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Questionable minor changes by IP

I see you're an experienced copy editor so I hope you don't mind if I ask for your opinion on some strange IP editing. Can you look at this IP's contributions? I reverted the newest one which was a change of North London to north London on Mick Taylor. The IP's made numerous "Fixed grammar" changes like this, and most have been reverted by other editors. Should the IP be warned? Should the other edits like this be reverted that're still current? Rosario Berganza 10:42, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

From what I can see, it looks like "north London" is preferable. Since it seems to be a static IP, you (and any other editors involved) can leave a note on their talk or the article talk pages. All the best, Miniapolis 15:18, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Just Curious

I spent 1 1/2 hours yesterday editing the article "Disney Publishing Worldwide". This included, among other things, putting magazine titles in italics. I note today that the whole article has somehow been reverted to its original state by user Spshu. I have left a note on his/her talk page suggesting this is unacceptable. Is there anything else I should be doing? Thanks. Twofingered Typist (talk) 15:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Putting a note on the editor's Talk page was the right thing to do. You might have assumed a bit more good faith and asked politely for your edits to be restored rather than starting the conversation with "This is unacceptable behaviour." Edit conflicts from simultaneous edits do happen, and it is up to the editors involved to work them out. Sometimes it is possible to use the article's history to find diffs of article sections that only one of you has touched, then copy and paste those sections into the current version of the article. Sometimes the differences in a section are intermingled so much that it is best to re-do your edits. Other times, one of you just needs to walk away for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:44, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the stalk, Jonesey and TT, just guesstimate how many words you've done and walk away from an edit warrior. Although they've been around a while, they may not know how to deal with edit conflicts; the path of least resistance, which they took, is to just copy-paste their changes over the other editor's. Plenty of other fish ... er, articles in the sea. All the best, Miniapolis 19:59, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Excuse em, Miniapolis, but you are not acting appropriate either by labeling as me as an edit warrior. I try to follow the rules. It is actual against etiquette to bring up any block on me as that is not arguing facts but personalities. You did not look up any reason for those blocks. Second, you have not even made an effort to actual see what is going on. You are acting in bad faith as did the first administrator that block me, did you find that out? I am sorry that I argue facts and that seems to bother many here. edit conflicts: "The edit conflict page gives Alice a chance to reconcile the differences manually." Um, no it doesn't, so don't point to something that does not work. It wipes out what you did and hope that you remember. The only thing you can do is back out and copy what you did then reopen the edit screen and paste it in, which has been the only way to fix it give the number of section effected by the conflicting edits. Did you notice that Twofingered Typist and Jonesey95 did pay any attention to what has gone on like gee an edit to being add back 2fT's edits (edit summary: "Twofingered Typist's corrections") and flew off the handle. No. How about looking into the facts. If any of you had done so I might have been able spend time adding back the errors instead of wasting time explain that you are not paying attention. Spshu (talk) 23:32, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
I was advising a relatively-new editor to avoid getting into an edit war with someone who has been blocked three times for 3RR. Although your chief area of interest seems to be Disney articles, this one was tagged as needing copyediting and TT was  ... well, copyediting it. Miniapolis 00:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Spshu: Fret not: you will get no further response from me. That should give you plenty of time to proceed with "adding back the errors". Happy editing! – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:17, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Population update project

Hi. The 18th edition of Ethnologue just came out, and if we divide up our language articles among us, it won't take long to update them. I would appreciate it if you could help out, even if it's just a few articles (5,000 articles is a lot for just me), but I won't be insulted if you delete this request.

A largely complete list of articles to be updated is at Category:Language articles citing Ethnologue 17. The priority articles are in Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 17 speaker data. These are the 10% that have population figures at least 25 years old.

Probably 90% of the time, Ethnologue has not changed their figures between the 17th and 18th editions, so all we need to do is change "e17" to "e18" in the reference (ref) field of the language info box. That will change the citation for the artcle to the current edition. Please put the data in the proper fields, or the info box will flag it as needing editorial review. The other relevant fields are "speakers" (the number of native speakers in all countries), "date" (the date of the reference or census that Ethnologue uses, not the date of Ethnologue!), and sometimes "speakers2". Our convention has been to enter e.g. "1990 census" when a census is used, as other data can be much older than the publication date. Sometimes a citation elsewhere in the article depends on the e17 entry, in which case you will need to change "name=e17" to "name=e18" in the reference tag (assuming the 18th edition still supports the cited claim).

