Wikinews talk:Workspace/Archive1

Workspace
This morning I added - and then removed - a headline for Condoleeza Rice's apparently forthcoming appointment as Secretary of State. We have a story here on Colin Powell resigning and so this seemed like a natural followup. But then I visited the review page, and found a better story which covers both events together (which is natural).

I conclude that it is best if we do not have separate pages for articles in review versus articles under development, because it is too hard to check both pages. Better instead to have sections on this page and let people move things back and forth as needed. Jimbo Wales 12:57, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * All articles being worked on in one stage or another should be listed from the main Workspace. The categories listed there are meant to locate articles in an individual stage. This is important so we can systematically review articles which are close to publication.--Eloquence 13:00, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Well, I should think so, but Disney World launches revamped attractions is in review, and does not appear at all in the main Workspace, right?  Is that just an oversight? Jimbo Wales 16:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Yea. Articles are automatically added to the review category when they are tagged with . That one was not created from the workspace, so it doesn't show up there. Fixed now.--Eloquence

Health
I've added the category "Health". Hope no one minds, it seems reasonable enough. --119 18:41, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thumbs up, Google News has it, so should we. --  user:zanimum

New Categories
I have created 2 news categories: Orphan Articles and Need Help in Article Workspace. Are they helpfull? Are they correct? Do some changes if you think it is worth. --carlosar Nov 18 22:50:20 UTC 2004


 * Orphan articles is already a special page (Special:Lonelypages). --Astronouth7303 02:34, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Now listing articles by date and method of change
I have overhauled Workspace and if no one objects, I propose we list articles under the day's heading with the kind of change being made or service requested, making new posts to this page as changes are made, but not deleting old ones. Example format: And so on. See the edit box for a full list of suggested common descriptors.
 * Dev: Delta 4 Heavy rocket poised for maiden launch
 * NPOV: Delta 4 Heavy rocket poised for maiden launch
 * Review: Delta 4 Heavy rocket poised for maiden launch
 * Copyedit: Delta 4 Heavy rocket poised for maiden launch

If the article has been reviewed and can be considered closed, is it deleted from here? --Shana 21:11, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * yep :) Lyellin 21:45, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I thought we could say "Publish: Article" so if an article is in a contentious review it won't sneak by without objection. 119 22:41, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * the process we had been going by, which is how I responded to Shana with was taht the workspace had articles that needed to have work done. Once the work was done and the article was publishable, it was removed, and put on the appropiate pages. That way, we don't have a long list of already finished articles being held on here. Lyellin

I'm updating workspace to reflect the current status of the news. I agree in principle on not deleting the old status, but it'll take me thrice the work to check every article for the new status date (I have DSL with a decent bandwidth, but it is still too slow in opening the pages), while if I just take the current entry and update the status I can do it quickly using the Develop, In review and Reviewed categories. Maybe it'll help if the develop, review and reviewed boxes that show up on the news page have an explanation to the author saying that he/she should update the workspace when they change the status? Meanwhile, I'll finish up cleaning up the workspace using the old method so we can get started using the new one... Shana 13:04, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm seriously confused
I need some help figuring out the process for adding an article. I add the review tag, but it doesn't show up anywhere, but apparently in Template:Editor tasks, and of course "Recent Changes". The article apparently needs to be added manually to "Main Page" and "Article Workspace".

I'm kinda new, and I'm sure there is something in the process that I am missing that would streamline it. Can anyone help? jkrusky 03:28, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You add the review tag, but the article needs to be manually added to Template:Editor tasks and Workspace. Modifying the template will put it on the main page. currently, we have no other steps to streamline it- we are governed some by what the software can do. Lyellin 03:36, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Beautiful, thanks. jkrusky

Duplicate stories
Ok, so we have two stories about the ETA bombs on friday. One has passed review, the other had some discussion but it seems to have passed review also, though it is not marked. I'm rather %| of looking at one all day in the peer review, so what's to be done with them? Any ideas? Publish them both and that's that?
 * Merge and publish just one article. Carlosar 13:20, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Loss of functionality with Eloquence's changes
With Eloquence's effective elimination of the Workspace as a unique list and merging with a cut-down Editor_tasks, there is no longer any way to sort changes to articles by date and no way to log things such as NPOV disputes, requests for copyedit, etc. I think this is a serious mistake and makes collaboration harder. 119 05:31, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Status indications should, in my opinion, be exclusively handled through the category system. That is the only way for them to be easily maintainable as they are clearly on the article page itself and not on some separate page that needs to be updated and tracked alongside it. We cannot expect newbie editors to do the work of writing aricles and to understand many different complex processes. If you wish to update the Workspace page whenever an article changes state, then you can volunteer to do it, but in the past this information has been notoriously out of date. It's just not scalable this way.


 * The most important thing here is that we must make it easy to write articles and maintain the different pages. Currently it's way too difficult. We should use the features available to us, such as Special:Newpages and the category system, to streamline the editing process as much as possible. We need to centralize and simplify processes. One place to add/remove an article in development. One index page to add it to once it's out of development. That is also important to avoid duplicates. The rest should be done through software.--Eloquence

Logbook pointless?
I don't really see the point of the story logbook. I think a prominent link to Special:Newpages would serve the same purpose. Any objections to removing the logbook?--Eloquence 16:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree that the logbook should be removed: very few people use it, and it is redundant. I've removed it and added links to newpages as well as today's category. -- IlyaHaykinson 03:28, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Workspace, Newsroom, and Water Cooler - too many pages?
Between the three of them, they all duplicate each other to some extent. I feel that at least one needs to go and any unique functions of that page merged into the remaining two. Comments? Dan100 14:21, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well I've edited this page to make it specifically about writing articles, while linking to the newsroom for community matters. I feel seperating the two is a good idea. Dan100 16:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Comprehensive text
Comprehensive text - what does that mean? That the article is good enough to go on Latest news and doesn't need more work? We need a key of some sort, I feel. Dan100 22:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Well I couldn't make head nor tail of it so went for 'being bold', and changed it so mature articles are removed from the workspace. Dan100 22:53, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed Editor Tasks!
Please don't hate me! I was just really confused about what to do where. My understanding is that the Workspace is for articles in development before going on Latest news. That's just what's left now. I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of Editor Tasks was. It probably should have its own page somewhere else. Dan100 22:59, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Workspace is the "central place for coordinating work on incomplete Wikinews articles." The stories in Editor tasks are incomplete stories and belong here. I re-added it to keep the page a "entralized collection. Please note the MAIN PAGE will probably be de-designed to remove editor tasks from it in the near future to allow for more stories. -- Davodd | Talk 09:29, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We can't have both the original Workspace layout and the Editor Tasks template here - it's just too confusing! Anyone arriving here for the first time won't know which one to edit - in fact he might give up trying to edit the ET template as it's not obvious how it works. Further, there's no good explanation of the purpose of the ET - it's not exactly for WIPs (although the first section might be), but the rest seems to be some sort of review system. That needs clarifying. Dan100 09:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I've added a section on the Water cooler under Proposals to discuss this further. Dan100 09:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * The workspace section you are referring to is meant for articles which are already written but are in process of being improved by editors.... not new articles. ;-) -- Davodd | Talk 09:51, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like what you've done! Much better now. Thanks. Dan100 10:19, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

'Articles under review...'
I also removed that text as I have no idea what it means, and a far as I can see, there's no explanation. Dan100 09:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

'Unpublished' and 'Published'
Davodd, I note that you removed 'unpublished' from the header of the first section. I was thinking of 'published' as in 'moved from the workspace to the main parts of Wikinews'. The other thing is that the header above ET says 'Published', which implies that stories were at one point 'unpublised'. Dan100
 * Following on from this I have seperated the purposes of the two sections somewhat. The first part is now only for articles being created, while ET is now the place for all copy-editing etc. Dan100 10:50, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New 'how-to' box
Isn't that conent already explained on the 'how to write an article' page? Dan100 11:04, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Change in template structure?
Am I crazy, or did the Workspace suddenly change? I can't get the link directly to the copy edit section anymore. Weird.

Unable to post to LATEST NEWS section!!
Ever since January 22, 2005, it seems that I cannot post my new articles to the Latest news section, BUT only the Developing stories section? And I discovered that somebody had made changes to the layout etc to Article workspace, right??????


 * SHOULD you undo your changes NOW????

King Ho Cheung, January 22, 2005


 * It seems okay now, but it takes around 5 minutes for the title of the new article to appear on the front page. Don't know what's causing such delay... King Ho Cheung 18:02, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * This is caused by the caching system of mediawiki. There is a way to speed up the process by adding a purge action to the url: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/?title=Main_page&action=purge This will purge the memory cache and build the page from scratch. (The cache is used to speed up the website, since other users in the next five minutes might want to see the main page the software just sends out a copy rather than building it each time.) - Amgine 18:15, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your information :) King Ho Cheung 18:42, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * You can click the "add story" link on the homepage to add to today's section of latest news. However there are issues with the recent changes to the latest news template.
 * Also: I fixed the workspace alignment issue.
 * Finally: you can easily sign talk posts with your username and current date by putting four tildes: ~ . -- IlyaHaykinson 01:12, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Big changes were made with no prior consultation nor explanation. I'm not happy. Dan100 (Talk) 10:40, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Big changes continue to be made without prior consultation, as has happened before, and will happen again. Contributors can learn new processes, or they can continue to break systems which cover multiple pages as you have just done again. I would like to point out that many of your changes are likewise troublesome, but were not reverted without giving them an opportunity to work.
 * If you wish to be in charge of making sure the Template:Editor tasks and Workspace are synchronised on ongoing basis, please leave things as they are. Otherwise, revert your reversions. - Amgine 16:34, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It was more the lack of explanations and instructions that bugged me. It would be fine to change things if people knew why it had been done, and how they should now operate. After consultation and more thought, I decided to accept your changes. I then re-vamped the workspace (see below) to fully reflect the changes. Dan100 (Talk) 17:50, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New layout and instructions
I have re-designed the workspace to reflect the recent evolution of the way the site works, namely nested templates on the front page and the use of the developing stories template for article creation. This is to make it as easy as possible for new users to get to work, and also to attempt to ensure some consistency in the way the process operates. Dan100 (Talk) 17:46, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Explanation
Here's why I made the changes I did:


 * I removed the template as we are no longer adding links to new stories directly to the page - they're going to the developing stories template, so the edit page no-longer needs to be simple, as it's never viewed.
 * I changed the section header from 'new articles' to 'creating new articles' to be clearer for new users.
 * I used the old instructions from the box in the template to produce new instructions in that section. As it would be helpful to have the date on visible next to stories in the developing news template, I produced a small 'example' of what should be posted, whose date updated automatically. Hopefully people will realise this and simple copy and paste it.
 * In all, I changed relatively little here - just moved the the instructions from the template to the page itself.
 * In the next section, Open tasks on published services, I added the "do not edit red links" warning to give people writing a story from scratch the chance to write their first draft without getting an edit conflict.
 * I think I added the direct edit link, but that might have been there already.
 * That's it.

In all, all I did was make some relatively small changes to reflect the move away from creating new links on the WS to making them in the developing stories template. Dan100 (Talk) 19:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Section edit links
Will people please refrain from adding, thus removing the section edit links. They're very useful to allow quick-access to the various parts of the Editor's tasks template. Dan100 (Talk) 02:03, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I just added to Editor's tasks. However, before I did so, I added edit links to each section manually, so the result is the same. The crucial difference is that the automatic section edit links didn't let you edit text inside templates, while the links I added do. We could have just gotten rid of all the templates on the page, but as we grow, I expect that the various sections will be accessed a lot, which means that we want them to be editable independently, as they are now. Pingswept 00:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * One other thing I'd like to point to, however... the Latest news section should be separated more firmly from the Developing articles section; it is quite possible someone will accidentally create their new article from the archive page as it is currently arranged. (just my opinion, since I very nearly did it this morning.) - Amgine 01:59, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)