Wikinews:Policies and guidelines

Shortcut:
WN:PG Table of contents // 1 Core Policies
2 How are policies created?

2.1 Means
2.2 Places
2.3 Changing a policy
2.4 Participation

3 Enforcement
4 Types of policies

4.1 Conventions
4.2 Restricted features

5 Other Policies

5.1 Using source from Wikipedia

6 Sources
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Core Policies

The gist of core policies are:

Do not promote any particular viewpoint even when it is scientifically proven or widely accepted. Simply report and explain it along with disagreements.

For more, see Wikinews:Neutral point of view

Avoid copyright violation.

For more, Wikinews:Copyright - not yet created, since we do not have official licensing policy.

Be respectful of others

Wikinews:Etiquette

Do not be overwhelmed by all the rules and guidelines but use your common sense and civil interaction to guide your behavior when you cannot follow every rule.

Wikinews:Ignore all the rules (w:Wikipedia:Ignore all rules)

Don't go overboard with adding more rules and instructions. Guidelines should be short, simple and clear.

Wikinews:Instruction creep

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How are policies created?

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Means

Most Wikinews policies are developed through consensus. Consensus might be developed through discussion and polls, but more often it develops through established practice. In most cases the policy is not even written formally, but is simply the community norms which have developed over time.

Discussions are good to find out available options, and their merits and demerits. They also have the merit of giving an incentive for people to look for a reasonable compromise. Polls are good to decide on issues when it is largely a matter of taste or belief.

Both decisions are binding, in the sense they result in consensus. You should respect the community consensus.

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Places

Policy issues may be addressed in the Wikinews namespace, especially through the Water cooler, and on Talk page. Issues may also be discussed in IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net/wikinews) and the e-mail list (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l), but official policy can only be made on Wikinews itself. If a policy might be controversial, it should be discussed and consensus reached before being written and linked here. Consider the guidelines at w:Wikipedia:How to create policy.

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Changing a policy

Policies change. When you present good reason to change a policy, and others agree, the change will happen.

Please don't bring up previously discussed policy changes until a new situation (technical environment, project's reputation, etc.) suggest revisiting old questions. Another justification for re-opening a discussion may be a significant change in the project's participant; some changing their mind, new people coming in or old ones leaving.

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Participation

All participants are equal. If you are a good faith participant to Wikinews, your opinion counts as much as others.

For practical reasons, people participating without an account may be excluded from polls, but usually not from discussions.

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Enforcement

You are a member of our community, and are empowered to edit articles and enforce Wikinews policies. You will follow policies and guidelines in correcting problems in content and format, improving them where you can.

But please do not bite newbies, and always show respect and kindness.

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Types of policies

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Conventions

Conventions are widely accepted tools by which we produce more consistent and usable articles:

Policies and guidelines/Fair use (What is fair use, how does it apply to Wikinews.)
Policies and guidelines/Editing policy (How to edit articles)
Policies and guidelines/Naming conventions (How to title articles)
Policies and guidelines/Disambiguation (How to resolve title conflicts)
Policies and guidelines/Image use policy (What kind of images you can upload to Wikinews)
Policies and guidelines/Deletion guidelines (how to request deletion for an article, and (restricted to admins) how to perform the deletion.)
Policies and guidelines/Archive conventions (When, how, and why articles are protected for archives.)

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Restricted features

Some features of the software which could potentially be misused, such as deleting pages and locking pages from editing, are restricted to Administrators, who are experienced and trusted members of the community. Policies particularly relevant to administrators include:

Protection policy (When and why to protect a page)
Blocking policy (Blocking users to deal with vandalism)

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Other Policies

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Using source from Wikipedia

Convention: Wikipedia articles are released under the GFDL, and any material more than negligible must include a link back to the source article.

This is a requirement under the w:GNU Free Document License and Wikepedia copyright policy.

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Sources

The Wikinews:Policies and guidelines are fundamentally based on the w:Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Policies_and_guidelines"

Categories: Wikinews