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Welcome to Wikinews!	Getting a head start as a Wikinews contributor Welcome! Thank you for joining Wikinews; we'd love for you to stick around and get more involved. To help you get started we have a short 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 want to look into the key policies for the project and other discussions you can participate in, so keep this message on your collaboration page and refer to the other links in it if you have problems or want to learn more. I would recommend that you get a username. You don't have to log in to read or edit articles on Wikinews, but creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, requires no personal information (not even an e-mail address), and there are many benefits of having a username. (If you edit without a username, your IP address is used to identify you instead.)

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 Neutral point of view Cite sources Writing an article Content guide Style guide Reviewing articles

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.	Where you can help and get involved The Water Cooler The Latest News The Newsroom Articles for deletion Audio Wikinews Recent Changes

Why create an account? You don't have to log in to read Wikinews. You don't even have to log in to edit articles on Wikinews—anyone can edit almost any article, even without logging in. Nevertheless, creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, and it's a good idea to do so, for many reasons. If you create an account, you can pick a username. Edits you will make while being logged in will be assigned to that name. That means you get full credit for your contributions in the page history (when not logged in, the edits are just assigned to your IP address). You can also view all your contributions by clicking the "My contributions" link, which is only visible when you are logged in. You will have your own user page where you can write a bit about yourself. While Wikinews is not a homepage provider, you can use this to display a few pictures, write about your hobbies, etc. Many users use their user page to maintain a list of the articles they are most proud of, or to collect other valuable information from Wikinews. Also, when you are not logged in, all your edits are publicly associated with your IP address at the time of that edit. If you log in, all your edits are publicly associated with your account name. They are also still internally associated with your IP address. In addition, There are many features of the MediaWiki software (which powers Wikinews) that are only available to registered users. For example, registered users can mark edits as "minor". Minor edits can be filtered from the list of "Recent changes". We do not give the privilege to mark edits as minor to anonymous users because we do not know who is behind a given IP address at any time, so we cannot build a basis of trust. (Marking edits as minor if they are not is considered very rude.)

The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 03:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)