Wikinews:Writing an article/New Zealand

Please read this page in whole before submitting an article!

Anyone, including you, can write for Wikinews! Just type a title like Good Weather in New Zealand in the box below, click "Create article", and start writing:

You will see a page that is empty except for some preloaded "tags" that will help to format your article. These are:
 * The tag. It puts your article in the correct date category, e.g.: July 29, 2006
 * The tag. This indicates that your article is still in development, and will list it as such. Once you are ready to publish, you can replace it with    and save the page.

Essential steps
These are steps an article has to go through to be published. However no one editor needs do all these steps themselves! You can do as little or as much as you want - the wider community of editors may well take up your story where you leave off.

Is your story news?
Check the content guide to see what kinds of articles Wikinews runs.

Start your story
First, check the Main Page under both Latest news and Developing stories to see if your story has already been covered. You may also want to check Story preparation to see if anyone has been working on the same story in advance.

If your story has not been covered already, create it in the box above. Please refer to the Wikinews style guide for current name and headline practices. Then click the Save button below the text area, and then click on your link (it will be red) to create your article.

Date your story and list as developing
Be sure to date your article at the very top by adding the following if they're not already there:

July 29, 2006

or

- NB Only use this if you are doing original reporting and were present personally at the news event.

Then start a new line, and add the text to your new story if it isn't there already.

This will also automatically attach the category for the date you specify, and list it on Developing stories in the Workspace and on the Main page.

Write your story in a 'news' style
Some degree of uniformity in writing style has, through common sense, tradition, evolution and research, developed in the majority of the English speaking news media. For tips on attaining an effective news style, see the Style guide.

Your story must comply with the neutral point of view - that is, represent all sides of a story fairly.

List your sources
When you have finished writing your article, you need to list your sources, so others can check your work and help improve the story.

As all information is required to be referenced, anything you write that is not backed up by your sources may be removed!

The method to use appears below, all under a heading of ==Sources== :

To format your text in the style demonstrated above, use this template:

To be clear, the fields are url, title, author, pub(lisher), and date.

It doesn't matter what order your references appear in. If your source is missing one or more of these fields, leave a blank space after the "=".

Original reporting?
If you are writing your article using notes you took yourself "in the field", the above section won't apply. Instead, read Original reporting for guidance.

Add the right categories
Every article needs to be listed under one or more categories, so it can be found once it has dropped off the Latest news pages, and also to be listed on the region and topic subpages. See the SectionMenu to find out which categories are appropriate. Add them using this syntax:. You can only add one category at a time - use a new for each category you want to add.

List your article for others to read!
Simply remove the tag from you story and instead add the text  (location is not important). This will automatically list your article on the Main Page.

While you are working on a story
To avoid edit conflicts you might first want to insert the tag and then save your story. Remove the tag when you're finished.

Add images
You may wish to add images to your story. Even if none are available from the actual event, it can be helpful to the reader if you add a graphic of some sort, perhaps a map, or some icon representative of event features.

Use the Reference desk to find images to upload, or take your own photos too (see digital camera), or even draw your own pictures (using a free program like the Gimp, for example).

If you want to upload public domain images, use the Commons image, sound and file library. Use this link to go directly to the upload page. You will need to register on the Commons if you have not already done so.

You can only upload 'free' (as in 'free to be redistributed at will') images on the Commons. You can upload 'fair use' images directly to Wikinews. Thoroughly read the fair use guidelines before uploading a picture to Wikinews; if you picture does not meet the fair use guidelines, it will be deleted. If your image is allowable, use this link to upload images to Wikinews.

Is your story about an on-going issue?
If so, you might find a suitable template to add to your story on Template messages/Infoboxes. These will automatically put appropriate graphics on your story and place it in the right categories.

An example news story
This page represents a well-written Wikinews article with all the important elements required present. View this page to see the Wiki text behind that article.