Wikinews:Accreditation requests

	Accreditation
	ARBCOM
	AWB
	Bots
	Functionaries
	Reviewer

	Policy
	Requests
	Verify

Shortcut:
WN:AR

Accreditation requests (AR) is the process by which the Wikinews community decides which users can be recognized as official Wikinews reporters.

Upon successful accreditation
I	Before making a request, please read the accreditation policy first. You can also view the list of accredited users.
II	Add your username in the box below and click the `Request accreditation` button. Complete the questions on the resulting page and save it. Transclude the request page at the foot of the section below by adding the title of the request page, enclosed with curly brackets e.g.: `{{Wikinews:Accreditation requests/YourUsername}}` Then inform the Wikinews community of your request.
III	Questions You may be asked questions by other users so they can review your request. Please try to provide full answers.
IV	Community decision The request must remain open for at least seven days for a new request or fourteen days for revocation. Other users may {{support}} or {{oppose}} the request. At the end of the minimum period, the request will be closed and the accreditation or revocation will be confirmed, if there is consensus. In the case of revocation a request may be closed early, but no earlier than 7 days, when there is overwhelming consensus. Closed requests are moved to the archives.
Email	Once accredited, you can get a personal email address on WN-Reporters. Please contact acagastya or Gryllida about this. Your email address will be made up based on the details given when applying. If you have a middle name and you feel having this in the address (or its initial) is important, please say so. You must either provide an existing email address for the password to be sent to, or have enabled email from your en.wikinews account and specify this as the preferred contact method. For further information, contact an active, established, already-accredited user. Requests for an email address must be verifiable — either submit via 'email this user', or signed and on the talk pages of Acagastya or Gryllida.
Cards	In addition to a wn-reporters.org email address, accredited reporters may — at their own expense — obtain a stock of business cards clearly indicating they are an accredited reporter. You can see a sample here. (Note: the sample is degraded to a quality that prevents use.)

Requests

Tduk (talk)

Name: Alex Lozupone

Location: NY

Areas of interest: original reporting, culture

Reason: to have an official email address for wikinews related content, and to have something to show to people when i am covering them

Accomplishments: longtime en.wikipedia editor and commons image contributed. wikinews artciles i was the main creator on are Crowds gather for 35th Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade amid car incident Bruce Gallanter interviews Elliott Sharp, Joe Fonda at Downtown Music Gallery event Robert Dick and Mark Dresser re-unite at the Fridman Gallery 2025 Queens World Film Festival features filmmakers breakfast and ceremony honoring Warrington Hudlin The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black performs as part of Vaginal Davis' exhibit at MoMA PS1

Contact information:

User ID: Tduk

Applied on: 04:02, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Stats

Links for Tduk: Tduk (talk · contribs · deleted · count · logs · block log · review log · lu)

Questions and comments

Votes

Support Gryllida (talk) 02:34, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral ...just for the moment. I'd like to watch things a bit, but I am optimistic about this person becoming an accredited reporter here.--Bddpaux (talk) 16:00, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for chiming in; I'm actually less interested in the official accreditation than just having a central email address, which would make dealing with sources much more professional and centralized (and presumably with an audit trail that scoop can monitor). It's been somewhat awkward having to explain to people I am interviewed that they may be contacted out of nowhere via whatever email address they have publicly to confirm that I did in fact interview them. The process has in fact given me some hesitation on what I am able to cover reasonably. If there's a better way to go about this, I'd love to hear it. Tduk (talk) 11:07, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, @Tduk, this may not be a complete picture, but, here are a few clarifications:
No, reviewers cannot monitor your personal reporter account or sent messages, unless you CC scoop address from beginning, and interviewee uses "reply all". I usually did not do that, and doing this does not require having accreditation.

I think the reporter has to provide evidence like "rob.foo@gmail.com actually belongs to my interviewee and not a random stranger" as part of reporter's notes if needed.

