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, B.j Shepherd! 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.


-- 01:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Water cooler

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I have replied to the question you asked on the Water cooler. - Amgine | t 04:36, 4 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hi, B.j Shepherd. I'm afraid there were some failures of communications about how Wikinews works. Maybe I can clarify some; sorry if I'm wrong about some of your thinking on this. Hopefully this will help you get started on Wikinews; we know there's a steep learning curve here, and we want to help.
  • A Wikinews article is not simply submitted by a single author and then accepted.
  • It may initially be written mainly by one author, but this is a wiki, and other contributors may also help to improve it. (Just to be clear on that.)
  • It must be rigorously peer reviewed by an authorized reviewer, and may either pass or fail review. If it fails, the problems that caused failure are identified by the review template on the article talk page, and the article needs to be improved to (attempt to) fix the identified problems before resubmitting it for review.
Your article received a failing review; it's possible you might have missed that, since the redirect to another article (see below) was added shortly thereafter. The failing review template admittedly did not have the sort of useful explanations on it that ideally it would have had.
  • One of the requirements for a Wikinews article to be published is that, at the time of publication, new information must have come to light within at most 2–3 days (and the news event itself has to have been within 7 days).
Your article was about an event that took place about three days before you wrote the article; and the sources were from then too, so there was no new information that came to light later.
  • There was a Wikinews article about the same news event already published two days before your article was written.
--Pi zero (talk) 06:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

These edits...

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Take account of one of the points on which this article was failed the first time. Regrettably, it was not the most important point. Please, to start with, refrain from marking something for review when you obviously know it isn't (and prove that with near-immediate substantial edits). Note there is no such country as "Yemeni", and correct the Random capitalisation - should you wish to resubmit this article. --Brian McNeil / talk 17:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

what a great encouragement it is to haver your article rejected for about the fifteenth time.

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