Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals

Page last updated: Tuesday 29 at 0323 UTC.      

Refresh   

Archive

---

Archives 2009  May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 2010  January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 2011  January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 December 2011 2012  January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 2013  March 2013 April 2013 July 2013 September 2013 November 2013 2014  January 2014 February 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 2015  January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 October 2015 2016  January 2016 March 2016 May 2016 July 2016 August 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 2017  January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 August 2017 November 2017 December 2017 2018  January 2018 February 2018 April 2018 May 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 2019  February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 December 2019 2020  January 2020 March 2020 May 2020 June 2020 October 2020 2021  February 2021 July 2021 December 2021 2022  January 2022 February 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 October 2022 2023  January 2023 March 2023 November 2023 May 2024 June 2024 September 2024 October 2024 December 2024

Markup for developing articles and the review process

I think that we can improve the article-development and review processes by using markup to clearly and effectively communicate between author and reviewer before publishing an article.

I have created {{Verify}} as a first attempt. From the documentation: "It can be used to indicate the source of a specific statement or it can be used to indicate that a statement needs a source."

I propose that if the template is useful, we consider requiring its use by authors to facilitate/speed-up the review process. What are your thoughts? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 16:38, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose this in published version, we don't use inline citations here. Gryllida (talk) 22:32, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem intended for use in the main published version, as noted in the documentation, but rather for the developing stage. Asked42 (talk) 10:30, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

This approach seems more effective than using HTML comments to indicate which information is sourced from where. Asked42 (talk) 10:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Asked42 is correct. I should have been more clear here. The proposed template is not meant to remain in published articles. And I too think it is better than hidden HTML comments as its presence and even lack of presence shows both the author and the reviewer important information about the state of a draft article. For example, if a statement or paragraph does not have a source indicated, the author can see they need to (temporarily) cite a source for the reviewer.

I think this will be a huge help in the review process if authors provide exact links to the sources they've used for every piece of information that must be verified. Currently, reviewers must search all sources for a single statement, not knowing which article contains the information. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 14:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I utilized {{Verify}} to indicate statements as I verified them during a review in this previous version of a published article. That version of the article would be an example of how it would look to an author if I had for some reason failed the review and returned it to the author(s) for further edits and improvements. The author(s) can clearly see the statements I have verified.

Again, to reiterate; these markings are not meant to exist after publication. These are meant to facilitate communication between authors and reviewers during the developing and review processes. My primary goal is for authors to utilize this template to preemptively point reviewers to exactly what source they used for a given statement. This will hopefully reduce the amount of back-and-forth between reviewers and authors, a process that can easily consume days of precious time. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 18:18, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI,side note, often a thing is verified through multiple sources. Gryllida (talk) 09:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Oppose I wouldn't require usage of this template as it would add difficulty for an article author. It would pass if it helped authors learn to verify information but I do not see it doing that either. It does not even save time for reviewer (at least me) as reviewer opens and reads all sources. I don't see any benefit and I see harm as it would lengthen and complicate authorship process. In my opinion, inline citations may be acceptable at Wikipedia where time does not matter but not in time constrained environment at Wikinews. Gryllida (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Markup updates

• I have added the ability to add up to four sources to {{verify}}.
• I have created Module:DetectTemplates Module:DetectDraft that detects the presence of {{develop}}, {{review}}, or {{tasks}} in articles.
  • I have implemented that functionality in both {{verify}} and {{PhraseReview}} so that neither template is visible unless the article is in the developing or review queue or has been reviewed but has required {{tasks}} for re-review. This ensures that these templates do not render any markup when they are present in a published article.

Hopefully these updates will make the templates more useful to both authors and reviewers. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 23:26, 2 February 2025 (UTC); edited 00:00, 3 February 2025 (UTC); edited 18:33, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I have previously used the verify template while writing articles to indicate which information comes from which source(s), and as an author I find this approach more useful. According to Cite sources, "...do feel free to provide hidden notes to assist reviewers in establishing which facts came from where; this is especially helpful with longer articles." In my opinion, using the suggested templates is a better approach. Asked42 (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. 👍 —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 17:27, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Grant project for Wikinews

Following up on Wikinews:Water cooler/technical#Can and should en.Wikinews be revitalized, I would like to propose that we address the social/technical/financial underinvestment in Wikinews by actively seeking outside grants. The affiliate that I'm part of, m:Wikimedia New York City, would like to help with this process, and to develop a grant proposal in consultation with the English Wikinews community.

