User:BDD/Mentorship/MJ94

With few formal definitions of what the Guild's mentorship program is about, I think the logical conclusion is that it's about whatever you want it to be. You could pick up a book to learn about copy editing in general, but I'm guessing you want to know more about the practice in the context of Wikipedia and the Guild. So first give me a brief rundown of your copy editing experience so far and what you hope to take away from this mentorship. And this probably goes without saying, but the Manual of Style will be the "textbook" for this course. You don't have to read every word of it, but make sure you're familiar with it and can refer to it when necessary. --BDD (talk) 19:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey there. Thank you for your willingness to mentor me with copyediting. As a vandal fighter and wikignome, I've enjoyed my time here on Wikipedia. I'm very active in ACC and enjoy my work with CSD. While this is not a complete list of my work on Wikipedia, I have not been very active with content work (aside from minor mainspace edits and an article or two). I was hoping to work more on content and writing articles, but I feel it'd be better to start off slowly. Because of this, I thought copyediting would be a good start. I've started looking through the How to pages and am very interested in the Guild and all they do. MJ94 (talk) 21:53, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm trying to think of a good place to start. You know your way around the encyclopedia sure enough, so my first thought is to set you on an article tagged with copy edit and review your work, but since the Guild has a backlog drive going on this month, I'm wary of spoiling the competition. But perhaps we can get you to the point where you can do a few articles for the drive towards the end of the month. So here's what I'd like to do. Find an article that needs copy editing but isn't tagged with —don't worry, there's plenty out there! For starters, look for a shorter article, but probably a bit more than a stub. If you're having any trouble, try looking for articles tagged for other issues, as they tend to come in spades. Transclusions of the multiple issues template may be a good place to start. Then we'll discuss what the article needs in terms of copy editing, and then I'll let you at it and see how you do. How's that sound? If it ever feels like we're going too slow or too fast, just let me know. --BDD (talk) 18:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I apologize for taking so long to reply, but I'm here and ready to go again. Well, I've thought about it for a while and think Robert Bagley might be an okay place to start. What do you think? MJ94 (talk) 00:52, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Good choice. This article indeed has a lot of issues, and the banner covers most of it. Do you see any other issues? Now personally, I learn best by example, and when I create an article, I always like to have good example on a similar topic handy to guide my work. I don't want to force you to work that way if it doesn't suit you, but you do want to begin with an end in mind, and a thorough copy edit of this article will essentially be a rewrite. Also, let me know if you see anything that you don't know how to fix, and I'll try to find any resources you may need. For example, do you know how to fix bare URLs? --BDD (talk) 02:03, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I learn best by example as well, definitely. Any suggestions you make are fine by me and I really appreciate all of the help. Anyway, back to the article. The first thing I noticed about the article is that it's poorly laid out. As of right now, I would rewrite the first sentence. Shouldn't it read something like "Robert Bagley is an American art historian and archaeologist in the Department of Art and Archaeology (?) at Princeton University."? Another change I would make is to fix the bare URLS, as you said. Done. :) MJ94 (talk) 02:41, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Good. The ref section is looking much better already. You may want to double check #2, however. It looks like there might have been an error in copying and pasting Chinese characters. Also, every citation template I've encountered supports a |language= parameter, which is always a good idea for sources not in English. If you can distinguish between Mandarin and Cantonese, more power to you (I certainly can't), but "Chinese" is sufficient. Good work identifying the problems. Now go ahead and try to fix them. As for examples, I usually check out Featured articles for a similar topic. #Art, architecture and archaeology biographies is probably a good place to start, but most of the biography subsections will have an academic or two. Also, there's my own article, Steven Amstrup. Lengthwise it's barely above a stub, but I modeled it after good academic bios, so at least in terms of structure, it may help. It also demonstrates some parameters of the academic infobox not currently covered at Robert Bagley. Just let me know if you need any further guidance. I think you're on the right track. --BDD (talk) 19:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I've done what I can for Robert, I believe. I'm thinking I should try copy-editing a different article. Do you have any suggestions? MJ94 (talk) 16:51, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm out of town for the weekend and on my phone, so I'll follow up on Tuesday. In the meantime, check the bottom of my user page, where I've listed some articles I'd like to see improved. See if any of them catch your interest. --BDD (talk) 02:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, picking up where we left off, I see you're from Duluth, so why don't you take a look at Duluth City Council? I don't see any glaring spelling or grammar errors, but it's practically a WP:DEADEND with no citations. I'll leave it up to your judgment whether either of the external links could work as references. As far as models go, Minneapolis City Council is in much better shape. --BDD (talk) 17:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, BDD. I came here to apologize to you for disappearing from Wikipedia after February 21, 2013. Shortly after your last post to this page, I suffered from a major medical event that put me in the hospital for over a month with a fair amount of health issues to follow. Due to this (as well as increasing commitments and decreasing spare time), my Wikipedia editing practically stopped. Now that summer is upon us I have more time to edit and will likely be doing a fair bit of it. I just wanted to let you know where I had gone off to and thank you for your help. MJ94 (talk) 03:37, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Not a problem, MJ94. I'm finding I don't have the time to really dedicate to mentorship anyway, but feel free to ping me if you ever need a hand with something. --BDD (talk) 16:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)