Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Archives/2019

RfC on drug name
Requests for comment are sought at on how to state the name of a drug mentioned in court documents about a living person. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:34, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Large number of tags added in the last few days
You may have noticed the backlog count increasing sharply in the last few days. One editor has tagged 90+ articles for copy-editing, apparently based on searching for potential typos (according to the edit summaries, which link to Typo Team/moss). I wonder what other experienced copy editors think about this tagging. My first thought is that if this person is part of a typo-fighting team, that team would be better served by putting these articles in a list and working through them. Copy-editing is a much more time-consuming process than fixing typos, and the editor appears to be asking our guild to do a ton of work to fix a few problems. Other editors' thoughts are welcome. If you want to ping the editor in question to request their reasoning, I will not object, but it might be useful to have a bit of discussion here first. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:29, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Thing is, they're fixing articles as well as tagging them. The backlog has always been at the mercy of new-page patrollers, AfC reviewers and what-not, and this historic low may be a brief, shining moment :-). I remember it being over 8,000 when I came in (in late 2010), but there was more help then. I wouldn't want us to end up like WikiProject Wikify, where the backlog was so humongous that it discouraged editors. We should probably ping and other members of the typo team, since we're fighting the same good fight., I tried to substitute GOCEinvite on their talk page but had to sign it manually; can you fix that (and tell us how)? All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:07, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd love to hear from . Aside: (Here's how I fixed the GOCEinvite template. I added four tildes with a tag in the exact middle so that the tildes would turn into a signature only when the template is substituted. I also added an HTML comment so that it was possible to tell how the words got there. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:10, 28 March 2019 (UTC))
 * Greetings, everyone! First, let me congratulate the Guild on the amazing copyedit backlog reduction. I was actually looking at those stats last night and was quite impressed at how motivated people are to copyedit articles when there's a backlog elimination drive on! The moss project definitely has a bigger backlog, somewhere over 100,000 spelling errors alone that need to be fixed. There are a bunch of different lists I post based on the reports I make, including things like "most commonly used words that seem to be missing from Wiktionary" and "most commonly misspelled words" and "articles with the most misspellings". Most of the current action is on the "almost certainly a spelling error" lists, for which I've created pages like Typo Team/moss/M. Generally what editors do is take a section of ~30 articles, or perhaps just 1-5 articles from a section, and fix all the spelling errors on those article (usually just one, and rarely more than 5). What I've noticed is that if they encounter an article that has a bunch of problems in addition to the spelling errors, they usually just leave a note like "this article is a mess and needs a copyedit" and move on to the next quick fix. Someone else coming along and seeing that note might do a full copy edit, or they might just tag it and clear it from the cleanup list (which will also exclude it from the next automated scan).
 * A few days ago I was looking at the "articles with most misspellings" reports and happened to notice that articles with a large number of misspellings and at least one whitespace typo almost always have a significant portion of prose that needs a full read-through that also corrects grammar, capitalization, formatting, and possibly removes or tags problematic content. Sometimes it's just a paragraph or section, but often the whole article is suspect. Since those were going to get thrown into the copyedit queue anyway, I thought I'd just go through and tag them now so the articles will get fixed faster. Ideally we only want to touch each article once, since that's the most time-efficient, and it also keeps the number of edits in the article history to a minimum. And since we're editing across tens or hundreds of thousands of articles, efficiency matters. It's going to take us many months, maybe a year, just to finish the easy spelling fixes, and some of the tagged articles are excluded from the main moss listings because they have non-English words that probably can't be fixed by a spelling editor who only knows English. It seems like the different groups of editors are in different mindsets; one doing a high volume of spelling fixes they don't have to think about very much, and the other actually reading the language and pondering its correctness. So if these articles require the second mindset to fix, it seemed appropriate to put them in front of the group that's actually successfully doing that. I started including the list of specific typos when I tag, so the editors that tackle these articles can zero in on the specific rough section or paragraph if the article is long and actually mostly OK.
