Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/March 2012
Phew!
[edit]Phew.
I checked the list and saw an aircraft article there. I immediately thought "I can do this easy-peasy" - WRONG! The article needs a complete re-write, as it had been written by a non-native English speaker. Oh well! I will try again later armed with some references.Petebutt (talk) 21:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- Note that the drive hasn't started yet - you might time that "later" for during it. OTOH, don't let the drive stop you from doing copyediting of various articles in the meantime! Allens (talk) 21:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- Articles needing rewrites, or otherwise not yet suitable for copy-editing, should be tagged with {{GOCEreviewed|user=???|date=???}} with the user and date filled in, and also comments on the talk page as to why the copy-edit was not done. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks for mentioning that. The GOCEreviewed tag goes on the talk page, below any previous banners but above any archive box and discussion. Don't forget to remove the copyedit tag from the article page too. --Stfg (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
- Articles needing rewrites, or otherwise not yet suitable for copy-editing, should be tagged with {{GOCEreviewed|user=???|date=???}} with the user and date filled in, and also comments on the talk page as to why the copy-edit was not done. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I just added {{GOCEreviewed|date=March 2012|user=Dthomsen8}} to Talk:Herzl museum, removed the {{copyedit|date=February 2012}} tag and used wp:Twinkle to add several tags to point out problems. This article is almost incoherent, and attempting a copyedit was not appropriate. Notice that the backlog of copyedits goes down, even though no copyedit was done. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:51, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
easy question...
[edit]I notice on the drive we are tracking word count, I'm assuming that's the number of *fewer* words? So then part of the process is almost necessarily to pare excess, redundant, unnecessary and unneeded verbiage? :) --Despayre (talk) 01:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't believe so - I think it's the number of words prior to any copyediting. Having a category of barnstars or whatever for number of words removed is an interesting thought, though. Allens (talk | contribs) 01:19, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- It's the size of the article before the copy edit is started that is counted. --Dianna (talk) 02:46, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Rollover counts
[edit]I've corrected several rollover word counts on the drivepage. Remember, your rollover count is what you carry across from the January drive only, and is listed for each January participant here. If you see that I've made a mistake with yours, please accept my apologies and either correct it or ask me to do so. --Stfg (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
The word on the streets
[edit]Hey everyone. I put up a notice for the drive on the Community portal. Please tweak as necessary. Regards. Braincricket (talk) 01:33, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you, Braincricket! --Stfg (talk) 09:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Leaderboard format
[edit]Just a couple of points about this:
- There are only five rows in the table. Please don't add a 6th.
- Entries with equal counts go in the same box, separated by </br>.
Check out how it is at present if these aren't clear. --Stfg (talk) 10:16, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
After beginning c.e., I realised that in it:wiki the page has been deleted as unencyclopedic and self promoting [1]. Should I go on with c.e. or is it a useless effort? --Broletto (talk) 11:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- It certainly isn't very good, and at least two single-purpose accounts have written much of it. It's up to you whether to continue the copy edit or not. Another option is to remove the copy edit tag from the article and place {{GOCEreviewed}} on the article's talk page. That would certainly be fair in this case (and is what I would probably do). I don't know enough to guess what are its propsects for PROD or AfD. Anyone else have a view on that, please? --Stfg (talk) 12:02, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think the article would survive a deletion discussion as there are several sources quoted and the subject has won an award for his poetry. The article is in really bad shape and is not for the faint of heart. --Dianna (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- Ok, I'll go on with c.e.; hope my heart will survive. Thank you! --Broletto (talk) 08:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- I did my best! --Broletto (talk) 11:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
- Ok, I'll go on with c.e.; hope my heart will survive. Thank you! --Broletto (talk) 08:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think the article would survive a deletion discussion as there are several sources quoted and the subject has won an award for his poetry. The article is in really bad shape and is not for the faint of heart. --Dianna (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Just for fun
[edit]From an article that has been {{GOCEreviewed}}: "Superstar Candies is a candy store that sells candies like candy floss". The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to remove all redundancy without losing any information. --Stfg (talk) 17:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
"Superstar Candies is a confectionary specializing in candy floss and fudge."
