Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 June 11

= June 11 =

Wanted: a nicely illustrative diff
I'm trying to find a good diff to use in an updated version of the Evaluating Wikipedia article quality brochure. The diff used in the previous version is along the lines of what I'm looking for (only the paragraph with significant changes was used), but I want something more recent (as it's a diff from 2008). These are the criteria I'm looking for:
 * From 2012 or 2013
 * Has one paragraph that keeps most of the text but has changes dispersed throughout
 * Changes should be a clear improvement
 * Text should be mainly prose (rather than ref markup or the like)
 * About a fairly significant topic

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * How about either of these? London (paragraph is long, but can you trim?) or Silver. 184.147.118.213 (talk) 18:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * For London, it's dominated by ref markup, and there are only changes in the last bit. I think it would be best of the any refs are short-form named refs. I'd also like a complete paragraph that's about the length of the one originally used, as that's a nice size visually. The Silver diff is pretty good, although I think it'd be better to have a bit more text changed and have the improvement be more dramatic (ie, the initial state should be bad in a more obvious way). --Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You could try my method - pick a topic, set the history to last 500, and do a Crtl F for "copy edit". I think I only had to look at a few pages (also tried Rio De Janeiro, Madagascar, Batik, Giraffe and Chlorine) before finding those two. If I have more time tomorrow I can help you look again, unless you or someone else turns something up in the meanwhile. 184.147.118.213 (talk) 00:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I like to improve leads. This usually means changing one bad paragraph into four good ones.  Check out Etruscan language since may if this helps. μηδείς (talk) 02:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

See also Linen, Asthma, Koala, Spear, Electron. 184.147.118.213 (talk) 16:37, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks much, 184! I did some similar searching, but couldn't find anything better than the silver, especially since it also has nice edit summaries in that edit and the nearby ones. So I expanded the diff range to encompass a few more changes in that paragraph, and I think it looks pretty good: here.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)