Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/Archive2018

"Sections"
I have just sorted an article tagged with. Can I add that to my total in the latest drive? As you can tell, I am new around here. As well as ever hopeful. Gog the Mild (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Only articles tagged with copy edit or other templates that put the article in one of the copy-editing backlog categories (listed in the collapsible box on the right side of the drive page) are eligible for the drive, though (a) thanks for sorting that article and (b) thanks for jumping in with enthusiasm. We love competent, energetic copy-editors! – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Drat. Ah well. Do you have a view on copy-editors who are merely energetic? Gog the Mild (talk) 01:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Older articles
A query regarding the current drive. I have found the list of articles outstanding from April on the 'Guild home' page, but where do I find or how do I access the list[s] for those tagged in May or June? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:34, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I find articles using the advanced features of Wikipedia's search engine. Here are links for articles tagged in April, May and June 2017.  They give a complete list for each month, an approximate size (don't use that word count, it includes content other than the prose), and a little bit of the lead for context.  BTW, if you haven't looked at it already, there is lots of useful information at the Guild's how-to page. Hope that helps! – Reidgreg (talk) 20:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Thank you. I am new. I will learn. I hope. Yes, I read it thoroughly, twice. I joined a couple of years ago, spent a month working through a large article and have done bits since. Hopefully I now have a grasp of what is required. But no doubt there is more to learn. Thanks again. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:18, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Always more to learn around here. I'm hip-deep in a 22,000-word monster, that's how I chose to start my year. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:29, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * On the right side of the drive page, you should see a box called "Wikipedia articles needing copy edit". Click the "show" link, and it will show you links to each month's category of articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:27, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ooh, secret doors. Very useful. Thank you. Gog the Mild (talk) 09:15, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

An overweening lust for barnstars
A simple query about word counts for the drive. I have looked everywhere, especially the FAQs, but can't find an answer; although no doubt someone will point me to one on a page which I thought that I had already looked at. In order to earn the Modest barnstar an editor needs to copy edit articles to a total of 4,000 words. If an editor copy edits 2,700 but all of the articles are requests or oldest does that entitle them to the Modest barnstar? And would that mean that they had 50 rollover words? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * In short, yes. For an example of how Barnstars are calculated for a drive, see WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/November 2017/Barnstars. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Rubs hands avariciously and cackles. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

QC
Browsing the topics above, attempting to educate/amuse myself, I came across this suggestion: "If drive participants haven't taken part before then (sigh) every one of their submissions should be checked." It caused me to grimace, and then to chuckle. I note that the current policy is to QC 10% of all copy edits. I realise that everyone is busy with real life and/or the current drive, but I would appreciate some feedback on what I might be doing wrong and where I can improve. I suspect that I am tending to (I hope) improve articles without getting them anywhere near 'perfect - whatever that is; but am I getting the trade off right, or at least acceptable? Also I am probably demonstrating a consistent blithe ignorance with regard to a number of Wiki-policies. Correction and enlightenment would be welcome. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that you're going too fast and not being thorough enough, but I haven't gone over your work due to time constraints. FWIW, I was thrilled when I started getting barnstars and what-not but in my experience it gets old fast. This is supposed to be a friendly competition, not an eating contest. I've been hanging around the GOCE for over seven years, and overenthusiastic newcomers were gently reined in when we had more editors available for QC. IMO, it would be better for the 'pedia in general and the GOCE in particular if you were a bit more thorough. Thanks for your help and all the best,  Mini  apolis  14:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your help
I rewrote the article of the Battle of Warsaw (1705) some time ago and decided to seek help for my, not so perfect, grammar. I got the help from Guild of Copy Editors, from the user Gog the Mild, and he did an exellent work on the article, and fixed its' structure, grammar and other errors. We held a very good conversation in the talkpage and solved the anticipated issues that often comes with copy-editing well sourced articles (without having access to those sources himself). Once again thank you. Imonoz (talk) 22:57, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Possible contradiction in instructions