 * I see it as a good thing that I'm able to identify articles that have rough patches that have been sitting around (a lot of these were tagged as orphans several years ago), so in some sense the copyedit backlog is increasing to be closer to what it would be if an omniscient editor had tagged all the articles that really did need a copyedit. I have tried to be careful to avoid tagging articles that actually don't need a read-through, such that those that mostly only have "typos" that look like they could be non-English words, or computer code, or something other than error-filled English. That said, I've finished adding all the articles that showed up in the current report. I stopped with articles that have a minimum of 10 likely typos, since that indicates a fair amount of text needs attention. I have listings for articles going all the way down to a minimum of 3 typos, but at that end it's probably better to try to fix the misspellings first and tag for copyedit only if the fixer notices there are wider problems. Maybe I should add articles with 9 likely typos as well, but I was going to see how the current batch goes. In the long run, I hope to finish an under-construction grammar checker that would be flagging rough patches directly, and I'm sure anything we're missing now would show up again if I manage to run that.  But in the long meantime, if the current pace continues, I'm sure the Guild will have erased the small increase in the copyedit backlog.
 * Anyway, long story short, I hope I'm putting articles that need a read-through in front of editors who want to read through them. I'm certainly open to feedback on how best to help editors fix problems they're interested in fixing. Thanks again for all your work in this area! -- Beland (talk) 19:23, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the detailed response! It's good to hear that you are done with the current batch, and that you are being thoughtful and considerate of other editors in your tagging. We can handle the hundred or so that you tagged; I was just worried that a hundred might turn into a thousand, or ten thousand, which would be demoralizing for us. Keep up the great work. I'm sure we are all aware that a significant fraction of WP articles need copy editing, so we are really deluding ourselves that our true copy-editing backlog is only a few hundred articles. My main goal in posting the above note was to ensure that you were tagging these articles in some thoughtful manner, not just driving by and dropping copy-edit tags on a zillion articles. And thanks for the typo fixing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to deal with articles that genuinely need copy-edit; I only object to the tagging of those with more serious problems like poor referencing (esp. BLPs), disputed notability, obvious bias (POV), coatracking, impenetrable text, vandalism, etc; all of those problems should be dealt with before being sent our way. I usually re-tag these articles with the summary, "fix referencing and other problems before requesting copy-edit". Many taggers mistake copy-edit for cleanup. Tagging articles takes seconds but sorting out some of these articles can take multiple hours of work.  Having said that, at least they get dealt with in some fashion and hopefully somewhat fixed up and/or shunted in the right direction. Mind you, I've dealt with some stinkers from our Requests list too! Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  20:18, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm with here. See  and  for examples of what I do to articles that are mistagged or not ready for copy-editing. Sometimes, if the article is short enough or the cleanup fix is easy, I'll just fix whatever the problem is while removing the tag. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:15, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, some of the articles with the most typos were in very bad state, like needing translation into English or rambling off-topic. I tag those with cleanup and a specific reason (or a specific tag if there is one) if I can't fix it myself just by deleting text or doing a quick search-and-replace or something. The moss system ignores the cleanup tag and a few others so editors trying to do a spell check don't get bogged down in trying to fix something that has larger problems. It's interesting to hear that people tend to reject articles that need more than copyedit if they're not tagged right; I guess being a copy editor is also a specific mindset that doesn't lend itself to stopping and doing fact checking. Personally I do find that more fun with articles where I actually care about it being correct or am interested in learning more about the topic. Hopefully some day we'll have enough enthusiastic fact-checkers to clear that backlog, which currently looks like it's over a million articles, all told. (Oof!) -- Beland (talk) 23:42, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Tabs stretching a bit (Buggy tabs)
When you click around a bit on the GOCE top tabs, you will notice that the tabs sort of shift a bit; I think it's because the current tab is bolded and therefore, the content will take up more space, and since the tabs are probably using ; then the padding algorithm might compensate for that (by making the tab bigger), shifting the tabs slightly away.

