Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/Archive/8

= Technical = See also the archives.

RC Patrol
Have we thought about enabling the RC Patrol feature on Wikinews? Seems like it couldn't do any harm..... - Borofkin 02:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Just wondering why it isn't at wikipedia, with the whole problems recently. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 06:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * They enabled it for a while, but this disabled it - not sure why. It's mainly to deal with vandalism - well thought out mis-truths are still going to slip through. - Borofkin 06:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * AFAIK this feature has been disabled Wikimedia wide due to some performance issues, but don't call me on that. It would also be of only limited use until user rights can be set individually. --Deprifry|+T+ 13:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting and Consensus
I'm very interested in voting systems and how Wikinews develops consensus. As I'm not an admin, I don't know how you currently work out de-admining and such things. Is there a place where such topics are discussed (not de-admining specifically, but rather consensus and voting)? I couldn't find anything built in to WikiMedia for example. --Zero 17:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * see and  specificly Polls are evil, VotingIsEvil, ArrowsTheorem,VotingIsGood Don't Vote on Everything. Voting (rule by majority) is generally discouraged and Concennsus (we all agree) is encouraged. We make concennses by writing to each other on talk pages. We vote by saying yes or no on the page. If you edit someone elses comment you get in big (trouble which recently just happened). There is no special voting software (I've heard that historiclly there has been but not currently) Some wikis also use templates (see commons:template:support and commons:template:oppose, commons:template:neutral for example) . I hope that answers your question. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Note that not everyone agrees that voting is "evil"; in fact, some people believe that voting is a crucially important element of democratic societies that also has relevance to online communities. As may not be difficult to guess, I count myself among these people, and I find the total anti-voting position not only to be wrong, but to be dangerous, because it leads to little clubs making decisions if taken to an extreme. There have been many large scale votes in Wikimedia, including the one to launch this very project. However, we do try to work towards a consensus in discussion before even thinking about votes, and the result of a vote (or any other decision making process) is always open to being questioned. We all agree on these points, I think. The Wikipedia page "No binding decisions is perhaps the most concise summary of the common ground.--Eloquence 01:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Consensus means you take forever to make up your mind. And when you finally do make your mind up, chances are it is a real good decision, because everyone agrees. Voting means the community isn't interested in consensus, so a simple majority will do... mmm.


 * Thanks very much for your answers. I've read enough now that my head is spinning. I agree that finding consensus by voting should be a last resort. But I also think that Wikinews in particular needs to avoid having the partisan image (the little clubs making decisions) that mainstream media suffers from. Perhaps there should be some sort of simple tools that allow voting, but discourage it (or allow voters to force the issue back to discussion). Also, I can imagine several technical solutions for making votes "dynamic" that would avoid binding decisions. --Zero 09:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Premise: consensus is not 'scalable'.
 * So what rules, "meritocracy"?

Comments
Not sure which heading to put this under since its a bit of tech, proposal, and policy.

I propose using Comments. People love to have they say. I belive it will increase readership, and thus editors. For example, on the infamous /. people often complain about quality of stories. In a wiki the complainer can fix it. the template I propose is User:Bawolff/comment (in action at user:Bawolff/idea) For more about this see also at template:xt. My template curently places comments in a subpage of the talk page for the article and transcludes them in the article. It has been sugested to use a new namespace with another tab, and also to use a modified extention. I hope everyone likes the idea, because I think it will benifit Wikinews. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Would anyone object to me giving this a trial run? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * If no one objects by tommorow I'll put it in an article. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 05:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Did you? Which one?  Nyarlathotep 11:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Multi-category DPLs
Somebody needs to modify the software to allow for more than one category to be able to be shown in the same list so that people can setup their own custom news feeds, don'tcha think? --Nerd42 23:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think work for that is going on at DynamicPageList2. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh good! -- 01:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

What happened to the source template?
It used to be when you created a news story, using the front page text box, you'd get the whole template deal with the source section. The source section is gone now? Why? Don't we want to encourage sourcing? -- user:zanimum
 * Please see WN:ALERT --Chiacomo (talk) 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

More discussion now up... -- user:zanimum

"podcast"
I know people have political issues with mp3, but an ogg file isn't really a podcast, since it can't be played on very many portable players (which is the point of a podcast) Can you either switch to mp3, or just hold off on making a "podcast" altogether? I know this may seem odd, but try and think of it from someone's point of view who might actually be considering using wikinews as a newsource, and not as a hobby. --anon


