User:Dan100/January 2005 site overhaul

Resides in Reading, UK.

I like Wikinews so much I spent my early days here cleaning up lots of the welcome, how-to etc pages. I did this as I really felt the process of creating and editing articles needed to be streamlined and made easier for people coming to Wikinews for the first time. I sincerely hope my changes will result in more people writing more articles.

Before commenting on the changes can I ask one thing? Go to the mainpage, and look at and follow the links with the eyes of a 'newbie'. I see the path as thus:


 * A new user would first click 'anyone can write', taking him to Getting started. Clicking the 'Wikinews' link would take him to the mission statement page explaining what WN is about and how it got started.


 * If he wants to edit articles, he might click 'edit an article'. This would explain the very basics of how to edit a wiki page, and also how to create a completely new one.


 * After reading that, he might return to 'Getting started' with the idea of creating a new article, and click the 'create a new one' link taking him to Writing an article. This would guide him, step-by-step, through the basics of creating and writing a WN article with the appropiate links to pages giving more info, where needed.


 * He might add his new article on the Latest news template straight away, or list it on the workspace if he feels it's not ready for publication yet. Here he could list his article with a tag (using Article development to find out what each tag means) so other people could pick up on his work where he left off. Finally, when his article is ready for publication, it could be removed from the workspace and listed on the latest news template.

If you've come here to complain about changes I've made - sorry! - and leave me a message on my talk page.

I really feel this site has huge potential, so join me in getting stuck in! Dan100 00:53, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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