Wikinews has so much to offer the world, and I think it just needs some investment and experimentation with new ideas to help it fulfill its potential. I'd suggest the following areas to be potentially supported by a grant:

• Developing a w:Social news website functionality
• Integrating more closely with Wikipedia, particularly w:Wikipedia:In the news and the daily w:Portal:Current events
• Wikidata items for new stories across publications, tying into the larger knowledge graph
• Better communications channels, and community support through editing events/contests
• Working with students and journalism schools, working on Wikinews as a class assignment
• Annex for newsworthy topics that don't fit Wikipedia notability
• Regional and topical newsdesks and feeds
• Explore creative but responsible uses of AI

All of this would emphasize and build on Wikinews' strong NPOV and human-centered collaborative tradition. This vision would also strengthen the traditional Wikinews mode of articles with a fixed publication date, while also enabling other modes of development and access to news-related information. Pharos (talk) 18:37, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

• Social news website - suggest off-wiki - probably w:Lemmy
• Wikipedia news integration - suggest last on the list after everything else is fixed due to previous issues (they have a large issue with Wikinews lacking 'assume good faith' approach where instead 'never assume' is preferred, and with the low pass rate of new sensible news articles)
• Wikidata maybe OK, I'm not experienced
• Better communication channels - official media is IRC - I am willing to help by providing access to my w:Quassel for testing - for long term use I suggest finding somewhere else to host. Or I could help with self hosting Matrix.
• Sounds great I am happy to make some additional documentation for students i.e. video tutorial
• That's original reporting, indeed not eligible for Wikipedia. Can be highly local news or exclusive content
• Same as above, bit more challenging
• Happy to collaborate with you on this

Gryllida (talk) 03:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

(FYI, the Lemmy page you linked to on enwp links to the article on w:Ian Fraser Kilmister, if you want to change it to w:Lemmy (social network) ^^) PixDeVl (talk) 23:33, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

WMF has no expectation for creating products on Wikinews

I believe there's a lot of untapped potential. And WMF has been funding journalist organizations through several rounds of meta:Knowledge Equity Fund (media-related organizations are in 3 out of 6 funded projects in round 1, 2 out of 7 projects in round 2, 5 out of 13 projects in round 3). Yet can anyone tell me if any of these projects collaborated with Wikinews? I don't know this community well but I am pretty confident in putting my bet at 0. In fact, in the project report produced by Borealis Racial Equity in Journalism Fund (round 1 recipient), they laid it out clearly on first page of the report that they have 0 new images/media added to Wikimedia articles, 0 articles created/improved on Wikimedia projects, and 0 bytes of value added to Wikimedia projects. What on earth is WMF paying them $850,000 for? Another round 1 recipient, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), reported that they published articles elsewhere. Why aren't they (ARIJ) publishing it in Wikinews? Why isn't WMF imposing a condition such that the journalism-area grant recipients must publish their articles in Wikinews in addition to other places they preferred? I haven't combed round 2 or round 3 recipients' reports but I expect similar outcomes. Wikinews community should grab their pitchforks, speak up and demand answers from WMF grant team on why they didn't impose conditions for projects that closely align with Wikinews. Given that the Knowledge Equity Fund is continuing to fund media and journalism organization, I think this is a lower hanging fruit than requesting grants specifically for Wikinews. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:55, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out this potential connection to the Knowledge Equity Fund! Actually, what I had thinking about principally was not applying to WMF at all, but rather to independent philanthropies interested in the future of journalism. Still, it makes a lot of sense to build up this connection, and though I think WMF were unsure about how to navigate it in the past, maybe we can make it clear that Wikinews is indeed now open for such collaborations. Pharos (talk) 01:22, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, as I mentioned the better part of a decade ago, I have done professional grant writing and I'm motivated to work together with a group looking to prepare a grant proposal. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikinews community should grab their pitchforks... That would be about four pitchforks at the moment. Is the thought that an influx of limited funds for limited projects would increase our user base? Is there a concern that with too few active users we won't qualify for said funds?

At en.WN we have a unique role; the Reviewer, which is critical to getting articles published using the outdated and no-longer-supported[1] Flagged Revisions. Without enough Reviewers, en.WN is dysfunctional. I believe that is where we need to first focus our attention; increasing the number and effectiveness of reviewers. In the context of grants and funds, I don't know what that looks like. Training? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 15:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

As mentioned above, "working with students and journalism schools" could in principle result in long-term editors (not necessarily likely, but certainly possible) or it could be a situation where the existing user base can move more to reviewing than actual writing and newer editors can focus on writing. Agreed tho that this project is unique among all the WMF projects where there is a critical mass that is needed to be even functional. At, e.g. s:, you can take an indefinite amount of time to keep on adding source texts and while a library is best when it has a lot of entries, at least having a few is a good start and you keep building it up over time and it just becomes more and more useful (this is also how Project Gutenberg has worked). But at a news site, stories cease to be news over time. We're falling behind in a more radical way than any other project is or could be. Projects like Wikipedia and Wiktionary are getting closer to their goals of being comprehensive, general interest encyclopedias and dictionaries/thesauruses, etc. but Wikinews is only getting worse off. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Michael.C.Wright To be fair, Wikinews doesn't speak up, nobody even knows you guys are grabbing your pitchforks (or that there's 0 individuals willing to grab a pitchfork). Imagine if a grant proposal requests for funding to take photos but the photos don't get uploaded to Commons, that proposal wouldn't get approved. If I were a Wikinews participant, I would strongly demand WMF (and the board of trustees) that funded journalism organizations has to contribute articles in Wikinews. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:59, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Update: Wikimedia NYC has now actually applied for our first Wikinews-related grant, taking the form not of money but of a student tech project with Cornell Tech through the Siegel PiTech PhD Impact Fellowship. We presented it as one of three possible projects for a student fellow to work on, right now we're just waiting to see if students are willing to step up for any of our proposed projects. Pharos (talk) 16:34, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Great thanks Pharos. Gryllida (talk) 20:37, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Phraos has graciously roped be in to this crazy idea. I've been itching to do some original reporting that isn't on my own blog and have it be seen as associated with an outlet. Coming from WMNYC, I see potential to contribute to NYC-focused stories. I've been calling myself a press photographer for the chapter lately, having done a lot of work on the Trump Trial and other news-y events. I'd really want to get a grant to be able to spend time doing this, though; housing in the US is expensive, and even more so here. SWinxy (talk) 06:41, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

We would love to have you! We could desperately use some original reporting.

