AKA Casey Rollins

Welcome to Wikinews

Getting started as a contributor How to write an article Pick something current? Use two independent sources? Read your sources before writing the story in your own words?. Do choose a unique title? before you start. 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. 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! 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   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.

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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.

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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.

-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 01:27, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

National Guard sent to Ferguson, Missouri

Hi. I point out that you've got no sources at all; you should be carefully documenting the sources of your information by identifying them in the Sources section of the article before you begin to write the content based on them. As the above {{howdy}} template notes, we strongly recommend that you choose your sources and read them all before you start writing. If you haven't read WN:PILLARS, I recommend that too. --Pi zero (talk) 00:30, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

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Alright, Pi, I've wrapped up my news article. How do I publish it? It doesn't show up in any portals. --Casey ([[User talk:AKA Casey Rollins|Talk with Casey) 11:20 PM, 17 November 2014 (EST)

I found some problems on review. See my review comments, and history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 05:43, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

You claimed to have actually gotten material from broadcast reporting. What broadcast did you get it from? Like, network news, local news, what? And, specifically which network, which local news channel, or the like? I'm trying to get perspective on what was done. --Pi zero (talk) 20:48, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Verification difficulties, and remarks re freshness: review comments; also, history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Your contributions

Please do not create categories casually. We have an existing category system, and we do not add to it without careful consideration and attention to category hierarchy design principles. --Pi zero (talk) 01:55, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

How to contribute

I get the impression you're off to a difficult start here over how to go about writing an article that will work for Wikinews. I suggest you don't mess with broadcast reporting at all. Also, "shorts" haven't really been a successful form here for years, really; as someone remarked here recently, they're a print newspaper thing that was done because of limited real estate on the physical page.

The short-short version of how to write a basic synthesis article is actually the simple step-by-step instructions on the {{howdy}} template at the top of this page. There are also several other attempts we've made over the years to explain the process; WN:WRITE is one, a shorter version of that is WN:ARTICLE, and an attempt at a (non-interactive) "article wizard" is WN:Article wizard. I wrote that last one myself, and concluded from the experience that what we really need is an interactive article wizard, something the wiki software does not support — so I'm working on some deep voodoo to make the wiki software support interactive pages.

Our initial learning curve is steep; we realize that, and try to help newcomers up it. Fortunately, though steep, it's also short for most people: once you get the hang of it, writing synthesis articles quickly gets to be pretty straightforward (not that one ever stops learning, hopefully). It's not uncommon to lose an article, or more than one, during the learning process (as I guess you've discovered). --Pi zero (talk) 17:24, 18 November 2014 (UTC)