The article Hyderabad, India is still having trouble getting to FA. At its current FAC, a review by SandyGeorgia is calling for an "independent copyedit", although it has had two GOCE copy edits this year. I think we need one of our top copy editors, someone who writes to a professional standard, like Dianna, Torchiest or Dank, to try to put this to rest. Any of you first-leaguers willing to give it a shot, please? --Stfg (talk) 18:43, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Having looked at it as an uninformed reader, there are problems right in the lede. I have no idea, for example, why the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is even relevant to the city. I also find that the geographic location of being "on the banks of the Musi River on the Deccan Plateau in southern India" to be confusing rather than informative, as I have no idea where either of those things are. It gets even worse when the next paragraph indicates that Hyderabad is at "the crossroads of Northern and Southern India" because that means it's not in the south, but rather more centrally located. I think, therefore, that the issue is that the article is not written to the appropriate level for a general reader who doesn't know about the topic, and in fact, there are informational issues outside the scope of a simple copyedit. It's not a matter of language at all; any of us should be able to do an appropriately professional writeup, but it's going to take an India expert to figure out what is right and what is not before it goes for copyedit for clarity.
There's also an issue with Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. His article says he established Hyderabad under another city name, but that name is not mentioned in the lede, nor who Shah was. MSJapan (talk) 01:01, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for those comments. May I suggest putting them on the article's talk page, where more people associated with the article content will see them? Here, I was more asking for someone to step up to copy edit rather than for detailed commentary on the article. (BTW, I see that Torchiest has already done some. Thanks, Torchiest). --Stfg (talk) 01:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Copy edit quality assessment, newbie
Hello, editors. I have recently made my first major copy edit under the auspices of the Guild to the article Bender (Futurama). As suggested in the how to, I would like to invite those interested to dwell upon the improvements I have made to that article and submit feedback on my performance. Further greetings and/or introductions to the project are also welcomed. HectorAE (talk) 05:15, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Looking at these edits, I see a few spots to work on:
In the lead, second paragraph, you added a parenthetical bit. I generally avoid these if possible, and I'm pretty sure it's standard practice to do so. You also added the word "continually", which is probably not necessary to understand the sentence. A lot of adverbs are just padding that we can trim. Something similar happens in the last paragraph of the backstory: you added "of varying duration" to the sentence about his relationships. Probably not necessary, since we could assume that all relationships will be of different lengths.
In the design section, you changed "In the episode "Mother's Day", Leela looks through a simulation of a bending unit's sight, which targets potential rubes and then denotes a plan to rob them and leave them in a ditch, showing that all bending robots are somewhat thieving and amoral by design." to " In the episode "Mother's Day", Leela looks through a simulation of a bending unit's sight, which targets potential rubes and then denotes a plan to rob them and leave them in a ditch, implying that all bending robots are somewhat prone to theft and amoral by design." My issue with that is not really a copy editing one, but a concern about original research or synthesis. Since the source for that is the episode itself, we can't, as editors, really say the scene is supposed to either show or imply.
In the composition section, it looks like your change partially corrected the figures, but introduced a new error by changed the range of 30%-40% to 40%-60%. I see 30% as the lowest value and 60% as the highest.
Having said all that, I think the vast majority of the work you did was quite nice, and say keep up the good work, while watching out for those few pitfalls I mentioned. Cheers. —Torchiesttalkedits18:40, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Catscan working
Just wanted to leave a note that Catscan has been working correctly for a few days now, in case anyone completely gave up on using it. —Torchiesttalkedits18:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Here. It's a very handy and fun tool; I use it for stuff outside of the copy editing drives, but it can help to organize the copy edit categories in lot of different ways depending on what you want to do. There are some basic instructions here, but I can probably answer more detailed questions if you have any. —Torchiesttalkedits18:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
In response to a tag on the article I expanded the article's lead section, however I know that there have got to be either spelling or grammar errors in there somewhere so I would like to request that someone with a better grasp of the english language than I have please look at the article and copyedit it for me. I would appreciate it. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Hello folks, Could someone please spare the time to see if the article Dog conch still needs some copy editing? I believe it is in pretty good shape already. It is a GA in the final stages of review for FA. A recently arrived reviewer there suggested an independent copy edit, and we will be very grateful to anyone who can spare the time to do this. Invertzoo (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
GCE members may be interested in this RFC at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, to confirm the roles of WP:TITLE and MOS in determining article titles. The question affects the smooth running of many discussions on Wikipedia, including RMs. The more participation, the better.
you find what you're working on is a copyvio in chunks? I am prepared to do a complete rewrite to get away from that, but it seems the article should not, strictly speaking, qualify on notability. Then again, it's always nice to aim for a complete record. But I don't want to waste time rewriting if it should be deleted anyway. See WP article at No._2_Squadron_IAF, original source/s at Offical IAF history site? and A probable copy at fighterpilotuniversity. There are one or two other sources with the same material.
While I'm at it, should the article title not be disambiguated to, say, No. 2 Squadron (Indian Air Force)? As opposed, say, to the Italian Air Force, Israeli Air Force, Indonesian etc. etc.? Please advise! David_FLXD(Talk)18:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Well spotted, and thank you. There is definitely duplication between these pages. See this Duplication detector report. The steps to take are detailed in WP:CV101. I would recommend following these steps rather than rewriting. Although there is duplication, there may be no copyvio, as permission may have been obtained or there may have been backwards copying. Followiong the steps at CV101 will bring it to the attention of the copyvio investigation team, who know how to discover and pursue these things. Post again if you have any trouble.