Whole point of having accreditation is trust that you are not falsifying the evidence that you are sending to scoop. Once there is accreditation, then, there is such trust, and a reviewer does not need (in my view) to ask interviewee to confirm that the content adequately represents their responses.

IRL, in a newsroom, if a reporter said "i asked Rob on phone and he said 'i like cats'", does the editor trust the reporter and believe that? Or does the editor go to all the sources of that reporter and ask them to confirm that the news piece is correct before approving it?

The main point of having a wn-reporters address (to me) is that it looks more credible to the interviewees, and, as a result, they are more likely to respond to an interview request from it than to a request from a gmail.
Hope this is helpful. Gryllida (talk) 12:04, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It still seems like it would smooth out a somewhat prohibitively awkward process to have that wn-reporters address. I have further questions about how to smooth this out; I have stopped doing interviews because I am not comfortable with asking the interviewee to subject themselves to what we ask of them. Tduk (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If it helps: I've never contacted ANYONE to ask -- "Hey, did this dude actually talk to you?" And: in the past (and I hope we re-vitalize it real soon) -- we MUCH MORE SYSTEMATICALLY focused on developing people under the Contributor > Accredited Reporter > Reviewer pipeline. Many efforts have gone into streamlining/adjusting assorted tools in recent months (and many of those are good actions) -- we just constantly have to work to maintain journalistic integrity. I'm all for 'fluffery' when and where it belongs. Keep writing. Keep submitting. Accreditation (in the least) will get you the Accreditation bit for you User page, a cool email address and a couple of other minor bits. Trust is built here -- and you've worked to do that very thing.--Bddpaux (talk) 04:57, 8 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You have certainly not done that when I submitted something that you reviewed. I had it happen to me twice - the first time, I wasn't even consulted, the person cold-contacted the interviewee using an e-mail address I didn't even have. This caused me to start warning anyone I'd interview in the future that this may happen. Is this not typical here? Tduk (talk) 03:37, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Was not done with my OR either when it was being reviewed. Gryllida (talk) 03:49, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any policy about reviewers cold-contacting interview subjects? Tduk (talk) 14:45, 10 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

> Was not done with my OR either when it was being reviewed.

1. You are accredited.
2. You have done it for other articles and you CC'ed Scoop. Subject was "ACTION REQUIRED: Query for peer review at Wikinews" sent November 22, 2025. In that email you specifically stated "I would like to verify the interview contents and consent."Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Reviewer) 17:26, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

> I'm actually less interested in the official accreditation

If accreditation is of limited interest, you may wish to reconsider this request, to avoid further unnecessary deliberation and debate.

> It's been somewhat awkward having to explain to people … that they may be contacted out of nowhere

“Out of nowhere” is not accurate.

In the first case, you had not provided any proof the interview occurred, as required by WN:OR. You cited “privacy issues” when asked to provide verification, and later stated you would remove all email addresses if forwarding to scoop. The interviewee was then contacted via their publicly available email. I believe this was also your first submitted, named interview, so no prior track record existed.

In the second case, you were informed before a draft was created that the interview would need to be verified.[1] You were informed again on the article talk page three days later. After three additional days without response, the interviewee was contacted via their publicly available email.

> "the person cold-contacted the interviewee using an e-mail address I didn't even have."

If the interviewee’s publicly available contact information was not identified, it raises questions about the extent of the background research conducted.

> "This caused me to start warning anyone I'd interview in the future that this may happen."

Informing interviewees that Wikinews may contact them to verify the interview is a reasonable, professional courtesy and likely appreciated by most interviewees when named in an article.

Bottom line: when a named interview is included and the reporter has not yet established trust at Wikinews, rigorous verification is required prior to publication. This is a standard safeguard for the project, the reviewer, and the interviewee.

Accreditation assumes an understanding of these verification expectations; where that understanding is not yet established, it may be premature to grant it.

Revocations

For requests for revoking credentials, {{Remove}} means "remove accreditation" and {{Keep}} means "keep accreditation."

Note: only accredited reporters who have misused their credentials (with concrete evidence) may be listed here.