(ok, sue me, I looked at the article for a little context ;) )
- confectionary is one word instead of two ("confectionEry" is more frequently used as the candy itself) which covers "candy" and "store"
- selling is implied since it's a store
- eliminated the ambiuity from where it sounds like they are selling candies that are actually like candy-floss (it's actually candy-floss)
- added the fudge, per the article
- Utterly failed if I was trying to make it much shorter! :)
- --Despayre (talk) 23:26, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Reversion question
[edit]I've been plugging away on Uttar Pradesh for a couple of days and hope to finish it tomorrow. Unfortunately, my edits from yesterday were apparently reverted by Sambharat with no edit summary (which is one reason I didn't notice till I'd made further edits); s/he reverted everything from the lead to Geography, on which I'd spent a fair amount of time and thought I'd improved the article :-). I'm inexperienced in edit warring; anyone have advice, or should I just chalk this up to experience? Thanks in advance and all the best, Miniapolis (talk) 02:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- This happened to me, too, on an article about one of the big Indian cities. I don't remember which one. But it wasn't a straight revert: the editor (not Sambharat; someone else) had actually taken my grammatically correct prose and revised it back to broken English, which one can only assume they thought was correct. So frustrating! it doesn't bode well for the future of that article. I walked away, as I recall, and didn't work on that article any more.
Because you didn't notice right away, it means that your edit will be quite difficult to recover. I would suggest carrying on, substituting as much of the revision as you are able to recover, and finishing up the article. It is unlikely that they will revert you a second time. --Dianna (talk) 03:26, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- A message on Sambharat's Talk page may be indicated. If Sambharat reverts it again, then warnings of Sambharat against edit-warring and failing to follow the MOS may be useful (they're two of the templates available via Twinkle). Allens (talk | contribs) 11:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks very much to you both for the advice; after considering soldiering on, I decided to also quit while I'm behind and walk away. The last straw was the IP who's adding all kinds of nonsense despite the {{GOCEinuse}} tag (which I just removed). What a mess; I was happy to slap on a {{GOCEreviewed}} tag, and the 2010 backlog has never looked so good by comparison :-). Thanks again and all the best, Miniapolis (talk) 16:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- It stinks when people do that. Suggest you take the word count anyway -- you've done enough work! --Stfg (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks very much to you both for the advice; after considering soldiering on, I decided to also quit while I'm behind and walk away. The last straw was the IP who's adding all kinds of nonsense despite the {{GOCEinuse}} tag (which I just removed). What a mess; I was happy to slap on a {{GOCEreviewed}} tag, and the 2010 backlog has never looked so good by comparison :-). Thanks again and all the best, Miniapolis (talk) 16:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- A message on Sambharat's Talk page may be indicated. If Sambharat reverts it again, then warnings of Sambharat against edit-warring and failing to follow the MOS may be useful (they're two of the templates available via Twinkle). Allens (talk | contribs) 11:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Upon edit-war, report article and find another: I had a growing edit-war, months ago, during another drive, and the other guy re-tagged the article as "{copyedit..}" twice, despite a hundred precise, re-verified changes. Quickly drop it, as a WP:DEADHORSE, and find another article, because some users can drag one article into a week-long debate, when they think they are cooperating but are not. Meanwhile, this is an exiting drive because most of the remaining articles are much easier than the January 2012 drive, which was insufferably tedious due to numerous huge articles with hundreds of problems. Instead, in this drive, we can easily tackle hundreds more than in January 2012. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- Excellent advice, to which we could add don't take it to heart. With 7x109 people out there, we're bound to meet a few awkward critters. A more difficult issue is when this happens with an article on the requests page, and the reverter is a different person from the requester. In this case, a good first step might be to message the requester and get their take on the situation. They may be able to help deal with the problem. If not, in the end we may regretfully choose to abandon the request. --Stfg (talk) 11:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
copy edit details question
[edit]On longer articles (like the extra-exciting Short-lasting unilateral neuralgiform headache with conjunctival injection and tearing), I usually include detailed notes on the talk page about what I fix, for shorter articles (500 words +/-) like Thanumalayan Temple I usually do it all in a broader sweep, without much detail in the talk section. So the question is, is there any guidelines as to what I should, or need to, put on talk pages I copyedit? good/bad idea? --Despayre (talk) 00:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
- Apologies, I was intending to reply to this but forgot. It's often a good idea to put something on the talk page, but minor things like puctuation and simple rephrasing possibly don't need to be covered there. I often go to the talk pages (a) when I didn't understand something, or doubted something but couldn't access a reference, and want help from the topic experts (in these cases I often put an inline tag in the text too); (b) where I've done something I suspect might not be liked, especially deletions, and I want to come clean, explain why and try to forestall offence. Cheers, --Stfg (talk) 11:11, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Someone copyedit Jennifer Lopez