 * Unfortunately, the MP3 format is encumbered by certain patent protections and is not a file format that the Wikimedia Commons allows to be uploaded. Perhaps someday there will be nice automatic tools that give you this conversion ability, but for now the OGG files are it. Sorry! -- IlyaHaykinson 04:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * We could allow them locally to wikinews. (But I'm doubtful wikimedia-foundation would let us). Also of intreast is commons:Commons talk:File types Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 04:52, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've tried bringing it up over a dozen times. It's a no-go; I sometimes think that convincing Microsoft and Apple to allow Vorbis support in their players would be easier than to change the foundations'.  Either way, I don't see a chance of it happening in the near future, although I'd really like to see it happen.  --MrMiscellanious – Happy New Year – 06:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio script proposal
What if we were to just move copyvios to Copyvio:Articlename and have a bot clean it once per day, based upon fair use criteria (3 days from date of move)? If the mover felt the article was worth preserving, they could always start a new stub at Articlename consisting of just the source where they found the copyvio. We wouldn't need to make this "policy" or remove the copyvio tag, as that might confuse people, but it might be a cool option which the copyvio tag could explain. This change technically gives non-admins the power to delete articles, but I think 3 days is probably a safe enough time, so long as their is a copyvio namespace list which allows people to look for copyvio articles which might be worth developing as real articles. Admins can always undelete inappropraitely deleted stuff too. Thoughts? Maybe namespace isn't the best way to do this? Nyarlathotep 18:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think works.  I've placed it on articles numerous times before I got used to them also needing listing on WN:DR, and they've all been picked up and processed appropriately.  Based on that, I can't see how a bot could help in the process, it could cause more of a problem to my thinking.  If applying a copyvio tag to an article automatically results in the deletion of said article three days later unless some action is taken, then that is a far worse result than if someone tags an article and no admin takes action in three days. Brian McNeil / talk 19:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Lead Article Template

 * I'm not sure if this is the best place to put this (if not, please suggest where to move it), but whilst the 18 killed in U.S. air strike on village in Pakistan article was the lead article on the Main Page, I thought it would have been useful to be able to link to the secondary article which focused on the reaction to the attack, Protests erupt in Pakistan over US air strike. The BBC News website seems to do this with most of their lead stories (which can have up to three secondary links in a bulleted list).


 * I created a template which tries to incorporate the idea, and put a demo on my user page.


 * Does anyone else think this is a good idea, or have any suggestions as to how the template might be improved? Frankie Roberto 10:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks intreasting. The only problem with that is that often we don't have a follow up/related story. (but we could just make it so it only displays the seccond story if we have one. But we'd probaly need to use an if template or cascading templates to do it, which are generaly bad things.) Definitly looks like a promising idea. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 17:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, we don't need fancy if templates, we could just change the name of the template we're using. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 17:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree we don't currently have follow-up or related stories that often, but I reckon this is something we'll see more of in the future... The fact that most news websites seem to do it suggests to me that it might be a good idea...

I've added the following test to the HTML comment directions for the Lead template: You may change Main_lead to Main_lead_with_secondary_link and add a |Secondary_Article= line if you wish the lead to link to a follow up article. Nyarlathotep 21:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * So this is where the discussion was. You don't know how hard I looked (through archives) for this, for the third lead. Also see template:lead 2 for non main lead pages. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 21:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

www.wikinews.org.au
How would one go about setting up a portal at http://www.wikinews.org.au, similar to the one at http://www.wikinews.org, but pointing to the Australian Portal for each language project? This seems to be the logical extension of the Portal concept, and makes publicising a portal much easier.... - Borofkin 01:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * A simple Apache setup can handle a short load of traffic on a personal system behind a broadband connection that will redirect users to a given URL. There are quite a few ways you can do this; some are more efficient than others, but before anyone buys anything or does anything, you should ask the foundation if they'll consider purchasing the domain and redirecting it (most likely, they will).  --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 01:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what I was thinking. Um, so how does one make such a request of the Foundation? Email to board@wikimedia.org? - Borofkin 05:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of the costs of purchasing an .au domain, but one might consider buying for the foundation and giving it to them as a donation. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Money is no object, I have a number of sizeable swiss bank accounts at my disposal, the result of my life before I became a Wikinews contributor. My problems are technical - I don't know about domains, or how to register them, or how to redirect them, or whether I need to get permission to use the name "Wikinews", or whether I need to be a registered non-profit before I can get an org.au domain, etc. Um, I'll do some more research. - Borofkin 05:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If money is no object, I have some excellent charities you can contribute to -- including the Buy Chiacomo a laptop fund... --Chiacomo (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, so I'm looking at the domain registration thingumy now. Can I register it under my person, or do I need to justify the use of the name "Wikinews"? It's asking me to justify how "wikinews" has "a close and substantial connection to the legal entity". Should I just be able to register it as a personal domain? - Borofkin 05:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The damn thing won't let me register it without a "Company number". Or to be more specific, a "ABN, ACN, ARBN, or Incorporated Association Number". - Borofkin 05:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You might consider mailing Foundation-l to see if they have such a number in Australia.. I don't think they do, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. --Chiacomo (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * TO register an .au domain you need some form of business/organisation ID. Unfortunately as the foundation isnt an Australian entity they dont have one. Wikimedia Australia will but at present there is no link to WM in Australia. As for the redirection, you could use a free DNS service like zoneedit or get redirection with the domain - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 10:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Link to Wikinews at Current_events
Divol suggested a link from en.wikipedia's "Current_events" to our en.wikinews site; it seemed reasonable (especially since it's on the french wikipedia to the french wikinews) so I did it. I hope/think it looks ok? Neutralizer 12:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * more : we made into wikipedia a template called WN : here its code :

