Dan G

An intereseting situation on Wikinews at the moment.

Take DPLs: DPL stands for DynamicPageList, which is a way to produce a list of articles in a category. Originally, they listed articles in the order of last edit. NGerda wanted to use these on the Main Page, but I objected on the grounds that because of the listing-by-last-edit thing, the order of stories was constantly changing and that then made it a right PITA to tell what was new when you checked back after a few hours.

However, this weekend, the software that runs the Wikinews site was upgraded and as part of that DPLs now list articles in the order in which they were added to a particular category - ie they now list in a sane manner. All my objections gone, so let's do it (and we did). To list a story on the Main Page, you now add {{publish}} to it - that's it. Great! So I thought it would be a good idea to use {{develop}} - already used - to list articles on a DPL in Developing stories as well. To publish a story, just change {{developing}} to {{publish}}. Simple, huh? I re-wrote all the instructions on the site to reflect this.

Well, no, Amgine doesn't like it, and even though I asked him not to, he went and reverted the lot straight away. He didn't even take heed of my note to only revert the parts about {{developing}} - he just used the 'rollback' button that undos all of an user's edits, in the process removing the info about using {{publish}} (which is here to stay), too. Nice.

At the moment we have an un-easy compromise - both a manual list and the automatic DPL in Developing stories.

On the other hand, NGerda is still pushing to let people record "interviews" for Wikinews Audio - basically, one guy asking questions of another, who can say whatever he likes. I kinda fail how this fits in with Wikinews! Audio Wikinews has a lot of potential, but it should only be the reading aloud of the text of stable articles, no more.

So as you can see, I am at the moment basically objecting to everyone :-).

Good job I don't regard the site as a popularity contest - I only have the best interests of the site at heart.

He's back already.

I don't really need to say anything, do I?

So NGerda has left. He joins the likes of Alan Franklin and David Vasquez.

Such exits aren't uncommon - to be expected, in fact. Dramatic, public exits are a fact of life on wikis - witness Wikipedia, from where RickK left in just the last week or two. He's not the first and certainly won't be the last.

What people may overlook is that people come and go all the time. On Wikipedia, only a few hundred editors are active at any one time, but many more have contributed over the years. People come, edit for a while, then quietly leave. Take a random page, check a random username from deep in the History, and then check their user contributions - chances are, the user has long left. People's circumstances change, or they just get bored, and no longer contribute.

(You'll also see a handful of users who are still present, and seem to have been there forever (on Wikipedia, the mediation and arbitration committees are populated by such people). So it is on Wikinews.)

The people who come and then make melodramatic, public exits tend to be those who are somewhat obsessive about the site concerned, but who in many ways just can't fit in. They might disagree with policies that have been carefully evolved by the larger community over time, or lack simple wikiquette. Perhaps they think they are in some way special, and/or think that the rules don't apply to them. They get fustrated - angry - when the rest of the community doesn't want to go in the direction they are pushing. So they feel the need to leave - and quite often, stamp their feet on the way out.

The site is larger than any one editor though - as I said, people come and go all the time, and the site carries on.

Erik ("Eloquence") - our founder and our "Jimmy Wales" - is going to give a presentation on Wikinews at a conference on citizen journalism organised by OhMyNews in Korea.

(I wonder if Erik is paying for the trip himself - if he is, good man!)

He's asked that we get the place looking good and we need to have a decent number of stories everyday this week, so we're pitching in with renewed vigour.

As part of it, we now have a Featured Article page, much like Wikipedia, which will hopefully showcase our best work. I've introduced a 'Golden rule' I hope people will follow - you cannot list your own stories :-).

This is a vital opportunity to boost awareness of Wikinews and get interest in us up - we must not let Erik down!

In other news, we've also just scored our third highest ever level of visitor traffic. I don't know why - I've not heard of any 'big news' that previous peaks have often been associated with. We must just be getting more popular, I guess!

is that Wikinews is my hobby - my pastime, my bit of fun.

Or rather, it was. Now NGerda is bent on making the site his, it's no longer fun at all - and that makes me sad.

