User:Fredlesaltique

Hello I'm FredleSaltique! Living in Japan right now, and want to help make Wikipedia better. I speak near-fluent Japanese, decent Spanish, and rudimentary French.

I like copy editing to make articles more accessible to lay readers like myself, especially lead sections. Let me know on my talk page here if I made an error!

Personal guidelines (may change as I learn more):
 * a high school graduate should be able to understand what the subject is without needing to use links to other wiki pages
 * avoid specialized language (jargon) when simpler wording will do. If an unfamiliar term is necessary for precision, explain it if need be or add it in parentheses for more knowledgable readers
 * don't add new info or change the meaning (this is really easy for me to do...). Just because you think something means something, doesn't mean it does.
 * Common usage is defined by what reliable sources use
 * The world won't end if it's not the way I want it. Other folks are almost always trying to help, but they have different experiences that have shaped their outlook and perspective.

How to navigate: articles, talk pages, wiki pages, etc.
You can edit any page on Wikipedia, and there are three main types.

Article pages: most of what is on Wikipedia is article pages, like France or elephant. This is also called the mainspace.

Non-article pages: pages that have to do with Wikipedia itself. You are on one right now--my user page. Easy to distinguish because the title almost always starts with a word followed by a colon.


 * Community or help pages such as Community portal (on the sidebar) or Help:Contents. These pages often have a lot of overlap, so navigating can be tricky.
 * User pages such as User:Fredlesaltique. Every user gets one when they register an account.
 * Disambiguation pages such as New York or Apple (disambiguation) that compare similar articles.
 * Category pages such as Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit. These pages automatically include any page with a certain "tag," but be careful as they aren't comprehensive and might not be well-organized.
 * Other pages such as template pages (Template:Citation), file pages, portal pages, etc.

Talk pages: every page, whether article or non-article, has a paired discussion page called a "talk page." This is where you can discuss with other editors anything related to that page. You can find this in a tab at the top left (next to "Article" on article pages), and the title is always "Talk:" followed by the title (Elephant and talk page Talk:Elephant). User talk pages (like User talk:Fredlesaltique) let you discuss things with that editor.

Pages you can't edit ("special pages"): these aren't quite "pages," because you can't edit them. An example is the "view history" tab, that lets you view an article's history.

How to find a page:


 * Article pages: use the Wikipedia search bar at the top right
 * Non-article pages: best option is to use Google. To use the Wikipedia search bar, then click the magnifying glass symbol. Click "Search in," then check "All" and uncheck "default" (article pages). Now it should return non-article pages.

Visual editor!!!
If you are new, switch to the much easier visual editor. (Why this isn't default who knows.)


 * 1) Make an account if you don't have one (otherwise it's harder to use visual).
 * 2) Click on the "Edit source" tab (in between "Read" and "View History").
 * 3) In the bar at the top of the edit box (starts with B I buttons), to the far right is a pencil icon.
 * 4) Click the pencil icon, and in the drop down menu select "Visual editor."
 * 5) Voilà
 * 6) From then on, the edit mode defaults to whatever you last used. You can change it to always prefer one in Preferences.

Note: Talk pages can only be edited in source mode. :/

Merging
Merging

Source page = content to be merged; destination page = page to be merged into


 * 1) If uncontroversial, skip steps 2-6
 * 2) Create discussion on destination page
 * 3) Tag source page with [merge from] and destination page with [merge to] template (see below)
 * 4) Close the merger discussion with [discussion top] and [discussion bottom templates] after consensus
 * 5) Remove [merge to] template on source page.
 * 6) Place [old merge full template] on source talk page
 * 7) Copy any information as necessary from source page to destination page
 * 8) Place redirect template on source page
 * 9) Merge talk page history and project pages if necessary
 * 10) Remove merge template on destination page

Deletion
See Deletion process.

Speedy deletion: obviously should be deleted

Proposed deletion: not obvious, but likely uncontroversial


 * 1) Nominate: place the   tag at the top of the page.
 * 2) Add  tag or other appropriate text to contributor talk pages.
 * 3) If no one removes in 7 days, then admin will check and either delete or keep the article.

Discussion ("Articles for deletion" or AfD): likely controversial, or if the above have failed



Pillars, policies, guidelines, essays
Pillars = core policies of Wikipedia; policy = widely accepted, should normally follow; guideline = best practice, good to follow; essay = no consensus

List of policies and guidelines

Pillar 5: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."

