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Josh P,
Just seeing if I am doing this right. Your topic sounds interesting. I have never heard of it before. I look forward to reading about it. -jjwiki14
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Hi Joshp - Test edit - jjwiki14 edit
Josh P,
- Just seeing if I am doing this right. Your topic sounds interesting. I have never heard of it before. I look forward to reading about it. -jjwiki14
Hi Josh, I'm so sorry for being incommunicado lately! I see you've begun your first article. Let me make a couple suggestions/comments. Everything I'm linking below is information you can and probably should read for some more insight on what governs the content and formatting of our encyclopedia articles, if you haven't seen them already:
Content:
- We need some more context about what exactly the plan is - is it a blueprint for new buildings? is it a conceptual five-year plan? - and some description of it. So ideally the article would open with a statement like "The Wilma Dykeman RiverWay Plan is a planned foo, with the aim of increasing bar for x, y, and z reasons." This is called the lede or lead, where you summarize what the article is going to talk about.
- Then in the body of the article, you would go on and give more detail about the whos and whats. "...design to redevelop Asheville’s urban riverfront corridor" could turn into "design featuring this thing, and this other thing, and that third thing, to redevelop Ashville's urban riverfront corridor, which [reason why redevelopment is called for]". Remember that this is an encyclopedia article, and encyclopedias thrive on abundant facts.
- Once you have more detail in the article, you'll want to remove some of the less neutral language that's in the article now. Calling the plan a "grand and ambitious design," for example, or its implementation a "daunting and expensive task", are non-neutral statements, and unless they have been made by (and can be cited to) a reliable source, they aren't really valid statements to make in an encyclopedia article. So if Joe Schmoe, important personage of redevelopment, called it "grand and ambitious," you could put that in the article in quotes, but if it's just that everyone seems to think it's that, or that you believe it's that, that's not an appropriate statement to make in a fact-based article.
- In addition, while you're doing a good job sourcing the article so far, one suggestion would be to branch out and start looking for news articles that mention the plan. So while the Riverlink website is a source for facts about the Plan, you're a bit short right now on demonstrating that people other than the nonprofit think the project is worth talking about. Are there local news articles talking about why the plan is good/bad/controversial? Are there, say, more local bloggers buzzing about it? Right now there's not a whole lot of information in the article about why people should find the plan important or why it's worth including in an encyclopedia (the relevant guideline here is our notability guideline).
Formatting:
This is way less important, and we can work on polishing your formatting at any time, but just some information in case you're feeling like an overachiever at the moment!
- We have a manual of style that lays down the format our articles follow. I'm not sure how much instruction you've gotten from your campus ambassador on wikimarkup, so if you have any questions about that feel free to ask.
In general, an article's lede will generally start, "Title of article is a [thing] which [stuff]." Notice the bolding on the article title. The body of the article is broken into sections with headings (the headings are set off by ==Two equals signs==, and if there are more than a few sections, the software will automatically insert a table of contents before the first section heading.
I find that when I'm trying to figure out formatting, it's way easier to just kind of copy an article that already has correct formatting. So for example if I'm editing an article and realize that I don't know how to make nested headings appear in a smaller font like I need them to, I might check out what formatting is used in, say, Edward III of England (which just happens to be an article I have open right now, almost any article will do for modelling off of), by clicking the "Edit" tab on it and seeing what code is being used to make the formatting I need.
Anyway, you're making good progress. I'm adding your article to my watchlist, and I'll continue to give you suggestions and commentary on how it's coming as you bulk it up. Happy editing! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:04, 24 February 2011 (UTC)