Wikinews:Archive conventions
Archive conventions on Wikinews are particularly important because Wikinews is not an encyclopedia. Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events which occur, or knowledge which becomes available, after publication.
Because articles published on Wikinews may serve as references of their time, the project description describes a final stage for articles in which they are protected from further edits. This protection serves to keep articles as snapshots in time; editing them is considered equal to editing history.
General conventions
Age for protection
Any article which is published and dated no less than seven days from the current date should, ordinarily, be archived per the process described below. Articles which have been published for more than 24 hours should not undergo significant edits; in case of a conflict on this basis, administrators may apply protection early. In such circumstances, the article should have the pre-protection process described below applied once it is seven days old.
Articles may be page-move-protected at any time after publication, to preclude page-move vandalism.
When, during times of slow output, the number of articles shown on the main page has dropped to just ten, archiving is usually suspended until additional articles are published. The theory behind this practice is that the main page should display a reasonable variety of the project's published work.
Talk pages are not protected
Article talk pages are not protected. Discussions regarding post-archival edits to an article should take place on the article's talk page. Ideally, the template {{editprotected}} should be used to notify administrators about required post-archival edits.
Post-archival edits
After an article has been protected, it should no longer be edited on elements of content, sources, or other substance. It should be edited for non-content issues (such as spelling, typos, punctuation and so forth) on a case-by-case basis. Questions of grammar are prone to dispute, and should be implemented after consensus on the talk page. Images are considered content and should not be changed or removed, even if deleted on Commons. They can, however, be converted using {{missing image}}, which takes into account the removal of an image whilst preserving as much content as possible.
A note about {{DEFAULTSORTKEY:}}
Please note: It is important that {{DEFAULTSORTKEY:}}
(or equivalents such as changing the sortkey on individual categories) never be added to an archived article (If you need to do this, do it at or before time of publish, never after publishing). This is because changing the sortkey of an article in a category changes the date the categorylink was last modified. Wikinews (DPL) uses this date to figure out when an article was published. Changing the sortkey causes the article to jump to the top of recently published lists; a bad thing if it was actually published last year.
Curating the archives
Archive curation is a constant and ongoing process. Due to protection, it is generally only carried out by administrators. Below is a non-exhaustive list of tasks requiring work;
- Some years ago Wikinews fell behind with archiving. A robot was used to automatically archive all articles that required it. These bear {{Archive-unreviewed}} and are in Category:AutoArchived. These predate the current review process. They can be checked and, if in suitable shape, {{Archive-unreviewed}} should be replaced with {{Archive}}
- Creating new topic categories is a constant task. Once a topic, such as a city or politician, has three to five relevant articles, a category should be created and added to relevant articles. To maintain compatibility with {{w}}, redirects must be set up.
- As mentioned above, articles in Category:Pages with broken file links require processed with {{missing image}}.
- Wikinews has begun using {{image credit}} to credit photographers and other media creators; this should be appended to old image captions where not already included in the caption.
- Before the {{sisters}} template, sister links were sometimes placed in what is now viewed as inappropriate locations, simultaneously implying they were used as sources for information in the articles whilst also degrading their importance as sister projects. Older articles using the outdated methods still exist in the archives. They should be converted to comply with the current style guide on sister links.
Pre-protection process
Administrators carrying out archiving should give all articles being archived a general check for problems. Per notes above, substantial changes cannot be made. Remove outdated tags such as {{expand}} and {{breaking}}. Once protected an article cannot be expanded and thus this is confusing.
The {{Archived}} tag should be added at the end of the article, preferably by putting {{Publish}}, {{Archived}} on individual lines, followed by the categories. Interwiki links to non-English Wikinews sites go last.
Articles should be given a final check for format, small style errors, proper categorisation, spelling, and similar minor points. Since all changes are reviewed, there should be no major problems outstanding at this time. Wikipedia's AutoWikiBrowser supports Wikinews and is a useful tool for catching typos and common errors. It is, however, no substitute for the current version of the human eyeball.