Remember, we want the *total* number of native speakers, which is often not the first figure given by Ethnologue. Sometimes the data is too incompatible to add together (e.g. a figure from the 1950s for one country, and a figure from 2006 for another), in which case it should be presented that way. That's one use for the "speakers2" field. If you're not sure, just ask, or skip that article.

Data should not be displayed with more than two, or at most three, significant figures. Sometimes it should be rounded off to just one significant figure, e.g. when some of the component data used by Ethnologue has been approximated with one figure (200,000, 3 million, etc.) and the other data has greater precision. For example, a figure of 200,000 for one country and 4,230 for another is really just 200,000 in total, as the 4,230 is within the margin of rounding off in the 200,000. If you want to retain the spurious precision of the number in Ethnologue, you might want to use the {{sigfig}} template. (First parameter in this template is for the data, second is for the number of figures to round it off to.)

Dates will often need to be a range of all the country data in the Ethnologue article. When entering the date range, I often ignore dates from countries that have only a few percent of the population, as often 10% or so of the population isn't even separately listed by Ethnologue and so is undated anyway.

If Ethnologue does not provide a date for the bulk of the population, just enter "no date" in the date field. But if the population figure is undated, and hasn't changed between the 17th & 18th editions of Ethnologue, please leave the ref field set to "e17", and maybe add a comment to keep it so that other editors don't change it. In cases like this, the edition of Ethnologue that the data first appeared in may be our only indication of how old it is. We still cite the 14th edition in a couple dozen articles, so our readers can see that the data is getting old.

The articles in the categories linked above are over 90% of the job. There are probably also articles that do not currently cite Ethnologue, but which we might want to update with the 18th edition. I'll need to generate another category to capture those, probably after most of the Ethnologue 17 citations are taken care of.

Jump in at the WP:LANG talk page if you have any comments or concerns. Thanks for any help you can give!

— kwami (talk) 02:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey, thanks for helping out. One caution, though: at Amarakaeri language, the 2007 figure is the ethnic population, not the speaking population. They very often differ. (Think of Irish.) In this case, note that children only speak it in some communities, and that the ethnic figure includes Huachipaeri as well as Amarakaeri. Oh, and at Aka language, the reason that the date was given as 1986–1996 is that the figure of 15k from Congo is dated 1986; only the CAR figure is from 1996. As for Aghu language, the 3k is for only one variety. We've lumped four ISO languages into one WP article, and the sum of those four is 14k speakers. (In many cases, the lit, or Glottolog, or often Ethnologue itself indicate that several ISO languages are actually dialects of a single language, in which case we generally try to consolidate them.) — kwami (talk) 23:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the guidance, since I'm new at this. So according to this, the Amakaeri speaking population is 500? I'll slow down changing things (except the e18 parameter :-)). All the best, Miniapolis 23:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes. The only speaking population they have is 500 from 1987. Actually, we can't be sure it is the speaking population, since not infrequently Ethn. mixes speakers with the ethnicity. But we know that the second figure is not the speaking population, so we can only hope that the first is correct. (That's why we should really review Ethnologue's sources, but that's impractical with 5,000+ language articles, and in this case their only ref is "SIL", so we would need to write them. Not something I'm going to bother with except in really dubious cases.)
There are lots of little details that can trip you up, but my request was TLDR as it was. At least, it makes it easier that, 90% of the time, there's no change. Sometimes, though, the figure for the primary country is the same, but one of the countries in the collapsed list at the bottom of the Ethn. page has changed. Kinda a pain in the ass to check, but the total number at the top will change as well. I've asked at Wikidata if we could automate this if Ethn. were to provide us with the population figures in their database, but it would still require manual review.
Anyway, don't worry too much. I screwed up hundreds and hundreds of articles before I figured out the bugs, and I'm still finding new ones. Sometimes you can see that the Ethn. figure just can't be right, and can figure out their error. The latest I've found is Macedonian, where I updated the article only to be told by another editor that the ref Ethn. uses (a supposed 2011 census) doesn't exist. SIL appreciates feedback, BTW. I think they're rather overwhelmed, with only a few editors to double check their decades of data. — kwami (talk) 23:29, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

