[Foundation-l] Wikinews & Wikinerds

Thu Oct 28 04:18:17 UTC 2004

Hi,

I noticed you were discussing about Wikinews some time ago. Because I do 
something similar, I give you my experiences & ideas so that you can benefit 
from them if you think they can/should be applied in your project (and BTW, 
good luck with Wikinews!)

In one of my wikis I write news stories like this: 
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Mozparty or 
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/News2004:Hans_Bakker_died  (these are 
the only links I include because I don't want my msgs to be misunderstood for 
advertising)

There is a separate namespace for each year, so I have namespaces like 
News2004: and News2005:

The separate namespace model allows the users of the wiki to limit their 
search in specific years.

Each news story had one or two maintainers who find references, copyedit the 
story, check for copyright violations etc.

News stories are mentioned in [[Current events]], sorted by date. the [[Main 
Page]] also has a list of the most important stories (not just the most new), 
by using a template [[Template:Newspicks]]. Most stories are also mentioned 
in Wikinerds Portal, our Drupal installation which serves as the homepage of 
the site. The Portal aggregates news stories and new article submissions, 
together with announcements and its own stories from all projects of 
Wikinerds. The Portal does not duplicate stories but just provides an 
introduction and a link to the story in the wiki.

Many stories can lead to interesting discussions, so there is a web forum 
based on phpBB. For most stories, I create a phpBB thread where anonymous 
users can post their messages. Each news story in NerdyPC and in Wikinerds 
Portal may have a "Discuss in Wikinerds Forum" link where directs the user to 
that thread. Talk pages are not used for communication but we have renamed 
them to Test pages and are used for developing articles or testing layout, et 
cetera. The Discuss link is always the last so users can find it easily.

Articles like [[27 October]] or [[2004]] are our almanac where we can list 
events happened on that date.

Every news story includes background information. When we refer to "GNU/Linux" 
we don't expect the user to click on the link to find out what GNU is but we 
explain it at the end of the article (See for example how most corporate 
press releases are structured).

The initial author of each news story decides on the copyright terms of that 
story and subsequent authors are expected to use the same license.

News stories always include external links in bullet format:
* link 1
* link 2
* link 3
etc

If the external links are too many, we categorise them. There is no limit on 
how many links can be included in each story and we try to include links to 
all Internet pages discussing relevant things.

News stories have this format:

[START]
{CYCLE:
=====URL======
----DATE-----
____TITLE____
(text)
* external links
REPEAT CYCLE AS NECESSARY}
(authors)
(license)
[END]

So, you see: A news story IS NOT attached to a specific date (only to a 
specific year) and the URL is not the same as the story title.

This means we can have [[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]] and update that page every day 
according to fresh news.

An example:

------------------------------
[[News2004:SCO vs. IBM]]
20 October 2004
SCO says that
blah-blah-blah
* ext link
18 October 2004
IBM says that
blah-blah-blah
*ext link
10 October 2004
...
Authors: NSK
License: CC
-----------------------------

That means the reader can read just one page and learn the news regarding a 
single issue.

So, in [[News2004:MediaWiki 1.3.7]] for example, we can include there a new 
bug or security issue if it gets spotted after the release. It's like 
including two or more small stories in one bigger page. It's very convenient.

Every news story contains a link to [[Current events]] which has a list of all 
current stories. We have a standard legal notice in template 
[[Template:Legal]] which says things like "trademarks are property of their 
owners" et cetera. The notice always goes at the bottom.

What I haven't found a good solution, is the archiving of [[Current events]]. 
I wonder whether I should just move its contents to pages like [[October 
2004]] or create an [[Archive:]] namespace and have [[Archive:September 
2004]]? What's the solution found in WP and how will you approach this 
problem in Wikinews?

You could use a wiki-only solution or use a Drupal frontpage for the 
publication of articles and a background wiki for the devlopment.

I hope the description of my approach to news was useful to you and of course 
I welcome any suggestion you would have to make regarding my approach. I 
think knowledge/ideas sharing among wiki communities is very important.

Oh, and BTW you can see my Wikinews coverage at 
http://portal.wikinerds.org/node/75

I also performed a search for "wikinews" and I noticed many blogs and 
newssites discussing your new project. I think this project must start soon 
and I am sure it will be a success.

-- 
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org