Wikinews:May 2010 writing contest

Welcome to the Wikinews writing contest for May 2010.

Signing up
Click here to sign up!

Qualification

 * Anyone, including you, can write articles on Wikinews.
 * You must be a single individual.
 * You must be registered on this project to compete.

Duration
The contest will run from May 1, 2010 to May 22,2010. Submissions for review run from 00:00 on start to 23:59 on end. (All times per Recent Changes - UTC).

Scoring points

 * 1) Synthesis article (Constructed from several credible sources in your own words)
 * 2) 1 point only for an article meeting three-paragraph minimum, and other publication criteria, yet below the required 1,200 characters to obtain 3 points. Where several of these articles are produced in a day, they should be collected in a news brief.
 * 3) 3 points for an article of at least 1,200 characters when published after any required copyedit.
 * 4) 2 points extra per additional 700 characters after copyedit (5 @ 1,900, 7 @ 2,600, 9 @ 3,300, 11 @ 4,000, ... )
 * 5) Original reporting
 * 6) Points as-per synthesis articles, with an additional 6 points for publication; original reporting content must exceed 25%, (400 characters), of the article post-copyedit and publication.
 * 7) Broadcast reports may count for 4 points, provided at least 25% (400 characters) is made up of the broadcast.
 * 8) Photoessays (A photographic form of original reporting)
 * 9) 8 points only, provided a minimum of 8 images provided.
 * 10) 3 points extra for each additional 5 images.
 * 11) 4 points extra where verbose (per synthesis article point 1.3 above).
 * 12) Articles, or portions of articles, copied wholesale from compatibly-licensed websites (such as Voice of America), will not be accepted for the contest (although you are still free to make use of them outside the contest). All prose in articles you create for the contest should be your own.
 * 13) Points are posted by the review gadget or manually (if necessary) at the log page and verified by a contest judge.
 * You can preview how many points an article gets using the character count gadget (in Special:Preferences under "Gadgets").
 * Note: human judges have final authority in judging if there is a conflict between the gadget and a human judge.

Submitting articles
When writing an article for this contest, please put

at the bottom of the article. Replace Username with your username.

Prizes

 * A barnstar for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
 * A "Certificate of Participation" for everyone else.

Judges
The contest's judges are
 * 1) MediaWiki:Gadget-easyPeerReview.js (most important)
 * 2) Mike  moral  ♪♫
 * 3) Bawolff ☺☻