[ Wikinews ]


 * usage : *

Jacques Divol 13:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Template doesn't seem to be there any more. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 18:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

RDF meta data
Currently we have metadata in MediaWiki:Copyright. This allows us to be found by specialized CC content serches (see advanced search in google). Maybe we should switch to RDF metadata. Bawolff ☺☻ 07:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

News discussion/commentary on Wikicities
The idea of a news discussion namespace has been brought up again, and I spoke with Angela at Wikicities about the possibility of hosting the discussions on a site there. She suggested I speak with the people at http://pov.wikicities.com about the idea, and Danny was quite enthusiastic about the idea.

There are a couple of technical issues which need to be resolved before such a project could be initiated.


 * 1) Linking to the discussion space on pov.wikicities could be done several ways. Here are the ones I thought of first, but are by no means the only or even the best ways:
 * 2) * A 'discussion' tab, probably written in javascript on wikinews for each of the available skins. This solution would end up creating links for all namespaces, including Wikinews: and User:, which might not be welcome on pov.wikicities.
 * 3) * A 'discussion' template. The primary benefit is it can be added by people who wish to open a discussion, so not all articles would develop commentary pages on pov.wikicities. This is also a potential drawback as it requires people to decide to edit the article first, so the number of discussions might be reduced.
 * 4) An interwiki transclusion. This could be done using an extension, if the Wikicities people are interested/willing to do so. This may also already be under development with Wikia, a project I know nothing about. The point is to have a very recent version of the news article available on pov.wikicities, but the actual article editing happening on Wikinews.

Pov.wikicities.com is also interested in editorials about current events and topics, so this fits with some of their goals and missions.

If anyone has further ideas about solutions to the technical issues, please jump in! -  Amgine | talk en.WN 20:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the best method would be an interwiki transclussion. It would also have the section editing links if anyone wanted to edit it. Failing that, I think a discussion tab preferably with some code that only allows it in certain namespaces would be my seccond choice. Isn't wika the comercial arm of the wikimedia foundation who runs operates and hosts wikicities? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 01:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Not exactly an issue for here, but I had a related idea, which I promptly never found the time to write the extension for. Of course, my goal there was some sort of "idealized internet conversation" while the goal here is much simpler "people having a say".  I'll need to take a closer look at pov.wikicities.com to see how they handle divergence of opinions.  Nyarlathotep 17:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

It should definitely be done with only the template, not enough people are interested in doing it for every page to have a link, plus POV wikicity requires that discussions get set up, and you really want one discussion per news topic. You don't want a seperate discssion for every new story about the JP cartoons!

Just as an interesting idea, what if we didn't send the discussion to only one site? We could have a discussions infobox for some topics, inserted next to Sources, which linked to between 2 and 5 discussion sites. We need to avoid advertising any particular discussion site too much, but it might be interesting. Nyarlathotep 16:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

April Fools Prank
Would it be possible to somehow show "Comrade User:" in place of "User:" on April Fools day? It might be a nice prank which didn't involve changing any stories. OTOH, its technically difficult if you try to do anything beyond just typing Comrade User:Amgine occasionally. :) Nyarlathotep 16:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think that possible as that would involve a namespace change which would break a lot (as in a lot) of links. One could, could possibly change the name of the tabs that you see in the neat little menu on top of every page, e.g. replacing "discussion" with "ranting" (via MediaWiki:Talk) or changing the name of the user page (via MediaWiki:Nstab-user) --Deprifry|+T+ 17:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We can change mediawiki things like Deprify sugested, but i'm doubtful we can change the namespace. (However doing that may just be as well). actually there alot we can do in mediawiki: land Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 21:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I strongly discourage any April Fools' pranks. At Wikipedia, we were still cleaning up the aftermath of April Fools' Day 2005 eight months later.  This is not a productive use of editors' time.  Uncle G 23:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't see whats wrong with one controlled prank aggred on by the people who read the water cooler. Anything else should be treated as vandalism. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