I haven't looked at the fighterpilotuniversity one. I agree with you that the article title is poor -- is this an isolated case of such, or is it more widespread? --Stfg (talk) 18:59, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, the IAF naming thing appears to be the case for all Indian squadrons. I recommend asking at WikiProject Military History. --Stfg (talk) 19:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I hope you're suggesting delegating this sideways! ;-] I've CSDd it on G12; it goes back to the foundations with two paras, later another user copied the remainder from the same source. There was virtually no original text when I started my copy edit. I've detagged GOCEinuse and notified the two CV contributors, I guess the CV specialists will take it from there. Re GOCE backlog drive does this count as a finished article? David_FLXD(Talk)20:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, we'll see what happens to the G12. I'd have gone for the {{subst:copyvio|url=link to the source text}}, and if the G12 fails, I would recommend doing that. It's a very easy process, really. Good job informing MilHist and letting them know that other ones have a problem. --Stfg (talk) 21:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Weird vandalism pattern
I have noticed an odd pattern of vandalism lately, and I came here because the articles involved seem to be related and was wondering if it was more than just these being affected. The piece that connects them is that they all have the copyedit tag, and all the edits seem to come from brand new accounts which make a single edit or a small number and then drop off. The affected articles from my WikiProject include Arena of Thyatis, Dragons of Mystery, Midnight on Dagger Alley, To Find a King, When a Star Falls, and probably the worst example is Queen's Harvest. Do you think it would make sense to file an SPI? Has this been happening on other articles with the copyedit tag? BOZ (talk) 17:47, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, OK! I kind of figured that it felt like there was some list somewhere on-wiki or off-wiki that was coordinating people to do this, but it looks like the intention behind this was innocent instead of malicious. That also explains why some of the edits from new accounts have been harmless or even beneficial, and maybe some of the things I considered vandalism above were actually in good faith (some were definitely vandalism though). BOZ (talk) 18:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Hey folks. Torchiest is correct about the source. This is not the final version of GettingStarted (more documentation), but rather just the start of experiments in how to give new users a place to find first editing task. A natural consequence is that, in addition to attracting good edits, we also give some vandals a new target. This is partially why I wanted us to tag the edits in RecentChanges and edit histories with an indicator of their source (also because newbies tend not to fill out edit summaries, good faith or bad). We've been studying the early results, and from looking at random sample of edits from the 21st-26th (we launched the tool on the 13th), it looks to be about 50% real good faith copyedits, and 10-12% vandalism. Even if it's not that high, we're going to continue to work on ways to reduce that proportion -- for instance, not including BLPs. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk04:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
OK thanks - I did notice that a lot of the edit summaries say "new user getting started", so that does make them easier to identify. BOZ (talk) 13:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Misbehaving icon in the newsletter
Whenever I get a GOCE newsletter or report on my talk page, the GOCE icon, which is supposed to sit decoratively in the newsletter block, instead appears at the top corner of the page like a stray balloon hitting the ceiling. Does this happen to anybody else, and can it be fixed? A. Parrot (talk) 05:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't know how to fix it; my banned friend made it ;> I had it overlapping the text on my copy. Perhaps we should go back to a simpler version that does not have this floating element, or get some coding expert to tweek it? -- Dianna (talk) 06:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
@A. Parrot, does it show up in the right place when you look at other people's talk pages (e.g. mine), or do you see the same problem there too? The answer to this would indicate whether this is likely to be a problem with your settings (browser settings or Wikipeida preferences), or with you talk page setup. (By the way, when I look at your talk page, I see that icon in the correct place.) Regards, --Stfg (talk) 12:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
I see the same thing on your talk page and Diannaa's, so it must be something about my settings. Which settings might cause the problem? A. Parrot (talk) 19:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
It's very hard to say. The best chance of solving it might to be ask at WP:VPT. I've always found the folks there to be very clued up and helpful. --Stfg (talk) 19:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
After the first blitz covered a handful of WikiProjects, and the second went after the January 2012 articles, I thought, why not continue to use different themes for each one. So, I propose that the February blitz be focused on requested copy edits only. This would give us a chance to work on generally high quality articles and potentially clear out the request page completely. As for dates, we've done Sunday through Saturday twice, which seems to work well, so I suggest February 17–23. There shouldn't be anything else going on then to conflict with the event. Thoughts? —Torchiesttalkedits22:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Support 53 requests in January! We need more firepower. 500+ tags in Jan. We reduced the backlog by 100+. I.e., it's growing about 100 tags per week including our drives. Anybody found any good, new tools? E.g., I feel bad when I come across disheveled references and am in the habit of applying {{sfn}} where possible. It would be nice to automate this! Is there a regex? I have another editor, but it doesn't seem to handle foreign alphabets well, and there are always issues with extra blank lines when I paste. Lfstevens (talk) 02:13, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Changing pronouns in quote
I have a question on when to change pronouns and the like in quotations. Check here. There is a large quote in which all the "I"s and other first person pronouns have been replaced with parenthetical "he"s and such. Is this how we would normally do things? My understanding is that those types of changes would generally only be made for clarity, but I'm open to views on this, or a link to some spot in the WP:MOS. —Torchiesttalkedits23:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
