I'm interested in visual artists, primarily artists from Maryland. I especially concentrate on biographical and critical articles about such artists.
The importance of sources, quotes, and links
editLet's face it: many people are wary of Wikipedia articles because of Wikipedia's openness to all contributors. That is the main reason why I am very keen on using lots of quotes, sourced in-line (even if it obstructs the flow a bit), and lots of external links and book sources, and providing external links to Worldcat's "Find in a library" service for all books cited (where possible).
[In fact, I would respectfully suggest that Worldcat links (where possible) for book sources should be standard practice for all Wikipedia articles.]
We who write for Wikipedia cannot expect our readers to take our articles as authoritative oracles in the old-fashioned way that people used to believe anything that appeared in the sacrosanct volumes of Britannica or Worldbook.
But what a Wikipedia article can be — rather than an oracle — is a central locus for gathering, coordinating, and creating a coherent narrative out of information that is so thoroughly and transparently sourced, in a user-friendly way, that any reader can easily check the important assertions in the article and quickly conclude that the article is at the very least solid enough to be taken seriously as a useful guide and starting point for one's own research and analysis.