Russians top podium on second day of European Deaf Swimming Championships is an article I got published yesterday on English Wikinews.  Also, Spanish Wikinews.  It was one of those exercises in disaster.  I originally wrote the article based on preliminary results.  In between submitting the article for review and the article being reviewed, the preliminary results changed to final results.  This completely screwed the article text, because it made it all inaccurate.  Erk?

The event is a world championship for deaf sport, which is not aligned with International Paralympic Committee in the sense that deaf sport just isn’t.  (The politics of this is actually quite interesting, in why deaf sports didn’t join the Paralympic movement.  Also, there is apparently a fear in some places that deaf sport will completely disappear because the technology is much better, and hearing problems are becoming much more fixable. )  What does this mean in terms of writing Wikinews articles from faaaaaaar away in Spain for a competition in Russia?  It means finding secondary sources to verify facts is PITA and not actually very doable.  The results seem pretty newsworthy to me, but verification.  Verification.  Verification.  Erk. Erk. Erk.

Errors were all eventually addressed, and the article got fixed on English Wikinews and then published.  😦