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The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

 Sharing news about the group's activities
 and things taking place on local Wikinews projects.

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The Wikinewsie Group News
Edition 3, September 1, 2013
Education and Research
  • On English Wikinews, there is work to make some educational videos to assist users in understanding how the review process works, and how to write an article using screencast. Videos created so far include: A review of an English Wikinews article to let people see how that looks. , A walk through of an article being written for English Wikinews to let people see how one person writes an article., A walk through of creating an article on English Wikinews with a Doctor Who related news story as an example.
  • A few of the provisional board members had intense discussions about the preferred research practices to inform key decision making in regards to developing the most effective programming with the goals of 1) working with educators to instill core journalistic values, 2) engage in quality original reporting that can be shared across projects, and 3) improve the diversity and quantity of the current contributor base to Wikinews projects. The ideal research often depends on context, but that in doing on project related work, action research is probably the ideal as it is an outcome improvement driven approach.
  • In further regards to research methodologies, three of the provisional board members read The art, science and mystery of nonprofit news assessment by the Investigative Reporting Workshop. This document discusses some of the challenges non-profit related journalism sites have in assessment as it pertains to their own reporting. A discussion was also held regarding the issue of information anonymization when it comes to any research being conducted by The Wikinewsie Group using on Wikinews publicly accessible information, content and data. Sources looked at and discussed included Researching the public web and Forum Guide to Data Ethics. There is a feeling by some of the provisional board members that the WMF, through the Grants programs and the Program Evaluation and Design group need to provide greater guidance regarding what sort of information collection and analysis is expected, what privacy guidelines will be expected, what will be publicly expected, what will be privately expected, if these match and how to handle any discrepancy between these guidelines. At the same time, documentation for the WMF as it pertains to outcomes needs to be clear as to the audience and objectives in conducting the research. These issues become vitally important as increasing contributor output research differs from research focused on providing an environment to encourage best practices for journalists, with a goal of bringing more educators to the project to assist in accomplishing this goal.
  • Brian Keegan talked about newswork on Wikipedia from a Wikipedia perspective (that ignores definitions of news) and failed to acknowledge the importance of original reporting and citizen driven journalism in his negative critique of Wikinews. At the same time, he failed to acknowledge the lack of investment by the Wikimedia Foundation in supporting Wikinews and other sister projects in strategically growing and supporting the Foundation's mission.
Technology
  • Given the issues with spying on government listening to communications, Scoop will be 'deprecated', and the recipients list trimmed back progressively have the membership list culled to make sure only reviewers and accredited reports have access to reporter notes for story verification. A new mailbox will be set up for incoming material that needs the attention of reviewers. [1]
  • On English Wikinews, a draft has been started at Wikinews:Visual Editor to let the Visual Editor team know some of the issues involved in working on bringing VE live to the project. This is vitally important to be done right and that VE works with the only main entrance point to writing new articles, because if done without considering the gateway, it would create massive technical problems that would like make it impossible for article review for publication to be completed.
  • On English Wikinews, efforts are underway to see about using DPL to sort images by date and to better highlight featured articles that appear in a category by calling them out seperately. This is likely to be a long term, wikignome type activity. [2]
  • A bug was fixed in wmtran, the translation helper tool, to correct URLs of preview wiki-links. Relevant contact information is now also available at the tool page header.
Reporting
  • On English Wikinews, there has been a substantial amount of original reporting done in the past 18 months that involved the uploading both local multimedia and multimedia to Commons. An effort is underway to categorize these images locally better highlight the original reporting of the multimedia including type. It will also provide easier access for reporters to file photos for re-use in other articles. The major category work was done on 2012 Summer Paralympics.
  • Following Jimmy Wales's speech at Wikimania, The Wikinewsie Group reached out to him via e-mail to see how we could work with to accomplish his stated aims in the context of our proposed organization. There are a number of shared goals, including making it possible for Wikinews contributors to do original reporting full time on the project. Susequently, he has been engaging in dialog with several English Wikinews reporters on his Wikinews talk page.
  • A survey has been created to better understand the existing original reporting costs associated with current Wikinews production. Reporters across all languages who have contributed to original reporting on any language Wikinews project reported on in our newsletter have been pinged on their talk pages asking them to complete the survey. Three different language projects have been notified of the survey on Facebook. The survey has also been linked to on Twitter. The goal of the survey is to be able to understand the value of original reporting, where money is currently being spent and by whom, and to have data that will better enable The Wikinewsie Group and project volunteer reporters to apply for grants related to conducting more original reporting. Survey results are currently being processed with a plan of having some research published for reference in the next newsletter.
Opinion pieces

For our next newsletter, we are encouraging Wikinewsies to define news and how Wikinews provides it.

Original reporting

The following is a list of all original reporting done on Wikinews projects from August 1, 2013 to August 31, 2013. Includes a new language edition, Serbian Wikinews.

Ukrainian
See also: Авторський репортаж. The wiki uses nothing for the publish process.
Spanish
See also: Wikinoticias:Reportajes originales sin notas, Artículos publicados. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Russian
See also: Оригинальные репортажи, Опубликовано. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
French
See also: Reportage original, Article publié. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Serbian
See also: Изворни извештај, Објављено. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Italian
See also: Notizia originale, Pubblicati. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Esperanto
See also: Originalaj raportaĵoj, Publikigitaj artikoloj. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Catalan
See also: Reportatges originals, Notícies publicades. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
Polish
See also: Materiały autorskie. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
English
See also: Original reporting, Published. The wiki uses flagged revisions for the publish process.
German
See also: Wikinews:Originalbericht, Veröffentlicht. The wiki uses a category for the publish process.
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