BTW, the reason we mention "census" after the date, as at Ama language (New Guinea), is that census data is very different from other sources. For one thing, a census relies on speaker intuitions as to what their language is. They might, for example, think it's a dialect of Chinese and so report their language as Chinese, when really they speak a completely unrelated language. But, on the other hand, we at least know what date the data is from. With a 1990 publication, rather than a 1990 census, the data might have been copied from a 1980 publication, with was based on field notes from 1970 that incorporated census data from 1960. That's not a hypothetical: I found one case where the data really was collected 40 before the publication date that Ethnologue gives. So, I tried to mention where the data is from a census, and several other editors do the same. — kwami (talk) 23:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'll tread lighter, because it's a big job and I want to give you less work, not more :-). All the best, Miniapolis 00:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
Hey, if people just updated the ref for all the ones that haven't changed, that would be a huge help. Of course, that's the boring bit, and in any case it's good for other editors to know how it's done. Otherwise, what will happen when I stop editing? The other editors who have been involved in discussions on how to handle screwy data are mostly professionals who don't have the time or inclination to take over. — kwami (talk) 02:21, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 March 2015

Tnx

Just to say thank you for taking care of 50 Cent's article. I'm not much into that music, but since his page was highly visited, I thought readers should have the information presented in the most concise way.--Retrohead (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Glad to help. All the best, Miniapolis 21:01, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

FourFiveSeconds

Hey Miniapolis! Do you have time to slightly c/e "FourFiveSeconds"? A user placed a copyright tag and it needs some c/e. Thanks in advance! — Tomíca(T2ME) 01:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm busy; please see the top of this page. Second, the tag I see on the page is for close paraphrasing—not copyediting. WP:PARAPHRASE has information on how to fix that. All the best, Miniapolis 02:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Howard Hille Johnson

The Copyeditor's Barnstar
Miniapolis, I hereby award you The Copyeditor's Barnstar for your comprehensive and thorough copyedit of Howard Hille Johnson. Thank you for your continued extraordinary service to Wikipedia and to the Guild of Copyeditors. -- Caponer (talk) 22:39, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 March 2015

One paragraph copy-edit request

Hi, I was going to ask Baffle gab1978 to do this since he copy-edited the entire article (God of War: Ascension) back in December, but he's taking an indefinite wikibreak. You copy-edited God of War III back in December as well which is why I decided to ask you (which thank you and it is now an FA). I have Ascension at FAC and have added a paragraph as a reviewer brought to my attention a source that talks about a certain feature of the game. Would you be willing to copy-edit this one paragraph? I've posted it here so you won't have to go to the article to find it. If you could ping me on whether you accept or deny this request, that would be great. Thanks.

The development team faced a number of challenges in adding multiplayer to an established single-player franchise. It was a difficult task and the team felt that they had to prove to critics that their multiplayer would not be "tacked on", as critics have panned other established single-player franchises for adding sub-par multiplayer. In tackling this, Santa Monica had to expand their team and hire new members with specialties in areas such as multiplayer, engineering, and design. During the course of development, multiplayer required several rewrites that took longer than expected and delayed their production schedule. The player navigation code had to be completely changed for online play, which was initially designed for co-op. Since multiplayer was new to the team, they did not realize how much work was required to make the experience they had envisioned. The original idea for multiplayer was exclusively co-op, but as development went forward, the team realized it was not what they wanted. It was not until before the first press show that they found what kind of experience they wanted, which is that of the final game. Because of the team's focus on getting mutliplayer ready for the first press announcement, the single-player got very little leadership attention and when they refocused on single-player, they had to catch up its production, which resulted in less focus on multiplayer. Focus shifted back and forth between single-player and multiplayer through the entire course of development.

And here's the source in case you need it for reference.

How about
The development team faced a number of challenges in adding multiplayer to an established single-player franchise. It was a difficult task, and the team felt that they had to prove to critics that their multiplayer would not be "tacked on" (since sub-par multiplayer performance in other established, single-player franchises has been criticized). To tackle this, Santa Monica had hire new staff specializing in multiplayer, engineering, and design. During development, multiplayer required several rewrites which took longer than expected and delayed its production schedule. The player navigation code had to be changed for online play, which was initially designed for co-op (co-op what?). Since multiplayer was new to the team, it did not realize the amount of work required for the experience it envisioned. Although the original idea for multiplayer was exclusively co-op, as development progressed the team realized it was not what it wanted. Before the first press show, the team found the experience it wanted. Because of the its focus on preparing mutliplayer for the first press announcement, single-player received little attention. When single-player was reemphasized its production was accelerated, resulting in less focus on multiplayer. Development focus shifted between single-player and multiplayer throughout its entire course.