Feel free to jump in at any time and start to learn the ropes by starting your first article. 👍 Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 14:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

If @Koavf and @Pharos are motivated to try something new and rally support for it, that's promising :)

• I think something new must start with acknowledging and working with the success of news coverage on the encyclopedias: impactful across an entire category. How can some of the ideas above support or interface with that work?
• Most languages are truly not active, and as noted elsewhere the critical mass is higher here. Could we try a single multilingual WN?

sj (talk) 05:39, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

A single, multi-linqual WN an interesting idea. There are very active language projects such as ru.WN that simply may not be compatible with how we do things here, for understandable reasons. That could pose a significant challenge to a consolidation. We would also have to consider the increase in traffic en.WN would receive and what that means for the various, outdated components we use such as liquid threads, DPL, and flagged revisions, for example (things we need to fix, regardless). —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 14:38, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I am motivated to help and propose, but I can't drive any conversations or initiatives. I want Wikinews to succeed, for sure. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:49, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Project proposal for 2025

width=300px

en.WN consistently struggles with low monthly publication rates and the problem is only getting worse. After analyzing the issue, I’ve documented my findings here: User:Michael.C.Wright/sandbox/The problem.

I propose we launch a structured project this year to boost our publication rate. Revitalizing en.WN is key to attracting more contributors, which could take many forms. For example, we could:

• Devise and expand in-line markup tools that facilitate communication between authors and reviewers, such as {{verify}} and {{PhraseReview}}
• Run writing competitions or themed events to encourage more article generation
• Improve how reviewers collaborate and communicate.
• Update the appearance of our Main page and published articles, to include:
  • New version of social bookmarks[2]
  • Include a byline for WN:OR
• Update how we utilize Wikidata (Pharos?)
• Wiki News Flash (voting articles up/down) (Pharos?)
• Update and/or change the review process itself
  • Are flagged revisions the way forward?[3]
• Increase the number of active reviewers
• Add ability to include video in WN:OR

This project would involve both authors and reviewers. Broad feedback and input are essential, as no single solution will fully address the issue—it will require multiple changes.

If there’s consensus to launch the project, I’ll create a central page to organize our efforts, similar to how we approached (or attempted to approach) the Wikinews talk:2024 Copyright license upgrade project. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 18:34, 30 January 2025 (UTC); edited 16:53, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Should we launch a project to revitalize Wikinews?

Questions and comments

I also have a proposal: creating a single guideline/tutorial page that covers all the key aspects an editor needs to know; at least the minimum criteria an article must meet to be published. This way, editors can find everything they need in one place in order to write a "sufficient" article. The page will be simple to understand and can include some "To Do" and "Not To Do" examples. Additionally, we could develop an Article Wizard (similar to WP) to make the article creation process easier and more convenient. This might help new editors to contribute without feeling overwhelmed or demotivated. Asked42 (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

That tutorial page can also include a section on "What to do if your article gets rejected" in different scenarios, along with a step by step guide on how to resolve the issues. Reviewers can then redirect the author to this page for additional guidance and help. Asked42 (talk) 18:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

I really like the idea. Gryllida has talked about doing something similar to an article wizard[4] and has created a similar tool as a bot for IRC, which I have previewed once. It consisted of a series of prompts such as 'find two sources, read them, then summarize them in your own words.'

Having a tool that is more 'native' to the site would certainly be useful. The IRC bot required coping and pasting from IRC into Wikinews. It also requires users to use IRC, which is external and has its own learning curve. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 22:56, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Native to site I made this (docs) (source code). I got frustrated it does not highlight the page title in white background while the rest of the page is greyed out. Some style issue and I think it may be confusing for the user. cc Leaderboard. Regards, -- Gryllida (talk) 02:34, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida If I understand you correctly, you want the page title to not be part of the grayed-out background (i.e, it should be in the foreground and not the background)? Leaderboard (talk) 02:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes Gryllida (talk) 03:14, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure - let me ask this elsewhere and see if someone gets back to me. Leaderboard (talk) 04:08, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida If you're on the Wikimedia Community Discord, can you check https://discord.com/channels/221049808784326656/1336911892270153800/1336976343761424416 Leaderboard (talk) 10:01, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

• Suggest to add point: "Devise and expand in-line markup tools that facilitate communication between authors and reviewers, such as IRC". Some tool to schedule biweekly IRC meetups with logging meeting and taking meeting minutes. Gryllida (talk) 03:14, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

  (I anticipate these can be spent editing articles collaboratively and clearing review queue at each meeting) Gryllida (talk) 03:15, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

