User:Chi And H/Model page with notes

In this model page with notes I try to collect what I learn about writing Wikipedia pages. This should also contain pointers to the authoritative pages of Wikipedia.

Structure of the article
The lead section is what comes before the first headline (other than the page title). It has to repeat the title in bold and has to quickly say what it is or means. An infobox or an main image are also common. A table of contents is included automatically if there are enough headings in the article. The TOC can be placed explicitly or suppressed.

The lead section is often preceded by a short description template.

Images
ESO pictures are under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0 unported) licence, unless the credit byline states otherwise (check that only ESO holds copyright; if credit is shared with others the licence becomes unclear). Apparently, we can download these (highest resolution JPG) from ESO, cut away the decoration (caption, copyright notice, logo), and upload them to the Wikimedia Commons using the Template:eso template in the permission. To give credit provide hyperlink to the page with the image original. The Commons has the category "European Southern Observatory Images" with sub-categories for Very Large Telescope. Separately there is a category Paranal with sub-category VLT Survey Telescope.

Appendices and beyond
The main text is followed by several appendices, which should be in this order (though some can be omitted):
 * 1) See also: A bullet list of other Wikipedia articles.
 * 2) Notes and references (see below)
 * 3) Further reading: Similar to the references this is a bullet list of non-web sources for further information. These are items not used as source in the article.
 * 4) External links: Similar to the see-also list this lists web resources. This can be included in Further reading if both are short.

The above are level-2 headings. A few further items are visually separate from the article and look like surrounding decoration. They have no headings.


 * 1) Related to categories and portals there may be a box that should be included in each of a large group of articles. This would be referred to by the box name in double curly braces.
 * 2) Practically mandatory is to put the article in one or more categories. These are referred to by the Wikipedia page name (i.e. in double square brackets) in the Category namespace.
 * 3) Also mandatory if applicable are the links to corresponding pages in other language Wikipedias. These are also in double square brackets like Wikipedia page names, but with a language code and colon in front of the page name.

References and notes
Ideally, for everything the article says a source is identified. For this the reference section contains the references/ tag, or better the reflist template. The ref tags are placed in the text where the reader will see a superscripted number in square brackets. Inside the ref /ref tag pair is the identification of the source. The ref tag should be given a name parameter. Repeat use of the same source is then by the combined ref/ tag without source specification, but with the name of the ref tag that has it. The multitude of ref tags is evaluated in the reference section due to the presence of the references/ tag.

Even better is to use the cite templates, in particular cite book, cite magazine, cite web and cite news. These specify the source. As such this could be used in an explicit list, such as the further reading section. Better, to also use it in the ref tags and then to replace the references/ tag with the reflist template. The advantage here is that the wikipedian gives parameters values to the template and the template will format all references consistently for the reader.

The ref tag serves to place the superscripted number in the text. These pair with the reflist template. The cite templates serve to format a source from parametrised information into a consistent form. This can be used within the ref tags, but also elsewhere, such as an item list for further reading.

In old usage, few, widely used references are manually formatted lists of sources. In one step, these could be each converted to cite templates. In another step the cite templates could be moved into ref tags in the text, wherever the source is applicable. In this, multiple use of the same source should use the same name to the ref tag and the source information should be entered only in one of those ref tags.

The article on Pluto manages to have two separate lists of notes. In the notes section it has two columns and contains the list template "reflist|2|group=note". The references section has an almost regular template "reflist" and is single-column. The first reflist template assembles inline references that have the group attribute set to note, in the list these say "note 5" rather than the usual "5". The second reflist seems to collect the remaining inline references.

Wikilinks
Links to other pages are the bread and butter of Wikipedia. These occur inline and are coded with a double pair of square brackets. Within the brackets is the title of the other page. If the highlighted text is to be different, then it can be added following a pipe character: alternative page. If it is only a matter of capitalisation of the first word, one would just use other page, i.e. the case desired in the text. Page titles are singular, if the plural is required in the text, this can also be handled. Tricky is the case where the text uses a page title that exists multiple times. E.g. Mercury leads to a different page than Mercury (planet) so that it may be necessary to something like Gillian Wright. More subtle are cases where the highlighted text is a redirecting title of a page. It is better to use the pipe character and give the primary title as link and the intuitive title as highlighted text.

Typography
It is permissible to use HTML encoding of non-ASCII characters like &uuml;, &copy; or &euro;. It makes searching a bit simpler if the character is entered directly (ü, ©, €), though a robot may come round your page to accomplish this for you.

Block quotations should be made with the quote template, not with the colon for indentation.

The hyphen is the ASCII character on your keyboard. This is not as wide as a plus sign, so a minus sign should be inserted as &amp;minus;. There are also two dashes, &amp;ndash; and &amp;mdash; (-, &minus;, –, &mdash;). Speaking of the minus sign, the standard is to use a &amp;times; (&times;) when a decimal number is followed by a power of 10, and int other places where the multiplication sign cannot simply be left out.

The hyphen binds two words together (face-to-face). The en dash separates words without space (1933–1944, time–altitude graph). This leads to subtleties like German–French border and German-French trade. I am not convinced of the value of the en dash. Commonly, interruption in a sentence - in anglosaxon use - is indicated by an em dash without spacing. A permissible alternative is to use en dashes with spacing.

