Orser67

My primary goal is to add material that is reasonably well-written and is cited to academic sources, or (for newer subjects) solid news sources. I also think that it's important to write leads that comprehensively and concisely cover the subject, since many or most readers won't advance far past the lead. I also occasionally will upload images and create tables that I hope are helpful visual aids. I'm happy to help with other worthy goals (e.g. getting articles to Featured/Good status, uploading images, conforming to the [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style|Manual of Style]], undoing vandalism, resolving disputes, etc.) but they aren't my primary focus.

I try to write leads and articles so that they are useful to readers at different levels of detail. Readers only looking for the key facts of a subject should be able to find them in the first paragraph of the lead ("level one of detail"). Readers looking for a general understanding of the importance of the subject, as well as a quick summary of the subject, should be able to gain it by reading the entire lead ("level two of detail"). And readers looking for an understanding of all of the important aspects of the subject should be able to gain it by reading the entire article ("level three of detail"). And, at least in some cases, readers looking for even more detail on the subject should have access to various sub-articles that provide comprehensive coverage of various topics ("level four of detail"). Wikipedia is also useful for providing solid sources that people could then go and read on their own if they are looking for more information (and those links could be thought of as providing access to "level five of detail"). I believe that Wikipedia is, unfortunately, missing a level of detail in between level two and level three. For example, I wish that there was some happy medium between just reading the lead section of [[Abraham Lincoln]] (~600 words) and reading the entire article (~15000 words).

I strongly believe that it would be a good idea to require in-line citations at the end of ''every single sentence'' in Wikipedia (excluding the lead and the relatively few sentences that are inarguable yet provide useful information). Under what seems to be the prevailing policy (which is to provide citations wherever you feel like so long as it's in the same paragraph), I think it's almost impossible to sustain text-source integrity when an article is worked on by multiple editors. Perhaps some sort of "no-citation-needed" symbol could be created for sentences that belong on Wikipedia but don't need a citation.

* [[Establishment of the United States Republican Party]] (formation in 1854-1861 to the [[1860 Republican National Convention|1860 RNC]])