Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2013/March

Add Wikivoyage sister links
A nice simple proposal: we should add links to our newest sister project, Wikivoyage on category/topic pages. We have links to Wikipedia, Commons and other projects... may as well have Wikivoyage too. —Tom Morris (talk) 19:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that had crossed my mind (briefly; reminder is good); that'll be Topic cat. There's also sisters, and... whatever it is that puts a list of sister projects on the main page.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've gone through and added links to all the Topic cat instances that have pages on Wikivoyage. I'm seeking consensus on Wikivoyage for links back. If there is consensus, there needs to be a bugzilla request for it. There are a lot of categories that don't use Topic cat that probably should be... —Tom Morris (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Topic cat is intended to be good for use on nearly every non-internal category on the project. But converting an existing category to use it is a good deal of work, at least the way I'm doing it &mdash; check each possible sister project for a likely target, and that sometimes includes looking for it under some non-obvious name.  I convert one every once in a while, and the total number converted must be fairly decent by now, but I've not yet added it to my list of maintenance tasks I nibble at on a regular basis.  Maybe I should.  --Pi zero (talk) 20:21, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I support Tom Morris's goal. --LauraHale (talk) 20:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * IMHO, I don't think it is appropriate for WN as a neutral news source to provide Wikivoyage links. Wikivoyage does not have an NPOV policy; it only requires editors to 'be fair'. Also, the purpose of WN's sister links is to allow the reader to know more about whatever is mentioned in the news. WP and Commons can do that: WP by providing further information, and the Commons by letting the reader know what the stuff mentioned in the article actually look like in real life. This cannot be said of Wikivoyage, which is only useful for travellers. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 22:42, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks isn't neutral either. If you go and read a book on learning French, it has the distinctly non-neutral point of view that one ought to learn French and not, say, Swahili. Wikiversity doesn't have NPOV. Pointing to sister projects shouldn't require them to adhere to the same rules and standards we do: we point to sister projects because they are doing interesting things about the same topic. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Another way of looking at it. We provide facts to our readers.  We can report objectively about controversial claims of fact, and about opinions, by attributing the claims/opinions.  The sister links are attributed to the sister projects.


 * We don't pass judgement on our sister projects. We aren't responsible for their content, and they aren't responsible for ours.  It has actually happened in the past that Wikipedia has tried to bully us, telling us how to run our project, by threatening us with non-linkage to our materials.  We didn't cave to that crap, and we don't do stuff like that to other projects.  We're better than that, even if they sometimes aren't.  --Pi zero (talk) 02:25, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Having a French book doesn't imply that French is more useful than Swahili. It only shows the demographics of WB editors. WN may have more focus on Europe and the US than sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands, but that doesn't mean it's biased. WV and WN are so different that I don't think it's ever appropriate to link there from here in a box - Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Wikiversity only returns one result, and it's on a userpage.
 * Interwiki links are for adding value for the reader, and there's no rule to say, 'you have to link to related sister projects'. By not linking to 'voyage, we aren't passing any judgements on the merits or demerits of the project, but merely deciding that it is not compatible with WN. That is different from WP bullying WN into following its rules - which isn't permitted by WP policies anyway. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 23:55, 19 January 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems you're making the mistake of thinking of sister links as purely Wikinews content. They aren't.  They shade well over from Wikinews content toward the infrastructure of the wikimedia sisterhood as a whole.  Refusing to link to Wikivoyage would be both judging the demerits of Wikivoyage, and also using that judgement as a basis for censorship.  And &mdash;I made this point before, but might as well amplify&mdash; it's shafting a sister project, similarly to Wikipedia's years-long campaign of de-facto attempted sororicide against Wikinews, which is both immoral and, amorally speaking, unwise.


 * Given what Wikiversity aspires to be, not wanting to link to there makes, if possible, even less sense.


 * The rest of the first paragraph, and the first sentence of the second, bear no relevance I see to the topic of discussion.


 * As for Wikipedia policy, Wikipedia's violation of its own policy about news is one of the most prominent features of its main page. --Pi zero (talk) 02:03, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

