User:ThunderingTyphoons!/sandbox

About me

Hoorah, I've made it to 1 year on Wikipedia!

I'm 19 and I live in Sheffield in the United Kingdom. My home town is way down south in Farnborough, Hampshire. I like languages and can speak French well, hence a love of all things Tintin. I enjoy philosophising about stuff and particularly like John Stuart Mill's views on liberty. After doing my A Levels at The Sixth Form College Farnborough, I now study a BA (Hons) degree in French and Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. At uni, I have also learned how to speak basic 'tourist' Russian. Xорошó!

Being a 'lazy unemployed student', I volunteer, was a scout for many years and have been a young leader and a helper at a Beaver Scout colony. I'm a fan of transport in general, although I particularly like rail-based public transport and wholeheartedly support these current UK infrastructure projects: High Speed Two, the Sheffield to Rotherham Tram Train, London Overground and Crossrail. Although I've still got plenty of hope for the future, I think politics in my country, and around the world, is deeply flawed and damaged (I'm a cheerful bugger too!).

I am learning new things here all the time, but still make mistakes. I'm not planning to upset anyone on here, but if you think I have, don't hesitate to contact me. Oh, and please stop by and admire my impressive/obsessive (delete as appropriate) collection of user boxes, with which you can learn more about me than you'll ever want to know. I completely believe in Wikipedia's goals and think if we all work together, it has the potential to be the great library of our time.

"How did I get here? More importantly, how can I leave?"

My work

As I am fairly new to Wikipedia, most of my edits so far have been small and cosmetic. I have done things such as add links in some bus-related articles, provided up to date information and new refs for Liverpool Waters and Farnborough (Main) railway station. These have largely been confined to short stub pages to help me to get to grips with the system here, as like many editors I am largely self-taught on how to edit Wikipedia sensibly. I enjoy patrolling stub articles and improving their quality through better spelling and grammar and neutralisation of any POV. As I learn more, I hope to progress to a greater contribution on larger articles.

My most significant work on Wikipedia is:

• Climate of Spain
• The French version of Farnborough, Hampshire
• I am now working to improve and expand The Scout Association page.
• I'm currently reviewing all place articles related to the Aldershot Urban Area (my local area) because I've noticed some are quite subjectively written and lack enough citations. So far, I've made significant cosmetic changes to Blackwater, Hampshire, Frogmore, Hampshire, Darby Green and Yateley but have endeavoured to retain all existing information wherever possible. I've also added several reputable sources and new information to Farnborough North railway station, where before there were no sources at all.

Yeah, it's not a very impressive list but hopefully this will get longer over time!

Pages I've created

• Eagle Extra (yes there's only one at the moment!

Useful stuff for editing (mostly here for my own personal use, but anybody may use this information)

• Template on how to give named sources: {{cite web |url=http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/buses-and-trains/bus-timetables/camberley-farnborough-and-yateley-bus-timetables |title=Camberley, Farnborough and Yateley bus timetables |accessdate=12 May 2012}}. Just insert a ref as normal and then use this as reference text. Only the title will show on the article (in the sources list at the bottom of the page)

• Template on how to link to a specific section on a page: [[Stagecoach South#Stagecoach in Hants & Surrey|Stagecoach in Hants and Surrey]]. For example, this text as a link would navigate to the Stagecoach in Hants and Surrey Section of the page Stagecoach South.

• A tip from User:Mrmatiko, use the tags <nowiki> (at the beginning of a template) and </nowiki> (at the end) to annul any formatting, so to allow the whole formula to be displayed outside of edit mode.

• When dating tags, use the format 'date=x', for example {{Citation needed|date=January 2013}}.

Some useful tags

• {{refimprove}} creates .
• {{no references}} creates .
• {{original research}} creates .
• {{ref improve section}} creates .
• {{unreferenced section}} creates .

• To create in-line tags, follow this useful link

• Similarly, to access the beginning-of-text notice boxes' templates, follow this link

Major vs Minor Edits (copied straight from this official guidance page)

When to mark an edit as a minor edit

• Spelling and grammatical corrections
• Simple formatting (e.g., capitalization, punctuation, or properly adding italics to non-English words, like folie des grandeurs)
• Formatting that does not change the meaning of the page (e.g., moving a picture, splitting one paragraph into two – where this is not contentious)
• Obvious factual errors (e.g., changing "Nixon resigned in 1874" to "Nixon resigned in 1974")
• Fixing layout errors
• Adding or correcting wikilinks, or fixing broken external links and references already present in the article
• Removing vandalism and graffiti

When not to mark an edit as a minor edit

• Adding or removing content in an article
• Adding or removing visible tags or other templates in an article
• Adding or removing references or external links in an article
• Adding comments to a talk page or other discussion

Please support:

2 separate links:

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia for World Heritage (official page)
• Wikipedia for World Heritage (stub article)