The only thing I see in WP:MOS is this: WP:MOS#Quotations. It doesn't really help. In my experience, you can usually change the text that leads up to or introduces the quotation in order to preserve the pronouns and verb tenses within the quotation. Some people, including me, learned in high school to integrate quotations into a sentence in order to make it read better, but if you have to change the pronouns and verb tenses to do that, you're doing it wrong. In the case of that article, I would change the LONG quotation to an indented blockquote, change the pronouns back to the original, and introduce it like this: "Conan has discovered, to his dismay, that being king is not as satisfying as being a warrior:" Also that quotation is just too long. I think it stretches the bounds of fair use, and a shorter quotation should be able to serve the point as well or better than the current long-winded one. Jonesey95 (talk) 00:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you both (but it's more a matter of good or bad writing than of style in the sense of what MOS covers). This particular case is horrid, and still would be if the brackets were correctly squared. It would be so easy to replace the opening "Conan has discovered, to his dismay, that" with "Conan describes his dismay:" and blockquote the rest, using the original pronouns. --Stfg (talk) 01:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Just FYI
Much appreciation to Lfstevens for reviewing the article Music for a Time of War. Lfstevens added the done template to my request for a review, and I added the GOCE template to the article's talk page. I hope this action is appropriate. Please let me know if not. Thanks! --Another Believer(Talk)17:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Copyediting software
Hey guys. I pitched a long-term proposal to develop software to help with copyediting to Siko ("Seeko"), who's running the Foundation's WP:IEG project, at User_talk:Sbouterse_(WMF)#IEG idea. She wants me to get moving with this sooner rather than later. Basically, what I need is anything anyone wants to tell me about what kinds of things you fix when you copyedit; there's no need for you to learn the technical end of it, but if anyone wants to join me, you're more than welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 04:25, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
A few things I can think of that would be nice to have automated would include: correcting obvious spelling mistakes, normalizing dates and spelling to either American or other forms according to either what is prevalent in the article or {{use}}-type tags, and adding commas to dates as needed. Something that might be doable, but which seems like it would be a lot more difficult, would be correctly parsing certain common word choice mistakes, such as that vs which. —Torchiesttalkedits05:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Great ... since people seem to be on board so far, I've created a page WT:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Software, and I copied your suggestion there. Natural Language Processing (NLP) uses a standard "language" for some of these things, and I'll convert suggestions on the talk page into that language on the project page (if the task seems to allow automation). - Dank (push to talk) 12:40, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
It appears that there is a helluva lot of members in the participants list, but how many are actually active? I think that some spring cleaning might be in order. — Statυs (talk, contribs)18:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Might there be an editor more familiar with naming conventions and the Wikipedia/classical music manual of style willing to copy edit the Oregon Symphony discography? Any assistance would be truly appreciated. I'd be happy to submit a formal request if there is a current drive the review could go towards. I hope to have this list promoted to FL status, once completed and reviewed. Thank you so much. --Another Believer(Talk)18:57, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Please do make a formal request here. It would qualify both for the February blitz and for the March drive. I'm making no promises, but it's short and I may take this one if not beaten to it. --Stfg (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Life's getting too busy for me to be able to edit Wikipedia, so I'm taking off.
But before I go, I'd like to remark how well the GOCE is doing. It's definitely come a long way since the beginning; a lot has changed, all for the better. And it has grown to a much bigger WikiProject than I thought it would. This May will mark the two year anniversary of the start of the Backlog elimination drives (how the time passes), and in that time the backlog has been reduced by a lot. And while you've still got a long way to go, I'm confident that you'll be able to completely wipe out the backlog.
But then what? What happens when the backlog is pretty much clean, and all that needs to be done is taking care of that month's tagged articles? Well, that's probably a ways away, but I'm sure the Guild will remain active and find a way to continue to clean up Wikipedia and make it a better place for years to come.
I'll still check my Wiki email on occasion, so if you still want to chat, I'll be there.
Thanks for all your help. Since the arrival rate has increased so much, we're going to need more hands to finish off that backlog. Hurry back! Lfstevens (talk) 01:10, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Hello to all copy editors! The articles on Sindh in the 7th-century, the vast majority of which revolve around a Persian chronicle called the Chach Nama, are desperately in need of copyediting. The needy articles are quite numerous; I have listed a few preliminary things at User:DCI2026/Chach Nama table. You need no experience in this historical area to contribute effectively on these topics; while reading a quick summary at Chach Nama or Chach of Alor may be helpful, you can, in most cases, work with the info given in the text. Any help is greatly appreciated as this cleanup effort begins. Thanks, dci | TALK 18:46, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Possibly a good idea would be for you to prioritize the ones that are most ready for copy editing, and to make requests at our Requests Page. You're allowed up to three requests at a time, to ensure that other editors with requests get a fair share of our attention. Best is to go for the ones where the content and sourcing are well established, as those are the ones where copy editing is less likely to be wasted as new content appears. --Stfg (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Anyone have any thoughts on what the theme should be for this one? Should we go back to focusing on individual WikiProjects, or getting rid of the old LOCE tags on talk pages, or something else? —Torchiesttalkedits01:29, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Just pinginging, because Miszabot came in and archived something else here, so this may not have shown up on watchlists. --Stfg (talk) 17:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Something that might be interesting to try as an experiment, since these blitzes are essentially experimental in nature, would be to make the focus be on only articles tagged in April 2013. It might be interesting to see how many are mistaken tags, easy fixes, candidates for deletion, etc. —Torchiesttalkedits13:42, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
It would be very interesting to see that. I wonder if there's a way for us to record, not merely what articles we edited, but what we found of that nature? (BTW another of the "etc" is copyvio. In the days when I used to preview the oldest months before a drive, I seemed to be finding copyvio in about 10% of them. I wonder if it would be the same with recently tagged articles, where any copyvio may have been less edited over.) --Stfg (talk) 14:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Focusing on recent articles sounds like an interesting idea. We might choose March 2013 instead of April 2013 in order to have a stable base of articles to work from. Someone should take a snapshot of the month of articles before we start.
