Welcome to Wikinews
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Getting started as a contributor
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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. |
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
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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. |
Find help and get involved
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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!
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Hi, N2e. Thanks for your edits on the SpaceX article. We didn't keep all of the material you submitted (I explained my thoughts in the edit summaries), but we did keep some, and your help and interest are surely appreciated! --Pi zero (talk) 23:19, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
- Well, thanks for the welcome. As I indicated on my (new Wikinews) user page, I'm totally new to Wikinews. I certainly don't know the culture, policies and standards over here.
- But as to that article, I'm certainly not trying to make the caption too long. Was just trying to correct/clarify what actually flew. The caption as it stands now is less correct than with the changes I had made. Since I don't know the editing standards, I'll just let you folks deal with it. Also, there is the context that Wikipedia links can provide to the specific test vehicle, and to the description of the test facility in Texas, should that be useful to your purposes.
- Should you want to communicate with me, probably best to ping me on my Wikipedia Talk page, as I don't expect to be here in Wikinews very much.
- Cheers. N2e (talk) 03:28, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
- Less correct? It's less detailed, but we certainly wouldn't want it to be incorrect. Is there something actually wrong about the caption as it now stands?
- There are two levels of procedures for addressing problems in an article more than 24 hours after publication: For things that aren't considered part of the substance of the article, like categories, or what is or isn't wikilinked, or spelling errors that don't affect the meaning, we can just change those things. For substantive changes, although we can't directly change the article, we can and do issue a {{correction}} when there's an error in an article that's more than 24 hours past publication. Image captions are in a sort of twilight, between being part of the article (and thus archived) and not part of the article (and thus changeable). --Pi zero (talk) 04:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)