User:Darkfrog24/IDrafter

This is a draft for a possible official Wikinews essay. It is discussed on the collaboration page, where the principal author welcomes comment on its contents, but it has not yet been proposed for promotion to any official status.

This is an essay by one or more individuals on using and contributing to Wikinews. It contains their advice or opinions, not necessarily those of the Wikinews community. Community essays can be found here; links to official policies can be found in the Wikinews introduction.

This is an user essay, suggested by its author(s). It's not a community essay, nor a policy or guideline.

Here on Wikinews, the person who first writes the bulk of an article, here called the initial drafter, tends to play a greater role than the first major contributor to a Wikipedia article. Officially, this is a collaborative project and anyone may BOLDly edit any article, but in practice, we tend to give the initial drafter the lead, even to the point of respecting his or her wishes about the level of direct contribution to be made by others. For most articles, the initial drafter is the one who supplies most of the sources, writes most of the text, and hits "review," with other drafters making smaller contributions as they like, but there are two other ways of doing things around here that are common enough.

Writing a draft solo or nearly solo: You start by creating a stub to unofficially call dibs on the subject.
Requesting an article to be drafted by someone else: You start by creating a stub.

The problem is that stubs created as a dibs-call and stubs created as a request look exactly the same. A request could sit there and age out because other contributors think the initial drafter is busily writing up an article offline. A dibs-caller could return to find his or her stub has been filled up with text and sources and images by well-meaning colleagues. There are ways to prevent all this.

When you want no direct collaboration edit

The default setting on Project Wiki is collaboration, so if you want to write a solo or minimal-collaboration article, it is your responsibility to let your colleagues know your wishes. Using one or more of the following will tell the community you'd like us to hold off while you do the heavy lifting:

Add the {{editing}} tag to the article and leave it up until review. This tag is understood to apply to the article but not the talk page.
Add a note to the Wikitext using  to give your version of  or
Add a note to the Wikitext using  to give your version of
Write "No collaboration yet, thanks!" or "Please talk page only" in your edit summaries, the talk page, or both.
Accept that no individual on Wikinews owns the article, and other contributors may decide to edit the article anyway.

Remember, it stops once you hit "review." Some of the changes that reviewers make are required by Wikinews policy.

As of 2019, Wikinews has a small group. In time, your colleagues will learn your individual process and preferences, and these indicators will serve to prevent newcomers and transplants from Wikipedia from providing unwanted help.

When you need zero interference edit

If you must be absolutely sure no one will touch the draft without your permission, start the article in your userspace and move it to mainspace when you are ready. Wikinewsies almost never edit someone else's userspace page without prior permission.

Go into "create article," hit "select all," and copy the form.
Go to your userpage, and add a slash mark and at least one character, as in "User:Wikigenius/MySuperNeatArticle" or "User:Stargazer/Astronomers_say_asteroid_will_hit_Venus" and hit "enter."
Click on the "create article" link.
Paste the form and compose your article but remove the {{developing}} tag so that it will not appear in the newsroom.
When you feel the article is ready, either copypaste your text into the "create article" form or enter your article's address (User:Wikigenius/MySuperNeatArticle) into the form at WN:WRITE.
Add either the {{developing}} or {{review}} tag as appropriate.

When you want someone else to write the article edit

Wikinews has a request article function, but another good way to request an article is to start a draft and provide at least one source, a bit like starting a stub on Wikipedia. However, because of Wikinews articles' time constraints, you should proactively tell the community that you don't plan to finish the heavy lifting yourself:

Add a note in CLEARLY VISIBLE ARTICLE TEXT saying "I am requesting this article" and, if you wish, explain why you think it could be an asset to Wikinews.
Write "REQUESTED ARTICLE" at the beginning of your edit summary.
Go to WN:Water cooler/assistance and ask for the exact type and level of help you want.
Accept that Wikinews is a volunteer project and other drafters may prefer to work elsewhere. You are free to ask other people to write the article, and they are free to decline.

When you want to contribute to a stub edit

If a stub article has been sitting in the development hopper for 12 hours with no edits, it is usually safe to start editing it. Even if the initial drafter had planned to come back, something has delayed them.

Why it works here edit

On Wikipedia, there is no problem if a stub article sits for months or years before someone feels like expanding it. On Wikinews, articles must be published within a few days of their focal event or they will lose FRESHNESS. Promptly telling your Wikinews colleagues whether you intend to bring the article to review on your own saves time and spares feelings.

Unlike Wikipedia articles, which are intended to exist for a long time and change as the coverage of their subject changes, Wikinews articles only remain editable for a short while between creation and archive protection. This means no article stays accessible long enough for WP:OWN to be a problem.

More than one reviewer expressed a preference for dealing with single-drafter articles as a means of developing useful relationships with drafters and teaching them the ropes.