The lede should briefly summarize the focus by succinctly answering as many as reasonably possible of the basic questions about it. It should stand on its own, rather than depending on the headline. I look at this first sentence/paragraph and don't know what happened.
Also, the first sentence here is emotive, not factual; taken as an assertion of fact, it's on the face of it impossible for the reporter to know that there was only mourning in an entire city. Don't write "purple prose", and don't write analysis; seek to only write facts, allowing the reader to make informed analysis because you've informed them. This is the essence of Wikinews's approach to neutrality: provide only facts. That's why we put such emphasis on attribution, which transforms opinion (politician A is an idiot) into objective fact (politician B said politician A is an idiot).
Re attribution for neutrality, who expects over 80,000 Catholics to descend upon Rome? (Btw, check what the claim is on this, as well as attributing it: I think you may find the figure is 800,000.)
Check for attribution on other claims, please; dropping attribution of claims of fact is often inappropriate in news, as we expect our readers to be intelligent information consumers, and therefore to want to know where claims came from (that is, they should rely on us only to do our best to report facts objectively; they should have, for the most part, no need to judge our ability to make subjective assessments because we don't present to them any of our subjective assessments).
The number of sources is going to make review quite a bit harder. It's fine to use lots of sources, if that makes a better article, of course; but one does want to take the reviewer into account (see also the first pillar at WN:PILLARS), so when using lots of sources, sometimes a reporter will embed html notes in the article<!-- like this -->, containing hints about which sources different facts are drawn from.
As for credibility, though, don't worry about that; our review process is how we provide credibility. You aren't trying to convince your readers that the article is for-real; the fact that it gets published in Wikinews tells readers an authorized reviewer has cleared it as fact-checked (and neutrality-checked, etc.).
Don't copy phrases from the sources. Don't copy phrases and "scuff them up", either. Write in entirely original phrases. For example, I see in the source "about 800,000 Catholic pilgrims from around the world are expected to descend on Rome", and then in your text "over 80,000 Catholic pilgrims are expected to descend upon Rome". Don't do things like that. Note that, in the process, you've lost most of the meaning (through a likely accidental dropping of a "0") and, if the missing "0" is restored, you've actually changed the meaning since "about" and "over" do not mean the same thing. Another that happened to catch my eye was "further celebrations to mark the..." (a distinctive turn of phrase). You oughtn't, btw, to be imitating the phrase or sentence structure of the sources either; see WN:PILLARS#own.
If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.
The lede should briefly summarize the focus by succinctly answering as many as reasonably possible of the basic questions about it. It should stand on its own, rather than depending on the headline. I look at this first sentence/paragraph and don't know what happened.
Also, the first sentence here is emotive, not factual; taken as an assertion of fact, it's on the face of it impossible for the reporter to know that there was only mourning in an entire city. Don't write "purple prose", and don't write analysis; seek to only write facts, allowing the reader to make informed analysis because you've informed them. This is the essence of Wikinews's approach to neutrality: provide only facts. That's why we put such emphasis on attribution, which transforms opinion (politician A is an idiot) into objective fact (politician B said politician A is an idiot).
Re attribution for neutrality, who expects over 80,000 Catholics to descend upon Rome? (Btw, check what the claim is on this, as well as attributing it: I think you may find the figure is 800,000.)
Check for attribution on other claims, please; dropping attribution of claims of fact is often inappropriate in news, as we expect our readers to be intelligent information consumers, and therefore to want to know where claims came from (that is, they should rely on us only to do our best to report facts objectively; they should have, for the most part, no need to judge our ability to make subjective assessments because we don't present to them any of our subjective assessments).
The number of sources is going to make review quite a bit harder. It's fine to use lots of sources, if that makes a better article, of course; but one does want to take the reviewer into account (see also the first pillar at WN:PILLARS), so when using lots of sources, sometimes a reporter will embed html notes in the article<!-- like this -->, containing hints about which sources different facts are drawn from.
As for credibility, though, don't worry about that; our review process is how we provide credibility. You aren't trying to convince your readers that the article is for-real; the fact that it gets published in Wikinews tells readers an authorized reviewer has cleared it as fact-checked (and neutrality-checked, etc.).
Don't copy phrases from the sources. Don't copy phrases and "scuff them up", either. Write in entirely original phrases. For example, I see in the source "about 800,000 Catholic pilgrims from around the world are expected to descend on Rome", and then in your text "over 80,000 Catholic pilgrims are expected to descend upon Rome". Don't do things like that. Note that, in the process, you've lost most of the meaning (through a likely accidental dropping of a "0") and, if the missing "0" is restored, you've actually changed the meaning since "about" and "over" do not mean the same thing. Another that happened to catch my eye was "further celebrations to mark the..." (a distinctive turn of phrase). You oughtn't, btw, to be imitating the phrase or sentence structure of the sources either; see WN:PILLARS#own.
If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I've been looking through the sources, trying to reconcile the conflict between Thursday and two days before he's declared a saint (which would be Friday). What I'm finding appalls me. One source — the most recent one — says it happened on Wednesday, several say it happened on Thursday, and several say it happened two days before he's to be declared a saint. It's more appalling that the ones saying two-days-before were published on Thursday, three days before he's to be declared a saint; seems like they couldn't even be bothered to use common sense on what they themselves were saying. --Pi zero (talk) 13:18, 26 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
Overall impression (but see the detailed history of edits during review): you should work on your original presentation and attribution. I've remarked on original presentation earlier; if you copy bits of sources, no matter what you do thereafter you're pretty much guaranteed to have a copyvio problem. It's vastly easier to not create such problems in the first place (especially with some practice). In attempting address attribution problems, I repeatedly fell back on the less-than-ideal old standby, "reportedly"; that's a stop-gap measure on my part, not a recommended practice.
The matter of when the collapse occurred seems a rather grim indicator of the state of mainstream journalism; the sources were all over the place, with at least a couple of them not even addressing what day it happened. I didn't like adding a sentence, which is pushing what a reviewer can do without disqualifying themself from review, but it was a weakening of information already there and I applied the general principle 'if there's one way to fix it, there's no moral difference between the reviewer requiring someone else to do it or doing it themself'.
The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.
Overall impression (but see the detailed history of edits during review): you should work on your original presentation and attribution. I've remarked on original presentation earlier; if you copy bits of sources, no matter what you do thereafter you're pretty much guaranteed to have a copyvio problem. It's vastly easier to not create such problems in the first place (especially with some practice). In attempting address attribution problems, I repeatedly fell back on the less-than-ideal old standby, "reportedly"; that's a stop-gap measure on my part, not a recommended practice.
The matter of when the collapse occurred seems a rather grim indicator of the state of mainstream journalism; the sources were all over the place, with at least a couple of them not even addressing what day it happened. I didn't like adding a sentence, which is pushing what a reviewer can do without disqualifying themself from review, but it was a weakening of information already there and I applied the general principle 'if there's one way to fix it, there's no moral difference between the reviewer requiring someone else to do it or doing it themself'.
The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.
