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Suggested change
Could we change this so it could be tagged to a wider variety of topics.
For example it could say: "To view news related to this article from our sister project, WikiNews, please see: [insert name of topic here]"
I think this would put the template to much better use.
I agree. And there are a lot of other examples that wrongly uses {{Wikinews|parameter}} instead of simply {{wikinews}} --
WikiRider 5 July 2005 06:08 (UTC)
{{Wikinews|parameter}} is the correct way to use this. Stop trying to confuse things and stop trying to change the way this is implemented. --
Netoholic@ 5 July 2005 08:01 (UTC)
re:Colored, non-standardized version of Template:Wikinews
Quit the revert war without discussion. I'll ask that this template be protected if the revert war doesn't stop.
As my subject line suggests, I don't like the colored version, and am reverting it. If you want to explain why the colored version is better, do that on the talk page and try to reach a consensus between editors.
BlankVerse∅22:20, 13 July 2005 (UTC)reply
It's not mine, someone created it on
Live 8, but I like it. It's more colouful and eye-catching. Seeing as it's designed to drive traffic to Wikinews, eye-catching is good.
Dan100 (
Talk) 22:36, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
I do not like having a Sister Project template that is formatted differently from the other Sister Project templates. With that said, it might be an idea to create a new template (template:CurrentNews?) that could be placed on a Wikipedia article any time there is some current event reported at WikiNews that related to the article. If such a template was created, I would suggest that it only be placed on a Wikipedia article for a limited period of time (four to five days?).
BlankVerse∅05:36, 14 July 2005 (UTC)reply
Good idea, Blankverse, thank you.
Dan100 (
Talk) 06:35, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
BTW though, re looking different to other sister project templates - is Wikimedia a beauty contest, or a series of projects aiming to provide people with information? I wonder sometimes...
Dan100 (
Talk) 06:36, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
re:Beauty contest: Among other things, usability involves good design. Having a consistent, easily recognizable, easily usable set of similar templates for the different Sister Projects helps facilitate their usefulness. Imagine if each one of the eight Sister Projects had a template that was a different shape, and different color, and used different positioning for the graphics, and used very different wording for each template. Compare that to the current set of Sister Templates. I don't wonder at all....
BlankVerse∅08:24, 14 July 2005 (UTC)reply
usability involves good design - oh absolutely. However I just don't think you right in this particular instance. If each project had a different-looking template I don't think that would harm their usability at all. From my point of view, the project templates are intended to drive traffic to the various other Wikimedia projects - and having different individual templates would help that.
Dan100 (
Talk) 14:34, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
New template suggestion
This template is currently used in a number of places to link to specific Wikinews articles rather than categories or general articles. The wording of the current template is not really conducive to this, as it implies that the Wikinews article is "related" to the Wikipedia article rather than about a specific point in the Wikipedia article, and, most importantly, does not name the date of the Wikinews story which I think is rather essential when linking to old articles.
I propose to create a new template, something like "Wikinews article", which takes two parameters, the article title and the article date, and to help migrate template usage in this area. Are there any objections? --
Fastfission23:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)reply
I think that it is unnecessary, too. This template should include the date. Indeed, for convenience and consistency this template should take the same parameters, with the same names, as
n:Template:Wikinews on Wikinews does.
Uncle G22:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)reply
When trying to use this template, I noted that the search function of WikiNews is totally out of date. As such, this template is completely useless: e.g. if I wanted to insert {{wikinews}} into article
Pluto, the link would return nothing (or old articles with the word Pluto). Instead, {{wikinews|article tilte}} is used much more, because of course that DOES work, but if future news is published on Pluto, articles had to be listed again and again in the template on article Pluto.
I propose a radical solution: we use Google instead of our own search function. It's up to date and this is the most important thing for news. This can be undone if our searchtool is up to date again.
I'm proposing
Template:WNGoogle. I don't have the skills to make it work both for keywords and specific titles, I suggest it to be used only for keywords.
Hmm, when was the last time this was actually used for searching? I personnally think that this template should only be used for actual articles. (Search is okay as a last measure if this gets left behind and the article deleted, but I don't think it should be planned on using).
Bawolff19:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)reply
Ok, that last sentence might not have made sense. To clarify: I don't think this template should be used unless its linking to an actual Wikinews article. Search is okay, in case the article name is misspelled or something, but I don't think it should be used unless linking to a specific article.
Bawolff04:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)reply
Then why does it say: "Wikinews has news related to"? That should change then, to something like "Wikinews has a news article related to {{PAGENAME}}: TITLE OF ARTICLE". Even then, for some subjects that are often discussed or have many news articles, it might be more interesting to use the search function (e.g. JonBenet Ramsey). Also, in the long run WN might develop multiple articles on uncommon topics, another argument in favour of a "Search"-type template (on top of it's obvious advantages in articles on common topics like
George Bush,
politics,...).