Lead text for lists (guideline)
Describe the subject of the list. Good example at List of Benet Academy alumni.

Manual of Style/Lead section

Jargon
Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do.

See Manual of Style: Technical language.

"Refers to"
Avoid constructions like "[Subject] refers to..." or "...is a word for..."

Helpful mark-up, templates, and tags
In source mode, templates go between double braces.

In visual mode, click Insert > Template. Search for and add the quoted template name below.

Templates
In source mode, templates go between double braces.

In visual mode, click Insert > Template. Search for and add the quoted template name below.

Add footnote to sidebar title
| population_footnotes            =

Citation styles
To add a source that isn't a default one (website, book, news, journal), after clicking on "Cite," click "basic form" then click "insert template." Here are some useful ones:

Laws
Use "cite act" template.

"[Title]" trans-title. Article [article], [Type] No. [index] of [date] (in [language]).

Use [url] parameter to add hyperlink.

(Unfortunately, no way to mention database law was taken from, or date of translation.)

Sandbox
Helpful tool to edit an article without publishing it after every session!


 * 1) At the top left, click Sandbox and then click edit (visual or source, doesn't matter). You should be in edit mode now.
 * 2) In another browser tab, open the article you want to edit and likewise click on edit (visual or source, whichever your sandbox is in).
 * 3) Then, while in edit mode, copy the text from the article you want to edit, go to Sandbox, and paste.
 * 4) Voila, now you can edit away at leisure with all the links intact. Save by publishing changes in the sandbox.
 * 5) When you're all done, do the same steps in reverse, and publish the article.

(This is super helpful for translations and for longer edits to infrequently-updated articles).

Things I've noticed that could be changed
Editorial trends
 * difficulty of navigating non-article space
 * sidebar link redundancy
 * Tab wording: Discuss page, not Talk page; Edit grayed out when View only
 * Talk page format is difficult to navigate: no nesting of comments, no automatic notifications, no way to write comment only instead of editing entire page
 * Requesting a professional redo of Wikipedia
 * Default to Visual Editor, not Source Editor
 * High threshold for Extended Editor; perhaps certification would be better?
 * Require alphabet only for user names
 * New article requirements are quite strict, or at least, they are made out to be so on the Help pages. Is there a way to make this less strict?


 * Long parentheticals on pronunciation, etc. are cluttering to the article
 * Linking is useful, but it should not be necessary to understand most articles. I think you should assume a reader won't have the time to use a link, and should write in such a way as to accommodate it. Examples: Formosa (modern Taiwan), Fascist era (1922-1943), comune (municipality)
 * Directions: "20 km south of London" is more descriptive than "20 km from London"

Smaller changes


 * No [no wiki] template available in Visual Editor

Good examples of lead texts
Google Books

Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Locator_maps_of_municipalities_in_Kagawa_prefecture

Tatami

A tatami (畳) is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Tatami are made in standard sizes, twice as long as wide, about 0.9 m by 1.8 m depending on the region. In martial arts, tatami are the floor used for training in a dojo and for competition.

Tatami are covered with woven soft rush (藺草, igusa) straw. The core is traditionally made from rice straw, but contemporary tatami sometimes have compressed wood chip boards or polystyrene foam cores. The long sides are usually edged (縁, heri) with brocade or plain cloth, although some tatami have no edging.

German East Africa (German: Deutsch-Ostafrika) (GEA) was a German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, the Tanzania mainland, and the Kionga Triangle, a small region later incorporated into Mozambique.

The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a large country in North America, stretching between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with 50 states including Alaska in the northwest and the islands of Hawaii in the Pacific. Bordering Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, it is the third-largest (by land area) and third-most populous country in the world, with 331 million people. The capital is Washington D.C. while the most populous city is New York, an important center for global finance. The United States is a "melting pot" of many cultures and ethnicities, and has been profoundly shaped by centuries of immigration. It has a highly diverse climate and geography over its large area, from hot deserts and snowy mountains in the west to cool forests in the east. Though most of its population lives in its 50 states, the United States includes the capital's federal district, five island territories and several uninhabited islands in the Caribbean and Pacific, and 326 Indian reservations with limited sovereignty.