Talk:German radio intelligence operations during World War II

Note: Version history for this article is contained at General der Nachrichtenaufklärung. scope_creep (talk) 12:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup tag revert

@Scope creep: Greetings! There was no edit summary on this revert and I'm afraid I don't understand the reason? -- Beland (talk) 19:22, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Beland: Mainly because nobody is going to update the article. The whole article needs a copyedit, not a cleanup, so that tag will sit there with no effect. Also I used '' for quotes and have done since 2005. scope_creep^Talk 19:34, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Scope creep: Ah, if you want a complete copyedit, I can add {{copyedit}} which will send the article to the very active Guild of Copy Editors. Someone will take care of that probably in the next 90 days or so. Using italics for English quotes is specifically disallowed by the current Manual of Style; see MOS:NOITALQUOTE. -- Beland (talk) 19:49, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Beland: I apreciate your comment. I doubt it will get copyedited anytime soon, as its not a mainstream article, but you could give it a try. I know the '' is outside MOS, but when I started I didn't want to change editing flow unless it slowed down the creation of articles, or tripped me up, somehow. I had to change the British English date format I would have normally used in 2006-2007, which should be 12th August 2021 instead of what is sanctioned 12 August 2021. At the time, I was fed a whole bunch of nonsense and wasn't able to get consensus on it and it put me in a real downer, which almost made me leave wikipedia. The whole system is orientated towards American English, which is unfortunate. Ultimately the MOS is a just a guideline, and on these non-mainstream articles the italics are a small thing and likely never be changed, unless it is done by script. The article I'm working on at the moment, the Red Orchestra (espionage) will go through GA and will be changed by the copyeditors, in a few months, when it is finished. scope_creep^Talk 20:11, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't have any doubt; the Guild works through its backlog systematically, by date of tagging. It was in fact an automated style checker that found the problems with this article.

I don't think of the MOS as a competition between nations. It's mostly a collection of arbitrary choices made for consistency, with some influence from considerations for clarity and brevity and universal accessibility. Sometimes American conventions are used, sometimes British, and sometimes the options don't break down across national lines. We certainly accept contributions in whatever style editors are comfortable with, as long as the efforts of other editors to introduce conformity with the manual aren't obstructed. -- Beland (talk) 20:36, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Beland: I figured it was automatic script that found it. I noticed that the tag you put on for a quotes was a public domain source. All the quotes in the articles are messages that were transmitted by radio. I don't know how that changes it, if at all. I spent a considerable amount of time defending British English articles against editors who insist on making then into American English.If the British editors left tommorrow, all the mainstream British English articles would become American English within months. They're is no doubt about that. It is a fact of life on here. The manual supports that and is biased towards American English, as they are the most predominate editors, the ones who wrote it. It is written from American audiences.scope_creep^Talk 21:57, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, yes. If all the French-speaking editors left Wikipedia, I would hardly expect the remaining editors to write in a language they don't speak. -- Beland (talk) 02:02, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Beland: I've changed. I've started to use proper quote marks per the MOS. I'll go back and change this article to suit the MOS, i.e. using quotes instead of italics. scope_creep^Talk 01:11, 19 November 2023 (UTC)