Under Instructions for participants, it apparently says that after finding the article, to obtain the word count and then copyedit. But under Dos and dont's, it says, "Only count what you copy edit". Why obtaining the article's word count before copyediting if I should only count what I copyedit? Then what should I put inside the round brackets? I think the instructions need to be clarified. Thinker78 (talk) 05:25, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the idea is that you start out with the full wordcount and (afterwards) adjust if necessary (as per Dos and Don'ts). Sometimes you adjust down if some sections are not ready for copy edit or if only certain section(s) are tagged.  Sometimes you adjust upwards if there are extensive lists or tables needing copy edit (or lists needing to be converted to prose).  We use the wordcount from before the copy edit as copy editing tends to make the prose more concise.  I get the paradox (i.e.: apparent contradiction) that you may not be able to determine how much of the article you're going to copy edit when you begin.  But the full wordcount is a good place to start when you put the article on the  line; you can adjust the figure if necessary when changing that to, and possibly add a second set of parenthesis with a short note like (partial count) or (extensive lists).  Does this make sense?  I think we were trying to keep the instructions simple. – Reidgreg (talk) 08:00, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was going to try to reverse engineer how is done by working your edit counts, but ran into trouble when trying to use the script. I participated in a blitz and I only had to put the word total of the article before I copyedited it. It looks like it is different with the drives. Where do I put the word count of the article as it was before I copyedit? Do I do a word count after I finish editing? Where do I put that number if so? Thanks for your help. Thinker78 (talk) 18:47, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's just to keep editors from gaming the system to get a barnstar. Sometimes only an article section is tagged for copyediting, and it would be inappropriate to use the word count for the whole article. BTW, please don't use extra parentheses on article lines; they mess up the script we run to generate the barnstar table :-). All the best,  Mini  apolis  22:40, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Still left without knowing what word counts should I use and where. :( Thinker78 (talk) 04:09, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I added  to my .js page years ago (think it was the first script I ever used), and have never had a problem. It's not perfect; it doesn't do bullet lists, tables (I copypaste them into a word processor with a word-count feature to get the count) or sections. Once you have the script installed, though, you can get section word counts in edit mode by clicking "Show preview" and then clicking the now-blue "Page size" link on the left. Are you using Visual Editor? If so, YMMV. All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:50, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I used the script in my blitz participation and worked fine, but now I am not being able to run it successfully. Thinker78 (talk) 06:18, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought we'd fixed the script problem with a comment in parenthesis before the wordcount. (The bigger issue at the time were disambiguation years in some article titles, which the script was mistaking for the wordcount. It was resolved by checking each line right-to-left so that it identified the right-most parenthetic number as the wordcount.)  Are there still problems? – Reidgreg (talk) 13:23, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , I won't know until I run it again (which hopefully won't be for a while :-)). told us in an email, "The code looks for numbers in parentheses to get the article word counts, and is designed to ignore disambiguation parentheses, but it gets confused if there are more than two sets of parentheses on a single line, so you'll need to remove extras." All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:34, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The procedure should be the same for drives and blitzes, using with the article title in wikilinks and the wordcount in parenthesis.  The only difference for drives is to add  or  on the end of the line for old articles and requests, which get a 50% bonus to the wordcount (automatically calculated, do not add the bonus yourself).  Basically: count what you copy edit, don't count what you don't copy edit.  I can't offer technical help with javascript.  If you had the script working in the past, you may remember that it highlighted in yellow the prose that it was counting.  Those are the same parts of the article you should look at for a manual count (many text editors and word processors have a word count feature if you copy and paste the text over).  Just be careful not to count the table of contents, section headers, captions, lists and tables that do not require copy edit, or the references, external links or see also sections (which should be simple lists). – Reidgreg (talk) 13:23, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You say, "The procedure should be the same for drives and blitzes" and "count what you copy edit, don't count what you don't copy edit". But in the blitz instructions it says, "Obtain the article's word count... This should be the word count before you start editing the article". Are the blitzes instructions bad or what is the meaning of this contradiction? What word count should I put inside the parentheses? Thinker78 (talk) 20:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

