Wikinews talk:Contributor Recruitment

There is an essay on the Water Cooler about this page, and the goals it aims to serve. I have written up an introduction and would like suggestions on other items that should be covered within the page. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:36, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two steps that need to be covered in a recruitment drive - the first is getting people to come here (and contribute), the second is getting them to stay. This page seems to be mainly aimed at the first, but if people come here, try to write an article, get pissed off for whatever reason (probably because they don't fully understand how Wikinews works in some way) and leave, Wikinews doesn't stand much to gain from it. I think it would be worthwhile writing up a couple of basic tutorials (e.g. "How do I write a basic article?" "How do I contact people?") and including them in welcome messages. I'll put my hand up for helping with these. Chris Mann (Say hi!|Stalk me!) 04:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * After Wikimania I will put up the full text of my presentation and the slides for it. I'm not so sure how I am going to deal with the video, the last rendered version was 1.3Gb which is well above upload limits. --Brian McNeil / talk 10:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I started an article here for the first time on Dec 31. I put a lot of work into finding various sources to get a better picture of the story, and did my best to put it in the right place.  Then I had to go out of town for some family stuff.  (Note that this was over the holidays.)  Apparently I didn't format the sources correctly or it wasn't in the right place or something, so you guys decided to delete it as being "abandoned," whatever the heck that means.  That doesn't seem very collaborative to me.  Am I pissed off?  Not really.  But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like a very good use of the hours I spent putting the article together and I won't bother doing it a second time. 68.251.43.220 07:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this comment shows how the best thing we can do to get contributors is to make sure there edits do not seem wasted. 99% of people are not going to make a publishable article the first time. If it gets deleted without feedback, they aren't going to come back. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)