User talk:Thamus

Welcome
Tempodivalse [talk]  23:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Authors
I was just reading over your list of literature. You might enjoy two English language authors named Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde. They're both scifi/fantasy humorists similar to Douglas Adams. Gopher65talk 23:56, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Deleted article
Good question. Articles which don't make the cut for one reason or another are deleted (if you want your article back I can undelete it and move it to your userspace for you). As to the question of copyright, when you submit something to Wikinews it gets copyrighted under a Creative Commons By-Attribution 2.5. license. You then retain the copyright, but you agree to let Wikinews use the article, and to let any other Wikinews editor modify the article in any way. Also, because it is under a Creative Commons license, anyone else is free to use or modify the article, provided that they credit Wikinews (and, by association, anyone who edited the article). I'm not sure what happens when an article is deleted before publication though. I assume that you would then retain control of the copyright.

Your article mainly failed for 2 reasons, and both are common problems in articles from new contributors, so don't feel bad:

1) It was, at its core, an editorial. Wikinews has a strict policy against publishing editorials. (There are other places where such articles can be published, but usually not on Wikimedia sites.) Articles should be written in a neutral fashion, without any opinion interjected into them. That means merely reporting the facts of the situation, without any side comments.

2) It was no longer news. News must be new, by definition. On Wikinews we generally set a 3 day window for most events. If it happened more than 3 days ago, it is history and belongs in an encyclopedia (in this case Wikipedia), not on a news site.

There are sometimes exceptions to the 72 hour rule, but they are far and few between.

Original Reporting is a little bit different. If you are conducting interviews, and doing actual footwork, there is a more leeway given on how old a news event can be. But you'd want to talk to DragonFire1024 or Brian McNeil about that. Gopher65talk 01:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Article moved
I undeleted and moved your article to your userspace. It is now here: User:Thamus/Public outcry as 24 get killed in bus accident in Panama. Gopher65talk 01:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)