The word count before you begin the copyedit.  Mini  apolis  01:08, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In the drive instructions it says, "Only count what you copy edit... Don't count words in articles or sections that you have not copy edited". What does this refer to? Because what I'm understanding is that the word count of an article before I begin the copyedit shouldn't be counted. What am I getting wrong? Thinker78 (talk) 04:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You count the words in the article (or section of the article) before you begin. That is the number you use. The number of words you add or remove will not affect the count. That phrasing refers to only counting the pre-edit word count from the portions of the article you are editing if only a section or sections require copy editing. In other words, if an article has 1000 words, but only a single section with 200 words is marked as needing copy editing, you only count 200 words because you haven't copy edited the entire article. —Torchiest talkedits 12:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)


 * If you choose an article and copy-edit the whole article, record that article in your section of the drive page, along with the article's word count (the number of words in the article). To find the right word count for your drive section, count the number of words in the article before you started copy-editing. You can use the View History link to find the version of the article as it existed before you started editing.
 * If you choose an article and find that only one section needs copy-editing, record the article in your section of the drive page and use the length of the article's section as the word count for which you take credit on the drive page.
 * If you have trouble counting the words in an article or section, one option is to copy and paste the words into Microsoft Word or another program and use its Word Count feature. Don't worry if one program gives you a slightly different count compared to another. Don't overthink it or make it more complicated than it is. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:59, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I get it now. I suggest modifying the instructions to include this information if someone else comes with the same confusion as me. Thanks for the replies! Thinker78 (talk) 18:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If you have trouble counting the words in an article or section, one option is to copy and paste the words into Microsoft Word or another program and use its Word Count feature. Don't worry if one program gives you a slightly different count compared to another. Don't overthink it or make it more complicated than it is. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:59, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I get it now. I suggest modifying the instructions to include this information if someone else comes with the same confusion as me. Thanks for the replies! Thinker78 (talk) 18:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Possible missing words in script instructions
I was reading the instructions on how to use the word counting script. It says, "if you do not have JavaScript enabled and either do not wish to or cannot, go to Special:Preferences and click on the Appearance tab. In the very first section, Skin and click on Custom JavaScript next to the name of the selected skin." I think some words may be missing or something I'm not understanding. "In the very first section, Skin and click on..."? What does that mean? Maybe it should say, "In the very first section, 'Skin', click on..."? Thinker78 (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Like me (who knows what she doesn't know :-)), you may want to stick with the default Vector skin and just follow the instructions (which have been around for years). All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:55, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ummm, being the Guild of Copy Editors, if the instruction needs a copyedit it should be copyedited, my humble opinion. I haven't done it myself because it is not clear to me what does the instruction mean. Thinker78 (talk) 06:14, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right. With the line In the very first section, Skin and click on Custom JavaScript next to the name of the selected skin. I changed: Skin and click &rarr; Skin, click – there and on the main Blitz page.  (BTW: in the mainspace we'd use italics for words-as-words but I feel the style choice of bold works well with these instructions in the Wikipedia namespace.)  I'm not sure what else to suggest.  Is there any chance it might be a javascript problem at your end? – Reidgreg (talk) 13:48, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There may be a javascript problem in my end, but I wouldn't be able to tell. When I did the blitz I ran the script using the developer mode in Firefox, clicking F12, according to another instructions, which I tried using again in this drive, but now I'm getting the error "too many arguments". Update: I found out what I was doing wrong. I was entering the script in the wrong line. :D Thinker78 (talk) 20:08, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

What do I do when I find an article that has issues and so can't be copyedited?
