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) 15:27, 20 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

Great job!

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Congratulations on the article you created! Hope you stick around! BigKrow (talk) 04:06, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@BigKrow: Thanks, and thank you for your formatting help! I've been on Wikipedia for a little while, and I hope to stay here as well. Thriftycat (talk) 14:37, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Very good!!! BigKrow (talk) 00:50, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Congratulations

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Congratulations on your first published article. It was one of the better written early efforts I have seen in my nearly 18 years here (OMG, I am so old). Some writers like to set up a Wikinewsie category to track their work. Yours, if you so choose, would be Category:Thriftycat (Wikinewsie). I hope you stick around even though there can be many disappointments with submissions not getting reviewed in time. Cheers, SVTCobra 22:25, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well done! BigKrow (talk) 22:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC) Template:CookiesReply
Thanks! Thriftycat (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Haha, I'll create the category. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the review. Thriftycat (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

InternetArchiveBot

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Hi. Now it's time for the old dog to ask the newbie for advice. How do you successfully run ArchiveBot on Wikinews articles. I have used it on Wikipedia, but never been able to get it to add archive links to our sources here on Wikinews. I have seen you have done it. Any tips? SVTCobra 23:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@SVTCobra: To be honest, I'm not sure what happened there. (I'm assuming you're referring to the bot's edit of the recently published article.) I did not ask it to do anything, and it only modified existing archive links that were manually added by me. They were already working, so I have no idea what it was trying to do. Now that you've said this, I tried using the management console to add archive links to a couple draft articles, but none of them worked. So, unfortunately, the newbie can't help you with this. :)
I noticed that there's a page on Meta for reporting problems with the bot. Perhaps we should talk to the devs? Thriftycat (talk) 23:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, we should. They added Wikinews to the dropdown box, so clearly they intended it to be used here. It's probably configured for footnote notation which we don't use. I wonder, if you didn't trigger the Bot, who did? Cheers, SVTCobra 00:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@SVTCobra I don't know. On enwikipedia, when someone runs the bot it usually registers the edit under the user's name, not the bot's, like so. So maybe the bot is running itself?? Thriftycat (talk) 00:21, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I thought Bots were made by actual users? BigKrow (talk) 00:26, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
They are, but they can be anywhere on Wikimedia projects. Also, there are often multiple people working on them. This one has two listed operators, but it is usually best not to contact these busy people if we are just confused about how to use a bot. We can contact them if and when we are sure it's not working as intended. SVTCobra 00:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
OK, thanks. Well, I don't have time to go deeper this evening. If IAB could work here, it would really save me time when I archive articles. And since you added the links manually, thanks doubly. SVTCobra 00:27, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thrifty, it seems IAbot knows how to interact with our style of citing sources, see this edit. I just don't know who triggered it and seem incapable of triggering it myself. Cheers, SVTCobra 14:45, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yep, I’m pretty much stumped. I did some sandbox experiments without success. The only thing I can see is that it seems to like when the archiveurl parameter is already specified. Thriftycat (talk) 16:19, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Alabama executes prisoner using new method

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Capital punishment in the United States

Hi Three Sixty, I really like your new artcile currently stuck waiting for review. It would be a shame if it does not get published just ecause it loses freshness. As it is the articles now appearing on the front page are all several months old, I think? Anyway I was also wondering if you like the image to the left.

