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Wikinews:Introduction
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Everything you read here is written by volunteers just like yourself. As well as starting your own articles, you can any page you see — expand it, fix spelling mistakes, correct facts, make policy suggestions, talk to other Wikinews contributors ... !
So what is special about Wikinews?
Anyone can contribute, and articles are written collaboratively for a global audience. We strive at all times to meet the policy of using neutral point of view, ensuring our reporting is as fair as possible.
Furthermore, everything we write is cited, to maintain the highest standards of reliability.
Our policy is to omit opinion and commentary in our articles — if you want to tell the world what you think, try blogging.
Wikinews, like its big sister Wikipedia, is run and funded by volunteers donating their time and money, and has no advertising. Decisions are made collectively, and we like to negotiate. Discussion is encouraged, and there are plenty of people around to learn from.
Everything that's done on the wiki can be undone, so it's very friendly to new users. The interface is designed to be easy to use, and easy to learn.
Where do I start?
Learn to wiki
Some essentials are needed by anyone who would like to work on articles. For one thing, you will need to know how to a page.
Guides to good journalism
Secondly, if you want to do more than existing content, we would like to help you to write quality news content, responsibly — it's easy, check out the Wikinews:Content guide and the Wikinews:Code of Ethics page.
Start reading, start writing
Published articles appear on the Main Page. You could start off by reading some of those, you might find errors to correct, and get an idea of what others are writing here.
Articles which need work appear at Wikinews:Workspace. You can find out how to write new articles here.
Like to know more?
Wikinews Style guide
Like most publications, Wikinews has its own style guide, which helps the many contributors here make their efforts blend in harmony, to produce a finished look. It also contains a lot of tips and grammar guides. But you can pick up 99% of what you need to know just be looking at existing articles.
Research using Wikinews Reference desk
If you need to research something for an article, you'll find plenty of resources on our Wikinews:Reference desk. There is also a page on wikipedia that organises news sources as to region. The structure of this page should help maintain NPOV.
Communicating with other Wikinews users
A number of facilities exist in order to communicate your intentions, suggestions and questions, with other Wikinews users.
'Talk' page of each page
Click on the 'discussion' link at the top of any article to go to its associated Talk page. By ing the Talk page, you can leave comments for other readers. Each user who has ed Wikinews before also has a Talk page for their username, where you can leave comments for that user.
Article flags
Wikinews:Article flags invite people to work on certain aspects of an article, or inform them about the state of the article, including a number of common problems which arise.
Water cooler
The Wikinews:Water cooler is the place to discuss general Wikinews issues.
Live chat via IRC
Internet Relay Chat channel #wikinews and #wikinews-en on irc://irc.freenode.net . You will not even need an irc client, if you use the web interface provided here.
Still confused?
If you're lost, try Wikinews:Contents.
Not quite sure if Wikinews is for you? Or if you are doing the right thing?
Try these:
Disputes
Disputes are inevitable. We are all very friendly here at Wikinews, but it is a little chaotic, and no one can see the whole of Wikinews all at once. None of us are mind-readers, and as nifty as Wikinews is, even this is not a perfect communication medium.
Please be patient and polite when you have a dispute.
Tips for resolving serious disputes are at Wikinews:Dispute resolution.
Administrators
Wikinews, like all wikis, tries to be non-hierarchical. However, like all wikis, there are some tasks that have to be reserved for trusted users, and for these we have Wikinews:Administrators.
See also
Retrieved from "http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Introduction"
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