Wikinews:Reviewing articles

This is an official policy on English Wikinews. It has wide acceptance and is considered a standard for all users to follow. Changes to this page must reflect consensus. If in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcut: WN:REV WN:REVIEW

Policies and Guidelines

Neutral point of view Content guide Style guide

Ignore all rules

Administrators

For Wikipedians

Accreditation Archive conventions Avoid weasel words Blocking Bots CheckUsers Cite sources Conflict of interest Copyright Dispute resolution Deletion Speedy deletion Don't disrupt Wikinews to illustrate a point Fair use Global permissions Image use Naming conventions Newsworthiness Oversight Original reporting Permission expiry Page protection Reviewing Three reverts Username

Etiquette

This policy in a nutshell:

All articles must go through independent Review prior to the Publish stage. All revisions to an article post-publication must comply with the pillars and the archive conventions. Use of the Peer Review Gadget is essential to ensure reviews are performed and recorded in a consistent manner.

Development stage

Prior to review, the article may be developed, and this will be noted by the {{Develop}} tag. Articles in development mean that they need more information, sources, or the article is currently a work in progress.

Articles in the developing stage are not considered ready for review or ready to be published and therefore, reviewers should not sight or review articles in development.

Review stage

Before publication, all articles must be reviewed by a user who was uninvolved in the development of the article. Please note that only users who have the reviewer permission should review and publish articles.

1. To ask for an article to be reviewed {{review}} should be added to the article. {{Develop}} gets replaced by the review template, once the article has enough information, and has been checked for spelling and grammar errors.
2. The reviewer should check the article against the guidelines below.
3. Once complete, the review notes along with a pass or fail of the review process, should be placed on the article's talk page by the reviewer. Templates for passing or failing review can be found here.

Checklist

When reviewing the article, the reviewer must check the following:

1. Copyright: The reviewer should check that the text and images are not copyright infringement.
2. Newsworthiness: The reviewer should check that the article agrees with our content guide and is newsworthy.
3. Verifiability: The reviewer should check that all information in the article is fully sourced, (using multiple independent sources is strongly encouraged) or has adequate Original Reporting notes.
4. NPOV: The reviewer should check that all information in the article is written in a neutral and unbiased manner, with no editorial commentary/advocacy or unsourced opinion. See also: WN:Neutrality (essay)
5. Style: The reviewer should check that all information in the article complies with our style guide (on dateline, grammar and spelling, "inverted pyramid" structure, tone, wikilinks, categories, headline... etc.)

See also: Wikinews:Tips on reviewing articles

Publish stage

In brief, the steps to publish an article are:

1. Final review check for required elements (after using EasyPeerReview)
2. Update the Main page (lead shuffle)
3. Create a Wikidata entry
4. Monitor the article for 24 hours

Full details can be found here: Wikinews:Publish checklist

Post-publication revisions

Post-publication revision is governed by Wikinews:Archive conventions. In general:

• Edits can be made but must also be sighted (approved by a reviewer) within 24 hours
• After 24 hours the article should be edit-protected so that only administrators can make changes. Proposed changes at this point should use {{editprotected}} requests on the article talk page.
• After seven days the article should be archived

Users in the class Wikinews:Reviewer can mark revisions of the article as sighted (reviewed). Sighted changes at this stage must comply with the pillars as well as the archive conventions.

See also: Wikinews:Correction policy