User:Stilltim

My name is Tim Westbrook and I am IT manager for New Castle County Government in Delaware. I am an amateur historian, arm chair traveler, and observer of the political scene. I also have a religious interest, particularly of the Anglican/Episcopal church community. Wikipedia has given me the opportunity to combine these interests with a long felt desire to write about them- for which I am grateful.

Laid out below are the components and the approach I am using as a standard in putting some articles together. There is nothing sacred about most of them and I am very interested in feedback from others so that I might improve their quality. My point in detailing all this is to provide a place for potential editors to at least try and understand my purpose.


 * }

Articles
I am working as a contributer/writer more than an editor, and rarely edit articles that fall outside the scope of the two projects listed below.

1. There is now at least a starter article written for every Delaware Governor, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Representative. Many of these go well beyond starter articles. My priority is to improve the remaining starter articles in these groups: about 2 Governors, 6 Senators, and 20 Representatives. I would also like to add articles on other notable Delaware political figures such as certain members of the Delaware Judiciary, Delaware General Assembly, some Mayors of Wilmington, some members of certain politically active families, and some defeated major party candidates. This project also includes several lists of these people and artcles describing their positions. While much is done, there is no end in sight.

2. There is now a standard format article for half of the ordinal U.S. Congresses: the 1st Congress through the 56th U.S. Congress. Most of these have 3 peripheral articles with supplementary information. While some editing remains to be done, they are largely complete. My priority is to complete the editing, particularly regarding membership changes and name linking. There is also a need to compare and contrast data in other congressional articles and lists to assure their consistency. In due time I would like to complete the series up to the present, and the next phase of the project will be to take it up to the 72nd Congress. It would be nice to think this project could be complete by the time the 111th Congress convenes.

Standard layout
It is my intent to follow the biographical guidelines as I read and understand them. Hence a name, summary lead paragraph, paragraph(s) about family and early career, paragraph(s) about major point(s) of interest, and concluding paragraph on death and legacy. I like the way this organizes the article, both the visuals and content.

Included

 * Infobox: I now use the greatly improved and very flexible Politician infobox. It is a generic politician box and works better in general than boxes for a particular kind of politician. Many of these folks have held more than one office, so Governor or Senator specialized boxes often don't work. Even though the information in the boxes is completely redundant, they provide a nice quick view. I am continously running into other editors trying to force an office specific infobox into this place. While it may make sense for current office holders to use these specific infoboxes, until they fully incorporate information about other offices held, they are unsatisfactory, and I will remove them.


 * Succession Box: I am using the "s-start" template for these and find it to be perfect so far. It handles full dates, no wrapping and a nice simple header. Knowing where to draw the line on when to use a succesion box is an unresolved problem for me as well. In some cases they are obviously overused. Use for a "succession" of candidacies doesn't seem to make much sense, nor does the practice of including non-succession information, like who they served with. So, I've limited their use to positions or offices when there is more or less continuous occupation and a clear and specific predecessor/successor. Here also there seems to be a drive to use office specific lines in the succession box, which produces odd looking inconsistencies between offices. I think the overall visual effect is important, and I have worked to keep the presentation consistent, clean and simple. The placement of this box has also sometimes become an issue for some editors.


 * Public offices and election results: I've added two boxes to all elected officials detailing their offices held and the record of their elections. I will be references the ordinal Congresional articles to show who they served with, and hopefully someday will produce comparable articles for the Delaware General Assembly.


 * References and external links: I add as many of these as I can come up with. At the very least we can provide a good bibilography. I am also trying to list places where people can find more information on the topic. These museums, libraries and whatever need all the help they can get to survive- and none of this information would be available if they didn't.


 * Footnotes: the new footnote in place methodology is simple and works great. What an improvement.

Problems

 * Creativity: Being bold, even within the written Wikipedia policies is difficult in this environment of some over zealous editors. Experimenting with tame and harmless new ways of presenting information is very difficult because of a very few editors who would seem to refuse to give the creative any room to create. If they don't undo the ideas, they subject them to endless mind numbing debate, among people who struggle to even understand the issue.


 * Navigation Boxes: Alas, my thick head has finally come to realize what several editors have been trying to convey for some time: namely that multiple navigation boxes, even when well designed are too much for an article and are really just unneeded decoration. If they are poorly designed or designed inconsistently (which is inevitable) then there is almost no possiblity of them doing the article justice. I am as responsible as anyone for the proliferation of these things; I designed the first Governor's navigation box, then the Lt Governor. Now it seems everything in the article needs a navigation box to support it. And, naturally, well intentioned writers and editors end up spending much too much time fussing over them at the expense of building content. The only solution I see is to cut back to one or two of the smallest, simplist boxes that lead the reader into the categories and rely on lists and the categories to help the reader navigate. With a little work the category groupings can be much more intuitive than they are now, although the display of the data in columns is pretty crude looking and probably needs some programming help.


 * Naming: The standard calls for the name to be the most commonly used name. I don't think this standard was ever intended to replace the most commonly used real names with "nicknames," although that has become the accepted practice among many writers. Indexes/redirects should, of course, accomodate all likely variants of the name, including nicknames. For instance, I think "Joe Biden" should be "Joseph R. Biden, Jr."


 * Categories: This whole concept seems fundamentally flawed as the information really needs to go into a database that can be queried. I had pretty much given up on them in favor of navigation boxes, but since the navigation boxes have failed for the reasons given above, more use of the categories is required.


 * Footnotes and/or References: Since "no original work" is permitted, and since I have no particular qualification to write original work, it is critical that the source of all this information be pretty obvious. Listing them all as references is a good start, but I'm still not clear on how often to place footnotes. Perhaps this is freshman Composition 101 that I have forgotten and need to relearn. Right now I am meaning to reference every work, published or web-based, that contributes to the articles, footnoting direct quotes, and showing bibliographical web information as external links.


 * Images: Understanding the legal copyright status of images is the single most difficult problem I have encountered. The next most difficult is dealing with the "editors" who may know even less than I do. The rules are exactly right, I think, but constructive help in applying them would be useful. I still can't imagine what form that would take in this environment.


 * Spelling: I've become lazy in my old age and an easy to use spell checker would sure be nice.

Wikipedia contribution tree.  Wikipedia user edit counter. 

I enjoy continuing to "noodle" with most of these articles, adding to them as I pick up new information or understanding. I will "watch" and edit the changes made to them, though, to try and keep them consistent with the standard. Many changes have been helpful, although an increasing number are disruptive. I dread school vacation time. The good ones correct my poor grammar, spelling and other stupid mistakes. Thank-you. The disruptive ones cause an enormous loss of time debating and correcting. Regrettably, the addition of meaningful content to any of these articles has been very unusual.

Quick links

 * Wikipedia Signpost
 * User:Stilltim/test
 * Template talk:Cite book
 * Template talk:Cite journal
 * Template:Cite web
 * Naming conventions (people)
 * Image copyright tags
 * Disambiguation pages with links
 * WikiProject Biography
 * WikiProject Delaware
 * WikiProject Military history
 * WikiProject Pennsylvania
 * WikiProject Politics
 * WikiProject U.S. Congress
 * WikiProject U.S. counties
 * WikiProject U.S. states
 * WikiProject United States
 * WikiProject Succession Box Standardization
 * Template:NavigationBox
 * References converter
 * User:PaulHanson/Style guide