User talk:81.243.190.2

Welcome

81.243.190.2, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Style guide - how articles should look before publishing
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• Audio Wikinews could always use more contributors
• And of course, stories need writing!

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!

First off, we really appreciate your contribution.

But sometimes users submit an article from somewhere else, not realizing that Wikinews cannot keep copy-and-paste versions of articles which are published elsewhere under a restrictive copyright. An article created in this way is a copyright violation, and Wikinews policy is to erase these even if they are excellent article ideas.

Another problem which sometimes comes up is press releases: Press releases are sometimes excellent sources, but they do not qualify as unbiased news articles so they can't be published as they are. Two key things to remember about press releases is that they're usually written to represent the viewpoint of an involved party (Thus likely running foul of our Neutral Point of View policy). And second, they are generally covered by copyright which can conflict with our open editing approach.

A better way to get an article on an exciting subject published here is to write an original article following the guidelines described in writing an article, or to write a brief explanation of the subject and include the url address of articles or websites to use as sources. If you are part of the story that the article is about, you may also wish to consider requesting an interview rather than writing the article yourself.

Thanks again!

- Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Copyright

Hi David, thanks for the message on the talk page about the F1 article, I'd really like to see this up as I'm (a) In Belgium, and (b) Quite like F1. However, as a non-copyright expert I'll offer you my two cents that might help get this up.

First off, if you can stick a copyright message on your article or site that allows derivative works that'd be great and the main item to deal with in reproducing your work here. However, that's going to make headaches for you on your site as a license sufficiently open to suit use here would likely open up the risks of others copying your content and using it for their own commercial sites. As an administrator on a non-Wikipedia associated site that sort of thing would make my blood boil (Seeing something I'd written making someone else advertising revenue).

Second, The Infamous NPOV :-). That's covered in the comments that come in the above boilerplate welcome message, and it could – for your article – be interpreted as "don't say anything nasty about Bernie without trying to give him a chance for a rebuttal". I'm not a regular follower of sports journalism, but I can accept it may be more relaxed in it's reporting style but this is one of our key rules. My take on it is if the article would be problematic for the BBC to run, then we shouldn't run it either.

Lastly, if you're pressed for time on this, and are looking mainly for a link to your own article, then summarise the whole thing down into a couple of two or three sentence paragraphs and the odds of it being objected to are minimal - unless someone decides to be anal about a second source. In which case, we do have some French-speaking contributors who could verify your contributions from a French source.

I hope you find these comments useful in bringing your story to Wikinews. Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)