Amayzes

Welcome

Amayzes, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• If you're interested in audio recordings, Audio Wikinews could always use more contributers
• And of course, stories need writing!

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome!

Addendum

The above links will give you some idea on how to tidy up your first attempt at an article, we have templates for sources and a requirement for >1. Saying that, not bad for a first attempt, I suspect you've wiki experience elsewhere and will pick up the fairly informal rules pretty quickly. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 21:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Feedback on Autism genetics story

You seem to be craving for some feedback ... I've got some scientific remarks but mostly there are some typical things new editors aren't aware of. The best way to learn I think is to check out the history of the article, so you can evaluate the changes others have made so far. Here are some highlights:

• Correctness: neurexin 1 seems to be on chromosome 11. I don't know if you had access to the original paper, if you ever need access to scientific articles with subscription for the purpose of Wikinews, I could help you via my university access. Anyway it helps to check multiple sources, Nature etc. get high coverage in the media so Google News easily tracks any other articles on the papers, such as the BBC News article which had it right. Also, the exact number (1,168 instead of 1,200) is an important detail imho.
• Wikilinks
• I don't think it's fair to summarize previous research as "Genetic studies of autism had previously been attempted"; you ignore the previous successes that have been booked so far and create the illusion that this is an incredible milestone, but it should be put more into perspective.
• I've added a little section explaining Autism, if you find the time I think this might add to the article.
• Title: take a look at the Wikinews:Style_guide#Headlines if you haven't already. I think the title you first put the article under was vague, didn't really report facts, it rather indicated a broad field the article covered. To me, it suggested that the "genetic code of autism had been cracked", which is of course not the case.
• Image: I'm one of those authors who believe a first class article needs a picture... Commons is usually a good source, but it takes experience to find free pictures.

Btw, if you have a specific interest you might consider adding some Category:User_categories to your user page.

Overall you seem to have a good wiki-sense of collaboration, and the article was really interesting and well written, so I say thumbs up and hope to collaborate with you some more in the future!

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 23:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Prolactin MS story

Wow, your new story looks very professional! Great work. Some more feedback (tell me to stop if it gets annoying):

• I've moved the context on MS down to the bottom of the article. I've learned during my time here that it's typical for news stories to do so, it's debatable of course but makes sense to me. Anyway it's great that you thought of it!
• I've added some categories you probably didn't know of. Since the story is from Canada, I've put it in that category too. Also, while most links are to wikipedia, we generally put links to country portals on wikinews like this: Canada. Works for others things too, e.g. AIDS instead of AIDS. It's mentioned in the style guide I think.
• Finally, if you're interested, you can always update the health news on the Medicine Portal on Wikipedia, which I co-manage. If you take a look, you should be proud to see your stories on our featured portal .

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 10:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)