I have found articles with information that can be removed for lacking citations which therefore I think shouldn't be copyedited. I then use a Gocereviewed template. Should I report those articles? Or just with the template suffices? Thinker78 (talk) 19:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * An example is always helpful. Can you please link to an example article?


 * If the article's prose is in good shape after you remove text that should be removed, you can remove the copy edit template. Put something in the edit summary that explains what you did and why you did it, with a longer explanation on the talk page if you think it is needed. There is no need to "report" the article anywhere. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I will add that if the article is a biography of a living (or recently dead) person (BLP), please follow the guidelines at WP:BLP. If there's text that is unreferenced and possibly defamatory, or is private information, please remove the offending text (if possible, and without drawing attention to it) and contact an administrator listed at this page off-wiki. Cheers, Baffle gab1978  (talk)  20:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Example article Thinker78 (talk) 02:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In that article, you did a good bit of copy-editing that improved the article. I did not see any significant sections that you removed. I don't think that your edits to that article are an example of your original statement, "I have found articles with information that can be removed for lacking citations which therefore I think shouldn't be copyedited." You correctly removed the copy edit template after you were done with your work.
 * I will make one suggestion that I would make to any new Wikipedia copy-editor: keep in mind that the articles that have been in our backlog for the longest time are typically still there for a reason. They are longer (more words) than the average article in our backlog, or messier, or somehow more difficult to copy-edit. If you find yourself looking at an article and are unsure how to proceed, sometimes it is best to leave it alone and gain experience by working on a more straightforward edit. Those can often be found in some of the newer backlog months (e.g. for this drive, November 2017, December 2017, or January 2018). Articles in the very newest month or two are also sometimes tricky, because they may not have had many eyeballs on them yet and may be a total disaster. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:55, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yep, I did some work on the article and realized about the unreliable source while working on it. Although I hadn't finished copyediting, I stopped, and placed the Gocereviewed template. I will follow your advice and leave alone articles that I don't know what to do with them. Thinker78 (talk) 07:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yep, I did some work on the article and realized about the unreliable source while working on it. Although I hadn't finished copyediting, I stopped, and placed the Gocereviewed template. I will follow your advice and leave alone articles that I don't know what to do with them. Thinker78 (talk) 07:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Barnstar of diligence
I think the Barnstar of Diligence should be revamped because it is too simple for 60k. It looks like the 8,000 edits barnstar. Thinker78 (talk) 18:12, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The word diligence has a nominal meaning of carefulness and long-term effort; it comes from the Latin root diligentia which also means economy, frugality and thrift. So I feel it fitting that the Barnstar of Diligence is unadorned.  It stands out on its colour scheme which sets it apart from the usual brown or bronze barnstars.  To swap it out with another barnstar would probably mean creating (another) custom one, and I'm not sure that's worth the effort.  The GOCE only awarded the Barnstar of Diligence once in the past six months – editors tend to fall into either the higher or lower ranges. – Reidgreg (talk) 12:18, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the fact that we're way too busy as it is :-). WP:VOLUNTEER.  Mini  apolis  13:26, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Instructions problem
The instruction about recording your work happens twice. Most likely editing error. Please fix. Thanks! Thinker78 (talk) 22:19, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
 * For some reason, you seem to be the only person having a problem with the instructions. What, exactly, is it this time?  Mini  apolis  13:47, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Rough day, Miniapolis? It happens. You will have to be patient with me or ignore me if you want because if I see something I think is wrong or that I don't understand I will point it out. In this case, it was not clear to me if the instruction #5 "Record your work in the "Totals" section of the drive page" was the same as the instrucion #10 "Record your completed work in the "Totals" section of the drive page". It looks like it is not but I spent a good while trying to figure it out. So, in my opinion, it is confusing and I suggest that it should be edited. Btw, I don't know if the wikicode " {{Green| # {{Completed}} " is intended to be seen like that. (Only person? Check the page history). Thinker78 (talk) 06:20, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * {{yo|Thinker78}} Sorry, Thinker. We are sometimes a little busier during blitzes and drives.  I have been meaning to take a serious review of the instructions and other pages.  It's a struggle finding a balance between simplicity and thoroughness.  Thanks for pointing out that coding error (my fault, I'd missed a nowiki brace in my copy&paste).
