Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests/Archives/2010

Text moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests/Archive 1, originally from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests Page history here.Baffle gab1978 (talk) 23:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC). Also from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests/2010 Archive. Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:43, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Page guidelines or policies?

I think this page needs some sort of ... something. For example, how long should we leave a request up before pruning it? Or should we prune requests at all? Can a request be deleted if its article seems to have achieved its goal? Should our people reply to requests that they work on, saying that they have worked on it, that more work still needs to be done, or that they've finished the whole article? Stuff like that.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 07:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of a maximum sitting time for an article. I think that once the article has aged out (say, it has been sitting for 120 days [4 months]), it can just be resubmitted if the requester thinks it still needs help and they still have an interest in it. I'm all for deleting any articles that have reached their goal. I just want the list to be current and free from clutter. I know here we were discussing removing the list from the Guild's main page and making more of a stand-alone page. As such, I have worked up a draft: I added dates and the right panel. My page design kung fu is not strong.

I'm not sure how to best handle the article as it is being worked. I like how GAN handles their requests. You pick an article to review, put it "on hold" on the list, and then do all of the work on the article's talk (sub)page. However, copy editing is not a one-and-done task, necessarily. A lot of editors will pick at pieces of articles rather than sitting down and c/e'ing the whole shebang. I don't know the best approach to this. TheTito ^Discuss 11:21, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Birth of the archive

Please refer to this discussion. –Paul M. Nguyen (chat|blame) 00:56, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

requests RAWK!

I had a blast doing Painted turtle. Is a very core article really (most populous turtle in America). And had a lot of good dope in there. I ended up doing a lot of rewriting for readibility and structure. But it was really pretty good and a good topic. Way better than the one in the backlog I did (which was obscure AND lacked content). Let's ditch the backlog and just do request articles!!!! TCO (talk) 04:43, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I just finished Chess, also an important article and a featured article. I created a "notes" section using techniques I learned when I did Indiana class battleship. It was super fun. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 21:26, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Please elaborate on the notes secton. Do you mean the explanatory footnotes, or some hidden notes, or some lessons learned on "how to edit an article"? (I would love some discusson of the last. I just went and tried to add value.)TCO (talk) 21:45, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

P.s. Chess and Indy are bee-yoo-ta-full!TCO (talk) 21:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Indiana was not all me. I worked with the author up through A-class and then a superhuman editor named User:Dank did so much more to the article that I was almost embarrassed. The footnotes thing is splitting out the explanatory "footnotes" from the true "references" or "citations" using wiki trix.

First, create a subsection of the references called "footnotes" by placing this code where the reflist is located:

==Notes==
===Footnotes===
{{Reflist|group=note}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|2}}

Then, the items you wish to have show up in the "footnotes" section are wrapped with these doodads:

{{#tag:ref|

and

|group=note}}

Example from Indiana:

{{#tag:ref| The armor of ''Oregon'', built by a different shipyard,...|group=note}}

The same footnote can be used more than once by naming the note and using for example

<ref group= note name=torpedo></ref>

on the first one and

<ref group= note name=torpedo/>

on subsequent instances. You can even quote a source for the paranthetical material using the regular

<ref> </ref>

tags, which then appear with the rest of the citations.

If you want to have some fun testing your copy editing skill, there are some great exercises available at User:Tony1/How to improve your writing. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 22:41, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I have seen the Tony articles. Very nice. I guess I was looking for something a tad more "in the trenches". Not another Strunk and White admiration, but something a bit more like a checklist, or "how to edit fast" or "most common mistakes". No biggie. TCO (talk) 22:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. If I run across one like that, I'll let you know. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 23:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Here's one in list format that goes over common errors: Wikipedia:Basic copyediting. I am gonna read this myself, hee hee. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 23:08, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Looking at Diannaa's ref tips: The {{#tag:ref}} magic is really only needed in the case that you want to embed a "citation" reference inside a "note" reference. Otherwise, you can simply use <ref group=note>note</ref> to make a note-type reference. The #tag stuff is used when you need to put a <ref> inside a <ref>, which the MediaWiki software won't normally let you do, because it would get confused about where the reference ended. With the workaround, you can do stuff like

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus.{{#tag:ref|It was actually Daddy, in disguise.<ref>{{citation
  | title = I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
  | last = Connor
  | first = Tommie
  | coauthor = Jimmy Boyd
  | year = 1952 
}}</ref>|group=note}}

and you'll get text in the article with a link to a footnote, and the footnote will have a link to the citation.

By the way: the group name gets prepended to the footnote number, so I like to use "group=nb" to keep the link short. See nota bene. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 03:54, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh that is cool. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 06:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Organization of archives

Currently, the request page archive lists the newest requests first. Should we reverse it so it lists the oldest requests first instead of the newest? The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 00:34, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I did it that way so I don't have to scroll to the bottom when I want to update the monthly chart. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 05:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

We can flip them into chronological order at the end of the year if you like, but I would like it set up this way for now, for ease of use. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 17:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

<quibbles>Given that we have separate tables for each month, do we need to list the name of the month in the "date requested" column? (now that you mention it, naming the month in the date completed column makes sense only if it's a different month. Please reverse the comment if we list articles in the month when they're completed rather than the month in which they're requested. I recommend the former so that the page focuses on requestors rather than editors.</quibbles> Lfstevens (talk) 01:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You are correct. We list the date of the original request; but it is possible to have an item completed the following month. I can try out your idea in January. I was also thinking about what Uhahraptor said, and I would like to have the current month at the top of the page for my own convenience. But I could move each month to the bottom of the page at the end of each month. Then there won't be so much reorganising to do at the end of the year to get them chronological. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 02:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it matters so much as it is a sortable table. I do feel that we need both the requested and completed dates. That will allow us to calculate how long it takes us to complete articles, and may be useful if we need to do any calculations regarding this. – SMasters (talk) 02:38, 20 December 2010 (UTC)