Maybe a fix is to use ? But then you might have to use some CSS styling (in particular, adjust the  and  ) and probably notify some template editors to fix Template:Start tab.

Thanks in advance (and please ping me), – Ben 79487  05:08, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * , they do not shift for me. I suspect that this is a case of different browsers and window sizes rendering the page slightly differently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:32, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * FWIW, they don't move for me either (I have Windows 10 and Firefox 66 on a desktop). All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm using 64-bit incognito Chrome 73.0.3683.86 on a Windows 8.1. I'll take a peek in the CSS. – Ben 79487  17:34, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Here's the code for the tabs (I extracted it from the debugger in Chrome):

<div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr"


 * I hope you don't mind Ben but I've collapsed the code because it clutters the page. I checked; the tabs do shift a little for me, both vertically and horizontally, (SeaMonkey 2.46, Javascript and images disabled), but I've never seen that as a problem or a bug; tbh I've never really noticed! Tabs are transcluded from WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/tabs. You're welcome to fix it if you want to; my view is that life's too short to worry and I'd sooner be copy-editing articles. ;) Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  19:47, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but the problem's that it uses Template:Start tab, which is under template protection. Well, I'll do another article (probably) before the clock hits midnight! –  Ben 79487  20:45, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * You can experiment using Template:Start tab/sandbox and your own sandbox page to see if you can make a version that works better. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Using GOCE within the Template: Article history?...
Is it even possible? As recommended - within Talk page layout - I am trying to use Template:Article history on the talk page of an article but am running into issues using the GOCE information (specifically getting an error code because the Article history template isn't recognizing the GOCE info). If such a thing exists, can someone point me to example/s of where the GOCE info is used within Article history templates? The Template page has a section for GOCE (under the How to use in practice section there's a sub-section under Peer reviews for GOCE) but I can't get the info to work. If anyone wants to take a look it's Talk:Vale Royal Abbey. Please, if you know this is a possible thing to do, please do not do it for me, post examples or give instructions here so I can learn to do it for myself. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 17:52, 18 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi ; the code you want to use in the template is as follows:


 * action1 = WPR
 * action1date  = 14:17, 13 September 2010
 * action1link  = Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors
 * action1result = copyedited
 * action1oldid = 384447156
 * Replace parameters and variables (date, diff etc.) as appropriate. My suggestion is to try it out in your user space before saving the edit. If you still can't make it work, post a diff here so someone (probably not me!) can see where you're going wrong and give you some pointers. I hope that's useful; I got the following code, adapted from the example in Template: Article history, to work in preview on my talk page. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  21:15, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Baffle. I've also found that Article history isn't the most user-friendly template to work with and much prefer GOCE, but if the template is already in place we really should use it. The one parameter that's given me fits is action#link; I just keep previewing until I get the damn thing right :-). All the best,  Mini  apolis  21:44, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help and to  for the thoughts... yeah, "Article history" isn't the most user-friendly I agree. Maybe the Template should be updated with the info Baffle posted above? (My fix can be found here.) Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 22:03, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks great; I'm glad you could work it out. All the best,  Mini  apolis  23:17, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks great; I'm glad you could work it out. All the best,  Mini  apolis  23:17, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