I think there are two options:
Two separate templates: a frequently used one linking to a specific article, and a less frequently used one like WNGoogle.
But even better (IMO), something along the lines of "Wikinews has [[Link used for searching via Google|news related to {{PAGENAME}}]]: [[n:articletitle|ARTICLE TITLE]]" (if you get what I'm trying to say here). This would combine both functions (searching and referring to a specific recent article) in the current template.
Bawolff, do you think this template should not often be used in general? Because I can imagine that it could be added to tons of articles on wikipedia if it doesn't refer to a specific current event, and that you would be uncomfortable with that idea?
I personally don't like the search thing. I geuss if we have over 4 articles its okay, but otherwise I think we should just list them. Also
template:wikinewscat/
template:wikinewsportal would be idea in my opinion on articles with lots of one subject. Also to make your life easier in designing these things, are you aware of the
google: prefix. normal link
google:foo, much easier to type.
Bawolff10:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)reply
I've tried to use WNGoogle on an article, and realised that it was just not a good idea: Google lists talk pages, user pages, and isn't up-to-date by the minute either. So I've proposed WNGoogle for deletion. What I will do is change Template:Wikinews to use the {{PAGENAME}} magic word, because now the intro just doesn't make sense.
However, the problems remain: it would be nice to have a link to all on some key topics, like Mahmoud Amhedinajad, Iran, Bush, obesity, ... WNGoogle wasn't the right solution, I think there needs to be a solution on the WikiNews side. Maybe we could create more specific categories? Or use more infoboxes.--
Steven Fruitsmaak (
Reply)
11:30, 9 September 2006 (UTC)reply
I wasn't able to pull my self to actual editing since I'm not a native english speaker. Your "Wikinews has related news" is better than what I was trying to do. Thanks for fixing! Cheers. --
朝彦 (Asahiko)11:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)reply
The article
MV Sirius Star has formating problems that disappear when this template is removed. If you remove {{wikinews|Pirates capture Saudi oil tanker}} from the article, the text in the highjacking section doesn't have a big gap. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks.
Ann arbor street (
talk)
06:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)reply
The problem was fixed by removing the template from the article, but it would be interesting to figure out what is causing the problem. The {{seealso|article name}} template did not cause the problem (as verified via preview experiments).
Ann arbor street (
talk)
16:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)reply
Suggestion: add the date parameter and write a 'bot which purges the news older than, say 6 months.
Rationales:
After half a year the news are no longer news. With time some articles became littered with real old news.
Basing on general "
wikipedia is not" (not a linkfarm, not a collection of indiscriminate info, etc.),
WP:UNDUE, and
Wikipedia:Verifiablity rules, if there was any notable info in the news, it must be added into the article, with direct references to
firsthand reliable sources. As you know, since wikinews is a wiki, it fails
WP:RS.
I suspect that in some cases the "wikinews" link became a vehicle of promotion of a certain person, by inserting the "wikinews" link in all marginally related wikipedia articles.
I oppose this idea (keep in mind I'm primarily a wikinewsie, so i'm biased) as: News may be mostly related to whats current, but its also interesting to read past news. For an article on 2008-2009 financial recession, I think links to articles that appeared at the time are useful to the reader. However I'll give you a point on marginally related articles. For most marginally related articles (for example, say big articles, like
Canada), the template is automatically updated by the
user:Wikinews Importer Bot. As with all templates and things, if its not actually related it shouldn't be on the article (If I link a wikinews article on the economy from
Disney, unless the wn article is specificly about disney, it shouldn't be linked from there). However, I would consider automatic removal of {{wikinews}} templates to be a bad idea. Even though I am primarily a wikinewsie, I have in the past come across wikipedia articles with links to wikinews articles I've never read before, and found those links to be very helpful.
Bawolff (
talk)
03:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)reply
Problem when embedded in a bullet list
{{
editprotected}}
This template was used in
this version of the
Willamette Week article between two items in a bullet list, and (this is key) without a line break between the template and the end of the first bullet item. That use produced an unintended result, i.e. the box around the item was missing and the text within the box was not floated along the right side. After some experimentation it was easy to work around this problem, but it would be better if either the {{sister}} template were fixed to not exhibit this layout behavior (sorry, I can't be more specific) or if this limitation could be documented at
Template:Sister/doc. This issue may be years old, since its similar to the one mentioned
here on this talk page in 2006 in the following example:
I think you are right in saying that the {{sister}} template needs to be modified to correct this. There is nothing which can be done to this template to fix the issue. I suggest opening a discussion at
Template talk:Sister or
WT:Wikimedia sister projects and describing the problem. Hopefully someone there will have an idea of how best to fix it.
