Wikinews:Archive conventions

This page is an official policy on the English Wikinews. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcut: WN:ARCHIVE

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Etiquette

File photo of a newspaper archive.
Image: Brian McNeil.

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 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 ten days old.

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.

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.

Part of the newspaper archives in Edinburgh's Central Library.
Image: Brian McNeil.

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.

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

Shortcut:
WN:TOARCHIVE

Articles published no later than May 17 can be archived; but see the usual exception at times of slow output, above. (Refresh)

• 12 May 2013: Fifth Expo Gastronomía finishes in Caracas
• 12 May 2013: Haitian cholera victims threaten United Nations with lawsuit
• 13 May 2013: 'Django Unchained' returns to Chinese cinemas
• 14 May 2013: National Rugby League Women in League Round celebrates sons
• 14 May 2013: Australian Treasurer hands down budget, announces two years of deficits
• 18 May 2013: Kangaroo injures Australian politician
• 19 May 2013: White House releases Benghazi emails
• 19 May 2013: Noosa defeat University in Sunshine Coast Rugby Union round nine
• 21 May 2013: Report finds Canberra and Northern Territory have most expensive cocaine in Australia
• 22 May 2013: Same-sex marriage passes third reading in House of Commons

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.