SEMI-RETIRED
This user is no longer very active on Wikipedia.
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 | This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 9 months and 2 days. |
 | This user received the Editor of the Week award. |
 | This user believes in the right of every human being to have access to Wikipedia. |
| <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 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, conforming to the Manual of Style, undoing vandalism, resolving disputes, etc.) but they aren't my primary focus.
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"). 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.
These are the U.S. political bios that I feel most need upgrades. Not all have recent full-length biographies, unfortunately.
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. A couple Wikithings I recommend: Wikipedia:Vital articles (debate the most important articles on Wikipedia), Portal:Featured content (see some of the best articles on Wikipedia), Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Presidents (self-explanatory).
And here are some random things I like:
User:Orser67/Projects, Other Subpages