• To anyone reading this: do you see a "unsubscribe" button on each of the water coolers linked at Wikinews:Water cooler (I think there are about 5 subpages)? If it's not there, please consider clicking "subscribe"?? And ensuring you either login to the wiki at least once daily, or have the notifications delivered to email which is checked at least daily? (Replace "daily" with some indication of a regular check that is convenient to you). If you can only subscribe to one Water cooler, please subscribe to the "assistance" one. Please let me know how this goes, it would be greatly appreciated. :-) Thanks. Gryllida (talk) 19:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

  I have noticed that the feature Automatically subscribe to topics does not always function properly. On several occasions I have found that I was no longer subscribed to new discussions I started. This happened to me for all three of the discussions I started here: Talk:Ruling party wins election in Bermuda. I have since manually re-subscribed to all three discussions on that page. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 15:01, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

• I have started a monthly challenge. The challenge home page can be found here: Wikinews:2025 Boost publication rate/Monthly top article. All published articles during the month are automatically entered. January winners have already been identified. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 18:18, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Comment: Even on WP today, trying to implement "traditional encyclopedia editorial room" practices would fail. English Wikipedia could not survive on new articles that went through the official Draft process. It's too slow, too much overhead, the role of reviewer is just inviting people to practice saing 'no'. I think to revive Wikinews you'll need more automation if you want to keep summarizing secondary coverage (high quality automated reviews and summaries do seem within reach), more of a focus on local/regional news, and on persistent beats; and more of a focus on OR. That's where I think WN has the most potential to improve on the existing state of the Web.

Wikipedias in most languages are fine places to summarize national / international news [at which point WN at best has a briefer, less complete version], and I don't think that's a great area for WN to host summaries. Really it's original regional coverage — of local happenings, of events and festivals and conferences — where WN can shine. Long ago I got press passes as a Wikinews editor; and lately I've helped with a few WikiPortraits events, which involves getting press passes to major events all around the world, to take photographs. The press-pass contacts at the events love it if people with passes were also writing up written summaries of the event... it's actually a bit of a challenge that we only take photos. So an event-focused beat on WN might attract people already at events to post articles. [I don't think the current Portraits photogs would be excited to produce news summaries here without a receptive audience among existing WN editors, but if there is enthusiasm and a more active pipeline in the future, it's an idea that could be revisited.] sj (talk) 04:47, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful input — there’s a lot of good insight here. I’m especially interested in what we can start acting on now to build momentum. Of the proposals you mentioned — automation of the review process, local/regional focus, persistent beats, more OR, and event-based coverage — which do you think we should prioritize first?

And what would specific first steps look like to begin making progress in that direction? Any ideas for tools, workflows, or outreach that might help get things moving? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 14:22, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Note

Hi, (I've left this message to everyone who indicated support below.) Here are a few ways to help out, as far as I could see, in no particular order:

1. write new articles by style guide and content guide
2. find news which happened today and share it on live chat or a news tip page
3. read drafts in Newsroom, especially those submitted for review, and edit them to make them more comprehensive or more current
4. read drafts in Newsroom, especially those that failed review recently, and address reviewer's comments quickly and re-submit for review
5. chat with new authors (of articles in Newsroom) and help them understand the key concepts
6. subscribe at Wikinews:Water cooler (there are 5 subforums, open each and click 'Subscribe' link at top - then keep a close eye on your Echo notifications) to help newcomers and help with editing articles when someone requests assistance
7. chat on live chat and help newcomers and reviewers with their review process
8. help with software development for authoring or reviewing articles, perhaps for the mobile platforms
9. chat with other contributors on audio or video chat
10. present notes about how Wikinews works at various conferences via audio and video communucations [as we don't have funds for travel at present] this can be linux, programming, journalistical, or wikimedia themed conferences
11. figure out how to get someone to do any of the above through a grant, sometimes google summer of code
12. find high school and university educators who would like to teach their class journalism by asking them to write articles for Wikinews (was done with in the past, and we have extension installed for marking students)
13. collaborate with Pharos on getting more news coverage of the New York City and adjacent areas
14. proofread, or read, Wikinews articles out loud for Audio Wikinews
15. make English Wikinews accounts on various social media like twitter, facebook, blue sky app (sp?), others [in consultation with someone on-wiki first] ensuring you're posting new news articles there with appropriate tags, moderate comments, and setup multiple moderators if possible and document which contributor is in charge of which social network account for Wikinews and how articles are being posted there

Please let me know which of these points you're most comfortable with, and/or would like to learn.