In addition to the things we might find that are listed above, we might want to note whether the article appears to be in a stable state or an active state. I have found that most of the year-old copyedit-tagged articles are pretty stable and do not change much after I copyedit them. We may find that copyediting recently-tagged articles results in edits that do not last as long. Jonesey95 (talk) 19:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
How about supporting smaller Projects? Those with only a few active editors left and a backlog that starts to pile up? If we can get a couple of other Maintenance Projects (like the Orphanage, Typo Team, etc.) to join us for a weeklong Blitz supporting this smaller project, maybe we could boost its activity and have a long term effect?
Example candidates could be nearly all the regional projects. Mathijsvs (talk) 22:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
So what did people think of the April blitz experiment of editing recently-tagged articles? Here's my anecdotal experience:
There were plenty of articles worth editing. We certainly didn't exhaust the low-hanging fruit.
I chose to copy edit about one of every three articles I looked at. The ones I rejected were usually very new (or aged but still very much stubs) and had dubious notability. I didn't feel that it was worth the effort to copy edit and wikify an article that would/should probably be deleted.
Following up on that note, if I were a more experienced WP editor who was more comfortable with thinning out non-notable articles, I would have marked many of these articles as AfD. I'd be interested to hear thoughts on this from more experienced editors, especially on the balance between (1) letting a stub breathe for a while to see if editors are willing to add reliable sources and (2) proposing deletion for articles that do not appear to have a future as part of WP. Jonesey95 (talk) 16:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Isn't it kinda unusual to invite a whole group of editors to a WikiProject on one of the most vital meals of the day rather than just one person? ZappaOMati04:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I did a little bit of work on this (and may return), but did not remove the tag. Also, I suspect from just a bare search of the references that there are some copyvio issues that need to be dealt with, along with splitting of the "list" items into a "list" are in order. — ChedZILLA11:59, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Good catch. There were a couple of instances of copy-paste from ref[2], which I've fixed by paraphrasing. I didn't see reason to suspect any more, but if you spot any, it would be great to rephrase those too. --Stfg (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor is coming
The WP:VisualEditor is designed to let people edit without needing to learn wikitext syntax. The articles will look (nearly) the same in the new edit "window" as when you read them (aka WYSIWYG), and changes will show up as you type them, very much like writing a document in a modern word processor. The devs currently expect to deploy the VisualEditor as the new site-wide default editing system in early July 2013.
About 2,000 editors have tried out this early test version so far, and feedback overall has been positive. Right now, the VisualEditor is available only to registered users who opt-in, and it's a bit slow and limited in features. You can do all the basic things like writing or changing sentences, creating or changing section headings, and editing simple bulleted lists. It currently can't either add or remove templates (like fact tags), ref tags, images, categories, or tables (and it will not be turned on for new users until common reference styles and citation templates are supported). These more complex features are being worked on, and the code will be updated as things are worked out. Also, right now you can only use it for articles and user pages. When it's deployed in July, the old editor will still be available and, in fact, the old edit window will be the only option for talk pages (I believe that WP:Notifications (aka Echo) is ultimately supposed to deal with talk pages).
The developers are asking editors like you to join the alpha testing for the VisualEditor. Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box at the end of the page, where it says "Enable VisualEditor (only in the main namespace and the User namespace)". Save the preferences, and then try fixing a few typos or copyediting a few articles by using the new "Edit" tab instead of the section [Edit] buttons or the old editing window (which will still be present and still work for you, but which will be renamed "Edit source"). Fix a typo or make some changes, and then click the 'save and review' button (at the top of the page). See what works and what doesn't. We really need people who will try this out on 10 or 15 pages and then leave a note Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback about their experiences, especially if something mission-critical isn't working and doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar.
Also, if any of you are involved in template maintenance or documentation about how to edit pages, the VisualEditor will require some extra attention. The devs want to incorporate things like citation templates directly into the editor, which means that they need to know what information goes in which fields. Obviously, the screenshots and instructions for basic editing will need to be completely updated. The old edit window is not going away, so help pages will likely need to cover both the old and the new.
If you have questions and can't find a better place to ask them, then please feel free to leave a message on my user talk page, and perhaps together we'll be able to figure it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi dear members of this beautiful guild! How would you feel about starting a copy editing service for other editors, called Please help me with a sentence!? Every now and then I find myself struggling with a sentence and then I think of you. So, if anybody feels like it, here is my sentence, the first one of Motor control: "Motor control is the process of organizing and executing actions in the world by humans and animals." It's my best effort, but I don't like it very much. Thank you! Lova Falktalk10:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Intersting idea :) My 2p on this one: "Motor control is the process by which humans and animals organize and execute their actions." (I think "in the world" is tautological and should be omitted.) --Stfg (talk) 12:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I think we should go back to the original idea for the next blitz, and focus on one or more WikiProjects. Does anyone have suggestions for projects we should adopt? If not, I'll just look through some categories and select a handful in the next couple weeks. As for the dates of the blitz, I'm thinking June 16–22. Other ideas always welcome. —Torchiesttalkedits19:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea. They're perhaps the most active WikiProject there is, and we can probably get some nice cross pollination by working with them. —Torchiesttalkedits01:57, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Is there any way to market our achievements better? Should we tell somebody about our backlog reductions? And maybe we could tell individual projects how many of their articles we hit in a given drive. I'm thinking about India. I personally hit 170 India articles in the last drive.
