part of the reason I mention this is because in the Mobile Reader App (and even on the web, though not on wiki) I could create a "News near you" based on your current GPS location. Granted we don't have a _lot_ going on now, but in the future it could be more useful. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 06:16, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * This is a good idea. I don't know why we haven't done this more, it's really a helpful little feature. Tempodivalse [talk]  18:31, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Namespace for "News briefs"
I saw that "News Briefs" are published in the main namespace. Why don't they have an own namespace, since there is a contributor that is focusing on it? It would be great in my opinion. What do you think. --Diego Grez let's talk 01:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that there would be a particular need for it. They're still news articles. And besides, only the main namespace is the only one configured for the comments namespace and liquid threads. If we were to move News briefs to a seperate namespace, comments would be... "Comments:Briefs:April 28, 2010" at the very best. --Thunderhead (t - e - c) 01:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think they need to be published. They are just pieces of other published news. They can't be published, or the older ones should be deleted as stale. --Diego Grez let's talk 01:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with Thunderhead. Just like I would oppose a "Wikinews Shorts" name space, it's just not necessary. -- Mike moral  ♪♫  01:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Too much work, too little use. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 02:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with the above, it just doesn't seem necessary and there's not really any added benefit to having them in their own namespace. We already have too many namespaces as it is [read: get rid of portals :b ]. Tempodivalse [talk]  03:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think they should get another news brief. They are not news articles (if they were they would not have category:Brief on them to hide them from the dpls), but they are in the main namespace. Everyone of them use the pseudo-namespace News brief. Why not make it a real namespace. As for comments, that could be handled by just Comments:News briefs:..., but really no one has ever actually used the comments namespace for news briefs, so it doesn't really matter. (For the record, we're talking about audio news briefs here (News briefs:June 21, 2009). Not article briefs (Business Brief for December 12, 2005). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:41, 29 April 2010 (UTC)