Welcome to Wikinews

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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! 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.


-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 11:12, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Published. Congrats!

I'm reminded of why I don't often review in the evening; one of the things we emphasize a lot is that the lede should also answer "when" — which is one of the five Ws and is also needed to establish freshness — and I had this awful moment of realization just after I'd published the article that it didn't answer that! What a terrible example to set for a first-time en.wn reporter! I fixed it promptly... and then wasn't quite 100% sure that I'd done it right, because the sources didn't actually say when most of those things had happened, either. (As we emphasize the importance of answering "when", we get very frustrated that many major mainstream news sources, like BBC, seem to have forgotten that "when" is one of the five Ws.) It worried me so that I went out and looked for additional sources, just to reassure myself that I hadn't messed up and ended up with wrong information; I mean, it seemed likely that all of those things were said on the same day — Monday, which ought to be called "yesterday" since the publication date on the article is Tuesday — but the only specific dates I could confirm from those sources were the dates on the tweets. But when I looked around, I did find one other article about it, in the Telegraph, and it said his agent had announced it on Monday; so at least I'm pretty sure I didn't end up publishing something wrong, although it sure wasn't a smooth performance on my part.

Anyway, you can see what I did during review in the article history, and I also left a review comment. --Pi zero (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2018 (UTC)Reply