User talk:Chocolateboy/Current events:Jtdirl

Brevity is the soul of "I quit"
The Alex Ferguson "story" doesn't have a link (try Googling for it). That's why it tries to put the whole allegation into the item.

The ghost story tries to put the whole incredibly important story into the item.

What relevance do Karl's friends and family have to this: "The Holy See announces plans to beatify the last Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl"?

chocolateboy 05:53, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Stop chopping up stories on Current Events down to one line when they can't be told in one line. Some things can (eg tonight's bus crash). But your edit of the story on Alex Ferguson was ludicrous. The story isn't that he was criticised by some charity head. It is that he (a) demanded payment when other sports celebrities don't, (b) his payment swallowed up half the funds raised, and (c) the organisers didn't know about the payment and if they had would have pulled the plug. The story is meaningless and pointless without those facts. Ditto with the story on Emperor Karl. The story isn't simply that some long dead emperor is being beatified. It is that the guy being beatified is so contemporaneous that his wife only died recently and his son was a top politician, possibly producing the first case of a politician whose father was a saint. If you don't know how to edit news links then don't. The page is supposed to be a longterm source of news stories, not a collection of banal sentences that miss the point, convey no information and will be meaningless and useless to readers in the future. FearÉIREANN 05:55, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Stop it, rather than discuss it? Please provide a reference for the Alex Ferguson allegation. I think the Karl point can be made without telling the guy's whole life story! ;) Do you have a defence of the ghost story? chocolateboy 06:07, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * The Ferguson story broke live on a news bulletin was typed as it was being broadcast. The news agency involved are notoriously slow at updating their news website to carry their broadcast stories but eventually get around to it. FearÉIREANN 05:59, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please consider holding it back until there's a link. Either way, I don't think it deserves to be so clumsily expressed that it ends up consuming more words than war, terrorism or SARS. chocolateboy 06:10, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't mean to be so sharp above. Just be careful when editing a news link not to lose detail and context if the detail and context are what makes the item newsworthy to start off with. The ghost in Hampton Court is meaningless unless you can explain what was seen and why it is important, ie, the first ever recorded 'sighting' in a location famous for happenings. Simply saying a ghost was filmed in HC without further explanation produces the question 'so what?' and makes the link irrelevant on the CE page. Ditto reducing the Ferguson link to one line turns an important story into a minor point that out of context would not warrant a place on the page. That is why context is vital in those stories, but not where, for example, 'x' becomes prime minister of somewhere, which would be straightforward and can be done in one line unless there was some important context to it, eg, a muck up in voting, an opposition collapse, a scandal involving his predecessor, a shock development, etc. Don't lose crucial context and news value in editing. It is a basic rule in copy-editing and journalism. FearÉIREANN 06:18, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * If a terrorism story can be told in a line, tell it in a line. If it needs a paragraph, it needs a paragraph. The size is irrelevant. Getting the story right is. And as to holding it back until there is a link, that is a non-starter. Not every newsworthy story has an instant link and there is no question of holding a story until it appears on the net. The net is not the centre of everything. When it appears on the net, it can be linked. Until that happens, it stands as a factual account of an allegation made live on a news bulletin. FearÉIREANN 06:18, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Re: the unsubstantiated Alex Ferguson story: I don't see how that's any different from "my mate Baz told me...". My own mate, Baz, tells me lots of things, but I don't splash them all over the "front page" ;) At the very least one would think the incredibly lengthy (and unconfirmed) saga would be prefaced with a disclaimer. I think a link could deal with the stuff you've tried to squash into the item.

"Simply saying a ghost was filmed in HC without further explanation produces the question 'so what?' and makes the link irrelevant on the CE page." I think it makes you say "so what?" if you get it from a disreputable news source. I think you would do a double-take if you read it in The Times, or The Wall Street Journal. Then you'd want to know more. Why hold Wikipedia to lower standards? Don't you think it would be a more interesting story if it teased succinctly, and then relegated the juicy details to the link?

How come you just did the Karl story more compactly than the news item?

Surely you've noticed that these are among the longest paragraphs on the page. Brevity is the soul of Current_events.

chocolateboy 06:58, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Firstly, the story is not unsourced, simply the source, a respected national broadcaster with the incompetence that is their trait didn't transfer a story that featured as number 2 in their running order onto their website (a regular and infuriating occurance. They seem to stop working on their website at 5pm every day, meaning that it is often out of date and misses stories that break after that point, as did one did). It was carried today by a host of newspapers. Unfortunately all I have checked so far are password required pages and so are useless as links because you can't link to the page with the story, merely the page asking for a password. It will no doubt feature in tomorrow's papers also. When one that has free access carries it I will put the link in.


 * Secondly, the sources for the ghost were the BBC and ITN, two renouned and respected sources. But links are links to external sources. You have to convey the story first so people know what they are linking to.


 * Thirdly, I take it from your 'brevity' nonsense that you have not written for a newspaper or copy for a wire. Brevity here as elsewhere comes second place to the story and context. If you don't have the story and context, brevity is worthless. The link has to explain as clearly as possible what the story is. If it can be expressed in 5 words, use five words. If due to complexity it needs five sentences, then it has to be written in 5 sentences and no less. Longer entries are often used on Current events where necessary. One some time ago required I think 10 sentences because the story was complex, and one wrong word used could have put wikipedia in serious legal difficulties. But then someone came along and shortened it using the brevity mantra, leaving it in a form that would have had the person it was about, who is notorious for resorting to law, with an open and shut case of defamation. Luckily his edit was spotted before anyone involved in the incident did, and immediately reverted to the carefully worded, legally tight, long version that avoided a lawsuit while carrying the story. (BBC and CNN carried longer versions of the same story in their headlines for the same, legally careful reasons.)


 * By all means edit stuff on Current events, but if you, know how to do it, how to keep accuracy and context central. Your edit on the Alex Ferguson story was a classic example of how never ever to edit a story. Your edit made the story meaningless. If you don't know how to edit a particular story in proper journalistic style then don't. FearÉIREANN 00:35, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The Alex Ferguson story is one sentence: "Sir Alex Ferguson was involved in an extraordinary row last night after admitting accepting £83,000 for attending a cancer charity bash". The rest is the "why". If you couldn't find a link for it you should have at least credited the news source. Alternatively you could have worked with me instead of patronizing me ("If you don't know how to edit a particular story in proper journalistic style then don't", "By all means edit stuff on Current events..." &c.). Either way it's unsubstantiated. 24 hours later and only 2 tabloids consider it news. 

The ghost story is told in the first sentence. The rest violates all the precepts set out here. Your understanding of the word "context" is at odds with the usage on that page. Your insistence on telling the whole story in the news item is at odds with this choice piece of "nonsense" from the same page: "Aim for brevity: concentrate on what happened, where, and to whom. This isn't really the best place to explain why".

The second sentence of the Karl story repeats the facts of the first sentence (he's gonna be beatified) in a verbose attempt to make the point you made much more compactly above about it being interesting because he's reasonably contemporary. The other two sentences are interesting tidbits that belong in the article.

You'll be glad to hear that I've lost my taste for trying to improve the "front page" as a result of your inflexibility and antagonistic tone.

chocolateboy 01:58, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)