As a note, I was very active on Wikinews April 1, 2005, and there were no obvious April Fools Day pranks. I personally like a laugh as well as the next person, but am leary encouraging it with such an open editing process. -Edbrown05 01:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Why Edbrown05! did you forget the "Wikipædia purchased by Britanica" article, posted to the main page by those fun-loving hoolies from #wikipedia? and a couple small stray additions here and there. Dan100 was quite focused on preventing/avoiding such pranks here last year, and I believe we had 2 or more admins on RC for more than 24 hours rather specifically watching for such submissions. -  Amgine | talk en.WN 06:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Well the question is "Do organized prank encourage or discourage prank-like vandalism?" I tend to think they discourage it, as people with a good idea figure out there is a channel for pushing their idea.

Anyway, if people are seriously worried about April 1st vandalism here, we could drop the archive protection time down to half a month around April 1st, basically cutting in half the number of messy vandalism opportunities. And it'd provide lots of time to fix things prior to future archival protection if we let it rise back to one? month durring the first half of April. Nyarlathotep 12:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yay! for once a Wikimedia Foundation project with a sense of humor. --    NERD42    [mailto:nerd42@gmail.com EMAIL ]  TALK  H2G2 PEDIA UNCYC   16:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Weather bot images on commons
Wikinews had a weather bot which reported temperatures around the globe for many months. In the process, it created hundreds, possibly thousands, of images indicating the temperatures several times a day in different parts of the world and uploaded them to commons.

Commons would like to delete these, to clear up some space.

Since the bot is not currently active (last image was 19 September 2005), and the images are a really bad way to store weather data for history, I've suggested they go ahead and delete them according to their processes on Commons but save the last image so we can see what it looked like (and to avoid breaking old test layouts). -  Amgine | talk en.WN 19:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 19:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

pl weather
The polish uses text over a map for weather. look at the bottom of pl:. Definitly intreasting. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Email this story . ..
Forgive me if this issue has been raised before, but I think it would be great if the news articles could have an "email this story" capability. Often at work, I send news stories to my friends via this method (and vise-versa) on other news sites. I have begun using Wikinews as my primary source for current events, and wonder if a similar script could be written to accomplish this (yes, I know about the whole 'permanent link' thing, but something more convenient would be nice). Anyways, just a thought. — orioneight (talk) 02:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've never actually heard somebody actually say they used thoose links! (: On most browsers there is a send page button under tools or file. I'll ask somebody who actually knows what they're talking about to see if/what can be done about it. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 06:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is that this is a wiki, allowing anyone to create a page that could then be sent to anyone. This, in turn, means that you would basically turn the wiki into a spam relay. We might tie it to a stable version tagging mechanism, but without any reliable way to distinguish stories from spam (which preferably shouldn't rely on Wikinews-specifics), this cannot be done.--Eloquence 07:29, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Whats wrong with sending a perma-linked version? Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 19:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What if it was an option in the sidebar only for articles with the published tag, or maybe in a template used in the bottom of published articles. I know it's easy enough to send a permalink onesself, but I think an easy, advertised way of doing this would spread alot of publicity, in a viral marketing kind of way.  This word-of-mouth could bring new readers and ultimately new editors. — orioneight <FONT SIZE="-2">(talk)</FONT> 02:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It could just send a default template with a link in the e-mail to the Wikinews page - that way there's no text in the e-mail that could be spam, and it encourages people to visit the website. This seems to be the way that most 'e-mail this' links work... Frankie Roberto 15:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Again your(almost all) browser has this functionality built in. Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 00:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

IRC
Why is it down? Can we have a back-up access? Neutralizer 10:15, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the web interface was running on Journowiki which is currently down. You could try getting an IRC client and connecting with that.  The server you'd want to connect your IRC client to is irc.freenode.net, and you want channel #wikinews. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * thanks. Neutralizer 14:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

URLs using IDs rather than titles
One of the problems with using the MediaWiki software for Wikinews is that we inherit the assumpton, which goes fairly deep into the software, that URL = page title. This is fine for encyclopedias, but for news articles it doesn't work so well. Long term, there are plenty of headlines which ought to be re-useable for new articles. Requiring article names to be unique and un-ambigous really hampers the style (IMO). There's also the problem that as pages can be moved to to new names (and often are), there's no unique identifier for the articles. This means that in RSS feeds, a page which has been moved a few times appears many times.

The only solution is to switch to using URLs with unique identifiers which aren't linked to the page name, ie numeric or perhaps alphanumeric identifiers, like /578768476. Whilst this isn't as readable, it does provide less changeable identifier, and allows two articles to have the same name.

I realise that to make this change would require a lot of work, and probably some major customisation/new features in MediaWiki, but I would argue that long term we should push for this change (allowing all the old URLs to work as redirects of course).

Agree?? Frankie Roberto 15:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Disagree. A good title is unique; otherwise, if you can't come up with a unique title, it's not really news. People have been foretelling this namespace conflict for well over a year now and it hasn't been a problem here.
 * Additionally, page moves that happen after publishing retain the original URL as a redirect. -- IlyaHaykinson 09:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ilya, no, that is an editorial policy decision, maybe a fine one for wikinews to make, but still an editorial decission. Most news sites can reuse titles.


 * Indeed, to be truly unique is pretty hard. For example, all of the following could be re-used (all taken from the same day):


 * RadioShack CEO resigns - what happens if the new CEO resigns too?
 * Tibetans protest Google on Valentine's Day - what if the same happens next year?
 * Mozambique and Zimbabwe Struck by Earthquake - earthquakes can strike the same place twice.
 * Arsenal beat Real Madrid 1-0 - this is hardly a unique result
 * An interview with Jimbo Wales - are we never going to interview him again?

Frankie Roberto 00:46, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Roberto, your talking about a major technical change which effects essentially all existing crosslinks of wikinews with other foundtation projects, and would require legacy links for off site pages too, plus it slightly complicates future crosslinking (need two pieces of info instead of one). It may or may not be a good idea, but it'd require much effort to pull off, and I'm not convinced it is essential yet. If we eventually grow to hundreds of articles per day, it's much more likely to be an essential feature. Nyarlathotep 10:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Even if there simply were unique IDs for the articles other than the titles, and the URLs didn't change, that'd be useful, as it could be used as an ID in the RSS feed to prevent moved pages from appearing twice. Are there any internal database IDs that could be exposed? Frankie Roberto 00:46, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I've seen a few articles renamed from " blah Dick Cheney blah" to "blah US Vice President blah" recently, which seemed like a bad idea, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Here is the reason: US VP's change. In general, proper names are preferable to titles as they are less likely to conflict with future title. Nyarlathotep 12:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree. un-unique names are bad (Numbers are horrible). Even the above examples you could have similiar but different titles. We've already had many interviews with Jimbo:

You could also change it to exclusive interview with Jimbo etc.
 * Interview with Jimbo Wales
 * An interview with Jimbo Wales
 * Bad things are not going to happen with conflicts. Each version of a page has a revisionid. The current one for this page is ‎. you can then use that number in the url to pick a specific non-changing permanent link to the page. (see perma-link in the sidebar). Bawolff ☺☻[[image:smile.png]] 23:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Need help from someone in the UK
If you're from the UK (or possibly elsewhere in Europe), I need your help. I've set up a local number in England that should be forwarding to the Hotline &mdash; the number is 0871-218-6397. I need someone to call this number and see if it works, as I've been unable to reach it properly from the US. Please report your findings, and thanks in advance! -- IlyaHaykinson 09:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Works from Germany. --Deprifry|+T+ 09:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Works via Skype from France, as +44 871-218-6397. Nyarlathotep 10:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks folks. I didn't even think of Skype (or in my case Gizmo). Number posted to the homepage. -- IlyaHaykinson 07:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I just phoned and left a test message from the UK, and it seems to work fine. Thanks for setting this up - I'll save the number in my mobile and might actually use it sometime if I stumble across a news story... Frankie Roberto 16:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC) (London)

Need to confirm e-mail address
You need to confirm your e-mail address in order to receive e-mails via the Wikinews e-mail system. To do so, visit your preferences (see the top right of each page), and click "Confirm my e-mail address". Then, send a confirmation code to the e-mail address set in your preferences. Finally, go to your e-mail and click the link given. This was enabled today by Brion due to the possibility of user-to-user spamming. Ral315 04:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikinews users should authenticate their @mail address using the preference pane if they want to receive mails. Jacques Divol

multi-lang portals
On Wikisource theres a feature for comparing different language editions of the same page. Maybe we could use this on wikinews to create bilingual portals (for countrys like Canada with two official languages). Perhaps have a link at top Bilingual version Bawolff ☺☻ 00:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)