There are situations when you would really want to have travel stuff. Maybe you read an article about fires in Australia and you were thinking of traveling there... or you read an interview about some one who talks about the volcano in their country. That may cause you to want travel information, not encyclopedia information.--LauraHale (talk) 09:45, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Laura's point is the most-valid here. We would want Wikivoyage to link to us, mainly so that where we have coverage of something like the wildfires in Australia potential travellers can see that; equally, if we've a category chock-full of unrest, kidnapping and so on, Wikinews provides a complimentary service to Wikivoyage in allowing potential travellers to look at that coverage.
 * You may-well ask where is the benefit to Wikinews in linking to Wikivoyage? I, as-yet, cannot see an immediate case for templates to link from mainspace news coverage directly to Wikivoyage; but, cross-wiki category links? Absolutely. There is no downside to that whatsoever; and, Wikivoyage not having an NPOV policy has absolutely nothing to do with it. You'd have to be pretty stupid to think that a travel guide would make any claim to neutrality!
 * Besides, what we have already discussed above has implications in-terms of Wikinews as a service to Wikivoyagers. If anyone from the project wants to try their hand at writing a news article on, say, a major international travel warning (eg. surge in gun crime/kidnappings somewhere in the world), we have to see what we can do to help them with that.
 * Laying down rules on "why we can't like to Wikivoyage" is not welcoming, and not productive. It would be adopting the attitude oft-shown in The Other Place towards us. Let's just wait and see, and inviting anyone from Wikivoyage who wants to have a look round and give their input has to be the best thing we could do. For all we know, setting up something similar to the bot which ports headlines over to Wikipedia portals has the potential to be most-useful in the "public utility" of Wikivoyage. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:12, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I'm an administrator at Wikivoyage. One of my roles is to foster good relationships between the sister projects as part of an Expedition there. After the discussion above which seemed to reach a rough consensus for links to Wikivoyage, would anyone be opposed to the addition of wikivoyage to both Template:Regioncategory and Template:Countrycategory? It seems logical to add the links, considering Wikivoyage has articles about all the places where those templates are transcluded. Also note that sometimes Wikivoyage provide travel warnings/alerts at the top of our country guides, possibly useful to those who just read a news report here and wish to follow up on the travel situation. JamesA (talk) 03:37, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "Rough consensus". Heh. That's one way of putting across how things go here - far more 'sparring' to discussions.
 * I'll take a look at the suggested template changes; havent touched those particular templates in a very long time.
 * A point to add is: If any WikiVoyage contributors find themselves in the wrong place, at the right time (from a news perspective), we'd be delighted if they can provide on-the-spot information and/or photos; but, they should not put themselves at-risk to obtain them! --Brian McNeil / talk 09:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Changes made, but not as-yet sighted. You should be able to see what difference this makes on Category:United Kingdom and Category:Europe. It does look like we need a nicer template that combines the relevant sisterlinks into one. Possibly with syntax like or  where the landing page does not correspond to the source page here. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:27, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * We are slowly migrating away from using Regioncategory and Countrycategory at all. We're shifting everything to use topic cat, it does support links to Wikivoyage, and links to Wikivoyage have been added to topic-cat pages when found.  It does certainly make sense to add it to the old templates as well, to provide some coverage where topic cat is not yet used.  --Pi zero (talk) 11:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Non-free image usage
I would like to propose a ban articles that use more than two non-free images unless they are clearly illustrating a news point. We should be encouraging free to use content. I can see one image being fair use, but when we repeatedly hit ten images, I think we have a problem. If a person gets permission, they should work on encouraging them to upload to Commons. There does not appear to be any specific rationale for this type of image, such as event rules covering it that put restrictions on licenses available. --LauraHale (talk) 22:41, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I am most concerned with the limitation that they be used only on Wikinews. We have always tried very hard to make our content very reusable. Completely unreusable articles are really bad. If we allow grants of licenses to be used, the grant of license must be such that reusers can make use of it as well. As such, I think, limitations that the image be used for news reports or to accompany freely licensed content only are fine, but baring exceptional cases, Wikinews use only images should be considered completely unacceptable regardless of quantity. --Cspurrier (talk) 04:04, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I can think of exceptions. Any original and live reporting from major sporting events often puts restrictions on copyright for images.  This was the case for the Paralympics, where the only allowable license was CC-BY-NC but this was expressly discussed with the community beforehand where we knew this.  The images can be re-used by others under fair dealings and where fair use is applicable.  But Wikinews only images are a licensing hell that is almost unenforcable... especially when there is zero indication of specific newsworthiness of an image and non-free images were not sought on Commons or elsewhere. --LauraHale (talk) 04:15, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
 * -NC or -ND, while clearly less desirable should be ok. We do not need to ensure that all of our images are fully reusable by every type of reuser, but they should at-least be reuseable by somebody. --Cspurrier (talk) 18:29, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

There's an order of preference for images: Free (as-in Commons will accept) sits at one end, and claims of Fair Use/Fair dealing at the other. The fair use end of the spectrum is supposed to be for absolutely irreplaceable images which contribute significantly to a report. I'm opposed to a hard policy; but, you can't build a photoessay out of images that can't be reused by others. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * We should however have very clear delineation of these principles prominently placed on WN:Image use policy, and probably a couple of other places as well. --Pi zero (talk) 12:23, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Wording change should definitely be done so no further repeats and no excuses of claiming ignorance on the topic. Legally, in Australia, newsworthy images (which we implicitly state they are by including them in a news article) can be re-used by any news organization. Thus a explicitly non-free images where the uploader implies they cannot be used under fair dealings by other news organization is in breach of my understanding of fair dealings laws. (Which are more liberal than USA fair use laws to begin with.) --LauraHale (talk) 03:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to close all language Wikinews
Please see Water_cooler/policy. -- Cirt (talk) 01:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)