Wikipedia:WikiProject Lead Cleanup

This page in a nutshell: The lead should point to the body and its references. It should then be visually clean and appealing.

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Welcome to WikiProject Lead Cleanup. Several Wikipedians have formed this collaboration resource and group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of [[{{{1}}}]] and the organization of information and articles on this topic. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject {{{1}}}|talk page]], and see the to-do list, below.

Goals

• Promote the primacy of article body content and references over content in the lead. The lead is a summary of the body and gets its authority from the body and its references. Therefore it should more clearly point to the specific sections in the body where those references are found.
• Make leads clean and visually appealing by getting rid of numbered refs. No refs in the lead!
• Get the idea of "no refs in the lead" made a policy/MOS. Currently, all contested content must have a reference, even in the lead. The widely-accepted practice of avoiding references in the lead is not policy. Let's change that by offering a substitute for those references.
• Use discrete "section links" in the lead to point directly to the relevant content and sources in the body.
• Avoid blue wikilinks in the lead that take readers away from the article. It is preferable to point to the content in the body.

Scope

• MOS changes
• PAG changes
• Ultimately all leads will adopt these ideas

Editing advice

• Default layout for the leads in articles. Include various categories applicable to the topic.
• Style advice - how to best apply the WP:MOS guideline and its sub-guidelines to this topic area.

Open tasks

{{to do}} included when substituted

• Develop a testing grounds subpage. (see section below)
• Style advice. What symbol works best?
• Should templates be used?
• Other ideas and concerns
• At some point in time, one or more RfCs will be necessary. The ideas must be tested successfully before doing that. All possible stumbling stones must be removed first.

Participants

Primary contact(s): Valjean

Please feel free to add yourself here and indicate any areas of particular interest. What talents do you bring to the project?

1. Valjean (talk · contribs) I am interested in getting these ideas carried out in practice. I don't know coding or template development, so others can do that. 16:16, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Demonstration/test article

• Create a Testing grounds here

Resources and discussions

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section
• Background
  • Wikipedia talk:How to create and manage a good lead section#Lead section refs (leadrefs) development
• History
  • Talk:Donald Trump#Leadrefs
  • Talk:Donald Trump#Discussion of section references in the lead
  • Talk:Donald Trump# Squigglies, throughout the page

Templates

• Ideas for templates

Categories

• To display all subcategories click on the "►":

Resources