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To do
Rewrite foreign policy leads for Reagan, GH Bush, Clinton, GW Bush
About me
 |
 | This user received the Editor of the Week award. |
 | This user believes in the right of every human being to have access to Wikipedia. |
| incl | This user is an inclusionist. |
| <ref> | This user would like to see everyone using inline citations. Please... |
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 cover the subject, since many or most readers won't advance far past the lead. I'm happy to help with other worthy goals (getting articles to Featured/Good status, uploading images, conforming to the Manual of Style, undoing vandalism, resolving disputes, etc.) but they aren't my primary focus.
Random thoughts
Because many (most?) readers will only look at the lead section, writing a comprehensive, concise, accurate lead is imo the single most important task in creating/maintaining an article. However, as the lead section summarizes an article (rather than the subject itself), the lead can only be good if it summarizes a well-written, well-sourced, and comprehensive article. Thus, a lead is important for its own sake, but also to ensure that the article provides adequate coverage of the subject.
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"). 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). 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.
U.S. political bios
These are the U.S. political bios that I feel most need upgrades. Not all have recent full-length biographies, unfortunately.
- Timothy Pickering
- Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
- DeWitt Clinton
- John Randolph of Roanoke
- Thomas Hart Benton
- John Bell
- Salmon P. Chase
- Carl Schurz
- Jay Gould
- Roscoe Conkling
- J. P. Morgan
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
- Henry Cabot Lodge
- William Gibbs McAdoo
- William Randolph Hearst
- Gifford Pinchot
- Henry L. Stimson
- Al Smith
- Robert A. Taft
- W. Averell Harriman
- Richard Russell Jr.
- Walter Mondale
Articles that should exist or be massively expanded
- Ratification of the United States Constitution
- Second Continental Congress
- Jeffersonian democracy/Jeffersonian Era
- Jacksonian democracy/Jacksonian Era
- Presidency of Jefferson Davis
- Marshall Court and other SC articles
Random recommendations
I sometimes enjoy wandering around Wikipedia user pages, partly because I'm always curious about what motivates people to contribute to this encyclopedia, and partly because it's just interesting to read about normal people in a non-journalistic, non-social media setting. So if you're like me, welcome.
Here are some random things I like:
Subpages
User:Orser67/Projects, User:Orser67/presidents, Other Subpages