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

iPhone version
I've just come across this site-www.intersquash.com, which makes an iPhone enabled page from any RSS feed. This is what results from our RSS feed for any iPhone/iPod Touch users-. What do people think about redirecting iPhone users to the iPhone friendly version of the site, with a link back to the normal version?   Tris   09:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea to me. Tempodivalse [talk]  15:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * personally i'd prefer if such mobile versions were done in house. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)


 * We should be able to do our own versions. This should be us being pioneers, and when we run into a brick wall with the WMF techies, we get Commons or Wikipedia to go "ooooh! nice!" and fight to get our new gadgets and toys made WMF-wide. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, if someone can and will do. Any volunteers?     Tris   08:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * For both these things, the point seems to be that we should be doing it ourselves. However, noone does, for whatever reason & I'm not blaming those who are able to.  Of course I'd prefer it done in house, but it's not, so until then, maybe we should consider outsourcing.     Tris   10:46, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Good news everyone: Wikimedia Technical Blog - Mobile Homepage in your Language! There might be a few kinks since its only used for Wikipedias at the moment, but this seems like the best route to take. the wub "?!"  21:46, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Do we know how easy it would be for the devs to make this work for Wikinews? I guess all we really need on the mobile Main Page is a DPL (though we should try to squeeze on as much as we can) so it shouldn't, I wouldn't have thought, be overly difficult. Den dodge  T\C 22:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Devs tend to be squeeze resistant. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:30, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * FYI - I talked to the dev in charge of writing the mobile "interface" thing. He said he didn't have time for it, but should time get free'd up, he does believe Wikinews should be next.  I promised him that we'd do whatever was needed to work with him on it.  So... eventually we'll get it.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 00:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Photographer user category
Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up, but would it be possible to add a 'Photographer' user category, so that we can easily find all Wikinewsies who are photogs with gear etc, would have helped in the Times Sq Bomb Scare article and probably in other things too, as well as the general reasons mentioned in "What are user groups for?". I have noticed that. hidden away, is an 'Interest in Photojournalism' category, but this has only 2 users, 3 now including me. Can I just create a category page for photographer and an admin add it to the user directory, or would an admin need to do all of it? Thanks, --JulesMattsson (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should reuse the old hidden category and just make it more prominent. Doesn't seem to be much point in making another one, when one already exists. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm with bawolff, if we can make use of the existing category that would be better, creating a new one would duplicate things unnecessarily, imo. Tempodivalse [talk]  03:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that seems a fair idea, but maybe it could be renamed or some such? It's one thing having an interest in photojournalism, but a Photographer category would be for people who engage in original reporting and photojournalism as part of that. Or maybe just clarify the 'Interest in Photojournalism'. I don't really know, policy and site maintenance etc isn't and never will be my area, so this is just a vague suggestion. --JulesMattsson (talk) 19:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Categories cannot be renamed; only deleted and a new category created. I would suggest kicking around a few suggestions for the appropriate category name and then going ahead and creating it yourself. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay well, what do people think for a cat. name? Photographer, Photojournalist, Wikinews Photographer, Commons Photographer? etc... --JulesMattsson (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, whatever you think is best. One thing about the category:Interest in photojournalism is that the interest in part clearly indicates its a user category, and not a category that contains articles. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:22, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Search Results Chronological Order
For a NEWS Website - I find it very strang that topical search results do not display in chronological order - starting with most recent events first.

Any Thoughts?


 * Yeah, from what I can tell the search lists material by relevance, not by chronological order. I agree that the latter would have been much more suitable for a news site. Unfortunately, this is the standard MediaWiki configuration and i don't know that it's possible to change it. Tempodivalse [talk]  02:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Well it'd be nice to perhaps give more weight to more recent articles. If i am searching for a specific article, it is quite possible i want an article from the past. If you put a well known topical term, ex: special:search/Canada, it will go to a page listing Canadian articles in order. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)