I prefer to use the hyphen almost exclusively. Without spacing it is a hyphen or replaces an en dash, which is too subtle a distinction anyway. With spacing it replaces the em dash. But a minus should be typed as &amp;minus; to be consistent with the plus sign.

ISO 8601 dates should not be used in text, only in tables or long lists. Best use the format "12 April 1923", with "April 12, 1923" as illogical alternative. Use either AD and BC or CE and BCE. AD can precede or follow the number, the others follow the number. Approximate years are given as c. 1923. Decades are given without apostrophe (the 1960s). Centuries are given as 19th century.

Billion is 109. Values can use M and bn, as in &pound;5M and &euro;30bn, if this is used repeatedly, the first instance of billion should be written out. Large numbers have commas, like 5,000,000 (but years do not).

In text, normally use per cent or percent. % can be used (unspaced) in scientific contexts, ranges should have only one % sign at the end. Units are separated by a non-breaking space, have no dot or plural s; use in and not ", ft and not '. The degree sign on its own is immediately behind the number (no space), but &deg;C has a space between the number and the unit. K (Kelvin) has no degree sign. Arc minutes and arc seconds are set like degrees, use &deg; ' and ", no space in front of these, and no space when two or three are concatenated (5&deg;10'25"). Times use colons (14:20 or 2:20 pm). Currency symbols precede the number without space, if the symbol is plain letters there should be a space (&euro;5 or EUR 5).

Code readability
I like to add more space than others. However multiple blank lines do change spacing! And a paragraph must be on a single line of code (the editor splitting lines on word boundaries). I put space characters behind bullets and table field starts, between heading text and heading level indicator. I put blank lines around headings and between paragraphs, others sometimes remove some of these.

Third or more language
Most articles exist in more than one language. They have links to the other languages. When we add a third or second language, we have to update those links (add one in each of old articles). This is up to a Wikidata database, where the article has an antry (one for all languages and some other common data). This is how it works in the English Wikipedia, it has to be done in one of the old languages. The pages in all Wikipedias should now have the additional interlanguage link.
 * 1) From the languages menu, choose to add a language, then to change inter-language links. This opens in the middle of a Wikidata entry "Wikipedia", where the existing languages are listed.
 * 2) Click on edit. A form to "set an item sitelink" opens. The ID should be filled in.
 * 3) Add the site ID of the new laguange, e.g. "enwiki".
 * 4) Add the sitelink, the title of the new page within that Wikipedia.
 * 5) Click to set the sitelink. The updated Wikidata entry is shown
 * 6) If you scroll down to the Wikipedia part, there should now be the additional language and page title.

Second language
I the article so far exists only in German, the infrastructure for interlanguage links does not exist already. The process then is different. The creation of the en page causes (i) the new page to be added to Wikidata, but also (ii) the de original to be added to the same item, so that the identification between the two pages exists automatically. I am not sure how this happens. It could be (i) due to the exact same title, (ii) due to the translation comment in the edit comment, (iii) due to the translation note in the talk page, (iv) the de original contained norm data, which has now appeared in the Wikidata entry.

For other languages than German, interlanguage links are already via Wikidata and even pages without other languages already have a Wikidata entry. Simply open this from the original language page to add the enwiki link as above.

Merge
What follows is abbreviated and assumes no discussion.

Merging two pages means copying both contents into one of the two pages, and then replacing the obsolete page with a redirect to the surviving, merged page. Possibly contentious mergers should be discussed first.
 * 1) Move the content of the disappearing page to the surviving page, initially en bloc. In the edit summary of the surviving page say "Merged content from (ref to other page)".
 * 2) Reconcile the talk pages. In particular, copy (!) the WikiProject templates, then give each in the disappearing page the class=redirect attribute.
 * 3) Empty the disappearing page and enter into it "#REDIRECT (ref to surviving, expanded page) (R from merge)" where one is a wikilink and the other a template. Publish with edit summary "Merged content to (ref to other page)".
 * 4) The talk page of the disappearing page survives.
 * 5) If non-free images have been moved, their description may need a change.
 * 6) Improve the surviving page for the unfortunate en-bloc copy.

Move (rename)
The tools menu has the item Move to rename the current page. Usually, move the talk page with the main page. Give a reason (similar to an edit summary). The old page becomes are redirect to the new page. Double redirects will not work, but are fixed by a bot within a day or two.

Redirect
This is the case where a page is good and well, but should be found also under a different name. That other name is a redirect.

The tricky bit may be the creation of a new page without a reference to it. But if a redirect is in order then there is probably a wikilink to it somewhere, which can be used to open the new page for creation. The content is merely the redirect instruction as outlined above: "#REDIRECT (ref to proper page)".

An existing redirect can be edited to make it an article or to correct the target of the redirection.

Image upload
Go to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Main_Page for this. This is single-signon with Wikipedia.
 * 1) Click "Upload file" on the left.
 * 2) Click on "entirely my own work", if that is the case.
 * 3) Locate the local file.
 * 4) Select a destination file name, which should be descriptive.
 * 5) Enter the date of the picture.
 * 6) If relevant, put the location into the "additional info", in the form, where latitude comes before longitude and longitude is positive East of Greenwich.
 * 7) Select as licence CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL.
 * 8) Click to upload.