[edit]Between editing the backlog articles, I have been discussing "quality" with other users and discovered uber-famous article "Jennifer Lopez" ("JLo") had more than 80 punctuation errors (such as "highest paid" should be hyphenated "highest-paid" and similar adjectives). I corrected some, but I think this large article should be entered into the backlog for some other user to get credit for the full copyedit (and then become part of the formally verified articles). One key problem is the need to put Spanish song titles into italics, inside quotation marks, such as "Uno y quatro". This is a high-profile page: 13,000–60,000 pageviews per day. If necessary, I can list article "Jennifer Lopez" as a request or "December 2010" entry due to the numerous punctuation concerns. Thanks. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:13, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- No harm adding it to the requests, if you like. I don't think tagging it with a date of December 2010 is a good idea (or have I misunderstood you?)
- I think foreign song titles may come under the heading of "musical movement titles" and therefore not need italicising, per MOS:Ety. Déjà Vu (Beyoncé Knowles song) made it to FA without doing it, and good old Selena, also an FA, systematically doesn't italicise Spanish song names. --Stfg (talk) 22:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Brand-newbie.........
[edit]Okey-dokey............I did a look-behind on the ce done by User:J4Editor on 2007–present recession in the United States. This user joined the project about 10 days ago, and the very first thing xe did was to join GOCE. A little bit odd, but not exactly a crime. IMO the ce job was lackluster, but a decent start. So, I put a comment on xyr talk page about maybe taking another look at the article. Still no action and no reponse. I'm not entirely sure that xe should be 'dinged' for the word count, but I mean.......for crying out loud. What do you guys think? Please read what I put on his talk page, first. Bddmagic (talk) 01:07, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
- It would be crass to penalise them at this point when Stfg, one of the coordinators, personally removed the copy edit tag. What I normally do is copy edit the article myself and then present the person with a diff of the additional edits that I completed, along with my rationale. That way they get a demonstration of what additional things were found and hopefully learn something. Examples: Diff of User talk:Livitup, Diff of User talk:Anagogist, Diff of User talk:Despayre. This was a very challenging article for the editor to have selected as their very first effort. -- Dianna (talk) 03:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
- great advice and I'll take it as such! Bddmagic (talk) 04:09, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
- Right, try hard to not bite the newbies. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
List of universities in Australia
[edit]Can I take credit for 271 words for List of universities in Australia, even though I could not find anything in the article to change? --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:56, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- I took a look at it and spotted a couple of things, one of which is arguable (whether to hyphenate part of the lead); the other is less so, being a use of the casual abbreviation "uni" for university. I also added a couple of clarification and out-of-date tags. Perhaps we could share the words? Allens (talk | contribs) 02:19, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- I don't know of a rule, but if I remember rightly, people usually don't claim word count where there was nothing to do. In this case, there was enough to do, as Allens found, and there were some MOS issues (see this edit). I suggest Allens counting this one. --Stfg (talk) 10:28, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- Really, Stfg, you should also... I did put back in one piece of info your edit accidentally removed (that the publication was from 2005). Allens (talk | contribs) 12:44, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- File:Blush.png Oh, er, ahem, uh, thanks Allens. Good catch. --Stfg (talk) 14:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- Quite welcome, and no need for embarrassment - I had a problem like that with Richelieu class battleship, in which I had thought that "ton" meant "metric ton", this being an article about a French battleship that looked to have largely been (roughly) translated from the French wikipedia's version. But apparently under some circumstances the French do use long tons, specifically for some types of battleship displacement. Sigh... I've been trying to help with correcting the matter, but have largely had to leave it to a subject-matter expert to distinguish exactly which tons are being talked about where. Allens (talk | contribs) 14:47, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- File:Blush.png Oh, er, ahem, uh, thanks Allens. Good catch. --Stfg (talk) 14:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- The expert copy-editors did find something to do, so they should take credit, and I learned some things by looking at what they did. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- Really, Stfg, you should also... I did put back in one piece of info your edit accidentally removed (that the publication was from 2005). Allens (talk | contribs) 12:44, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- Well, I'm not sure if I'd call myself an expert, but thank you, and happy to help! Allens (talk | contribs) 14:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
"Totals" section
[edit]How do I add myself to the totals section, especially when I haven't worked on the drive, yet? Allen (talk) 02:17, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