An article I copy edited
As a part of the current copy editing drive, I am copy editing several articles tagged from November and December of last year. One of those articles was Nike Dattani, which I cleaned up extensively to remove biased, unsourced, or non-noteworthy information. A major contributor to the article, VPL Strathcona, undid my edits, and undid them again when I attempted to restore them. They are claiming that I removed important information that belongs in the article. As I have only recently resumed copy editing articles, perhaps I cut the article down too much, so I would appreciate outside input on the state of the article as the other editor wishes it to be, compared to the changes I made to it. I wish what is best for Wikipedia, and if that is the article as it currently stands, then that is fine with me. I will not edit the article again until some form of a consensus is made on the state of the article. Thanks, CoolieCoolster (talk) 01:49, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I disagree with a lot of the things that CoolieCoolster has said here. The major problem is that CoolieCoolster completely destroyed the page, without consulting anyone.
 * One edit summary was "From what I can tell, he is only specifically known for the morse/long range potential, with other works being secondary to that", and it is fine to have an opinion, but to make that conclusion and change the whole Wikipedia page of a living human being, based on that instinct and no discussion with other people, is not appropriate. In fact his work on breaking records for factoring numbers on quantum computers is much more sourced by journalists in articles in the media, and his most cited paper is on the "variational master equation" which after CoolieCoolster's edits, was no longer cited in the article *at all*.
 * CoolieCoolster removed links in the "selected works" section, which is actually the opposite of what we do at Wikipedia. We put references to the original sources. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endre_Boros
 * Strangely, the info box was majorly stripped down. Even though there were citations for each of the institutions where the individual worked (which is usually NOT the case for articles about academics), more than half of them were removed arbitrarily. Why remove this information, especially when each item in the list had an associated citation? If we are to trim this list down, let's discuss it on the article's talk page and see what the other contributors think should be removed (I would have kept McMaster University because that's where he held his Banting award, according to the article that's presently cited).
 * You think there was too much information about his research? Well what about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subir_Sachdev ? Looks like every single thing that person did is listed somehow, whereas it wasn't the case for the article about Nike Dattani in question! If we are to trim down which scientific achievements to include and which not to include, let's discuss it on the talk page with the other contributors!
 * And I am just astonished by the fact that CoolieCoolster keeps saying that the article lacks enough sources. Look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9e_Hlo%C5%BEek. Where's the citation for her year of birth? And her alma mater? and her institutions? and her opening sentence? Where are the articles about her actual work? They are all about her TED talk and about "women in science", not about anything notable done by her specifically.
 * Why was Dattani's website taken down from the info box? Look the infobox here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Dunkley. This is a normal thing for pages for Academics.
 * Why was the "influenced by" section removed from the info box? That's common among academics!
 * Why was the "Heatherington Prize" removed but not the Banting Award and the Clarendon Award? It must be harder to win the Heatherington Prize than the latter.
 * Whether to remove things should be discussed. This was a page that looked roughly the same for several months, why suddenly decide (uni-laterally) that the whole thing needs to be destroyed?
 * I have more comments about his or her edits at their talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:VPL_Strathcona
 * Let's see what the other contributors to the article say!

VPL Strathcona (talk) 03:26, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As a reply, I will point out why I removed a few things. "Due to publications with Oliver Riordan and Lila Kari, he has an Erdos number of 3, in two different ways. He is an academic grandson of Stephen Hawking and a degree 5 descendant of Niels Bohr." I don't see how a subjective rating scale has any significance to his academic career other than attempting to connect him to more noteworthy scientists. "Known for	Morse/Long-range potential, Integer factorization records, Hierarchical equations of motion, Quantum Master Equations, Dilithium, Discrete optimization" I removed most of these from the infobox due to the name of the person in question appearing nowhere in the articles of these topics, with little to no explanation of how he contributed to some of these fields in the article itself. "famous, landmark" I removed words such as these for being subjective in an attempt remove any subjective claims from the article. "The ability to factor larger numbers in non-classical ways forced the NSA to begin working on stronger security schemes" I removed this for being a subjective claim by only one source. " Ronald Rivest (the 'R' in the RSA cryptography scheme)" Removed for discussing a subject in a non-encyclopedic tone. I admit that my lack of experience with academic articles caused me to remove some things that should have stayed in the article, however the issues I mention above in addition to several others show a sign of bias in the way the article is presented. I will also point out that even if something has been done, if it isn't notable enough it should not be included. CoolieCoolster (talk) 04:01, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * without delving into details, my initial take is that did the right thing in removing material about a living person that was not properly referenced to a reliable source (see WP:BLP). I haven't read your wall of text rant, but please note that on Wikipedia, nothing is 'completely destroyed'. The onus is on you to reference the material properly (see WP:References), and the fact that other poorly referenced articles exist doesn't mean editors can't deal with this one. If you're not careful I'll report you for edit-warring, which could cause your account to be blocked from editing.  Baffle☿gab  04:03, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Sorry Baffle gab, but you have provided absolutely no evidence that anything was not properly referenced!!! I was not trying to start an edit war either. I simply brought the article back to where it was for several months, because the user made extreme and severe changes that were never approved by the community (they were uni-lateral decisions).


