User talk:Steelthumbs

--Steelthumbs (talk) 21:34, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

-- Wikinews Welcome (talk) 20:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC) helpme

Question? --Pi zero (talk) 22:13, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi. What do you need help with? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi, Steelthumbs. The most usual way to reply is to edit the section where the thing you're replying to is, or the whole page if it's not in a section (as in this case); write your reply on a separate line below what you're replying to, with enough colons,   or   or   etc., at the start of the line to indent it a little more than what you're replying to; and at the end of your reply, put   which automatically expands to a signature saying who you are and when you wrote the reply.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks, so like this? I'm going to try and contribute to articles about Ireland or my county, or board games I'm into. Being a Wikipedia writer already looks like fun, especially with so many people and places to help me --Steelthumbs (talk) 16:12, 8 January 2017 (UTC)


 * That is the way to do it, yes. Regarding editing Wikipedia:
 * Wikipedia and Wikinews are sister projects. That is, they are both part of the wikimedia sisterhood, operated under the aegis of the Wikimedia Foundation, but they work somewhat differently.  They have some basic things in common; not just the software platform, but also some basic philosophical values &mdash; and they disagree on some philosophy, and do different tasks using different methods.  They share a commitment to the idea that ordinary people on the internet should have a voice in information-providing.  Wikipedia produces encyclopedia articles, which can be under development forever; anything anyone does to them is instantly "published", on the assumption that if a mistake is made, over time someone will spot the error and it will be fixed.  Wikinews produces news articles, which are snapshots in time; news articles aren't under development indefinitely, they have to be gotten out while they're still news and they can't be changed long after publication (that would be like revising history); and by definition news is vetted before publication, it's not news if there isn't a philosophical commitment to getting it right the first time.
 * Editing Wikipedia &mdash; and editing Wikinews &mdash; can be fun, yes. They are somewhat different experiences.  I'm not sure how to explain the difference simply.  Both projects have great people on them, and sometimes there can be friction between the people on a project; on Wikipedia there are a lot of people, whereas Wikinews is much smaller, and so the kinds of friction between people are different.  Both projects can be technically challenging, I think, but the technical challenges are different, and with Wikinews a lot of the technical challenge is in an initial learning curve after which things get much easier.
 * --Pi zero (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Btw: there's a compact overview of what we do at Wikinews at WN:PILLARS.  There's a tutorial on writing a first article at WN:WRITE.  I also once tried to create an "article wizard", which imho ended up as a pretty good description of how to write an article but I wasn't really satisfied with it because the wiki software didn't allow it to be as interactive as I wanted it to be; that's at WN:Article wizard.  (I'm now trying to fix that limitation of the software, but it's a long-term goal.)  --Pi zero (talk) 17:42, 8 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Gah, I completely forgot this was WN and not WP, sorry. I get the notifications for these messages in Wikipedia. I'll try to write about some local news that might interest people on here when I hear about it, and thanks for all the info! --Steelthumbs (talk) 17:50, 8 January 2017 (UTC)