Another thought: Are we seeing patterns in articles that could drive recommendations to project about how to minimize our workload? E.g., I propose that Indian villages be handled by a script that processed a database of village info. It would include, pop., geo, literacy, district/state, political leaders, ... and produce a standardized article that would still allow for individualized details about temples, etc. Lfstevens (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
We need a better way to do this. Having picked the low hanging fruit in May, there's no way to do it again. I.e., the backlog is going to head up again. Otherwise, we're fighting a losing battle and that's not fun. Lfstevens (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
If you're switching to a weekly "blitz" format, please let us know at the Signpost so we can post a notice the week before you start any future blitzes. –Mabeenot (talk) 15:08, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
I like the idea of additional promotion, but there's no easy way to count articles by porject after the ce tag is removed. I'm hoping focusing on individual projects during the blitzes will help advertise. I'm going to try to do a good number of Milhist articles this week. Clearing the whole group would be huge. —Tourchiesttalkedits05:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Copy-editing assistance on MicroStrategy
Hello, Guild. I recently worked through several volunteers to develop and place a new version of the article about MicroStrategy, a U.S. software company. I myself am not a volunteer in this case: I was hired by the company to address a number of problems identified by Wikipedians, but which no one had yet spent time to fix.
Since completing the project, I've read through again and realized that I made some small but nonetheless regrettable grammatical and formatting errors. Because of my financial COI I have not and will not edit the article directly; I'm coming here in hopes of finding someone willing to consider making these changes. Here's what I suggest:
List of my own typos in MicroStrategy
Complete list:
Infobox—"Sanju Bansal" should be "Sanju K. Bansal" to reflect usage elsewhere throughout; while his biographical article is called Sanju Bansal, a redirect exists so no pipe is necessary.
Second paragraph of Overview—"commerce platform" should be "commerce platforms".
Third paragraph of Overview—semi-colon in the first sentence should be removed.
Final paragraph of History—it would make a lot more sense if the "Facebook like" wikilink was in the first occurrence of "like", rather than the second.
Final paragraph of Products—the phrase "the ability" should be inserted between "other merchants" and "to create".
Done. As these were very minor and not controversial, and as you were upfront about your COI, I've done them. I do feel that the article is more than slightly promotional in tone, and that the {{advert}} tag was justified and should not have been removed. That tag doesn't need justifying by a statement on the talk page.
I appreciate your making the copy-edits. The current version is very different from the one which was so tagged, and the current one was reviewed by several different editors over a few months. If you feel strongly enough about the tone, I hope you'll raise specific issues at Talk rather than simply tag it. Otherwise, many thanks for the update. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 17:37, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm thinking for the August blitz we should do another Requests-only event. As of this writing, there are 77 articles in the queue, which is a huge number. The good news is the old ones are only from May, but the requests page is a very popular part of the Guild's services these days. It would be nice to knock down that list to just a single month again. August 11–17 looks like a good week for the blitz to take place. How does that sound to everybody? —Torchiesttalkedits13:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
Greetings. I've just started looking at GOCE, and I have a question about how to handle poor lead sections. This is really a question about the scope of "copy-editing" here. If I fulfill a GOCE request, and the lead clearly goes against the standards of MOSLEAD, how should I handle it? (Examples include Bangladeshis in India, where the lead contains much information not found in the body, or João Goulart, where the lead is far too short.) Thanks for any guidance, – Quadell(talk)11:06, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Quadell. You have a few options here. With a request (as opposed to a tagged article) probably the best is to discuss the problem with the requester with a view to agreeing how to proceed. This may result in your agreeing to rewrite the lead, or the requester undertaking to do so. If you feel that it's essential that the requester resolve the problem himself, you can also just advise this. For example, where the lead contains much that isn't in the body, it may be necessary to restructure the article entirely to get that content into a sensible place. It's fine to do that if you want to, but it's definitely going the second mile in a copy edit. --Stfg (talk) 11:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
When it's a tagged article rather than a request, it's probably best to make a decision yourself. With João Goulart, for example, the options that I can see are either to expand the lead during your copy edit, or to tag the article with {{Lead too short}}. --Stfg (talk) 11:38, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Just today (Tuesday) Reflinks has started triggering some kind of XSS error when I click preview. Is anybody else seeing this? Is there a workaround? Thanks! Lfstevens (talk) 04:37, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
I noticed that this corresponded with my having to re-login to Wikipedia (after a certain number of days). I use Firefox, and I was able to re-login to Reflinks as well, but it appears that "Your edittoken is only saved for a few hours" when either logged in as "secure" or "non-secure"...whatever that means. Same thing goes for Webreflinks. Guy1890 (talk) 04:52, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
I took a stab at it. I'm not sure what shape this old article was in to begin with, but I'm not sure that a copyediting tag is usually necessary for a stub like this. Guy1890 (talk) 21:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Possibly not, but Raincity471 simply used {{copyedit}} to replace a much more clumsy use of {{cleanup}} -- a good idea. Raincity471, thanks for your interest in helping. You did fine. (By the way, the difference between {{refimprove}} and {{more footnotes}} is that the former just says we need more references while the latter says that we need footnotes to tell us which references support which statements.) --Stfg (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you! The article wasn't really that bad, and it only took me about a minute to go through it.