Of course, the obvious rejoinder is that I'm behaving exactly like NGerda. Well, I wouldn't agree with that. First, I've always put our readers absolutely first - I my approach has always very much been "service-led" - to provide our readers with the best possible service. Second, I respect the wikiway and other people's concerns. I propose ideas, rather than just do them with no consultation. I listen and react to objections. NGerda does not - it's simply "I'm right, you're wrong" with him.

And I don't do crazy stuff, like removing important features of the site or pretending that my articles are the best on the site.

But if NGerda is hell-bent on making Wikinews his own, I guess I'll have to leave him to it, and move on.

It would mean killing the RSS feed though - and disappointing 1,100 readers. Of course, if NGerda doesn't back down over using DPLs on the front page that will happen anyway, but it's still a shame. I've manually updated it everyday for five months and dare I say it, I've done a good job. I can't imagine anyone else doing it.

I had a feeling he could be trouble from the start - his stated goal was to become an admin. Soon after he applied - after just editing a few stories and uploading a picture or two, needless to say, his application failed.

However he re-applied just a month later - just when I was a on a wikibreak. Despite is inexperience, he gained adminship this time.

Now he's trying to run the site like he owns it. He makes big changes at will without consulting anyone, and will not back down. He has to have the last word on everything. He will not consider any viewpoint other than his own.

He's even going a little crazy - when Eloquence asked for a list of 'Featured article', NGerda simply listed articles he's written!

In fact I've even just discovered that he tried to remove the RSS feed from the front page! A service running since February with 1,100 readers!

We've had only a handful of stories in the last few days - the site is nose-diving. I can't help but wonder if all this is connected.

There have been a series of flash floods in the north of England causing widespread damage in several areas - cars washed away, debris everywhere, parts of houses torn down; others flooded. Watching on the TV news, the photographic potential is immense - as is potential for original reporting.

I found myself wishing something similar would happen around Reading one day so I could report it first-hand on Wikinews.

I quickly checked myself - I was wishing for such destruction to happen?!

The BBC ran two fantastic programmes tonight charting the making of Live Aid and then the event itself, back in 1985.

It was fascinating to watch, especially as I was just four years old at the time and have little first hand recollections :-). Apart from how much better some of the people involved look now twenty years later (Paula Yates and Midge Ure in particular!), something that struck me was the clarity of purpose - raising money to feed people starving to death in Africa.

Twenty years later things are not so clear. Live 8 is going off, but why? Certainly people are still starving, but this is not a raise-money telethon. It seems to be concerned with a much more nebulous message - getting the G8 to 'end poverty'.

This raises many questions whose answers are not obvious. What causes poverty? What can be done about it? Are these things the G8 can change? What about us as individuals - what can we do? People talk about 'cancelling debts' - but is that it? Is that all that causes the desperate problems still happening across Africa? I think not.

Wikinews can help here. We're no public campaigning platform, and we're not going to be able to answer all of those questions. But I hope as we draw closer to Gleneagles and Live 8 we can start filling in some of the blanks.

to my readers using RSS.

Both of them :-)

Yahoo employees. Here's one nearly getting a coporate kicking :-).

I haven't written that many at once since the early days :-).

Mind you, I was quite motivated by the fact that, so far, they are the only stories...

I forgot to switch BlogThis over to the feed blog, and ended up posting the day's news here :-)

NB Apologies for the lack of links in this post - 360 playing up :-(.

Just two posts ago I made some pretty damming comments about Wikinews, and also seemed to have talked myself out of working on the project.

The first thing to say is that I use this blog as a safety valve - a place without rules where I can let off steam. I often feel much better for having written something here.

And so it was in this case - straight after writing that post, I actually spent an hour or two beavering away on WN. I reminded myself that, when all said and done, Wikinews doesn't have to be anything more than a hobby, and there's no need to get worked up about it.

My post did not go unnoticed though, with Eloquence posting a response on my Talk page, so I should respond to those comments.