 * Maybe you should read what I wrote, rather than just calling it a "wall of text" or "rant".


 * CoolieCoolster: We can discuss on the talk page of the article whether or not to remove the Erdos number. Many Wikipedia articles on people with low Erdos numbers, mention it on their Wiki page. "I removed most of these from the infobox due to the name of the person in question appearing nowhere in the articles of these topics" -- I beg to differ: his name is mentioned in every single one of those pages except for Discrete Optimization, which is one of the smallest "orphan" articles in all of mathematics (and doesn't mention anyone else's name either). Perhaps "Discrete Optimization" should move from "Known for" to "Fields of Study".


 * << "famous, landmark" I removed words such as these for being subjective in an attempt remove any subjective claims from the article.>> now I am starting to get concerned with you. The phrase "famous, landmark" never appeared in the article. How can you say: "I removed words such as these for being subjective in an attempt remove any subjective claims from the article" when the work was called "landmark in diatomic spectral analysis" in Ref.[25], which was written by completely different authors in completely different continents?


 * "I removed this for being a subjective claim by only one source." there is one source referenced, but that does not mean there's only one source. Everyone who knows anything about quantum computing knows that quantum computing is a threat to cryptography and that the NSA has been working hard since 2014 to develop something called "post-quantum cryptography" which has its own wiki page.


 * "Removed for discussing a subject in a non-encyclopedic tone." you could have re-worded it.


 * "if it isn't notable enough it should not be included." other authors seem to believe that the things that were included were notable. For example you removed the three-slit experiment which is a generalization of one of the most famous experiments in quantum mechanics, the two-slit experiment. For things that you believe are not notable, we can discuss it on the talk page. The problem is that you just removed too much all at once, and the whole page looks completely different now.

VPL Strathcona (talk) 04:53, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * , your first revert is here and your second here. You don't get to dictate article content here and you don't own the article. I'm happy you and CoolieCoolster are discussing these changes, and are avoiding edit-warring, but please drop the indignant tone. One might ask who is the "us" you refer to in the second diff; shared accounts and role accounts are not permitted on Wikipedia, and you should declare any conflict of interest, especially if you're being paid to edit. I've posted some links to your talk page if you care to read about Wikipedia's editorial and behavioural policies, and other norms. This has now gone beyond the realm of copy-editing (improving prose) so further discussion should occur at your talk page or the article's talk page.  Baffle☿gab  05:50, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Baffle, I do not appreciate your indignant tone against me. CoolieCoolster also made 2 reverts, which you don't point out. "You don't get to dictate article content here and you don't own the article" neither do you or CoolieCoolster. I never said I get to dictate the article content, I said things should be discussed. "One might ask who is the "us" you refer to" -> I thought I made this very clear ... there's many people who have been editing this article for months, and none of us were consulted before CoolieCoolster's uni-lateral edits. Some of them I don't necessarily agree with (such as BountyTJ) but they have still contributed to the article and I believe they should have a say in what happens too (through discussion on the talk page). I have NOT been paid to make any edits! "This has now gone beyond the realm of copy-editing (improving prose)" .... this is what I've been trying to say all along! Thank you Baffle. I agree we can probably sort out anything else on the article's talk page or my talk page. Thank you. VPL Strathcona (talk) 07:50, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why this conversation is happening here instead of at the article's talk page. This is very basic WP stuff, friends. Please read BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. – c (talk) 09:29, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I was seeking the input of more experienced copy editors; I will post any further of my comments on the article's talk page. CoolieCoolster (talk) 11:35, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've responded at Talk:Nike Dattani. BTW, CoolieCoolster did the work of the copy edit and I feel should be credited on our drive, regardless of whether or not other editors accept it. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Reward board offer to get all U.S. Presidents to Featured
Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I was told to put this notice here. I have recently introduced this offer to the reward board and thought that it would be of interest to this WikiProject. To sign up leave a message on my talk page here, or sign up at the Reward Board entry here. (Do NOT edit the page immediately below, which is a transclusion.) Thanks! – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:04, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reward_board&oldid=895110349#All_of_the_U.S._Presidents_to_Featured_status All of the U.S. Presidents to Featured status]   — Preceding unsigned comment added by John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:04, 14 May 2019 (UTC)