Guy1890: I asked here cause I wanted to make sure the copyedit was fine before I took of the tag. There was a copyedit tag on the article to start with, and I took off the cleanup tag cause it just said what the copyedit tag said. However, I took off the copyedit tag first but then put it back on before I saved: but in a different way! Sorry! — Preceding unsigned comment added by RainCity471 (talk • contribs) 14:46, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
Copyedit of the month contest - a new backlog in of itself?
Since we're in October now, to follow the schedule routine for the Copyedit of the Month contest would mean that October's contest was the current submissions contest and September's was the one for voting. And yet, August is still being announced for voting and September hasn't left the submissions stage. The October one doesn't even appear to have been started yet. Falling a little behind now, or has the event been terminated? If I said "I'm miffed!", would you come running or go? (talk) 20:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
In this article, I see that the writer has too much of a fondness for shooter games. Please check it over and let me know what you think. I think that the article should either be scrapped because of the view the writer had, or edited to the point it solely is about multiplayer of shooter games. EditingNinja*whisper*17:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor Ninja (talk • contribs)
GOCE Menu Page
Hello GOCE coordinators,
As a WP:GOCE copy editor, I have noticed that the large amount of project information on the GOCE portal is interfering with navigation across the portal. With this thought, I have consulted other Wikipedians about what they think about the portal, and many other users are also finding this to be true. Although I feel that the main portal is quite informative, I figured that it would be quite helpful to make a menu page (User:JustBerry/GOCEMenu). The menu page provides an overall view of the page, some important tools, and stats. I would like to make a "Menu Project" and receive feedback on the menu page, with the intention of eventually adding the menu page to the GOCE portal. Please consider my idea, and let me know what you think. --JustBerry (talk) 16:56, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks so much for sharing your ideas. I like the new page in principle - it looks fresh and modern. It's going to need some tweeks though, as the current version doesn't work on my display, as the choices appear on two lines and the sidebar is below those elements (I am using a Toshiba laptop and 125% magnification). You also need to check out how it looks in mobile view: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JustBerry/GOCEMenu. Try making your screen narrow, as though you were viewing the page on a tablet, and super narrow, as though you were viewing it on a cell phone. -- Diannaa (talk) 17:40, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Thank you very much for doing this, JustBerry. I think this is a great idea and I hope it will go ahead. One detail at the moment: is it feasible to make the images link to the target pages, rather than to the image files? --Stfg (talk) 17:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
I like the idea overall, but can you explain a little more what aspects of the current layout are confusing? I'm a bit hazy on what you mean by "portal", precisely. Are you referring to the tabs at the top of most project space pages? Also, where would this menu fit into our cluster of pages? Would this be a substitution, or a supplement? Thanks. —Torchiesttalkedits21:14, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
The current layout of the pages arguably appears to be detailed. The menu would fit as another tab, perhaps as a supplement, as some may want to look at the other links given on the main page. The menu acts as a bit of a guide. The page I have created and designed is simply an idea, and is open for changes/suggestions/ideas to layout, content, etc. Please let me know how we can move this project further. I understand this topic was discussed few months ago, but upon my return to Wikipedia, would like to continue the discussion. In addition, I plan to have collaborators and make this a mini-project, a subset to this one. --JustBerry (talk) 04:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
GOCEd version
The Talk:Karna has the banner that declares that it's article Karna was copyedited by the guild. However, its tough to find that copyedited version. Is there a way to find it out? In general, won't it be better if the banner had a link to that historic version, so its easy for referencing ahead? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 10:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
When GOCE members use that banner, they should use it in its full form, which is {{GOCE |user=U |date=D }} (filling in U and D, obviously). Then the date would enable you to identify that version. That wasn't done on this occasion, but I've fixed it now.
GOCE members please note: if using the GOCE template, please include the username and date!
Nominations for Coordinators for 1st half of 2014 now open
At Torchiest's request, I've opened the 2014 H1 election page for nominations. Questions may be asked of the candidates from now on as well. No voting yet, please -- that starts on December 16th. --Stfg (talk) 15:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Final remarks
Before my term as Guild coordinator finishes (and to make up for missing out on most of the last six months), I figured I should give some final suggestions.
To begin, I have to say that we've accomplished a lot in the last year. The WikiProject is growing at an impressive rate and for the most part we've seen a significant increase in the number of people who are actually copy editing (as opposed to just signing their name and doing nothing). Our July and September drives weren't what we thought they'd be (July netted a gain of articles to the backlog and September saw only a slight decrease), but this last drive was fairly successful with over 400 articles eliminated from the backlog. That being said, though, there are a few issues that, to my knowledge, have not been addressed:
1. Our newsletters aren't being sent as timely as they used to. The November drive wrap up hasn't been sent out yet, nor have the November barnstars. It took over half the month of October to get the September drive wrap up sent out, and it took almost two weeks for the July wrap up to be sent out. We used to have it where we work on these newsletters a day before the drive ends so that we could update them with the correct final tallies and have the newsletter sent out by the next day or even sooner. We need to have people on top of this 100% of the time. Our coordinators must stay focused on the tasks at hand.
2. Our Copy Edit Of The Month contests haven't been very successful lately. The main idea behind them is to get people to focus on making quality copy edits, but during this entire six month period the most submissions we've seen on a single contest is two. We either need to change this so that it's more appealing to people or do away with it entirely.
