User talk:PeppersauceUOW
Welcome to Wikinews
|
Getting started as a contributor
|
Welcome! Thank you for joining Wikinews; we'd love for you to stick around and get more involved. To help you get started we have an essay that will guide you through the process of writing your first full article. There are many other things you can do on the project, but its lifeblood is new, current, stories written neutrally. |
All Wikimedia projects have rules. Here are ours.
Listed here are the official policies of the project, you may be referred to some of them if your early attempts at writing articles don't follow them. Don't let this discourage you, we all had to start somewhere. The rules and guides laid out here are intended to keep content to high standards and meet certain rules the Wikimedia Foundation applies to all projects. It may seem like a lot to read, but you do not have to go through it all in one sitting, or know them all before you can start contributing. Remember, you should enjoy contributing to the project. If you're really stuck come chat with the regulars. There's usually someone in chat who will be happy to help, but they may not respond instantly. |
The core policies
|
Places to go, people to meet
Wiki projects work because a sense of community forms around the project. Although writing news is far more individualistic than contributing to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, people often need minor help with things like spelling and copyediting. If a story isn't too old you might be able to expand it, or if it is disputed you may be able to find some more sources and rescue it before it is listed for deletion. There are always discussions going on about how the site could be improved, and your input is of value. Check the links here to see where you can give input to the running of the Wikinews project. |
Find help and get involved
|
Write your first article for Wikinews!
Use the following box to help you create your first article. Simply type in a title to your story and press "Create page". Then start typing text to your story into the new box that will come up. When you're done, press "save page". That's all there is to it!
|
-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 07:32, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
Wikinews articles[edit]
Hi. I've been observing the article you just started, Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now, there are two or three basic problems there, so I thought I'd just point out some of the early steps in writing a Wikinews synthesis article.
- Choose a focus that's newsworthy. The three main elements of newsworthiness are that the focus should be specific, relevant, and fresh.
- Choose at least two mutually independent trust-worthy sources that corroborate the focus.
- Write a headline that is a sentence, in present tense, preferably in active voice, that tells the most important and unique thing about the focus.
- Create your article (probably using an article creation form, such as the one at WN:WRITE).
- Write a lede that briefly summarizes the focus by succinctly answering as many as reasonably possible of the five Ws and H about the focus, written for a general international audience, and in the process establishes that the focus is newsworthy. Note particularly that it should answer "when" in a way that includes a "day" word — "today", "yesterday", or the name of a day of the week; if it isn't easy to answer "when" that way then maybe the focus isn't specific enough, and if the answer doesn't involve a "day" word maybe the focus isn't fresh enough (in fact, if you can't say it happened today or yesterday, it may be getting a bit long in the tooth). Details and background, beyond just a few words per five-Ws-and-H, should generally go further down in the inverted pyramid.
You may find WN:Pillars of Wikinews writing helpful for overall perspective, and then WN:Writing an article. --Pi zero (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)