Martinmsgj08:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)reply
The table that shows if you view the doc file separately is not showing up properly when transcluded. I don't know how to fix this though.
Calebrw (
talk)
23:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Why is this template being used at all
I don't understand why this template is being used in Wikipedia. The rules for wikinews differs from Wikipedia. The only reference I could find to its use, points to
WP:SPS suggesting that it is sometimes "self-published" material and not necessarily verifiable. Why would we want to promote another wiki site? Hopefully, not because it has "wiki-" in front of it! :)
Student7 (
talk)
21:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)reply
"I don't understand why this template is being used in Wikipedia."
Because Wikinews, like Wikpedia, is part of the overall Wikimedia family. You need to read and understand
Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects before continuing on this thread.
"The rules for wikinews differs from Wikipedia."
No and yes. Wikinews operates under many of the familar Wikipedia rules:
NPOV,
verifiability/sources, even
3RR. On the other hand, Wikinews differs from Wikipedia in a good way in that it has implemented the
sighted review mechanism where articles must be subjected to independent review before they can be published. Before discussing the merits of Wikinews any further, it would be prudent to review at least the core Wikinews policies.
"The only reference I could find to its use, points to
WP:SPS suggesting that it is sometimes "self-published" material and not necessarily verifiable."
The usage is supported by
Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects which you should read again. Links to other projects in the Wikimedia family are encouraged, including this template, which is a logical and practical extension of
WP:LINK. Wikinews is in no way self-published due to its policies, review mechanisms, the nature of Wikimedia's ownership and the varied editors involved. Above all, the {{Wikinews}} template is not used for a source, it is an interwiki link, and perhaps the template doc could include a statement to make that distinction more obvious.
"Why would we want to promote another wiki site?"
Because it's not just "another wiki site", it's
on the same team.
"Hopefully, not because it has "wiki-" in front of it! :)"
Thank you. This answers all my original questions.
My "follow-on" is this: How to restrict the use of this to sanity. Once per article (like Wikicommons) isn't so bad. Nor do I object to a lot of Wiktionary references (though I might question why so many obscure words were being used). But how can this be limited in the case of an "in the news" article like (I haven't looked!) Obama, for example. Having an article plastered with these things seems a bit counterproductive and distracting IMO. And no, since this is the first instance I have ever encountered, I'm not accusing anyone of violating common sense. But give some people an inch.... :)
Student7 (
talk)
21:45, 29 November 2009 (UTC)reply
If the subject has more than one article, {{Wikinewshas}} would be used to consolidate these into one box. After numerous articles, a Wikinews category should be requested and created so that {{Wikinewscat}} can then be used. If there are multiple active Wikimedia links {{Sisterlinks}} is available e.g. as used in
Barack Obama.
Dl2000 (
talk)
04:14, 30 November 2009 (UTC)reply
Not currently. I would recomend modifying the template as follows:
{{sister
|project=wikinews
|position={{{position|}}}
|text=[[Wikinews]] has related news:
'''''[[Wikinews:{{{1|Special:Search/{{PAGENAME}}}}}|{{{2|{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}]]'''''
}}<noinclude>
{{documentation}}
<!-- Add cats and interwikis to the /doc subpage, not here! -->
</noinclude>
I'd like to discuss what value linking to Wikinews adds to Wikipedia articles – Is it just for the sake of driving traffic to a sister site as seems to be implied in the thread
above, or is there any other reason? It seems that WN recycles news from the same sources we use here. The coverage of our articles, where there are similar WN topics, is more often than not wider and deeper than anything they can hope to achieve. So it's not as if they have access to better sources, or that their articles are better researched or better written. It really begs the question what value these WN links add... --
Ohconfucius¡digame!09:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)reply
Good question. Actually, I think there's a basic issue WP needs to be wary of linking to WN pages. WN has almost no primary news-gathering capability (which is extremely expensive, of course). the entire effort is founded on re-writing Reuters and (mainly) Associated Press news articles that appear in subscribing publications lsuch as MSNBC and CNN. In the effort to use original wording and steer around accusations of plagiarism, errors are inevitable. This is because professional copywriters pay attention to language and boolean nuances to make perfectly factual statements when not all of the facts are available (this is not always the case, but is typical in professional journalism—one learns to deal with it as a primary journalist). Given this model, it's all too easy to think something is being implied when it is not.
I wonder why WP isn't externally linking to the original news sources, rather than rehashed versions from WN that are likely to present dangers in their tinkering with the wording.
