By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --SVTCobra02:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have looked over various of the hints but still have questions.
Rename for style--Do you have a suggestion for a different name? Does the current title imply some thing that this blurb is not, like global warming? )
Edit for style--How? It is perhaps a bit colloquial, but I always like news that has a distinctive voice to it.
Expand to include more information/Refocus on a news event. WHAT!!! Three lines aren't enough!! if I have time, I will try to connect this in with general global warming and how the specifics of climate change are affecting weather day to day.
Add categories--How do I add categories?
add original reporting notes--hmm, like "I went outside my door and took a picture and have seen the snow melt over the last couple of weeks." Where do these go?
Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikinews pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four w:tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the w:Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you!
You are receiving this copy of the Bulletin even if you haven't subscribed because you are mentioned in it because of your excellent contributions. Well Done!
Since our last edition, no users have been given the mop and bucket.
No one has became an accredited reporter on Wikinews. You can currently vote on a request by WNewsReporter and Zachary.
Featured Articles and News In Pictures
No articles were promoted recently. Eight candidates are waiting for your vote, including a self-nomination by Celticfan383 which could become our first featured sports article.
Several images were featured on the main pages, which you can check out in the News In Picture archive.
Several images have been featured on the Main Page. A slideshow of these images is available below. (ogg format) -
Original reporting
Since our last edition, many articles have claimed original reporting. Here are the most recent:
Several others wrote stories based on television sources. The Wikinews Reports blog activity was mostly related to some of these stories. You can ask any of the blog authors if you want to help out on the blog.
I would like to thank our users who have helped increase our level of Original Reporting content. Some users who I think have been especially helpful are Leila Monaghan (talk · contribs) who has got interviews despite being a very new user and BrockF5 (talk · contribs) who has continued to provide us with excellent reports and images. In addition, Brianmc (talk · contribs) has been helpful in combatting vandalism. --Anonymous101 (talk · contribs) 19:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Site activity
Try testing CSpurrier's new feed thingy. this may become the main wikinews feed at some point.
Zach's new tool: Per category rss feed. Do a hard refresh, goto a category and click on the rss icon in your browser.
Some of the IRC topics include the mass deletion of CC-NC or ND images. ... (add more here if you know more...)
Wikimedia News
The Wikimania call for participation deadline closes TODAY!. Get your last-minute submissions in or get involved with the Wikinews efforts at WN:WM2008.
Wikimedia Commons has accepted the Creative Commons 3.0 license.
The Wikinews Bulletin is a free internal newsletter for members of the Wikinews community. The newsletter is "staffed" by several editors, who produce the (more or less) fortnightly publication. Don't hesitate to join our team, or leave us a tip. The publication has produced nine issues.
I was the one who published it. Most of it came from NASA. I am generally the science, environment and weather etc person. I am in Buffalo, NY. I would love to start a series and what not...where should we begin? DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 17:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikinews pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you!--Anonymous101 (talk · contribs) 15:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please ensure that you add a license tag to the images you've uploaded to Commons otherwise they will be deleted. Regards. Adambro (talk) 14:54, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone who's new to Wikinews remind yourselves of the article guide and style guide. And, use the Enter an article tab in this template to correctly start your competition articles.
Possibly the fastest way to get help is to look for the regulars in the #wikinews IRC channel on Freenode. See this page for more details. Remember, many people will lurk, connected long-term, but not regularly checking for messages. Please be patient when looking for answers to queries, it can be annoying to see someone ask a question but leave before you notice it.
Use this form to create a competition-ready article. Be sure to check the Main page and Newsroom to see you're not creating a duplicate. Please also add your article and point score to the log so that your score can be counted.
Newsletter compiled and written by Tristan Thomas. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 111 articles.
This Week
Brian McNeil reports on the first week; as the instigator and main organiser of the competition, he has a large interest in its continuing success.
Wikinews' 2010 writing contest got off to a brisk start this week with entrants scheming to have the first post-midnight submission.
A particularly high number of barely-qualifying articles on the first day saw a notable record sent for the most articles published in one day since the introduction of Flagged Revisions.
Tristan Thomas upped the stakes on the second day of competition with an original reporting interview scoring 26 points and moving him near the top of the leaderboard with only one article, as-compared to others prolifically contributing short 3-point articles.