 * thanks for your note, some of our members may find it useful. GOCE, however, is a WikiProject for copy-editing. WP Talk: Featured articles may be a more appropriate venue for this. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  01:11, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I'll see what I can do there. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 03:33, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Baffle gab, but wouldn't bringing articles to feature article status be a copy editing task? Thinker78 (talk) 18:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * We will be happy to copy-edit articles once they are ready for it; editing high-quality articles is often quite enjoyable. Copy editing, even though it is listed as criterion 1a in the FA criteria, should be one of the final steps in getting an article to FA status, if a copy-edit of the prose is even needed. Articles at a less exalted status typically need to be expanded, corrected, reorganized, and properly sourced; if copy-editing were performed first, those steps would wipe out some of the copy-editing work and require a second copy-edit. I encourage your participating editors to submit requests to the GOCE by reading and then following the instructions at the Requests page once the articles have been improved to meet the rest of the FA criteria, which you might want to link to from your postings. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:11, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE
Hi! I have a question for my education. While doing a copy editing run on an article, I noticed that content was sourced to numerous blog sites. I combed through the sites and was unable to determine that the sites should be considered reliable, as they appeared to be primarily self-published sources. I may have missed however, that at least one of the sites was operated by someone who may be considered an expert in their field, and has also been published in independent (and reliable) sources.

A fellow editor suggested that I was should have checked for expert status before deleting self-published sources. Having come across this, going forward I will be cognizant of the possibility. My question is this: does WP:BEFORE apply when simply removing self-published sources from an article?

It's a simple enough thing to fix; I just want to increase my awareness going forward.Curdigirl (talk) 22:49, 8 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi no –&#32;WP:BEFORE is a guideline to be followed before nominating articles for the deletion process. Checking sources is always a good plan, though it is outside the copy-editing remit. I usually only check sources if some text I'm working on is ambiguous or confusing, or seems out-of-place for that context. You might like to err on the side of caution; you can mark dubious sources with templates self-published, unreliable source or not in source. If the expert's blog content has been published by reliable, independent sources, it's best to use those sources instead. Copy-editors aren't expected to know the names of every expert, so you're within WP guidelines to remove them; a brief note about the removal on the article's talk page should be fine. I hope that's useful. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  03:18, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I tend to tag with which seems less judgemental/argumentative.  To avoid drama, I usually tag for bad/insufficient sourcing and give editors a chance to fix things.  If there's a  tag that's been on the article for a while with no signs of improvement, then the original editor(s) may have abandoned it with opposition to changes unlikely. Controversial BLP, medical and legal statements should always have good sourcing and should be fixed immediately or be removed from the article. – Reidgreg (talk) 12:07, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help, . Because "a fellow editor" corrects you, that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. The other editor can always restore the sources if they feel strongly enough about it. WP:SPS and its further-information links are useful guidelines. Have fun and all the best,  Mini  apolis  13:44, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Formatting changes to our header and tabs
Hi all; I've just reverted some formatting changes to our header (changed version) and nav tabs pages changed version). The tabs were placed on a single line, causing my screen to scroll sideways and the header was changed from the usual black text on sky-blue to oversized white text on a red-shading-to-black background, which I think would be difficult for some people to read properly. I can't find where these changes were discussed; courtesy pinging to this discussion, and I'll drop a note on his/her talk page. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  22:00, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Tabs