Tony(talk)09:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)reply
I agree. It doesn't feel right to reference distilled and summarized sources (as is the case by using WN articles). We should be striving to skip the middle-man and use the same underlying sources as WN. WN represents one more (external) layer that is beyond the control of the average WP editor (i.e. a reference to a WN article could obtain a different meaning if the content of the WN article is: subsequently altered, being reworked, or vandalized). The content of reliable media sources is far less likely to change after publication, so we should strive to go direct to the established source. Finally, WN is less stringent on allowing
OR and it is a pity to weaken the authority of WP articles (when a little more work in passing through the original references means that we don't have to). I would certainly support an RfC that discussed the removal of the WN template throughout WP. HWV258.04:54, 11 October 2010 (UTC)reply
One reason why we should not limit ourselves to, or rely on, the same sources as WN is that news evolves in light of new information. News articles often become stale or unreliable for that reason. Another reason is
linkrot. We already have the problem, but with such a small editing team, WN cannot hope to keep updating its reference links to avoid this problem. --
Ohconfucius¡digame!05:08, 11 October 2010 (UTC)reply
Of course, I don't suggest limiting ourselves to only the same sources as WN; however we could use the same sources that WN did as a starting point in the construction of our own articles. My main point is that I believe referencing WN to be akin to taking the easy way out (as opposed to doing the reference work from scratch). HWV258.05:20, 11 October 2010 (UTC)reply
It's bad enough having these WN templates on articles, due to the fact that our coverage is vastly superior to that of WN. Bearing in mind the questionable utility of the said links, and the fact that English language readers are unlikely to want to read foreign language news articles, I'd say it would be a waste of effort. --
Ohconfucius¡digame!09:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)reply
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The functionality that lets one link to a Wikinews search page is very bad form. It encourages inclusion of links where nothing relevant exists at Wikinews, and, due to relatively short search strings, is likely to give highly irrelevant results. The functionality should be removed, or at least given a category that notes an almost-certainly-bad use of the template, so it can be reviewed and removed or replaced with a direct link.
Linking to search pages is an explicit violation of
WP:ELAdam Cuerden(
talk)20:15, 20 July 2013 (UTC)reply
Not done. I'm not sure what you're asking to get done here. Which template mode enables linking to search pages? Please fix the template in a /sandbox page and then renable the request. Thanks,
Legoktm (
talk)
02:06, 22 July 2013 (UTC)reply
Template:Wikinews/sandbox is the simplest change. Basically, the original template links to a search on Wikinews for the page name if parameter 1 isn't specified. This edit adds a category to pages using this, so we can evaluate if there is a problem, and offers the ability to suppress the category by adding |searchgood=yes.
Once it's possible to check the usages, we can make changes as necessary. There may be some cases where a dumb search works, but there's no way to know until we can actually see pages that use the functionality. Adam Cuerden(
talk)23:22, 10 August 2013 (UTC)reply
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The secret, undocumented search option gives really terrible results. I just reviewed all usage of this secret fuctionality (there were only 5 in article space), and couldn't find one that was remotely useful - it's just a base search, so, for example, Occupy wall street gave results that contain - in separate places in the article - the words "occupies" "walls" and "street". It's not useful, so I propose the template code be changed to the following, which gives a standard-format warning if used without a parameter. This should not affect any valid usage, and has been tested:
Edit page, then copy-paste
<!--Copy-paste from here-->
<includeonly>{{#if:{{{1|}}}|</includeonly>
{{sister
| project = wikinews
| position = {{{position|}}}
| text = Wikinews has related news:
'''''[[wikinews: {{{1|Special:Search/{{PAGENAME}}}}}| {{{2|{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}]]'''''
}}<includeonly>|<font color=red>'''The template {{tl|Wikinews}} requires a link to an article. To link to a category, use {{tl|Wikinews category}}.</font>}}</includeonly><noinclude>
{{documentation}}
<!-- Add cats to the /doc subpage and interwikis to Wikidata, not here! -->
</noinclude>
<!---Stop copy-paste--->
So sorry, I don't know enough to be able to tell if your edit improves this template. However, I do know that interwikis must now go to Wikidata and have amended the above comment accordingly. Joys! – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX!02:33, 7 May 2014 (UTC)reply
Wikinews as a project is essentially dead: output is slow and article quality is often poor. Clearly, it would not be considered a
WP:RS by most standards. Should the use of this template, and linking to Wikinews articles, be discouraged?
feminist (
talk)
04:34, 4 June 2018 (UTC)reply
Three out of your four statements are false (though the other one out of four, "output is slow", is merely transitory and therefore deceptive). --
Pi zero (
talk)
17:16, 8 June 2018 (UTC)reply
Not that these points are necessarily relevant, since policy (to say nothing of community spirit) calls for sister projects to support each other. --
Pi zero (
talk)
17:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)reply