The Wikinewsie Group/Newsletter/1

The Wikinewsie Group Newsletter

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

Shortcut:
WM:WIKINEWSIE

Key resources

Home
TWG Newsletter
#wikinewsie-group^connect - The Wikinewsie Group IRC Channel
wikinewsiegooglegroups.com - Email discussion list - join here!

The Wikinewsie Group News[edit]

Since mid-April, supporters of The Wikinewsie Group have been quite active, doing a number of activities in support of the organization. These include selecting a provisional board, engaging in research projects, working to support original reporting, discussing setting up off-line events, and promoting our efforts and the broader work being done by Wikinews reporters.

On May 4, a meeting was held to select the provisional board. It was decided that the board would be composed of the following people: LauraHale (Chair), Pi zero, Brian McNeil, Bjarki S, ProtoplasmaKid. The total number of people and roles was based on the draft bylaws. 18 people, a little under half of all people who were listed as supporters, attended the meeting. aff-comm has been advised of this, and that we are ready to discuss the group's bylaws with them. They have responded back to indicate their review will start shortly.
Tentative steps are being taken to have a Wikimedia conference in Iceland with a Wikinews workshop as a component of it. This would likely be in December to coincide with the 10th birthday of Icelandic Wikipedia. Having some discussions about the possibility of having a small Wikinews conference somewhere in Europe sometime in the next year.
Wikinews:GLAM was created after writing about previous experiences with GLAM projects on English Wikinews and content related to GLAMs across all projects. Hopefully, with groundwork underway, there should be two announcements about Wikinews and GLAM projects by the end of June that will build upon previous success.
It does not look like there is a single presentation about Wikinews at Wikimania in Hong Kong has been approved. Given that, plans are to have some sort of Wikinews meetup while there independent of the official tracks.
Efforts are underway to do a better job at translating articles from one language to another, and successfully guide them through any local review processes. This is not a one way street of material from English Wikinews to other languages: We have successfully had two articles start on Spanish Wikinews that were translated to English Wikinews, where they passed the local review process and were successfully published. Comments on this effort are welcome at The Wikinewsie Group/Project planning and User talk:LauraHale: WORTNET.
Efforts are underway to develop a matrix to understand key policy, community and content requirement differences between different Wikinews projects. Once complete, this should ease cross Wikinews collaboration by having a starting point to discuss content related issues when translating for review, and trying to standardize any policies across projects.
Four pieces of research have been completed. They include Blocks on English Wikinews, Wikinews:GLAM/Coverage, Research:Wikinews Review Analysis and English Wikinews and the Gender Gap. If you are doing any research, formally or informally, about any language Wikinews project, please share it with The Wikinewsie Group as it will help better inform our decisions.
The development of a reviewing tool for English Wikinews continues. There are some concerns that the future roll out of Lua may hinder this. Once complete, this tool should make it easier for reviewers to leave feedback and check articles against all criteria.
Migration of the wikinewsie.org server to Iceland should be complete by the end of June. Once funding is secure, one of the first upgrades to the server will be to create a secure server and a dedicated host in order to encourage more investigative reporting and reporting of embargoed news stories. The server could also be used for development of bots, and mobile reporting tools. The planning is being done to give The Wikinewsie Group cloud space to host reporting notes, video and audio to support journalism efforts.
Icelandic Wikinews and Malayalam Wikinews are both hosted on incubator. The Icelandic Wikimedia mailing list and Indian editors have been contacted to encourage local editors to get the projects viable to move to the main space.
On social media, a few The Wikinewsie Group supporters are answering questions about Wikinews on quora. This is part of an effort to expand awareness about the Wikinews in general.
Follow @wikinewsie, The Wikinewsie Group on Twitter. Please tweet us any original reporting you are aware of on any project so we can tweet about it.