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User:Auntof6/Things I would like Wikipedia editors to know

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Things we do here that might be different from other Wikis

We have a couple of different standard headings. Instead of "See also", we use "Related pages".(see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Related pages) Instead of "External links", we use "Other websites".(see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#List of links at the end of an article)

We use the word "movie" instead of "film" when talking about motion pictures. "Film" can be used for the actual medium that a movie is (or at least used to be) recorded onto. It can also be used for the act of recording the movie. (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Movies)

Also on the subject of movies, we use the term "family movies" instead of "children's movies", per this discussion.

When creating a new category, we want at least three entries in it right away. That is to keep our category tree from having long branches of single-entry categories, which can make it harder to find things. Some exceptions to this are certain chronology categories (including the ones for births and deaths by year) and maintenance categories.(see Wikipedia:Categories#Is there a need for the new category?)

In categories, we use the general term "settlement" instead of "populated place". See Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 104#Municipality categories for the discussion where this was decided.

We discourage unlinking redlinked terms. We use the red links as a way to see what articles we're missing. The more times a term is redlinked, the higher it appears at Special:WantedPages. We can look at Special:WantedPages to get ideas for good pages to create.

We manage our stub categories more strictly than English Wikipedia. Here, we want as few stub categories as possible. We don't consider it helpful to have stub categories just to reduce the number of articles in an existing stub category. The stub categories do not need to mirror the regular article categories. New stub types need to be approved at Wikipedia talk:Simple Stub Project before being created.

We do not use portals.

WikiProjects: We have some WikiProjects, but they are unofficial and they are maintained in userspace. Unlike WikiProjects at English Wikipedia:

  • We do not use categories for individual WikiProjects. There is Category:WikiProjects for the project pages and Category:WikiProject user templates for WikiProject user templates.
  • We do not use categories for WikiProject participants. Participants can be listed on individual project pages.
  • We do not use WikiProject banners on article talk pages.

We don't use set index pages, only disambiguation pages.

Users who plan to make a large number of similar changes should request a temporary flood flag so that their changes do not "flood" Special:RecentChanges. We have users who actively patrol new changes (not just new pages) and having a large number of similar changes can disrupt those efforts. The flood flag can be requested at the admins' noticeboard or on the talk page of an admin.

We do not categorize males and females separately as much as enwiki does. For example, we categorize both actors and actresses under actors. See WP:CATGENDER.

With very few exceptions, we do not host images as English Wikipedia does. Images used in articles here must be in Wikimedia Commons.

How to patrol

Here are things to check when patrolling (some of these may not be applicable for some kinds of subjects):

  • properly categorized
  • Page is wikified
    • Page name bolded at beginning of intro
    • important terms linked, even if the links are red
  • page makes sense
  • Appropriate number of references. When there are references, a reference section should be included with a hardcoded {{reflist}} template
  • No links to articles in other Wikipedias
  • No links to other websites in the body of an article.
  • No use of any Wikipedia as a reference
  • Linked in Wikidata, if there's something to link to

Nice to check, but optional:

  • Is there an image?
  • Is there an infobox?
  • A link to the Commons category, if one exists

Miscellaneous notes

Incredibly does not mean the same thing as very. Incredibly means hard to believe, and is not usually a good word to use in encyclopedia articles.

To star in a movie (or TV program, or play, etc.) means to have one of the more important roles. Actors who have less important roles act or appear in the movie, but do not star in it.

Wikipedia has a style guide at Wikipedia:Manual of Style. It has a lot of detail about how to format Wikipedia articles. Some of the things it covers are how to pick titles, what should be in the first sentence of an article, how to format different things, using different varieties of English, and more. The Manual of Style can be overwhelming at first, but after you're comfortable writing articles, take a look at the manual to pick up pointers. Things in the Manual of Style include:

  • The order of sections at the end of an article (related pages, references, other websites, etc.)
  • The correct capitalization for page titles and article headings is sentence case. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Wording for more info.

Stub articles need categories assigned besides the stub categories.

Articles about people need categories for at least the following:

  • The year they were born
  • The year they died (or Category:Living people if the person is still alive)
  • Their nationality and/or the place(s) they are from
  • Something about why they belong in an encyclopedia. This could be a category about their profession, something significant they did in their life, awards they received, etc.

The following are not usually good words/phrases to use in encyclopedia articles:

  • Currently, now, nowadays, since, these days, today. Anything qualified by these words can change. Instead of "John Doe currently plays for the Hometown Cougars", you could say, "In 2012, John Doe started playing for the Hometown Cougars."

Wording and expressions

Wrong Right
He is from Irish descent. He is of Irish descent.
between 1946 to 1955 between 1946 and 1955
or
from 1946 to 1955
He is (married, governor, etc.) since 2014. He has been (married, governor, etc.) since 2014.
(although it's better not to use a wording that needs
"since" because that can go out of date)
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