Wikipedia:How to edit a real time update

Proposed New Guidelines

(For editing In The News and Current Events.)

Innate bias exists in the media we receive our news from. Apart from overt political biases, almost every news outlet is biased where topical coverage is concerned, and this goes against the Wikipedia policy of NPOV (this page offers some loose statistical information and graphics conveying the extent of topical bias in The New York Post, as an example.) In order to help counter this natural bias on Wikipedia, the following steps are recommending in adding items to the Current Events page, from which items may be taken to be added to the In the News section.

Look for headlines on the BBC/ Google/ Yahoo News websites pertaining to regions other than the US, US areas of interest (Iran, North Korea, etc) and UK. These sites may not be unbiased themselves, but a broader selection exists.
Help to avoid systemic bias by finding important articles about these ignored regions. Links to underdeveloped articles will eventually help in the improvement of those articles, as evidenced in every news item that has been linked to a weak Wikipedia page. THERE SHOULD BE AT LEAST ONE HEADLINE FROM EACH CONTINENT (other than Antarctica, of course) and THERE SHOULD BE NO CLEAR MAJORITY OF ARTICLES RELATING TO THE SAME COUNTRY. For the "In the News" template, remember that not more than one headline per country is allowed.
Where the US/ UK/ overemphasized regions are concerned, try to find important articles that relate to a completely new event, rather than some record in a long, ongoing process in the above named regions (ex. the US invasion of Iraq) that are, in any case, overexposed in the news. Obvious exceptions are allowed, such as the murder of Margaret Hassan, but the allowance of exceptions should not regress into a habit.
Add a link to the source.
Update the page and the corresponding article as per the rest of the guidelines.

If an editor has added a little known news item, do not revert without checking for sources. If an editor has failed to follow the guidelines but the story has merit, do not revert the headline but try to format according to the guidelines. If the update is incomplete or inadequate, do not revert - find and add information yourself; in brief, since this is an encyclopedia, consolidate information and try to edit rather than taking the easy way out.

These are some good places to start though you should by no means restrict yourselves to those sources (in fact, you are encouraged to find news stories from well known local sources where applicable) unless they are not as reliable: BBC - Europe, Yahoo - Latin America, Yahoo - Africa.

Further information

This topic has generated a lot of debate in the past. To newcomers/ skeptics: this is in fact a problem, since Americentric news or trivia do dominate the relevant pages, as you will see yourself by browsing the respective articles or their edit histories. There has been a heated debate recently at the Village Pump, here - which contains links to some of the arguments dating further back; a perusal of at least that section will provide a flavour of discussions related to this topic and a background to the necessity for new guidelines.

Comments/ Votes

No - I don't like stupid, personal-agenda proposals forced down peoples throats without people that know how to formulate a guideline having any influence on it. violet/riga (t) 09:11, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)