First, Indymedia does a lot better than us on Alexa, so it's not true to say that all websites which deal with 'minority' news do poorly. And previously I've agreed with Elo - certainly in my first few months on WN, most of my stories were covering the 'big news' of the day for exactly the reasons Elo states.

However, having seen our growth and the size of Indymedia's audience, a seed of doubt was sown in my mind, which I elaborated on below.

Yet Elo is basically right - if we're ever to reach Wikipedia levels of use, we have to cover 'big news'. It's just hard to saythat right now, our coverage is better. And I really do not believe that Reuters is biased. I don't think the BBC is either - in fact their 'fair and balanced' mantra gives results remarkably like our own 'neutral point of view' does.

What we can do though, and this is something I've felt from the start, is be more accurate. Take a BBC News about electric toothbrushes, and then read the NHS's appraisal of the study. Saying "only one type of electric toothbrush produced better results despite being many times more expensive" is not really the same as "The only powered toothbrushes that were consistently found to be better than manual toothbrushes were those with a rotation oscillation action. For the other types of powered toothbrush, there is insufficient, good quality randomized evidence for reliable comparisons with manual toothbrushes", is it? The BBC provided a fair and balanced story - note the quotes at the bottom of the story from the likes of the BDA. But they didn't actually get the story right.

Now, obviously there's more to world news than electric toothbrushes, but this demonstrates how, I feel, Wikinews can be better than the 'mainstream media'.

And sometimes our shorter stories are rather good - our report on the Michael Jackson verdict tells you the story in a very clear, easy to view way. It tells what the charges were, what the verdicts are, and what is required for a 'not guilty' verdict in US law. Compare that with the BBC News story, which doesn't list what the charges actually were - and even includes puff about a BBC documentary, which the BBC claims led to the case being brought(!).

In an earlier post I mentioned a drop in Wikinews's Alexa traffic rank. Well, I must say that was rather shoddy reporting on my part.



For a check for the BBC's and CNN's traffic ranks shows that they, too, lost traffic in May. It was simply a quiet news month, and Wikinews's traffic was reflecting a wider trend.



Happily, our own rank has stabilized - if not showing a trend of growth again, in fact. I've no doubt the news of the verdict in the Michael Jackson trial will see a jump too - and any reader who comes to Wikinews for that will find what is, in my opinion, a very good to-the-point article.

When you go to sleep thinking about Wikinews, and wake up thinking about Wikinews, you know you're caring too much.



It doesn't help that I imagine that I'm as popular as a turd in a baked bean factory. I have always put the site first, and have not been afraid to make a wave if I see a problem that is harmful to Wikinews. Of course, that means I put a lot of people's backs up, but hey, this is supposed to be a news website, not a popularity contest.



But then, I sometimes wonder what we're doing. When I write a story, more often than not it strikes me that the short-comings of the press that were identified when Wikinews was created, don't actually exist. When you go to check the source for a two-paragraph story, and see that it's a well-written, three-page in-depth analysis of a difficult and complex situation in Iraq, you have to wonder what the hell we're doing. If you want a  good quality news service, read Reuters!



And then you hear that a coporate blog about yoghurt has 24 times more readers than the Wikinews RSS.



Hmm, done a pretty good job of talking myself out of contributing further...



I'm currently putting some effort into dispute resolution on Wikipedia. When you bring calm to troubled waters, it's satisfying. Smoothing out conflicts on such a valuble resource does, right now, feel more, well, worthwhile than working on Wikinews does.



One of the few chinks of light is Clare White. She's in Rwanda, and has developed a 'Rwanda newshut', which is aiming to enable Rwandans to put their news onto the world stage. *That*, I feel, is where Wikinews could shine.

I've switched from Yahoo 360 to here to enable commenting by anyone. 360 wouldn't even let Yahoo! members post, which was sucky.

Really though, while 360 is a fairly good product, it wasn't the right tool for the job. The fact is often stumbled over links is a real PITA, too.

I'm copying the last few posts over to ease the transistion.

Welcome to Blogger!