Reviewing is, at the moment, the most problematic issue with the competition. This can be as time-consuming as the actual creation of an article when copyediting for active voice, formatting per the style guide, and reading all cited sources. Competition entrants are strongly advised to ensure their browser supports a spell-checker; beware developing offline with a word processor that uses 'smart quotes' and other nonstandard characters; only cite the sources needed; review all copyedit changes to their articles done during, and after, the review process; and, to ensure they are very familiar with the style guide.
With only thirteen competitors on the scoreboard at the end of the first week, where are all the entrants? Comprehensive and in-depth submissions could easily change the leader positions. The current top five are Tempodivalse, Dendodge, Bencherlite, Pmlineditor and Microchip08.
Newsletter compiled and written by Tristan Thomas. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 145 articles.
This Week
Tempodivalse reports on the second week of the competition. He is the current leader on both points and articles.
Well, we're now about two weeks into the contest. The initial "flurry" of activity has now subsided significantly, and we've settled down to an output of about ten articles per day, down from 25-30 articles in the first few days of the competition. That's less than I had hoped, and a lot of the 31 original sign-ups have yet to write anything, but I can't complain; we've attracted at least half a dozen new contributors to the project, such as Microchip08 and Wizardman, who are doing a great job expanding our coverage.
The point scoring system was designed to encourage in-depth articles, rather than a mass of stubs, and it shows: I estimate our average article size to have increased by several paragraphs, which I believe is good, as it helps encourage casual readers to stay on the site and read more.
I'm in the lead at the moment, and I admit that the gap from first to second place - and especially second to third - is fairly large, but I don't want that to discourage participants (as it appears several people have been). It's not as big a gap as it seems, and two or so in-depth articles would easily bring 50-60 points, placing one well within striking distance. Plus, there are still another ten weeks left, ample time to catch up.
Newsletter compiled and written by Mikemoral. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 173 articles.
This Week
Dendodge comments for this newsletter. He is currently ranked 2nd in the competition.
As we approach the fourth week of the contest, the activity levels have decreased greatly compared to the first few days, and we are now down to between five and ten articles per day. I can't claim to have helped the situation—I haven't written anything for about a week. I'm not complaining, however, as I have somehow managed to stay in second place. While this may make the gaps between competitors seem too large to overcome, it should take only a couple of in-depth articles to overtake me. In fact, with so much time left, I wouldn't even rule out somebody knocking Tempodivalse down into second place!
The articles we are getting are still relatively in-depth, though much shorter than at the beginning of the contest. Remember, in-depth articles mean we can better compete with the mainstream media (and they're worth more points!).
I have also noticed a widening of our geographical and categorical coverage. While we used to cover mainly US and Western Europe, with particular focus on "important" issues such as politics, we have now branched out (probably out of desperation to find more points!)
Finally, I would like to thank everybody for their participation, and wish you all the best of luck.
Newsletter compiled and written by Mikemoral. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 173 articles.
This Week
Rayboy8 comments for this newsletter. He is currently ranked 2nd in the competition.
There have been some significant changes to the leaderboard over the last couple of weeks. One of the main changes is the fact that five more entrants for the competition have now started to create articles for the contest, meaning that five more users have now gone onto the leaderboard. The total number of competitors on the list was 20 the last time I checked. One user in particular, known by the name of C628, appears to have performed particularly persistently recently, going from not being on the leaderboard at all to climbing all the way up to seventh place. On a separate note, I also managed to reach second place recently, surpassing Dendodge's total. This shows you just what you can achieve if you put enough effort into writing articles over a certain period of time. Remember, it is still perfectly possible to build up a score that is higher than Tempodivalse's! I wish all of our competitors the very best of luck for the next month and a bit.
Newsletter compiled and written by Mikemoral. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 257 articles.
Tempodivalse comments for this newsletter. He is the winner of the competition.
Well, the three-month contest has finally drawn to a close. I must admit I've been somewhat disappointed with the results. Despite advertising it heavily, we didn't have nearly as many new users or as much news coverage as I had hoped, and closer to the end it completely faltered, so I didn't have any competition for first prize. Maybe there's something we can learn from this, though: instead of doing very long competitions hosted occasionally, we should perhaps have multiple shorter (i.e., week-long) contests spread out throughout the year - which may encourage more heavy editing. One thing I think we should keep for any future comps is the scoring system - which worked really well and encouraged in-depth writing, in my opinion.
The contest was still pretty fun overall, though. Congratulations to user:Rayboy8 and user:Pmlineditor for taking second and third places, respectively. Thanks to everyone for participating, and especially to User:Brian McNeil for offering to host it and come up with most of the rules.
located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you!