Which points would you like to contribute? Please name up to 3-5 points, if you like. Or suggest your own. :-)

I'm happy to connect with you and guide you in any of the above areas. Thanks, Gryllida (talk) 23:14, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I would add

• write articles about any conference or event or festival you are at. Make that a standard and easily templated / reviewed beat that lots of people contribute to.

sj (talk) 04:49, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Votes

I think we should, otherwise Wikinews will keep losing active users and eventually die out. Anonymous5324859 (talk) 17:48, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Support We should not give up on any project in the free knowledge ecosystem, and Wikinews is one such project. We should put forth an effort to save it. DraconicDark (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. BigKrow (talk) 21:16, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

Support The world today has even more need of a strong Wikinews than it did 20 years ago, and now is the opportunity to innovate and catch up to serve that need.--Pharos (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Support I believe in this project so much. Lofi Gurl (talk) 20:13, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Support: I might not be very active here in terms of article writing, but I do believe these initiatives, especially the themed writing competition, could have a major impact. We could structure it similarly to the Monthly Photo Challenge on Commons. Additionally, we could maintain a project to recognize the most active contributors: such as the top five authors and reviewers from the previous month, and award them with badges, "thankyou" notes, or other forms of appreciation to keep them motivated. Asked42 (talk) 18:06, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Neutral Hi I think each of these ideas needs to be voted on separately and majority of them are not votable yet, i.e., are 'how?' and are not 'yes/no' questions. Gryllida (talk) 02:30, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

The yes/no question for current voting is; Should we launch a project to revitalize Wikinews? The proposal is: "[W]e launch a structured project this year to boost our publication rate."

In other words, we are voting on whether or not we want to coordinate our work here specifically to revitalize Wikinews by boosting our publication rate.

Once we decide we agree on the problem and agree to coordinate action by launching a project, we can start deciding what actions to be taken. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 18:37, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

FYI for everyone, from my perspective, such a project is perpetually on. (If fiction is to be believed, there is a saying among military pilots, "Don't think, just do.", which I remembered when reading this discussion. (When reading the above, I've decided to click 'Subscribe' at all water coolers; why isn't this on for all users by default, and why can't an admin subscribe or invite selected users to that (perhaps with their consent)?)) Gryllida (talk) 02:49, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Neutral I echo Gryllida's sentiment. Asking Wikinews members if they want to save Wikinews is going to result in "yes, we should definitely save Wikinews".

I personally think a lot of the core issue lies in the fact that we don't have enough reviewers for all that many articles to not go stale and there still isn't a functional pathway to learn how to become a reviewer. This means that a lot of people who want to write articles will find they're not published because they time out, which is definitely a huge negative pressure on activity. Do you want to invest time and effort into writing an article (as I did, putting several hours into an article, and I'm sure this has happened to a lot of other people here) only for it to be thrown in the metaphorical bin after 7 days because no-one was around to review it?

I feel the process to become a reviewer is designed to discourage people from applying and contributing more to the community, because there's no resource to learn the answers to the barrage of questions you'll inevitably receive. I know one of the reasons I'm not around here too much anymore is that I disagreed with the outcome of my reviewer application, and that by itself is fine, I'm comfortable disagreeing and then still editing. The issue lies that we don't have resources to effectively teach people how to review while having a massive reviewer shortage. I'm not here much because I have a major energy-limiting disability, and I cannot commit as much energy as I do into my articles without the decent chance they get reviewed. Ash Thawley (talk) (calendar) 00:12, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Asheiou, thank you for the feedback. It does help. And for what it's worth; it has been my experience that once one becomes a reviewer, there still is very little help in learning the ropes. You basically have to learn by doing. There is also our issue of "institutional knowledge" which isn't contained in our policies and guidelines, making it very difficult to learn effectively. The best one can do is to read through past conversations and hope to get an understanding of the goals and desired outcomes.

If you are still interested in becoming a reviewer, I will commit to helping you however I can. What helped me to learn the ropes was using {{Pre-review}} and trying to think like a reviewer. Having pre-reviews out there to point to in my request, I believe made it easier for me to demonstrate a willingness and ability to help others improve their articles, which is (in my opinion) the primary role of the reviewer.

Regarding your previous request for reviewer; it's unfortunate that you were caught in the middle of a difficult, complex situation. It feels like there’s some resistance to change, which I think is natural in any community. There may be a concern that the direction of the project could shift dramatically, leading to feelings of uncertainty about what might be lost. There’s also a great deal of respect for Pi zero and the significant role they played in shaping the current state of en.Wikinews, especially with the modern review process. I do wonder if part of the resistance is tied to the fear of drastically altering what many consider to be Pi zero's legacy. Change can be hard, and sometimes it’s difficult to balance respect for past work with the need to evolve.

Lastly, regarding the vote on the proposed project: to be successful, we need to collectively acknowledge the problem and take concrete, coordinated action to address it. Sticking to the same routines hasn’t worked for the past six—going on seven—years, as can be understood when reading some of the past conversations we've had along the very same lines as the one we are currently having. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 15:18, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I'd love to actually be able to get things moving around here, so learning how to review would be good. The resistance to change is certainly something I've noticed, there's a strong "no"-culture, where change is to be avoided until it is proven positive. This isn't inherently a negative part of Wikinews, but when things are clearly falling apart, rejecting change isn't going to help.

I am currently stuck between about 15 different rocks and 15 different hard places thanks to the UK's amazing bureaucracy (2, 3), so that is eating up most of my energy at the moment, but I'll be around as much as I can afford without burning out. That'll most likely be more in {{pre-review}}ing than in writing articles, because I can't commit the energy to typing hundreds of words of my own at the moment.

