User:Robin Patterson/English notes

Talofa lava, greetings! This is an introductory page for the thousands of Samoans whose first language is English (according to Ethnologue)and it will be useful for the hundreds of thousands who understand English.

Welcome to Wikipedia!

This subdomain is reserved for the Samoan language Wikipedia. At the moment, there are 1,187 articles in Samoan.

It may take a while before this Samoan-language Wikipedia is very useful as an encyclopedia. But it has some material worth reading already, with only a handful of contributors. Some people will enjoy contributing, knowing that their work will later be enjoyed by someone else. The more the merrier!

Ways you can improve it

If you have Samoan-speaking friends, please encourage them to view the Main Page then to write or translate some articles suggested by the lists there and to add to the lists.

Have a look at the page for "2004". Maybe you have access to some other news source from which you could add another event for 2004, with double square brackets to create links to articles that have been or can be written, then someone may be able to write an article about something mentioned in the event. If you have a copy of a news item but want someone else to add it to "2004", put a note (with a copy of the material) on the "Talk" page of one of the recent contributors, eg User_talk:Robin_Patterson

The red links or questionmarks that you will see on most pages usually stand for articles that deserve to be written but that nobody has started on. If you or your Samoan-speaking friends could click on a link you know something about and write a couple of Samoan sentences, then "Save page" (preferably after a look using "Show preview"), that would be a good start and might inspire others to join in.

To "fix" the red links on as many pages as possible, find one of the "Most Wanted Pages" (http://sm.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Wantedpages) and create an article that is currently a "dead-end" link on more than one page.

A useful page for people willing to translate articles from English, is:

Wikipedia:Wikipedia English Language articles about Samoan subjects

How to edit

The basics

The bare essential points of editing are:

Type in the edit box, much the same as in any wordprocessing program.
For a new paragraph, you need a complete blank line OR a line starting with either a colon (which produces an indent) or an asterisk (which produces a bullet).
Macrons are in the special characters below the edit box. You may click them or copy-and-paste. Same with other characters shown there.

Fractionally more adventurous things

Other effects may be achieved very quickly if you can see a toolbar (row of little boxes) just above the edit box. But here are the slow ways of doing the most important:

Double square brackets around any word or phrase create an internal jump-link to a page with that name (whether or not one exists). Please use them for any Samoan word or phrase that you think should have an article.
Italic is achieved by putting two apostrophes at each end of the word or phrase;
three each end makes it bold (and note that the first appearance of the page title in the article text should be bold);
five makes it both.
Headings (as above) are made by typing two, three, or four "equals" signs in front of the word or phrase and the same number after it. There are several advantages in doing it that way instead of typing apostrophes for bold text.

Summarise, preview, and save

When all looks good enough:

add a few words of explanation in the "Summary:" line
hit the "Show preview" button
edit further if desired, then if really OK hit the "Save page" button.

More detail

Full explanations of how to edit and navigate can be found on the main English Wikipedia and related pages, eg:

You can start right in (and someone else will be able to improve it if necessary).

Other points

For more information about the Wikipedia project go to the main website at www.wikipedia.org

Find out more about Creating a new language in Wikipedia

Links that have Samoan names: use your mouse to hover over them: that usually reveals an English word of explanation.

Registering costs nothing except a few moments of your time; and it carries some advantages:

you get credit (in the "History", which can be viewed even if the article is later changed) for anything you write,

you can keep personal "quick links" and "to do" lists on your User-page and get to it with one click from any other page, and

you can very quickly add your name (or pseudonym) and the date to the end of "Talk" (discussion-page) paragraphs by typing four tildes (~).

If registered, you may go to Wikipedia:Babel to find how easy it is to display boxes on your User page that show which language[s] you understand.

Each article and each User page has a corresponding talk/discussion page. Use any language you like there. For general discussion of overall ideas, concepts, and criticisms, use the discussion page linked to the Main Page.

Track progress on the statistics page.

Enjoy!! (and please contribute something)

Note that starting a line with a blank produces an unexpected display, which has its uses but is seldom good in ordinary text, like this:

example.