3. While we're still a long way away from completely eliminating the backlog, we should try to figure out how to stay so big once the backlog is mostly reduced. Of course, people will always be adding articles to the backlog, but it will probably never exceed 1,000 articles again once we whittle it down to below 1,000. If there's one thing I've learned from studying ghost towns, especially mining ghost towns, once that main industry, that raison d'etre, is gone, that's when most people start to leave. We should figure out how to keep the Guild busy when the backlog is mostly reduced. Perhaps our drives could focus partly on the copy edit requests from the current month and partly on the Guild's requests page?
Sorry to rain on the parade, but I think the backlog isn't going anywhere soon. At the end of last November's drive we had a backlog of 2690. We made real progress the year before, before things changed. I'm impressed that we're keeping up given the big increase in the rate at which articles enter the list. Lfstevens (talk) 02:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
4. Finally, we should continue to set our sights on growth and prosperity. This is something that has never been neglected, but it's important to keep sight of it. As we continue to grow, we must continue to evolve.
Thanks for the thoughts. I just thought about the Copy Edit of the Month contest today. My thought was similar: it's not something people participate in much, and I don't see it having a lot of value. I'd be OK with doing away with it. Maybe we copy editors just aren't big on bragging about ourselves, or maybe there is some other way we can draw attention to edits that we are proud of without having a big infrastructure and set of tasks around it.
My big idea for keeping things more timely is to create a sort of checklist/calendar that would serve as a reminder of all of the tasks that need to be performed monthly. It's still in the "not even really an idea" stage, but I've been letting it ferment for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Don't forget we have WP:GOCE/COORD/TASKS, which should be pretty comprehensive as a coordinator responsibility checklist. On the CEotM issue, I've been thinking about ending it for a while. Considering that the October contest received no votes, and the November contest has but a single entry (thanks Jonesey95!), I have no plans to open a new month, and will simply mark the main contest page as inactive. —Torchiesttalkedits01:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
It was horrible ... horrible. Greengrocers cart's were overturned and the street's were littered with apostrophe's. Corn flakes had to be removed from the shelves of all the stores after police recieved an anonymous tip-off that several batches had been contaminated with cereal commas. Surgeons were called upon to work 36-hour shifts separating people's fused participles, while hospital A&E departments were so overrun with people suffering split infinitives that it was feared that the supply of comma splices would be exhausted. Never in the field of human conflict have so many cats been let out of the can of worms. --Stfg (talk) 01:24, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
When was the Copyedit of the Month contest canceled? On the contest's main page it seems to imply that it "ended" in October 2013, even though there apparently was a November contest as well. I'm deeply surprised by this; why would the monthly contests be canceled, and why, if my person is to be used as an example, were the members of the guild not individually notified that this was going to happen? :/ The carton was never meant to hold anything, anyway. (talk) 00:25, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
It was canceled at the beginning of this month. The October on the main page was a mistake; I just corrected it to November. The reason it was canceled was because it was receiving extremely limited participation. The October contest had only two entries, with neither receiving any votes, and November had only a single entry. The contest in fact hadn't had more than two entries since June. I'm sorry you weren't notified, but I assumed (incorrectly, it turns out), that all interested parties would see the change on the main contest page. There was also a brief discussion on the main talk page here. Essentially, I didn't think anyone would care. —Torchiesttalkedits00:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Aw, that's a shame. I loved that contest, though I wasn't always able to participate in it myself, for varying reasons. Well, I guess you can't force people to participate more, but maybe someday it shall regain interest and rise again. Thanks for clarifying for me, by the way! The carton was never meant to hold anything, anyway. (talk) 04:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
No problem. If enough people were interested and committed to participating regularly, it could easily be revived at any time in the future. —Torchiesttalkedits18:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I took part in the contest for a few months, but I'm not interested in getting barnstars, awards etc. so it lost its appeal for me. I think it would have been more engaging with a larger pool of contestants; nevertheless I think it was a good idea and a positive way of attracting more participants to the project. Perhaps if it's revived we could have a COTM League with a unique barnstar/award for the c/e who wins the most contests in a year... Just a thort. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 20:05, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
Philosophical question about copyedit for GA articles of a technical nature
Hi copyeditors. I have an article that several editors have been working on to improve, and I would like to get it to GA-quality in the next couple of months, prior to a time when a "first" in the history of human technology will get that article a lot of views. My philosophical question is this:
When working to get an article to GA quality, which is obviously for a mostly non-technical Wikipedia readership, is it best to have a non-technical copyeditor do the review, perhaps with assistance from some techies who might also ensure the technical information is stated correctly? Or might you have generally found it to be okay to have a technically-trained copyeditor just do the whole thing in one smash?
Either is fine. One thing that copy editors sometimes do is to open a section on the article talk page with a title like "Copy edit, January 2014", and ask questions/make comments in bullet points there. It's a very effective way to cooperate with subject experts. (Personally I never edit articles on medical topics. The risk is just too great and there are good Wikipedia editors who have medical expertise. But anything alse is OK, I think.) --Stfg (talk) 18:55, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Echo the dialogue point. But I think the vast majority of willing copy-editors should be comfortable working on technical articles. If there is some kind of information (particularly when it comes to numbers or abbreviations for units) that is presented numerous times in an article and that falls outside the MOS broad guidelines, then some dialogue with subject-matter-experts and copyeditors could resolve what convention to adopt for that article. You might find that an article with a lot of technical information may deter copyeditors who lack that background anyway... I also think that with Wikipedia's WP:BOLD policy and community etiquette, a copyeditor's improvements should be welcome, even if further technical changes must be made; the copyeditor could even be contacted for a followup review of subsequent changes. Finally, keep in mind that the encyclopedia is to be written such that each topic is accessible to most readers, with a sufficient amount of wikilinks to relevant background material and adequate depth in the coverage of the topic... I think this also keeps the article close to what most can handle. Paul M. Nguyen (chat|blame) 20:56, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
I sometimes copy-edit medical and other technical articles. When I do so and have any doubt about the veracity of the resulting text, I usually leave a note in the edit summary and also on the Talk page to explain that I did a copy edit and that if I changed anything that made the article technically/medically incorrect, knowledgeable editors should correct my errors.