Hello, Which Browser Are you Using? "causing my screen to scroll sideways" Doesnt happen on my test Cases..! Please say your pc config for testing.. Stalin SunnyTalk2Me 05:51, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi ; I primarily use SeaMonkey 2.4 series with Javascript off, running on Linux Mint Rosa. I also have Firefox and Midori installed; your version of the tabs side-scrolls in those too. Please don't specify fonts; I don't have the fonts "Metamorphous", "Raleway" or "Cormorant SC" installed. There are many operating systems and form factors out there; what looks good on your system might look awful on mine. My suggestion is to copy the elements you want to change into your user space and post links here so we can discuss changes and suggest improvements without disrupting the Guild pages. This will also allow you to test your changes on other machines and see how different browsers and operating systems render them; you'll be surprised how different things can look. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  08:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Please help
Please help improve the style of the article Dissolution of United States. --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 14:58, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've copied this request to the Requests page. Please discuss at REQ talk.  Baffle☿gab  21:15, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

New copy-editor work check
Hi all, I'm a new copyeditor to the Guild and I was wondering if someone could check my work on Jewel of Vicenza. There's still some awkward/POV language there, but I thought it'd be best to leave some as is, since the claims from sources are so hard to work out. Do y'all agree? Wingedserif (talk) 19:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for your copy-editing work on this article. I've had a brief look over your changes here. You've clarified the text, making it clearer and more concise for the reader. You are correct to leave the uncertain text alone; though some of us do, copy-editors aren't required to check facts and sources, which goes beyond the copy-editing task. One minor point to watch out for; contractions aren't generally used in Wikipedia outside quotations, per [|the manual of Style]—you used on in "It's not certain that Andrea Palladio created the model..." (History section). Finally, it's not easy to interpret and correct poorly translated material, so I think you've done a good job here. Thanks again and cheers,  Baffle☿gab  20:28, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yay, thank you! I'm glad my judgment with those tricky sections was correct, and thanks for the MOS pointer —Wingedserif (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Archiving
As it has been said that a bot is being tested for archiving requests, what shall I do after completing a request and how do I 'initiate' the bot? Thanks, Willbb234Talk (please &#123;&#123;ping&#125;&#125; me in replies) 15:01, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * When you complete a request, place in the request article's section of the Requests page and sign it with four tildes.  The bot will archive it about 24 hours after the timestamp. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:22, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Also,, if the requester hasn't added one of the recognised Purpose codes, please add it before your sig; for example, "Done for GAN", so the bot can archive the request correctly. Cheers,  Baffle☿gab  23:14, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Question
Does anyone know if this kind of construction has a name?


 * Originally announced for 2015, Cool Game 2 was delayed until 2017.
 * Born in London, he moved to Edinburgh with his family when he was 13.
 * Hungry, he ate a sandwich.