- Just follow the directions given on the drive page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/March 2012#Directions. Please post again if you can't figure it out. --Dianna (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't participated before, so what do I put in the fields? Allen (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
- Please look at what other editors have done for examples. -- Dianna (talk) 01:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- Did I add myself correctly? Allen (talk) 21:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, perfectly. --Stfg (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- On my progress entry, do I put the change of words or the total words? My "words" entry is "-6". Allen (talk) 22:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
- What you are supposed to do is take the word count before you start editing the article, and use that. Although articles tend to shrink a bit when we copy edit them, that is not the number we use to keep track for the drive. There are some useful copy edit tips available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/How to/Step by step guide. Please read that, because your edits so far do not meet the description of copy editing. All I am seeing on the four articles on your list is a script-assisted edit on each article on your list. If you have any questions, please let us know. -- Dianna (talk) 02:43, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
- On my progress entry, do I put the change of words or the total words? My "words" entry is "-6". Allen (talk) 22:53, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, perfectly. --Stfg (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- Did I add myself correctly? Allen (talk) 21:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- Please look at what other editors have done for examples. -- Dianna (talk) 01:03, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't participated before, so what do I put in the fields? Allen (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
CAWylie's point regarding other categories under "articles needing copyediting" than those generated by the "copyedit" template
[edit]CAWylie has a point about why not accept copyedits of articles under "articles needing copyediting", like from the template {{capitalization}}, even though they aren't from the "copyedit" template. Why aren't they counted? (I believe CAWylie's query regarding why the number of words to start with is what's counted is answered by previous commentary or the FAQ (I forget which) - it's meant to reward those who wade through longer articles.) Allens (talk | contribs) 02:21, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- When I saw that, I started Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Coordinators#Funny category. Please do comment there if you like. I think it's fair to point out that the current rule is pretty clear in the first paragraph of both the monthly drive page and the main drive page. Obviously the rules belong to the Guild and the Guild is free to change them by the usual consensus-building methods. --Stfg (talk) 11:13, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for noticing, Allens. As for the "previous commentary or the FAQ," I tend to jump right into things, without reading lists of "rules." RE: the "reward" that you mentioned: longer articles or no, I stand by statement. I wonder if there are GOCE members who bypass the tiny articles for the 5K-sized ones, JUST to have that reward? No wonder there's such a pile to c/e. I'm a former newspaper copy editor that had to wade through both large and small articles. I was paid hourly, regardless the size of the article. — WylieCoyote (talk) 15:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- Please don't go around dissing other editors and how they choose to spend their time on the project. It just creates ill will. Thanks. --Dianna (talk) 23:31, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for noticing, Allens. As for the "previous commentary or the FAQ," I tend to jump right into things, without reading lists of "rules." RE: the "reward" that you mentioned: longer articles or no, I stand by statement. I wonder if there are GOCE members who bypass the tiny articles for the 5K-sized ones, JUST to have that reward? No wonder there's such a pile to c/e. I'm a former newspaper copy editor that had to wade through both large and small articles. I was paid hourly, regardless the size of the article. — WylieCoyote (talk) 15:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've been doing a mix of small-sized and large-sized ones. I don't tend to go after the medium-sized ones as much, admittedly - I want either something that I can get done within an hour or something that I'll be spending enough time on to get familiar with. The rewards for number of articles (leaderboard) encourage doing small-size ones; those for 5K encourage large-size; the ones for total words, I'm not sure about. I am admittedly not a professional copy-editor (although I certainly have to wade through lots of bad prose when dealing with student lab reports and papers... sigh!), although on the other hand I try to do a bit more than copyediting in compensation: some of the small ones I've wound up practically rewriting, and when working together with someone on a requested large one, I act as somewhat of a peer reviewer in addition to copyediting - pointing out unclear places or ones with missing information. Allens (talk | contribs) 00:27, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
We need more editors
[edit]We've netted 200+ articles so far in this drive. But in April, we're likely to get another 400. We need to cover at least the off-months during each drive or we're never going to kill the backlog. My approach is to shift to the shorties as long as we're not netting 400+ during the drive. I wish those were the worthwhile pieces....
- Reducing the total backlog is good for morale, and that makes it worthwhile. -- Dianna (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
- Another way to reduce the backlog is the deletion of articles tagged for copy-edit. Beyond that, I have been working on Category:All unreviewed new articles and Category: Unreviewed new articles, and I have refrained from tagging new articles for copy-edit. Sometimes Wikify was the proper tag, and on some short articles I just went ahead and did the polishing needed. However, in April I will tag some of those articles I saw earlier. That makes our progress better this month, but worse next month. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've been going through the month listings of articles looking for short ones with lots of other tags on them (or deserving of such tags, like {{notability}} or {{unreferenced}}), pulling off the copyedit tag (and putting on any appropriate ones), and putting a {{GOCEreviewed}} on the talk page. If the article doesn't have/deserve a lot of other tags, and the info available is enough for me to figure out what the article means to say, then I do a copyedit instead. Once catscan is back up, I plan on doing a cross-search for articles with both "notability" and "copyedit" tags, and remove the copyedit from those (with adding GOCEreviewed). Allens (talk | contribs) 22:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
ok... that was ...well, it was *something*! :)
[edit]First of all, LFStevens, 160?! Get a job man! But seriously, very impressive!
I just finished working my way through the quagmire that was Shinji Takahashi, it started off at over 11,000 words, and it's now under 6,000. It was a very dense article, and I think it's all I've managed to do for the drive since the 19th. It was a pretty big job, and I'm sure there's a few things I've missed (maybe more than a few?), I would appreciate if one of the elder statesmen (stateswomen?) here could skim it quickly and point out my glaringly obvious errors (you can see by the talk page where I've had a few difficulties too). please and thank-you. And it's like a programming easter egg, if you get through the article far enough, there's some kinda interesting stuff when he starts talking about UFO's! (Actually, his thoughts about consciousness were actually kind of innovative, at least for me) :) --Despayre (talk) 04:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
- It's incredibly generous of those people who pick up and do those last enormous articles that hang fire because they are so mind-mashingly long and tedious. Thank you, Despayre. I trust your copy editing because of what I've seen before, but as you've requested it (and I have the required lack of youth), I'll take a look later this morning. --Stfg (talk) 08:17, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've had a look through up to the end of the "The essence of the universe" section, but then could bear no more. Great kudos to you for sticking with it, and you've enormously improved it. Your laconic comment on Humanity's Scientific Research Center on the talk page -- "its name is not as self-descriptive as it seems" -- is a classic. Note that we put commas, periods etc outside quotation marks unless they are part of what is being quoted, and that we avoid decorative quotation marks -- just use " and ' everywhere. Not that it's important for an article this far down the food chain, but I've dealt with these as far as I got. As I say, great credit to you for this work. --Stfg (talk) 09:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for looking at that, I looked over your changes, and see where I could have done even better. I did move a few hundred periods outside of quotations, but I'm not surprised I missed a few of those, I think when I got to the end finally, I may have let my enthusiasm at being done override a *really* keen look at the remaining text! There was a lot of text there, deciding which of the long-winded complex passages to keep was one of the larger challenges. And that elder-statesmanship comment of mine, was purely wiki-, and not chronologically-based, of course, too! ;) Thanks again, I feel more confident about tackling larger articles after having you look at that. --Despayre (talk) 15:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've had a look through up to the end of the "The essence of the universe" section, but then could bear no more. Great kudos to you for sticking with it, and you've enormously improved it. Your laconic comment on Humanity's Scientific Research Center on the talk page -- "its name is not as self-descriptive as it seems" -- is a classic. Note that we put commas, periods etc outside quotation marks unless they are part of what is being quoted, and that we avoid decorative quotation marks -- just use " and ' everywhere. Not that it's important for an article this far down the food chain, but I've dealt with these as far as I got. As I say, great credit to you for this work. --Stfg (talk) 09:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
tags question/suggestion