To archive
WN:TOARCHIVE
If there are no articles listed below the horizontal line (that is, if there are no more than twenty five unarchived articles), see the usual exception at times of slow output, above. Otherwise, articles published no later than October 20 may be archived. (Refresh)
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- 23 April 2024: Lawrence Wong to become Prime Minister of Singapore on May 15
- 25 April 2024: Industry leaders see energy supply as the next hurdle for AI
- 26 April 2024: Wikinews interviews noted juggler for International Jugglers Day
- 20 May 2024: Citizen journalist, Viktor Pinchuk — gives travel presentation in Sevastapol
- 20 May 2024: Police identify man's body found in a canal in Miami Gardens, Florida
- 24 May 2024: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calls for general election in UK
- 29 May 2024: Exhibition featuring ethnic music from around the world opens in Crimea
- 29 May 2024: Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv
- 2 June 2024: Ukraine permitted to strike Russian territory near Kharkiv
- 3 June 2024: Levenmouth Rail Link reopens as June timetable changes reshuffle United Kingdom rail service patterns
- 3 June 2024: Tens of thousands of people join the Israeli day parade
- 3 June 2024: Akron, Ohio shooting leaves 1 person dead, 25 people hurt at birthday party
- 4 June 2024: Former U.S. President Trump convicted in hush money trial
- 4 June 2024: Russia warns United States against allowing cross-border strikes by Ukraine
- 4 June 2024: The Ancient Pyramids of the World, a new photo exhibition by Viktor Pinchuk took place in Crimea
- 4 June 2024: Severe weather affects portions of Texas
- 5 June 2024: Dutch F-16s supplied to Ukraine to be used in Russian airspace
- 6 June 2024: Hezbollah attacks Israel, causes wildfires
- 6 June 2024: Hezbollah launches drone attack on Hurfeish, Israel
- 8 June 2024: IDF missile strikes UN school
- 9 June 2024: Vladimir Putin threatens to give allies weapons to attack West
- 11 June 2024: Israel Defense Forces discover tunnel in child's bedroom in Rafah
- 11 June 2024: Israel Defense Forces rescue four hostages in Gaza
- 16 June 2024: Azov Brigade to be allowed to use US weapons
- 28 June 2024: On the campaign trail in the USA, May 2024
- 30 August 2024: SpaceX will return stranded astronauts in February 2025, NASA announces
- 4 September 2024: England: Staffordshire town celebrates LGBTQ+ pride despite funding issues
- 11 September 2024: India wins T20 men's cricket world cup against South Africa
- 11 September 2024: Around 8,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh
- 11 September 2024: Four killed in Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia, United States
- 24 September 2024: Thousands of pagers explode in Lebanon killing twelve people and injuring thousands
- 27 September 2024: Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau survives a no confidence vote
- 1 October 2024: Prosecutors charge man with attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump
- 5 October 2024: Hololive VTuber Watson Amelia holds last livestream
- 7 October 2024: Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon River experiences lowest water level on record
- 7 October 2024: New Zealand Navy ship HMNZS Manawanui capsizes one nautical mile from shore
- 8 October 2024: Thailand's Ping River water levels reach record high in 50 years
- 8 October 2024: General secretary of Social Democratic Party of Germany resigns due to health problems ahead of next year elections
- 13 October 2024: Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers tap access to battery-less desalination of more groundwater than ever before
- 13 October 2024: TV host Willie Revillame files certificate of candidacy for upcoming Philippine elections
- 13 October 2024: Data breach and DDOS attacks bring down Wayback Machine
- 13 October 2024: Former leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond dies at 69
- 21 October 2024: Bruce Lehrmann judge said to have no links to published book of judgement
- 24 October 2024: New Zealand defeats South Africa to win 2024 women's T20 cricket world cup
- 24 October 2024: Qantas Australian airline employees strike for better wages
- 26 October 2024: Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh dies, aged 84
- Note
- The print edition pages should be archived, listed at Wikinews:Print edition.
- Verify the fully-protected version of any article you archive is sighted.