In regards to "concrete (...) action", I do agree that something has to be done, but I think a proposal to establish proposals to eventually maybe get a 5% change is the way things have always been done around here, and it hasn't been working. Making the site look and function a bit better still doesn't tackle the fundamental issue that we don't have enough reviewers and any new author is promptly scared off by the fact that nothing is ever written down here (on a project dedicated to writing, nonetheless). Getting a lot of the policy and convention that's currently in about 4 peoples' heads into a nice format for new authors and potential reviewers has to be a simple first step, at least. Ash Thawley (talk) (calendar) 19:16, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

SupportI've read some smart words above. In a perfect world, I wish I had to time to create an 'Academy' for new reporters and reviewers, but alas -- life gets in the way. It is my closely held belief that we must ALWAYS take steps to remind one another:We try to function as a news organization here. But, further: I think our larger use of FB et al. could use a good vitamin shot! Social media should feed INTO THIS and THIS should feed into social media.--Bddpaux (talk) 15:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Support I'm a passionate believer in curated neutral news. I've put forth a three-points-plan below that can be implemented as soon as tomorrow. Kenneth Kho (talk) 19:11, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Support While I am pretty new here, it seems quite clear from the links I've seen (and from my experience trying to get an article reviewed here) that this project isn't really doing very well...there's little sense in continuing with something that clearly isn't working very well. AnInfiniteInfinity (talk) 21:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Comment Gryllida has a point that not all of these are yes/no comments, but I think most of them are reasonably doable and I like the energy. I think we need to either lose the idea of Wikinews-as-writing-school and focus on retaining skilled drafters (more doable) or completely embrace the idea of Wikinews-as-writing-school and focus on attracting composition learners (radical change). Trying to do both is part of why we have a problem. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:18, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I was going to archive this discussion with the note that without more active reviewers and admin involved in this project, it is dead on arrival. However, given that people are slowly commenting here gives me hope.

And again to clarify, the proposal is Should we launch a project to revitalize Wikinews? The bullet points were ideas for such a project. The idea was to first see if enough people want to organize our efforts towards revitalizing Wikinews, i.e., increasing participation in article writing and reviewing, our core function.

I think we need to either lose the idea of Wikinews-as-writing-school... I agree. Without more active reviewers who publish quality news articles, we can't sell that anyway.

...focus on attracting composition learners (radical change) What are some ideas you have for doing this? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 14:13, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd say our big problems is that we need to give people something that professional news doesn't. Right now, we're at least two days delayed from other sources, and we don't do a better job. Since we don't use paywalled sources, we're not giving people access to information they couldn't get themselves. I don't have a ready answer.

This is part of the reason why, even though I don't love the idea, "completely rebrand Wikinews as a writing school" isn't completely off my table. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:05, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I think microdata and interlinking could be a point of difference, really leaning in USP of being an intergral part of the web, not just somewhere people go to, for example for recent cable car disaster the co-ordinates of where it happened will help our artical appear when people are searching for it elsewhere and in the "bigger picture" help people make fact/data driven decisions about the news the reading. To this edit I have copied in the relevant module for co-ordinates Back ache (talk) 01:46, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Support Intergrating with Wikidata is key as it allows the reader to dig further into an artical and intergrates the artical with the way search engines work, for example, with the artical about the cable car disaster I added its link to the wikidata artical of the cablecar in question. Back ache (talk) 01:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the note. I am not a Wikidata user. Is there an utility which can be used to receive suggestions of related Wikidata items? Does Wikidata have a category for 'recent events'? Gryllida (talk) 03:51, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Update to archival process

We have had few active admin in recent months. It's been a significant-enough issue that we have chosen to allow Global Sysops to lend a hand (thank you all!). Our archival process is also historically loathed by many admin. We currently have a very long list of un-archived, published articles in the Latest news section of our main page. I would therefore like to propose a change to our archival process.

Proposal: We change our archival process so that reviewers can help admin in the archival process.

Idea: After our post-publication, 24-hour grace period, articles could be protected by a bot to allow only reviewers and admin to edit them.

We create a template such as {{Archive-ready}}, which would allow for a scheduled bot-sweep to archive articles every 24 hours. Once an article has been re-reviewed per the current WN:Archive conventions to include the Pre-protection process, {{Archive-ready}} can be placed on it. In addition, we have a bot that runs every 24 hours looking for articles containing {{Archive-ready}}. When it finds it, it does the final archival step of protecting it to admin-only, removes {{Archive-ready}}, and adds {{Archived}}.

I think we could devise some sort of "meta data" or "front matter" template that allows us to track and manage article stages, original authors, bylines, and more, but very specifically exact publication times for ArchiveBot to parse. That template could have no output to the page, but its parameters can store the meta data. Alternative, maybe we could start including a subpage to every article that contains XML data. I don't know which is cleaner or more elegant. Asked42 and Leaderboard would certainly have a better clue than I. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer)

Should we change our archival process so that reviewers can help admin in the archival process?