Please don't make a habit of this (I don't edit on demand), and sign your posts. Note my question about co-op and the change to American English; change the pronouns back if needed. All the best, Miniapolis 23:20, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Don't worry about me making this a habit. I usually sign my posts, just happened to forget this time. Co-op (short for cooperative and noted in an earlier section of the article) is just a type of multiplayer mode. I was a little confused on the American English note because I am American. Thank you again though. --JDC808 ♫ 02:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. I didn't know if the whole article was in British English (an article on an American topic can be written in BE, and vice versa), and one hallmark of BE is the use of plural pronouns for collective nouns: "the team" referred to as "they", rather than the American English—with which I'm most familiar—"it". All the best, Miniapolis 13:10, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Ah, I see and I can see where it can be used. There were a couple of spots though that when I first read it, it sounded like "it" was referring to the multiplayer. After rereading it, I noticed "it" was referring to the team. --JDC808 ♫ 18:36, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Check my work; think I saw a misplaced plural pronoun above :-). All the best, Miniapolis 23:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 2

For this month's issue...

Making sense of a lot of data.

Work on our prototype will begin imminently. In the meantime, we have to understand what exactly we're working with. To this end, we generated a list of 71 WikiProjects, based on those brought up on our Stories page and those who had signed up for pilot testing. For those projects where people told stories, we coded statements within those stories to figure out what trends there were in these stories. This approach allowed us to figure out what Wikipedians thought of WikiProjects in a very organic way, with very little by way of a structure. (Compare this to a structured interview, where specific questions are asked and answered.) This analysis was done on 29 stories. Codes were generally classified as "benefits" (positive contributions made by a WikiProject to the editing experience) and "obstacles" (issues posed by WikiProjects, broadly speaking). Codes were generated as I went along, ensuring that codes were as close to the original data as possible. Duplicate appearances of a code for a given WikiProject were removed.

We found 52 "benefit" statements encoded and 34 "obstacle" statements. The most common benefit statement referring to the project's active discussion and participation, followed by statements referring to a project's capacity to guide editor activity, while the most common obstacles made reference to low participation and significant burdens on the part of the project maintainers and leaders. This gives us a sense of WikiProjects' big strength: they bring people together, and can be frustrating to editors when they fail to do so. Meanwhile, it is indeed very difficult to bring editors together on a common interest; in the absence of a highly motivated core of organizers, the technical infrastructure simply isn't there.

We wanted to pair this qualitative study with quantitative analysis of a WikiProject and its "universe" of pages, discussions, templates, and categories. To this end I wrote a script called ProjAnalysis which will, for a given WikiProject page (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek) and WikiProject talk-page tag (e.g. Template:WikiProject Star Trek), will give you a list of usernames of people who edited within the WikiProject's space (the project page itself, its talk page, and subpages), and within the WikiProject's scope (the pages tagged by that WikiProject, excluding the WikiProject space pages). The output is an exhaustive list of usernames. We ran the script to analyze our test batch of WikiProjects for edits between March 1, 2014 and February 28, 2015, and we subjected them to further analysis to only include those who made 10+ edits to pages in the projects' scope, those who made 4+ edits to the projects' space, and those who made 10+ edits to pages in scope but not 4+ edits to pages in the projects' space. This latter metric gives us an idea of who is active in a certain subject area of Wikipedia, yet who isn't actively engaging on the WikiProject's pages. This information will help us prioritize WikiProjects for pilot testing, and the ProjAnalysis script in general may have future life as an application that can be used by Wikipedians to learn about who is in their community.

Complementing the above two studies are a design analysis, which summarizes the structure of the different WikiProject spaces in our test batch, and the comprehensive census of bots and tools used to maintain WikiProjects, which will be finished soon. With all of this information, we will have a game plan in place! We hope to begin working with specific WikiProjects soon.

As a couple of asides...

  • Database Reports has existed for several years on Wikipedia to the satisfaction of many, but many of the reports stopped running when the Toolserver was shut off in 2014. However, there is good news: the weekly New WikiProjects and WikiProjects by Changes reports are back, with potential future reports in the future.
  • WikiProject X has an outpost on Wikidata! Check it out. It's not widely publicized, but we are interested in using Wikidata as a potential repository for metadata about WikiProjects, especially for WikiProjects that exist on multiple Wikimedia projects and language editions.

That's all for now. Thank you for subscribing! If you have any questions or comments, please share them with us.

Harej (talk) 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

.

The Signpost – Volume 11, Issue 12 – 25 March 2015

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:25, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
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