Welcome

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Welcome to Wikinews

 

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
  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.

Tempodivalse [talk] 22:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

citation

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Hi.Welcome to wikinews, and thank you for adding to Large Hadron Collider restarted. Just as a note, we use a slightly different citation method than wikipedia. You only have to add the source template to the bottom of the article. You do not have to do the <ref>blah...</ref> part. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Bawolff 04:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hello LHC Tommy. Just to let you know, articles on Wikinews can only be published after a review by another, uninvolved editor. I'm afraid there's a bit of a backlog at the moment, but I'm sure it will get done soon as soon as possible. the wub "?!" 13:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Ok, thanks. Will wait LHC Tommy (talk) 15:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
How long until this is reviewed? LHC Tommy (talk) 01:22, 18 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I had to give this a failing review. The listed sources are not enough to verify the article. The writing and style are fine. --SVTCobra 01:38, 18 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Added multiple sources to verify event LHC Tommy (talk) 11:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
See link for full event (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BDA16F52CA3C9B1D) LHC Tommy (talk) 15:07, 18 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Staleness

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The article cannot be published in its current form because it fails to satisfy one of the most primordial requirements for publication, namely freshness. If it isn't fresh, it isn't news. Although Rayboy8 and I are both editors, qualified to do peer reviews, failing an article for lack of freshness isn't handled through the Easy Peer Review gadget, which puts a {{peer reviewed}} template on the article's talk page; instead, one manually puts a {{stale}} tag on the article itself. The difference probably comes down to the fact that staleness is a failing from which most articles cannot recover.

For freshness, details have to have come to light within the past couple of days or so (and the event itself has to have been within a week).

The award event itself is falling out of the one-week horizon, and presumably all details about it came to light outside the 2–3 day horizon. There is one loophole that is sometimes mentioned in staleness situations. If some further news regarding the matter were to arise, then an article about that, written well within its freshness horizon, might incorporate the material of the current article.

From time to time, an article does go stale and get deleted despite having no other shortcomings than staleness. It's a singularly unrewarding experience all around. (My own early experience with this can't really be compared with yours, because I'd only contributed an hour or two of copyediting to the article involved, which isn't nearly as bad as having been the primary author.) --Pi zero (talk) 01:48, 21 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

I have tried to get this article up and reviewed quickly after the event. I feel it is "stale" becuase the review process and specific feedback took so long. This has been a very dissappointing experience and I guess gaining new authors is not a priority. Everything on this site as of now can be seen on CNN.com so I clearly don't get this wikinews. My apologies. I will most likely not be back. LHC Tommy (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
We'd be sorry to lose you. We want new authors. Specifically, speaking for myself, I think we could use more coverage in the hard sciences. And more broadly, shortage of personnel is the biggest single reason why articles sometimes aren't reviewed as promptly as they ought to be — I agree with your assessment of this case: staleness was ultimately due to a sluggish review process.
Wikinews has Wikimedia ideals much like those of Wikipedia. It seeks to make the world a better place by providing a neutral source of information driven by the citizenry of the Internet — in the news realm, which is about taking snapshots of events as they happen and preserving those snapshots, whereas Wikipedia uses this same strategy in the encyclopedic realm, for gradual assembly of information about past events. The more comprehensive the information, the more good it will do in the world — and again, for that Wikinews needs more authors.
More specifically, Wikinews aspires to bring the Wikimedian ideal of Neutral Point of View to news coverage, providing uncensored news without bias either in choice of stories or in the way those stories are covered (something that cannot be expected from commercial news organizations, let alone goverment-run outlets like Voice of America).
I hope you choose to contribute here again — and if you do, consider dropping me a line on my talk page; among reviewers here, I may be relatively unintimidated by reviewing physics articles (although real-world events can interfere; for example, it likely wouldn't have worked this past week because the flu had pretty much flattened me). --Pi zero (talk) 05:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Nobel for Higgs boson

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Are all the listed sources needed for this? You're putting what seems like a lot of work onto reviewers. If any of the sources are not used in the article, or substantially duplicated by others, it would improve the chances of the article being reviewed were they trimmed back. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talkmain talk 23:03, 8 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I was going to look over it, but the sight of that many sources just turned me off... I don't have an hour to read through all of them and watch all the videos. Can you try to trim the ones that aren't needed or don't provide information not already stated in another source? Usually, articles have 2, 3, or 4 sources. fetch·comms 21:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
You also cannot publish it yourself. fetch·comms 02:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
Ok, making mods to sources. Thank you.LHC Tommy (talk) 23:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
Style points addressed. Hoping someone can review an dpublishLHC Tommy (talk) 23:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply
Can someone review and publish this? Every time I soubmit a good article it nver gets reviewed - it waits and waits. Then someone says it is stale. There are no major dates to make this stale. It is also only not published becasue it is not being reviewed. It failed becuase it was "Higgs boson" vs. "Higgs Boson". C'mon.