[edit]On an article I was copyediting this month, in the notes I left on the talk page, I made reference to each {{fact}} tag, and various others. When I came back later, I found that an editor had edited my talk page notes to say {{tl|fact}}, at every occurrence, which I didn't like, since it shows up differently (it shows as {{fact}}) than it does in the article, making it maybe a little tougher (esp. in longer articles) to find where I did something. So, of course, I reverted my text back to how I had it (I also thought it was weird someone would edit my talk page notes, but that was a separate thought!). Which brings us to the point (I know, you're saying "finally!"), apparently even on a talk page, if you use the straight tags (translation, fact, etc) without the preceding {{tl| construct, those pages also get counted in the categories that track them. It seems kinda goofy to me to track talk pages that are using the "fact", or "translation needed" type tags, so I was wondering where I would go to suggest that talk pages don't get tracked like that, and because I have no idea where I'd start that discussion, I thought maybe someone here might know. Thoughts? Is there a reason we would want to track these on talk pages too? --Despayre (talk) 20:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- One worry if going down that route is that it might require significant change to the implementation of many templates. One way you could do what you were trying to do is to write the superscripting longhand, as <sup>[citation needed]</sup>. That's a bit tedious to do, though, isn't it? The {{tl}} is probably OK, or just writing a single parenthesis like {fact} if you don't want the link. People mostly know what they refer to, or else they learn another template :) --Stfg (talk) 21:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- Hmm, the stickler in me says do it longhand, the c/e in me that wants to get it done likes the single { idea... decisions, decisions... :) --Despayre (talk) 02:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Sanity check...
[edit]Everything anyone has ever taught me about writing in the English language would lead me to believe that constructions like the following one are pure evil:
He never recovered, and died three years later, having been moved back to New Orleans.
First of all, it's horrible construction, but worse, the way this sentence is constructed makes me thing that being moved back to New Orleans was the cause of his death. Of course, this isn't true; he was critically ill, was moved to New Orleans so he could die there, and then died after he was moved.
I've been recasting sentences like the above into something like the following:
He was moved back to New Orleans, where three years later, he died.
And I've been doing it with calm self-assurance for quite a while. But recently I've come across so many of these kind of constructions that I've been wondering if they're teaching something new in high school composition classes. My theory is that the majority of these constructions come about because average writers think that they have to "write smart" when contributing to Wikipedia, so they come up with these awkward constructions because writing it plainly would be too... plain.
Someone tell me if I'm crazy, or if it's the rest of the world conspiring to supply me with an never-emptying pool of inverted grammatical constructions. Livit⇑Eh?/What? 20:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- Be careful that some articles appear new, but are copied from 19th century encyclopedias, and the 19th century writing may sound strange to our ears. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- The article quoted above is about a Jazz musician who died in the 1970's. I don't think so. I'd never WP:BITE the original contributors, but was mainly venting, yet at the same time checking to make sure there wasn't some alternative form of encyclopedic English that I wasn't aware of. After seeing the same thing over and over and over again, one eventually has to stop, step back, and make sure it isn't one's own beliefs that are wrong. :) Livit⇑Eh?/What? 23:20, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- Livit⇑ sanity - Done
- I'm behind you 100% on your re-write of that terrible sentence. --Despayre (talk) 02:52, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- Grammatical sanity 100%. Theory of world conspiracy ... well, it's original. Theory of average writers trying too hard, 100%. There's a lot of that out there, isn't there? --Stfg (talk) 10:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
On a similar note, I just c/e-ed an article on a chinese soldier with the following, "He was eventually assassinated by a traitor in Guangdong. Later in his life, he invited...". Hard to keep a good man down? --Despayre (talk) 22:11, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Completed Siberian fur trade
[edit]I just realized that I forgot to change the Working tag to a Completed tag when I added the numbers for Siberian fur trade into my count. I finished the edit earlier when I added the numbers in and took the copy edit tag off of the article, just forgot to change the tag on my list of articles and only remembered after the page was closed. Lexah06 (talk) 00:11, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
- That's okay, I have made the correction for you. Thanks so much for your participation. This was a very successful drive! Regards, -- Dianna (talk) 04:30, 1 April 2012 (UTC)