Questions and comments

• As I said at Wikinews:Admin_action_alerts#Request_to_archive_articles, I am not convinced of the need for "later, post-archival review" in the first place. Leaderboard (talk) 02:07, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

  Replied there. Gryllida (talk) 09:34, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think it's fine to fully automate as long as there is a tracking category to clear manually after archival. This would solve issues with spam/vandalism to articles which were already published, while still leave human viewing archived articles for unexpected issues. Gryllida (talk) 23:24, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

• Comment Regarding the use of XML subpages to store metadata; I just tested and subpages of articles are not moved along with an article move. I'm not sure how or if we can change that behavior. If subpages and root or parent pages aren't moved together automatically, that is not a good solution. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 18:36, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

  Someone please give me a list of what needs to be archived, and how to do it. I can do it now. Gryllida (talk) 09:27, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  The list and procedures are both at WN:Archive. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 13:18, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Let's write a script that archives sources of published articles automatically? Gryllida (talk) 01:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

• We have some conversations about this spread around, so for anyone wanting to follow along:
  • Wikinews:Admin_action_alerts#Request_to_archive_articles
  • Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#Update_to_archival_process
  • User_talk:Leaderboard#Archiving

—Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 16:19, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Reliable, unbiased and relevant news

Hi I love the WikiNews concept but please may I suggest that you bring together all the news from local Independent media and point to their stories instead of trying to do the impossible yourselves.

UK examples include:

the Exeter Observer https://exeterobserver.org/ The Bristol Cable https://thebristolcable.org/

and there are many more nationally and globally.

Good luck!

Mark Mark Allen Exeter, Devon UK 217.155.76.26 (talk) 08:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Having a general index to news is certainly something valuable and something we can work toward, but I'm a little confused by the idea behind "unbiased" news. Can you give an example of a news source that has no biases? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Looks like to setup a lemmy. I can setup it if someone can moderate it. It would be unofficial project (potentially helpful). Gryllida (talk) 09:26, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Audio news

In interests of increasing contributors, I am thinking of audio news as a podcast. Like this but cut out the analysis bit as it is opinionated. Currently thinking of reading articles out loud to an account in Spotify.

• Is this a good idea from your perspective?
• Who is interested to volunteer to sign up as readers and proofreaders (listen to recording to check)?
• Is Spotify OK?
• Where else - what other platforms?
• What text to add before and after each audio clup? w:librivox has a short sentence at each clip. So for Wikinews it could be 'Wikinews is a citizen journalism site that anyone can edit and report news at. Today report is: [title]. [content follows here]. The end.' or some other? [Note: I haven't yet listened to past audio clips, so I don't know what they say]

See also: Audio (inactive after 2023 I think).

Regards, Gryllida (talk) 09:33, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

This brings back some memories. I remember doing Audio Wikinews Briefs back in 2010. It was a shame they went away.

To the questions put forth;

• I do think this is a good idea, broadly speaking.
• At the moment I'd be available most days to either read or to check the recording.
• I have no problem with Wikinews content going on Spotify.
• We should find as many platforms to post audio news to as possible. I'm not familiar with many other podcast platforms. Apple Podcasts and YouTube are the ones I tend to use. We should also post the clips to Wikimedia Commons (seeing as it would be Wikinews content).
• I'm not entirely sure what to write here. I'm thinking I might draft something up later and see how it goes.

RockerballAustralia contribs 23:02, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you :-) I will send you a recording. Is wn-reporters email OK, are you checking it these days? Gryllida (talk) 14:53, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I do still check that address on occasion, perhaps not as often as I used too. Send the recording through. RockerballAustralia contribs 05:54, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

• w:RSS is the most important thing in podcasting. Marek Mazurkiewicz (talk) 22:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Can we use speech synthesizers or AI text-to-speech tools to generate audio versions of Wikinews articles? I noticed that Commons has a tool for creating audio versions of Wikipedia articles; Maybe we can use that? Asked42 (talk) 09:08, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any reason we couldn't. We just need to make sure the resultant audio matches the text input, i.e., no added hallucinations. Basically following WN:AI. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 13:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Can you make one test version, perhaps for one article, please, @Asked42? Gryllida (talk) 22:48, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Three-Points-Plan to Jumpstart Wikinews

This is the minimum viable prototype for the public to be interested to rely on Wikinews, this has been well received in Wikipedia, and in the TLDR News YouTube franchise for those who watch it.

1. Presume Wikipedia's Current events as news and write about all the news within one day.

2. Stubs with a thumbnail and two sources are better than nothing, suspend the rest of peer review processes, and setup an autopatrolled permission for experienced editors to bypass peer review.

3. Main Page is to contain only events in the past seven days (sectioned similar to Wikipedia's Current events), each event is complete with the title (clickable), thumbnail, lead paragraph, and two citations.

I believe this bold plan is very clear and straightforward to implement with sufficient support, and without any obvious drawback at least for a few while. Kenneth Kho (talk) 18:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi

1 ok, please go ahead

1 i can write it for some events within my scope - how do i get notifications of new events posted there - which page do i subscribe?

2 i can publish this straight away no problem

2 list of candidates?

3 oppose citations in any form, as a statement is either attributed or supported by multiple sources?