By the way, if you would like the article to be copy-edited in the next couple of months, I suggest that you put a request on the Guild of Copy Editors' Requests page now, perhaps with a note about when you expect the article to be ready for copy editing. Our recent backlog has been six to eight weeks; we tend to edit articles approximately in the order they are requested, though that is not a policy. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you Stfg and Paul M. Nguyen for the helpful input on that! I too think the article should not be too geeky so being copyedited by a non-technical copyeditor would be best from my point of view. There will be plenty of tech-savvy folks to help answer any questions, I expect.
Jonesey95, thanks for the good advice on getting it listed soon. Will do. I'll get it added in the next few days, as I think we want to aim for the copyedit to occur prior to mid-February, when the historic event is slated to occur. N2e (talk) 06:32, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Hi Guild of Copy Editors! I always find the use of "one" and "they" in the same sentence rather ugly, but sometimes I am at a loss how to copyedit. Here come two sentences from Memory_and_social_interactions#Destination_memory that I would like to improve upon:
Destination memory is defined as one's ability to remember what information they have told others in the past. An example of destination memory failure is when one tells the same story multiple times, unaware that they have told their social partners the story before.
Yep, that's ugly. In cases where a sentence is just plain ugly, it usually needs to be rethought entirely. I might try something like this:
" 'Destination memory' is the ability to remember information one has conveyed to others. Telling a story multiple times, unaware that listeners have heard the story before, is an example of 'destination memory failure.' "
Notes: "is defined as" is useless text. "in the past" is redundant: you can't have already told something to someone in the future. I sort of buried the lede in the second sentence, but I think it works.
It would also be grammatically correct to change all references to the subject to either the second or the third person, but it would of course not be wise for one to put a lot of ones in one sentence unless one wanted to make one very ugly sentence. -Well-restedTalk08:18, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Suggestions for the "undergoing a major edit" template.
The template which now includes ...
This article or section is currently undergoing a major edit by the Guild of Copy Editors. As a courtesy, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed.
... would be made better by supplying info. on how long the major edit is expected to take, (how long such edits generally take or better, when the particular edit is expected to be finished) and what to do in the meantime, e.g. add notes to the talk page.
Also, the template would be improved if it linked a page describing what a "major edit" is in general, how many are involved in carrying out a "major edit" and how much inconvenience it might cause if one goes ahead and edits the article during the "major edit."
Also, the template is a great place to invite Wikipedians to sharpen editing skills and join the Guild, maybe play up the advantages in skills and sense of connection to a merry band of editors worldwide.
Hi Ocdnctx, thanks for your comments. The template already explicitly allows "a few hours" to elapse between the last GOCE edit and its removal by someone else; its documentation says it should be removed after twelve hours. The nature of copy-editing often means that we don't know how much time editing will take; it depends on what needs fixing. A straight grammar, punctuation and spelling fix takes less time than checking references, consulting other editors etc. Therefore I don't think specifying a time will be desirable, or even possible in most cases.
I think a "major edit" can be construed as one which will change the article significantly; the major inconvenience is the possibility of edit conflicts, which occur when the text in the window being edited has been edited by someone else in the meantime. There's already a wikilink to the GOCE homepage which interested editors can check out if they wish. It will be interesting to know what other copy-editors think about this template. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 02:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I tend to use it when undertaking major edits to citations or templates, or large-scale edits that require an hour or more of editing time and involve the article as a whole. If anyone edits the article in the meantime, I would most likely over-write their edit and then try to repair it. This could be difficult if they've moved material around rather than done copy edits or simple tasks. -- Diannaa (talk) 02:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I never use it. I do always check the article's history, though. If it's been busy recently, I will make many small edits to individual sections. If the article hasn't been touched for a while, I'll take my chances and do a longer edit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:17, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I use it much as Dianna describes. As I edit very slowly, edit conflicts are a real pain, so I seldom do without it. 12 hours seems to be a sort of standard, though it seems rather long to me. Overnight or if taking a longish break, I replace the GOCEinuse with {{under construction}}. That one has a placedby=<username> parameter, which we could consider adding to GOCEinuse, perhaps, although it's easy enough to get this from the article history. --Stfg (talk) 10:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Just a thought: it would actually be nice if the template includes a note that editors can contact the GOCE member on their talk page if they want to know more about the copy-edit they are doing (in much more concise terms, of course; the template is pretty wordy at the moment!). I would imagine that seeing a big template suddenly appear on an article followed by a bunch of changes can be pretty alarming for a user who happens to be working on that article. (As an aside, old member of the GOCE here btw; returning after a long Wikipedia hiatus. Love what you guys did with the project's main page!) -Well-restedTalk11:14, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Done -- Dianna (talk) 17:36, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Northamerica1000(talk) 07:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Like --Stfg (talk) 15:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
