Jverwey

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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) 02:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Submission

Hi. Just a reminder, draft articles (such as your shorts article on February 26, which of course long since lost freshness) don't get reviewed for publication unless they're submitted for review. --Pi zero (talk) 11:58, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

User page comments, wiki syntax

John,

The use of [[w:Page title]] reads the w: part as a directive to look on Wikipedia, where the page titles you've used do not exist. Local links do not require any prefix, so [[Main page]] goes where you'd expect here, and [[w:Main page]] lands you in The Other Place. There's also the wikt: [[wikt:prefix]] for wiktionary. Yes it's primitive, and ugly too! We all learned it by copying markup code from elsewhere, and still get caught out by quirks in it. (Disclosure: I had to preview, and re-edit, this comment several times to get what I wanted). However, primitives can build some pretty-impressive things, such as a Death Star constructed entirely from Lego.

I also notice you've got an intern 'gong' on your userpage. I appreciate the word published isn't in there; but, that's due to those pre-dating independent review. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

News briefs

At this moment, all of the (ten) articles on the main page have been published within the past seven days. (I'm recalling the news briefs script preview, late last month, in which most of the articles available for inclusion in the brief were more than a week old.) --Pi zero (talk) 13:53, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

US Capitol on temporary lockdown after shooting

Drat. New developments, so the article needs a rewrite to bring it up to date. --Pi zero (talk) 22:27, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

In case I wasn't clear: we're being told the lockdown has been lifted. That means a change of focus, with changes to both the headline and the lede. --Pi zero (talk) 22:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hopefully, this will both result in a published article and leave you well along our steep-but-hopefully-short initial learning curve. Once you've got the basics down it gets a lot easier. See my review comments, and history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 02:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, it did get published; another contributor came along and revised it. --Pi zero (talk) 23:47, 12 April 2015 (UTC)