Welcome to Wikinews

A nice cup of coffee for you while you get started

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) 14:03, 4 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Review edit

Both User:Gryllida and I have provided feedback on Hanford nuclear waste tanks in danger of exploding on the talk page. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

UoW? edit

Are you a University of Wollongong student? If so, please put a {{UoW student}} template on your user page, like this:

{{UoW student
|year=2013
|semester=Autumn
|course=
}}

--Pi zero (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Saw one like this in your article and copy pasted it to your user page. It is not supposed to go to article footers — articles on Wikinews are attributed to Wikinews; although there is a related concept, it's not used on articles themselves.

To claim a story, the wikinewsie must either have started the article or contributed significant content (at least three paragraphs) to the article. --Wikinews:Contributing Reporter Awards

Cheers. Gryllida 13:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

At least 19 dead after car bombs explode and gunmen attack in Somali capital edit

Hi. I reviewed At least 19 dead after car bombs explode and gunmen attack in Somali capital and left comments at Talk:At least 19 dead after car bombs explode and gunmen attack in Somali capital. Please do not be discouraged by the review and stick with it. All things considered, the changes are relatively minor and involved rewording and reordering some things. If you have any questions, please comment on the talk page of the article or the talk page of myself or another reviewer. We will be more than willing to assist you, and advise you to ask questions before resubmitting so we can avoid a second not ready review and increase the chances of getting published. --LauraHale (talk) 01:24, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, it looks like the story is still fresh but there are — still — some concerns about quotes. Those should please at least be marked as such, and it's typically desirable to work on your own wording of the content. If there is a problem or something you're unsure of, you're encouraged to use article talk to ensure timely understanding and solution to the issues. Cheers, Gryllida 07:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

  • Hi, Smuow9. You were asking at Laura's user talk for clarifications about what needs doing. I thought I'd try to offer some suggestions, such as I can (granting I'm not as familiar with the article, having not reviewed it myself).
Your objective, in synthesis, is to draw all your facts from the sources, but use your own presentation of those facts. That's partly that you want to be neutral even if the sources aren't, but it's also about organization, which may or may not impinge on neutrality. The overall organization of the article is yours, based on your understanding of the story, rather than imitating the organization of any of the sources. Seek to use your own division of information into paragraphs, Your own division of information into sentences — whenever possible, a sentence of yours contains information that's found in scattered places in the sources, perhaps not even all in one source. Your own sentence and phrase structure, different from the sentence/phrase structure used for corresponding passages in the sources. Avoid imitating distinctive word choices and turns of phrase. And when you're all done doing those high- and medium-level things, there's a rule of thumb that you shouldn't have more than three consecutive words identical to a source, with obvious exceptions like titles or direct quotes.
I'm hoping some of that may be helpful in working out what Laura's review concern was with the article.
Some general suggestions about negotiating the article review process. Comments about the substance of the article should be on the article's talk page. If you want to drawn the reviewer's attention to the comments you've left on the article talk page, certainly you can leave a note on the reviewer's talk page saying that you've commented on the article talk page — but that's just a really short note. The content should go on the article talk page, since it's about the article. On quick inspection (I could certainly be misunderstanding the situation), it looks as if there were various questions asked by a reviewer on the article talk that you could have tried to answer there. If I were making specific comments about the article, rather than these more general remarks, I would put them on the article talk and leave a brief note here pointing out that I'd added comments there.
Btw, Laura did say in an early review, "Once these problems are addressed, the article should be easily passable"; I wouldn't have read that as a promise, rather as an encouragement. "should be"; one can't be sure some other problem won't be discovered later in the review process, since that's what the review process is — checking everything. In any case, you want two things out of an article like this: sure one hopes to try to get it published, but one also wants to learn as much as possible from it so later articles won't have to go 'round the review process a bunch of times. --Pi zero (talk) 04:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Six dead after shooting spree in Belgorod edit

Published. Congrats! Please see the review comments, and detailed history of edits during review. --Pi zero (talk) 18:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

Victoria Arlen found unqualified for IPC Swimming World Championships edit

Hi. I reviewed the article you worked on Victoria Arlen found unqualified for IPC Swimming World Championships at Talk:Victoria Arlen found unqualified for IPC Swimming World Championships. AS the review queue is swamped, please really carefully address these comments so the version that comes back is publish ready. As the competition started today, the article will almost certainly need an update to include if the appeal was successful. You may want to consider reading more about the classification appeal process as background writing to better inform yourself when fixing the article. --LauraHale (talk) 06:47, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

GM rice research continues despite protest attacks in Philippines edit

I have reviewed GM rice research continues despite protest attacks in Philippines and left feedback at Talk:GM rice research continues despite protest attacks in Philippines. The article is not news because events occurred last Thursday, way outside the 48 hour window. Please consider writing about a new and more newsworthy topic. --LauraHale (talk) 07:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Looking at articles from a reviewer perspective... edit

Reviewing an article for Wikinews about Paralympic swimmer
Reviewing an article for Wikinews about Norwegian politician
Reviewing an article for Wikinews about Paralympic swimmer
Reviewing an article for Wikinews about Genetically Modified
Reviewing an article for Wikinews about Glasgow para-sport
Reviewing an article for Wikinews about athletics

When I was doing reviews this morning, I screencast a number of them with the hope student contributors and other Wikinews reporters could see what reviewers are looking at and better understand some of what we are looking at. Hopefully you may find these helpful for understanding what we look for, bearing in mind that every reviewer does look at things slightly differently and no two reviews are the same.--LauraHale (talk) 12:17, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

Article and Video Response edit

Hi Laura. Thank you for reviewing my article and attaching that video. I viewed the clip reviewing the Victoria Arlen story I wrote and found it very helpful. However, I have received no further feedback since I made changes to the article in accordance with your previous feedback. I was wondering if you thought I needed to make any further changes aside from the ones I have addressed. Thank you and I appreciate your help.

Classification edit

I have left additional feedback on the article. There are fundamental underlying neutrality problems with how this is presented. She was not unqualified, but her classification as likely re-assessed. You need to mention who that John Hopkins guy is, why he was involved (because if he is not an IPC classifier, then why is he mentioned?) and you at the very least need to mention what her classification is. I would hazard a guess but S10? --LauraHale (talk) 14:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply