Welcome to Wikinews

A nice cup of coffee for you while you get started

Getting started as a contributor
How to write an article
  1. Pick something current?
  2. Use two independent sources?
  3. Read your sources before writing the story in your own words?. Do choose a unique title? before you start.
  4. Follow Wikinews' structure? for articles, answering as many of who what when where why and how? as you can; summarised in a short, two- or three-sentence opening paragraph. Once complete, your article must be three or more paragraphs.
  5. If you need help, you can add {{helpme}} to your talkpage, along with a question, or alternatively, just ask?

  • Use this tab to enter your title and get a basic article template.
    [RECOMMENDED. Starts your article through the semi-automated {{develop}}—>{{review}}—>{{publish}} collaboration process.]

 Welcome, MyNameWasTaken! Thank you for joining Wikinews; we'd love for you to stick around and get more involved. To help you get started we have an essay that will guide you through the process of writing your first full article. There are many other things you can do on the project, but its lifeblood is new, current, stories written neutrally.
As you get more involved, you will need to look into key project policies and other discussions you can participate in; so, keep this message on this page and refer to the other links in it when you want to learn more, or have any problems.

Wikipedia's puzzle-globe logo, © Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia's puzzle-globe logo, © Wikimedia Foundation
  Used to contributing to Wikipedia? See here.
All Wikimedia projects have rules. Here are ours.

Listed here are the official policies of the project, you may be referred to some of them if your early attempts at writing articles don't follow them. Don't let this discourage you, we all had to start somewhere.

The rules and guides laid out here are intended to keep content to high standards and meet certain rules the Wikimedia Foundation applies to all projects. It may seem like a lot to read, but you do not have to go through it all in one sitting, or know them all before you can start contributing.

Remember, you should enjoy contributing to the project. If you're really stuck come chat with the regulars. There's usually someone in chat who will be happy to help, but they may not respond instantly.

The core policies
Places to go, people to meet

Wiki projects work because a sense of community forms around the project. Although writing news is far more individualistic than contributing to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, people often need minor help with things like spelling and copyediting. If a story isn't too old you might be able to expand it, or if it is disputed you may be able to find some more sources and rescue it before it is listed for deletion.

There are always discussions going on about how the site could be improved, and your input is of value. Check the links here to see where you can give input to the running of the Wikinews project.

Find help and get involved
Write your first article for Wikinews!

Use the following box to help you create your first article. Simply type in a title to your story and press "Create page". Then start typing text to your story into the new box that will come up. When you're done, press "save page". That's all there is to it!



It is recommended you read the article guide before starting. Also make sure to check the list of recently created articles to see if your story hasn't already been reported upon.


-- 22:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Publication, and a technical glitch edit

Hi! Thanks for your interest in Wikinews.

There's one software, and one project-procedure, reason, though, to wait until an article is published before leaving remarks on its comments ("opinions") page. The wiki software, which was really designed for an encyclopedia rather than a news site, only just barely supports those comments pages at all, you see, and the software can get seriously messed up by pre-publish comments. Procedurally, the content of an article is vetted during pre-publish review, so we discourage comments on something that might not be representative of the published product (not that that applies to your comment). --Pi zero (talk) 20:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hey there! Thanks for the heads up. I just flew in from Wikipedia, going over Wikinews:For Wikipedians right now. Looking forward to getting involved here a little! MyNameWasTaken (talk) 21:14, 6 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Article found not ready on review; see my review comments. Also, of course, the history of edits during review.

Thanks for your improvements to the article following my earlier comments! --Pi zero (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

  • As I've commented on the talk for this:
Where the original contributor to mark, using htlp comments, what facts/quotes within the article are to be found in which sources, this would significantly easy completing a review.
Sorry just to be dumping this on you; due to a pc failure, I'm only getting a couple of hours (frequently just one) online at the moment. So, if you can make review easier, ... --Brian McNeil / talk 12:43, 8 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Brian. This actually seems like a good practice in general. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 03:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Congratulations! edit

MyNameWasTaken,

Congrats on publishing Pump leak and fire shuts down nuclear reactor in France and welcome to the Wikinews community! Best, Crtew (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Instagram acquired by Facebook for $1 Billion edit

MyNameWasTaken, Hey, I just took a look at the article, and I am interested in the topic. I have to use my daughter's i-Phone to toy with Instagram as I'm currently a droidhead, hahaha! Even though I'm interested, I believe your article is likely to be rejected in the first round as it is currently written. I have made some internal comments in HTML form inside the article. Here are some things you can do to clean it up:

  • Attribute (noted within comments)
  • Look for evidence instead of reporting unattributed sentiment.
  • Avoid flowery language.
  • Headline: possibly "Facebook acquires Instagram for US$1 billion"
  • Explanation for #4: First, active voice is almost always better. Second, you have to set the country into context because a large portion of the readers are from outside the United States. In this medium, you can never assume the location of your readers.
  • I haven't looked, but is there an example of what Instagram can do in Wikimedia Commons?

Good luck, Check for any current developments when editing and I hope you can get this published today. Best, Crtew (talk) 13:39, 10 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that it had already been rejected. I did fix the links to Wikipedia. You have to use the squiggly brackets for the Template:Wikipedia to make those and not the straight-edged brackets.

You also didn't really address some of the editor's concerns (I take it as you didn't know what he/she was trying to get across). For the comment, "NPOV: Reads like an advertisement," I was alluding to this in my comments for attribution and facts that put this into perspective. Wikinews doesn't publish any promotional like news that you would find elsewhere, but it does publish business news. There can be a fine difference. Err on the side of being very business-y (prob not a word). For comments about dates (I changed that too), this means instead of today, which is now yesterday, you should use Monday.Crtew (talk) 13:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hey there, thanks for the comments. I went back and addressed most of them. All of the issues in the style were really leftovers from the original article into which I merged mine, I guess I was a little soft-hearted and didn't want to obliterate the previous editor's work. Also, I'm not a huge Instagram fan, believe it or not, as a fellow Droid-head I find it kind of obnoxious actually, although there is an Android version now. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 15:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)Reply