 * To answer your question, yes, you record your work on the drive (or blitz) page twice for each copy edit: once when beginning a copy edit and once when you've completed it.  (If you're immediately starting another copy edit, of course, you can record the completed copy edit and the next one you're starting at the same time.)  It's important to record when you start a copy edit so that everyone knows what you're doing, to help avoid edit conflicts, and so the coordinators know the work is unfinished if you have to abandon the copy edit.  This is also a convenient time when you have the article's word count (which can be obtained later, but it's simpler at that stage).  Recording the completed copy edit is important so that the coordinators know when you've finished so they can check your work, give you credit, and gauge the progress of the drive (or blitz).  So there are reasons.  I suppose instead of Record twice it could be Record the article you are beginning and Record your completed copy edit.
 * I'll try to get around to a thorough review of the instructions and other pages, maybe next week if a few of the chainsaws I'm currently juggling have landed by then. This is my responsibility/fault so feel free to contact me directly with any other instruction issues. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:38, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * {{ping|Reidgreg}} and {{ping|Miniapolis}}, please also read Thinker78's comments on my talk page here—short version-I reverted to an earlier version of the instructions to clarify / simplify and tweaked and updated the text. Thinker complained about this and I self-reverted. Thinker wants a talk page discussion; well here we all are, ready to discuss changes. I'm sure it's a pure coincidence that he signed up for this Blitz but his subsection remains bereft of entries (diff, but has time for this sort of thing.  Baffle gab1978  00:43, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I've noticed the same thing: not a lot of copyediting, just complaints about how we do things. I'm starting to think that they may be trolling us. All the best,  Mini  apolis  12:17, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Baffle, read the note of Reidgreg above. It is my intention to discuss the instructions after the Blitz finishes. I haven't had time to participate in the Blitz. I know from experience that copyediting an article might take 8 hours. It is my intention to copyedit. When I sign up to the events I believe I will have time but something comes up and then I can't participate. Thinker78 (talk) 20:47, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Notice (response on Miniapolis' talk page)
CC-BY-SA notice; below response copied from Miniapolis' talk page here by me.

Hi Miniapolis. I left the above to try to let you know in a humorous way that you are not being very nice. I asked a legitimate question and for some reason you replied the way you did, which left me feeling discouraged, saddened and disappointed. I will then proceed to remind you about Civility and No personal attacks. The fact that you say that I may be trolling seems to be a personal attack. What is personal attack? "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence. Evidence often takes the form of diffs and links presented on wiki." FYI I have sometimes spent eight consecutive hours copyediting articles in the guild. The fact that you are an administrator concerns me. If you didn't have time to deal with my question you could have left a polite note like Reidgreg did, not writing what you did. A simple "Can't focus on instructions right now due to blitz" would have sufficed. Thinker78 (talk) 20:39, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:BAIT.  Mini  apolis  01:49, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Miniapolis is very helpful, and volunteers thousands of hours to The Project in many areas. Along with that comes experience to notice certain editing patterns that may indicate problems.  Miniapolis simply pointed this out to caution myself and the other coordinators.  I became a coordinator in part to help attend to matters like this so that truly competent editors like Miniapolis can use their time more productively.  So please, let's drop that and discuss what you feel could be improved in the instructions. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:25, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That was the source of my exasperation; they seemed to be obsessing about the instructions, and their complaints were becoming Whac-A-Mole; when one was addressed, they would pop up with another. It was turning into a timesink. Anyone else remember ? All the best,  Mini  apolis  16:17, 27 August 2018 (UTC)