Cheers, Ottawahitech (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Ottawahitech - Thanks for the message! I do like that image. Looks like a good candidate to add to the article. I don’t take ownership of articles I create, so please feel free to boldly improve it with any other ideas you have :) Thriftycat (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
FYI, it's out-of-date. There are some current maps on Commons. Heavy Water (talk) 01:04, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Alright, I’ll look into it. Thanks. Thriftycat (talk) 01:06, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Heavy Water: Are you referring to File:Death penalty in the United States with hiatuses.svg? Thriftycat (talk) 02:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
That's probably the best one, yeah. Heavy Water (talk) 02:41, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Great.   Done Thriftycat (talk) 02:51, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for taking the time to reply and ping me, Three Sixty. WN has some unusual policies, and since I visit here so sporadically I prefer not to "edit" articles that are awaiting review. I don't know for example if such articles are sent to the back of the queue every time an edit is made. As it is I see this article is #6 out of 7 waiting to be reviewed. I worry this article will be added to the heap of deleted articles that never got reviewed before they lost freshness. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
The review queue is not literally a queue. At Category:Review, the main review queue ("Current review queue, not under review:") is ordered by date submitted for review (so no, making an edit wouldn't affect the ordering unless you took the article off the queue and resubmitted it). I don't think anyone anymore follows that order in choosing which articles to review. For myself, like others, one of the factors I look at is how old the focal event is, with some priority given to the newer ones, actually, to give more time for a not-ready-revision cycle and ensure articles are fresher when they get published. There are, of course, a lot of other factors like what the reviewer has time for. Heavy Water (talk) 18:36, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Thriftycat. This article went stale yesterday as I was reviewing it (I had to be absent for a few days there, unfortunately, so that delayed my getting back to the review). I know you're on wikibreak, but I wanted to mention a few things that would've been in the review comments, for the future (written here since you would be liable to not see any messages on the article's talk page before its deletion).

  • Using the Commons version of the map risked incompliance with WN:ARCHIVE, since there's reason to expect the map will be updated in the future, and an en.wn article is a "snapshot in time", so it has to reflect the situation as it was at the time of publication. Locally uploading the current version of the map is one solution. This is my fault, because I should have thought of this when I suggested using a map.
  • I encountered multiple factual flubs and a few paragraphs after the lede needed work on distance from source. Substituting in synonyms or making similar changes that maintain the same structure (of a sentence, paragraph, etc.) as a source can't do the trick alone, there needs to be original presentation. WN:Pillars#own explains this much better than I can. There's also a rule of thumb about not having any phrases of at least three (or four) consecutive words identical to source phrases, and advice one should read the sources before writing, then check the product against the sources.

Nonetheless, I can certainly say you're doing much better than I was at your level of experience. Heavy Water (talk) 19:03, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Heavy Water- Wow, thanks for taking the time to write me this! I'm expecting to mostly step back for a couple weeks, but when I return, I'll keep your points in mind.
I had an idea that might help me avoid the factual inqaccuracies and/or make reviewing a little easier. I could create a separate version of articles I create (maybe in user space). The second version would be identical, except that it would use Wikipedia-style inline refs for every claim. This would also help me fact-check myself, I think. The second version could be deleted once drafting/reviewing was completed. What do you think? Thriftycat (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The verifiability facet of review involves more than just verifying that one of the sources supported a fact. The reviewer also has to check what, if anything, other sources have to say about that matter. Disagreements between sources can't be ignored — they have to be addressed, for example by using attribution or backing off to a weaker claim both/all of those disagreeing sources agree on. As to what you're proposing, reporters sometimes use invisible comments in the article (<!--this-->) to indicate sourcing to reviewers; one of the experienced reviewers, however, has said this is not a good idea because it can lead to reviewers falling into the trap of confirmation bias in relation to sources' support for a fact (related to what I was saying earlier in this comment). Heavy Water (talk) 04:41, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

It would appear that we missed this....

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So: Here it is!

  The Order of the Humble Pencil


For completing 5 edits.

Great work! Keep it up!--Bddpaux (talk) 19:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Bddpaux you don't need to give this to every single user who made 5 edits Me Da Wikipedian (talk) 19:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Bddpaux, @Me Da Wikipedian, please don't disagree with each other... BigKrow (talk) 20:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Haha thanks! Baby steps Three Sixty (talk) 23:34, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Welcome back

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Nice to see you back! @Three Sixty BigKrow (talk) 23:49, 13 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks BigKrow, it's good to be here! Three Sixty (talk) 00:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Three Sixty, I am going through Newsroom deleting stale articles. I just found the one linked in section heading. I enjoyed the read and it looks like an important topic that is not immediately stale in the long term. Would you be interested in interviewing political parties and the said constitutional scholars about this, for example, by video call or email?

If so, the first step would be to add a note on article that it is being worked on to do interview, and make a list of questions on the talk page. Related links: Category:Original reporting, Wikinews:Original reporting. Regards, -- Gryllida (talk) 20:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply