Wikinews talk:Workspace

Archive1

Making brief pages long
The Workspace did used to be very wordy. Then Pingswept cleaned it up a lot, making it much easier to use.

Pages like the Workspace don't need long, very wordy intros. Users simply do not read it, and it gets in the way of the function of the page. Dan100 (Talk) 08:05, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of the Workspace and why things are where they are
The workspace is the central hub through which article work takes place. There's a large clear header for 'Creating new articles', which sends would-be writers straight to the Writing an article page. Below that is the 'Work on existing articles' section, where editors can see what articles are works-in-progress and reach them easily. There's also brief pointers to the style and content guides and the Article flags guide. There's also links to update the front page leads (kept here, and not the front page, to reduce simple vandalism).

The purpose and reasoning is to enable work on articles very quickly and clearly, and no more. Dan100 (Talk) 15:22, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Please explain purpose of content in-line. People should not have to switch to a discussion page to find out what something is. It should be self-explanatory. Where it is self-explanatory, you should not go and document it again somewhere, it just makes more things to get out-of-date whenever something changes. - Simeon 03:00, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * The inline content is so you can see what's being worked on in each section, and as you can see it works very well. What else needs explaining? Dan100 (Talk)

Submit a story articles not displayed on workspace, may lead to duplication
Submit a story may contain articles which are not mentioned on the workspace page. This could lead to duplicate stories being filed. - Simeon 03:00, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Proposed solution 1: make Submit a story inline into the Workspace
 * Proposed solution 2: rm Submit a story
 * Proposed solution 3: embed Developing stories template into Submit a story and educate users to add their headline to it
 * Proposed solution 4: ask users of workspace to check Submit a story before starting a new story


 * This is a personal opinion, but Submit a story is a quick and easy way for someone to ask Wikinewsies to write a story for them. It is often not a well-written article, and may take a considerable effort on the part of a contributor to research and write the article. Where it has been well written, great! those article are quickly put up on the developing stories. Where not... if it languishes, or is superceded by an article from workspace, I guess I don't have much sympathy or remorse since the contributor might have taken the time to become familiar with the WN processes and written the article. - Amgine/talk 07:11, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, I've had a fiddle, how's that? Someone give it a test-drive and find out what's wrong Dan100 (Talk) 07:50, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Dan, great! I've cleaned up the text a little to make it clearer how someone should edit/publish them. - Simeon 13:38, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Requested Translations
I took the liberty of adding a new section to the Workspace -- "Requested Translations". There are many non-English articles in other Wikinews versions that are not included here. While any and all translation requests are welcome, it would be very useful if people would post requests for translations of excellent articles. I just posted one. Oh, and I'll be filling translation requests myself -- mainly French to English. --Zantastik 06:31, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Fabulous, Zantastik! Thanks! - Amgine/talk 06:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Workspace changes
I have taken the Proposed Workspace and put it live. I think it is a cleaner layout and works well with the new /  system. Main changes I have made:
 * Removed Submit a story, deprecated
 * Made a separate and highly visible section for starting new articles
 * Removed the separate "stub" listing. I'm not yet convinced we need this, and it could turn out to be too much maintenance in addition to the tag.
 * Added a little navigation menu at the top

Thoughts?--Eloquence 3 July 2005 15:41 (UTC)


 * It looks very good. I made some adjustments - I removed the articles stages again, as I really don't think people want them back. They killed the site first time round, and I don't see why that should be any different this time round, either. Either an article's developing, or it's ready to be published - no need to complicate the matter. I also moved the lead update links higher to get to them more easily and made disputed articles slightly less prominent (not like we get many). Dan100 (Talk)


 * Yes, it's probably a good idea to keep the number of templates low. Let's try the simple approach first and see if we really need more tags.--Eloquence 3 July 2005 16:09 (UTC)


 * I have suggested a change on Wikinews_talk:Proposed_Workspace, that I think might make it look even nicer: I applied the new theme from the stage tags. Kevin Baastalk July 3, 2005 16:38 (UTC)


 * In general, it looks like this:


 * Thoughts? Kevin Baastalk 3 July 2005 18:47 (UTC)

See above. Solution looking for problem. Dan100 (Talk) 3 July 2005 21:17 (UTC)


 * I designed the original new workspace. I see that someone (was it you?) has implemented it.  Is there any more of a problem to the solution of it's design when i designed it the first time, then when i designed it the second time?  If so, what problem does the design of the first design solve that the second design does not? Kevin Baastalk 3 July 2005 23:28 (UTC)


 * And furthermore, what problems do your changes solve? I don't see any, so why shouldn't I revert them under the same pretense that you used to revert my changes?


 * I'm not adverse to discussion, figuring out what the consensus is, and applying the consensus, whatever it may be, irrespective of individuals' unique preferences. However, I dispute, on logical grounds, that, in the given situation, the reason you claim is sound. Kevin Baastalk 3 July 2005 23:38 (UTC)

(Just a quick interruption to the discussion at hand) - I really like the new workspace and submit a story interface. I think it's far more welcoming to newbies and not-so-newbies like me who haven't quite got the hang of the formatting. It'll be interesting to see the effect it has on submissions, I think it could get people submitting in a more thoughtful way but could also get people sneaking press releases etc in more easily, but they will be easily deleted. On the whole, I think it should really increase involvement. Well done all! ClareWhite 4 July 2005 11:01 (UTC)


 *  This may not be related to the new streamlined workflow, but we've seen a huge increase in both story submissions and publications. Congrats!  -- NGerda July 4, 2005 11:08 (UTC)

Not particulary, we're doing about the same as this time last week, give or take a few. The number of stories fluctuates wildly - and we're still far below the March peak.

Re: 'RFC' - it's just surplus to what we already have. If you have an issue with an article, you can mark it with an article flag, which will then list the article in the Disputed section. We don't need two ways to do the same thing. Dan100 (Talk) 5 July 2005 11:26 (UTC)


 * it's just a facade for the disputed category. the rfc tag puts it in the disputed cat, and it's simpler, more general, and less threatening.  The alternative would be a whole bunch of different disputed tags, as seen on article flags.  right now, if you put such an article flag on an article, it will show up in the "rfc" dpl, because that will put it in the "disputed category".  "rfc" does not have it's own category. people can go ahead and continue using the traditional disputed tags.  any of these tags will move the article to the rfc dpl.  for a newbie, however, it may be easier and less confusing to just use one tag for any dispute.  now that option is available, and they don't need to read a big tutorial about all the different dispute tags, they just see, "oh,  ".  it's there for newbies, to use fewer tags. Kevin Baastalk 5 July 2005 23:51 (UTC)

Verify English Translation
Someone should verify that my translation of Bavaria ha sido adquirida por SABMiller is accurate. The translation can be found at SABMiller acquires Colombian Grupo Bavaria brewery. Theshibboleth 13:35, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Evergreen
I re-added the Evergreen section to this page. As exists in most newsrooms, an "Evergreen" file is kept on stories that are not time sensitive, but are of interest and may be slower to develop than daily news or breaking news stories. It is where most investigative and feature(in-depth magazine)-type stories are kept. Unlike "Prepared" it is not about a story that has not yet happened. Unlike "Developing" - they are not listed on the front page since they could take days or weeks to finish (and are prone to being deleted as empty or ultra-short before they are finished). In the spirit of wiki, the reason for a public evergreen list instead of a single user's subpage sandbox is to allow collective community input on a long-form story from its creation instead of it being primarily one person's work. -- Davodd | Talk 16:19, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. There just wasn't any demand from editors for such a system. Dan100 (Talk) 12:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

rss feed for developing stories
I wonder if it would be possible to have a rss/atom feed just for developing stories. --JWSchmidt 23:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

SHORT summary of major pitfalls should be displayed
I SHORT summary of major article pitfalls should be displayed to prevent new users from getting ticked off by editors POV'ing and Minimaling their articles. --Sfullenwider 03:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Why no story on the page A1 Wall Street Journal article
Why no story about the page A1 Wall Street Journal article, the BBC article or the AP wire service article from late this week, all of which reported Britanica's response calling for a retraction of the Nature study? Signpost's strong bias in favor of Wikimedia Foundation interests should be an embarassment. 207.200.116.196 02:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

errors
Something's gone wrong with the workspace page. I keep seeing thing like 'UNIQ4ea58e5e503d1a61-nowiki52fc467e5e752d5100000001' on the page, and no left hand nav. Frankie Roberto 09:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I suggest commenting out the inclusion of Special:Newpages until the problem is fixed. 81.175.154.38 14:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The techies at meta are aware of the problem. Unfortunately, they are pondering as much as we are. Jason Safoutin 14:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Did exactly that until this is sorted out. --Deprifry|+T+ 20:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)