Robert Važan

Welcome to Wikinews

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.

The core policies Neutral point of view Cite sources Writing an article Content guide Style guide Reviewing articles

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 The Water Cooler The Latest News The Newsroom Articles for deletion Audio Wikinews Recent Changes

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) 01:17, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

How to make news writing easier

Hi Robert

I see you are suggesting to do this by writing shorter stories.

I am just wondering whether you think that it would be easier for people to write news if there were tools to handle the annoying wiki markup and requirements, such as

• ask authors to confirm the date of the event to ensure it is not stale
• prefill source templates
• warn the users against copy pasting
• assist authors with free/libre image search
• assist authors with categorization
• assist authors with article layout
• inform authors of the need to follow up their edits and reviewer comments, or mark themselves as gone
• near-instant feedback to their draft by engaging others at the time of creation (User:Gryllida/welcome a bit

If you find any of this useful, do you think it is enough to implement it at the wikinews website, or do you think it is also important to bring it to peoples' preferred platforms (social networks or email, their favourite news reader, etc)

Please let me know. Thanks

--Gryllida (talk) 00:33, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi. Actually, my limited experience with editing long articles on Wikipedia is that the current Visual editor is a joy to use for long text with wikilinks and references. All you need to add a reference is to paste in a URL and the software does everything else (fetching title, recording date, ...). I have positive experience with specialized gadgets too, for example the one for merging Wikidata entries. So yes, tools can be quite useful, but no, they aren't the limiting factor here, because existing tools are already good enough. Also, tools are probably the wrong place to explain the rules. Prominently linked project pages serve that purpose better. Redistribution of Wikinews (social networks, email, ...) is a good idea, but there's currently little to redistribute. — Robert Važan (talk) 10:34, 21 June 2019 (UTC)