Wikinews talk:What Wikinews is not

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[edit] What Wikinews articles are not:

1. Wikinews articles are not press releases. There are a variety of press release aggregators online who provide this service; check the Reference desk for links to some of them. Wikinews articles address the 5 W's and H where possible, and attempt to present newsworthy articles which are balanced and have multiple sources.
2. Wikinews articles are not advertisments. Especially, they are not political advertisements. Excluding opinion columns, an exclusively one-sided article, either pro- or con- the subject of the article, is a form of advertisment.
3. Wikinews articles are not scientific papers or critiques of same. Articles might review or synopsize science, but must be written to be read by a wider, lay audience than that of a science journal - use of jargon must be limited and qualified.
4. Wikinews articles are not works in progress. Once written and posted they are historical documents; they should not continue to be updated or changed. Especially, they should not be altered to an angle or POV not reflective of the article as it was published.

Please remove/edit/something this .. wikis are supposed to allow others to edit. If this is just a multi-user blog, please say so. One of the primary legs of the wikipedia NPOV concept is that NPOV is never actually reached, but the ability for people to continually modify the article is what creates the NPOV. One of the primary motivations in wikinews is that it is a wiki for news. - Simeon 11:36, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What does this last sentence mean Especially...published? Does this mean that an NPOV article should not be made POV, or that an article violating NPOV cannot be made POV, or both? Boud 21:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Wikinews is not an encyclopedia.
2. Wikinews articles are not editorials. Although opinion columns are likely to be an element of the Wikinews site, articles in the main namespace should restrict themselves to reporting news and not commenting on the news or newsmakers.

- Amgine 04:03, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reviews and editorials

After a recent discussion on the issue on the Water cooler, the community was very much against allowing either on the site, so I've updated this page to reflect that. Dan100 (Talk) 21:02, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe we should probably develop a larger community consensus before altering policy on what is a clearly divisive issue (several previous polls specifically did not gain consensus on this issue.) For this reason I have reverted your addition. - Amgine/^talk 21:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Let's be honest - it's you versus everyone else who's commented. Granted that's not consensus - I chose my words carefully above to avoid saying that - but consensus would require someone to change their mind. I'm not and, judging by the very firm comments but other editors, other people aren't going to either.

I think technical reviews, feature appraisals, should be ok, as that's just highlighting facts. But I sentiments like product A is better than product B will just not work here, and I think policy should reflect that. Dan100 (Talk) 21:55, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Let's be honest, Dcabrillo also wants reviews. So do you, if you stop and think about it. De, Ro, Pl, and likely most of the others have them already. But at least a dozen other users, including DV, Lyellin, and more have stated that we need some way to announce things, review events or items, to talk *about* events and not simply report facts. By their nature such articles must be reviews.

And the question is not one of if, but when. We cannot be a comprehensive news source without at least minimal review articles, such as announcing when the next version of Windows is released or talking about the movies and stars up for the next Oscars Awards. My purpose in this was to try to create some policies to deal with what is inevitable. - Amgine/^talk 22:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Some Wikimedia policies are not up for individual project community votes and instead would require a policy exemption from the Wikimedia Board - for instance the NPOV policy. A second is that Wikimedia products are the work of the general public community instead of a single author. An original review - by its very nature, is one person's opinion. That would appear to violate two of the main Wikimedia mandates - NPOV & community-created content. There is a way, however, to include review-type information. In fact I am working on this project now - in between classes. Basically, it would be an index-type survey of 5 or 6 leading reviwers globally (NYTimes, BBC, Ebert & Roper, etc..) - with the average rating of those reviwers being the Wikinews Index. -- Davodd | Talk 23:03, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

<confused look> Whoever said anything about single-person reviews? Furthermore, as I have pointed out, there *are* editorials being made elsewhere within Wikimedia.

Please see OS Tiger: "It's like being in the future", a multi-person review already. A review is not necessarily POV, unlike an editorial. I think the most successful projects on Wikinews thus far have been where it is kept as simple as possible. - Amgine/^talk 23:08, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Before we break out to serious an argument here, might I suggest two things:

1. There is deffinetely some confusion as to the word "Review" and "editorial" being used here, both sides using different definitions of the word(s). Let's agree on what we mean by Review and Editorial first.
2. To Davodd and Dan100: This discussion in the watercooler is really not finished yet. No one is attacking NPoV, wikimedia policy is as allways respected, and though the consensus seams to point to another rejection of this notion for now, people are still firing ideas about it, and we really shouldn't make new policy before the discussion is resolved. There is no need to "nip this in the but". Let's role with it, see where it may lead, before outlawing it completely. -- Redge (Talk) 23:17, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmm.. I think OS Tiger: "It's like being in the future" is not a review as much as it is original reporting. In reviews, the author judges and/or reccomends action to the reader. (i.e.: Eat here, avoid this movie, her performance was brilliant)... Stories that merely chronicle the opinions of others without a call to action (implied or not) are just news reports. Now, whether or not those quotes are biased or respectible is another thing. For actual review reporting, I suggest a project with guidelines similar to this: Wikinews:Film reviews which I had started in late March and have not done much else with outside of notes on my laptop. ;-) -- Davodd | Talk 23:25, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

A review is a critique, period. If the review is positive, or negative, or neutral is irrelevant to its definition. - Amgine/^talk 23:30, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's just the 18-hour work/school days I'm dealing with - but I am not understanding what you mean here. An index of averages is not a critique - it's just a statisttic. -- Davodd | Talk 05:57, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I do not see anything in Foundation or Wikipedia policy that would prevent op-eds in user space, if they're relevant to articles. On the other hand, I do think it would be a good idea to post a disclaimer: "This page is an editorial, not a news report. Opinions expressed herein are those of the contributors [link to history] and are not necessarily those of the rest of the Wikinews community or the Wikimedia Foundation."

However, if people want to write product reviews, I highly recommend that they visit the Shopping Wikia, where non-NPOV user reviews are allowed in the main namespace. Seahen 13:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link farm

Wikinews articles are not link farms. Wikinews articles must contain links to appropriate sources relevant to the article. Articles should also link to other Wikinews articles related to the topic - in the section titled "See also" or "Related news". Articles may, on a limited and specifically related basis, link to external sites with more in-depth information, in a section clearly titled "External links". Content may be linked to related content via interwiki links in the body of the article, but should not be over-wikified.

- Amgine / ^talk 17:20, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Support except for the part about "over-wikified." Readers may want or need more detailed information about any person, place, thing, concept or procedure referenced in an article, and Wikipedia is often the best source for this extra detail. Seahen 13:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source documents

I am not sure but I think this is worded very wrong:

Wikinews articles are not source documents. Our sister project Wikisource is a repository for static documents; articles on Wikinews can and should be edited ruthlessly which would be inappropriate treatment for a source document. Also, many news-related source documents are copyrighted - verbatim copying of a source document could not reasonably be considered "fair use".

Should it read that Wikinews does not host documents? I mean correct me if I am wrong, but would they not be considered a source document after publishing? DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 11:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] question?

What is meant by rule #9, "Wikinews is not WikiNews"? 69.140.152.55 23:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe it means that Wikinews is not spelled through a capital N. Tempodivalse [talk] 22:58, 21 August 2009 (UTC)