Regards, Gryllida (talk) 14:56, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I like this approach (with gry's addendum). Thanks @Kenneth Kho: at the least there should be stubs for what makes it to the WP portal, and a shared sense of the sources appropriate to reference on each Project. Though as with Wikipedia there can be ongoing events that persist for a long time. sj (talk) 02:50, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

That's right. In wikipedia ongoing event gets added to same article e.g a three years long war. At Wikinews an article is published about a recent event and stays about it; further developments are published as separate stories. That is how news workflow is different from how Wikipedia does it. Gryllida (talk) 19:09, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

article proposal

I'm sorry, I can't write it myself, but I think it's worth noting:

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Esperanto_Wikinews

Esperanto-language Wikinews reported for closure? Marek Mazurkiewicz (talk) 10:24, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Proposal was rejected Gryllida (talk) 19:07, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Reviewers self-sighting within 24 hours

I propose establishing a standard practice allowing reviewers to self-sight their own changes to articles within 24 hours of publication.

Reviewers are already trusted to publish full articles independently. However, post-publication edits—often minor—are typically not self-sighted, requiring a second reviewer to sight them.

Given our ongoing shortage of reviewer time, this is inefficient and can result in missed edits, occasionally leading to avoidable corrections.

Edits that may be controversial can reasonably remain unsighted, but routine, uncontroversial changes made within 24 hours should be self-sighted. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 20:32, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't agree with allowing to self sight minor changes. This may cause issues. I'd suggest against self-sighting anything that visually changes the article (like changes of verb tense or removing a repeated word or altering punctuation). Gryllida (talk) 20:53, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

What is the rationale for allowing reviewers to self-sight during the review process, but requiring a second reviewer for minor changes within 24 hours of publication? What risk does this protect against, given that reviewers are already trusted to make similar minor edits during review?

If the change simply corrects an oversight by the original reviewer, why should it require three separate review actions to address? —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 21:07, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I would further add that all unsighted changes must be reconciled by an admin once edit protected (which is by policy after 24 hours). Requiring so many reviewer actions before archival will likely increase the amount of archival work required per article. There are currently 91 pending changes that need to be sighted or rejected. Many, possibly most require an admin due to post-publication protection. Making it common practice for more reviewers to self-sight minor corrections would certainly help reduce the admin work (that isn't being done on a regular basis already). —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 21:19, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

On the other side, self sighting changes to categories would be fine, I think. I have found those to be a pain. Why aren't they all protected against edits by users who aren't autoconfirmed? Can this be configured per namespace? Gryllida (talk) 20:55, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, not behind this one. Reviewer status does not mean someone is magically an error-free person. Reviewers can and should be drafters as well, but let another reviewer check their sources and work. Agree that this should not apply to minor changes, like cat changes and typo fixes. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:20, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I should have been clearer in my original proposal. I’m suggesting that reviewers should more consistently self-sight additional reviewer actions on a published page—provided those actions wouldn’t otherwise disqualify them as a reviewer, and are made within 24 hours of publication. For example, if Reviewer A misses something during review, Reviewer B should be able to correct it and self-sight the change.

These are actions we already trust reviewers to take independently during a full review. This does not include adding sources, significantly expanding the article, or making any other edits that would compromise reviewer eligibility.

While some reviewers already do this in practice, inconsistency—especially during periods of limited reviewer activity—can lead to a buildup of unsighted changes. These often become convoluted and difficult to reconcile.

This isn’t to suggest that reviewers are infallible—only that we should adopt a consistent and practical approach to handling post-publication corrections. I’ve also seen cases where a reviewer inserted incorrect information into an article I wrote, which later had to be corrected and sighted—so mistakes can happen on either side. That said, this isn’t a hill I’m prepared to die on; I simply think it’s worth considering for the sake of clarity and workflow. —Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 16:29, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Okie-dokie. That sounds like no big deal. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:14, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

What I've found myself doing instead is making minor edits before publishing, as then I can fix any outstanding minor issues. In that case the minor edits can include things like changing passive voice to active voice, adding wikilinks, changing the order of sentences. I try to avoid doing this repeatedly for the same user though so if a user makes the same issue repeatedly then effort is undertaken to clarify why this is needed and what edits were required to publish, and I continue to track how they do it in their future submissions.

Further, to make it easier to request ''major'' edits in case they are required, I made template {{pingrr}}, which has usage documentation. I hope it will help to get articles fixed by request much quicker. This is a group of users who are interested to get notified of new requests of article revisions either before or after publishing, can respond quickly, including searching for sources or rewriting content, digging for new information, etc. If you would like to be a part of this group of users, simply add your name to the template at the end of its source after the "noinclude" block, and ensure you login to the wiki 2-3 times a day to check your notifications.

Thank you very much, and please let me know if you have any suggestions what else needs to be done or changed in how I or otherwise everyone is doing things. Gryllida (talk) 06:20, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Publicizing reviewership request Darkfrog24

Is this still where we request reviewership or has it changed? Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:06, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

I have transcluded your nomination into the Requests for Reviewer section. -- Asked42 (talk) 06:16, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Can we make a help for making new article

Hello, Can we make a New Help here. It will help us to contribute. Md Mobashir Hossain (talk) 06:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Md Mobashir Hossain do you mean to create a new article wizard for Wikinews, like there is for Wikipedia? Gryllida (talk) 21:22, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida Yeah, Something like this. Md Mobashir Hossain (talk) 06:43, 28 April 2025 (UTC)