I don't know my formal grammar well enough. Popcornduff (talk) 09:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * These sentences all have a subordinate clause that is followed by an independent clause. See, for example, . -- 10:45, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks. Popcornduff (talk) 10:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

References and footnote formatting
Hi, I'm helping out on an article on Abū_al-Faraj_al-Iṣfahānī with both references and footnotes. I think that Edited: Harvard referencing style separate 'references' and 'works cited' would work better for it but I'm not familiar with how to implement it (I usually stick to science articles where just referencing with cite_journal is pretty simple). Would anyone be able to drop by and lend a hand? Thanks in advance for any assistance! T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 01:13, 15 October 2019 (UTC) edited: 05:38, 15 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Thomas. I'm not quite sure what you're asking for here. Do you have specific questions about how to do Harvard citations that you can't find answers to at Parenthetical referencing? I see that the article does not have any parenthetical references currently. Do you want us to do all of the conversions for you? We prefer that involved editors do as much as they can themselves on an article before we work on it. Regards, Tdslk (talk) 01:59, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * After taking a quick look at the refs, I disagree (unless I'm missing something) that Harvard citations—author, date—would improve this article. If you're planning to change the citation style, you would need to obtain consensus on the article's talk page first. All the best,  Mini  apolis  02:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Apologies, I think in my original post, I conflated harvard style with just splitting 'references' versus 'works cited'. It's that split that I mean (e.g. in the style of this article). I'm happy to do most of the work, I'm just not used to how to split out 'references' versus 'works cited', so some assistance to start off with would be useful. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 05:38, 15 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not at all sure what Wikiversity's practices are for this, but so far as implementation goes have a look at and Help:Shortened footnotes.  For the titles of the section headers, I've seen Notes/References/Sources, Footnotes/Citations/References, or sometimes they'll be nested under "Footnotes" or "References" (with Citations and Sources as sub-sections). – Reidgreg (talk) 13:02, 15 October 2019 (UTC).  P.S.: The relevant Wikiversity help page appears to be v:Wikiversity:Citation templates which has some other examples but perhaps less detail. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:10, 15 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Knowing the term to search for is half the battle. I finally understand the difference between and . Is there a difference in when to use "Works cited"/"Bibligraphy"/"Sources" as the full source name section title and whether it's L2 or a nested L3 heading, or is it a diceroll as to which is chosen? T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 23:29, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! I know how difficult it is to search for common terms like "citation" or "reference".  For the section headers (a.k.a.  section titles), I think the ones you and I have mentioned are all valid (though not in all combinations).  There may be preferences at certain WikiProjects or at Wikiversity, but there's no Wikipedia-wide standard.  I consider it to be a situation where there are multiple valid styles.  The most popular ones (according to MOS:NOTES) are References, Notes, Footnotes, and Works cited.  If you're the primary editor on the article and doing the work, feel free to go with whatever you're most comfortable with.  If I have short citations, long citations, and other notes, I might put them under L3 headers within a L2 "Footnotes" section to keep them organized as a block, but that's just me.  I know others will do an L2 Notes then an L2 References with L3 Citations and L3 Sources.  You can also have a General references or Further reading section that isn't specifically used to site anything in the article.  Just make sure that the headers clearly identify the contents of the section and are distinct from each other.  Also consider the context of the article and anything that might be ambiguous. For example, in a biography article "Bibliography" might be confused with a list of works authored by the subject; an article about a river might already have a section describing the (water)sources of the river. A bit to think about, but I hope this helps! – Reidgreg (talk) 04:07, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Additionally, any ideas on how to reference a book with only editors, not authors? Example   doesn't seem to find it. Thanks again. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 03:17, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As with authors, you have to put all editors (up to four) into the sfn template. Beyond four authors, additional names are ignored. I adjusted your example immediately above. One useful thing to do is to find a Featured Article that uses a ton of sfn citations and look through the wikicode for examples of the quirky things that you are trying to do. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:52, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point. Help pages are about how to do things, but not whether you should do them.  Guidelines are often about what not to do.  Looking at existing featured articles for actual practices of how things are done can greatly inform good editing. – Reidgreg (talk) 04:07, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Aha, that makes sense, I didn't realise that all lastnames were necessary. Thanks again for all the help here. Feel free to take a look at the half-finished page for the status so far, and direct-edit if I've made any obvious errors (of if you want to chip in)! T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 04:19, 16 October 2019 (UTC)