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Uttanka

BlueMoonset, Rothorpe

BlueMoonset, I'm glad you approve of the edits I made to Uttanka, and that the article has been rated as a good article. I agree with the edits you made just after mine, at [1], but I wanted to ask you and Rothorpe about one of them. It's not a big deal. It's just something to ponder.

You changed "are called" to "have been called". Normally, I would say that present perfect tense should follow anything like "Since then", and the "are called" may sound like ungrammatical and/or Indian English there. However, Nvvchar just told me that Uttanka and the others are characters in a larger collection of stories in Indian mythology. That suggests to me that this is closer to fiction than non-fiction, and when we discuss characters and plot, etc., in fiction, we often use simple present tense even if discussing things which, within the story, seem to have happened in the past. If the naming of the clouds after Uttanka is within the mythological stories – perhaps carrying over into Indian customs, perhaps not – wouldn't simple present tense make sense here? Present perfect tense (ever since then...have been called) would really only make sense if we are referring to a current custom stemming from a real historical event in the past, unless you think that it would also be appropriate to use when referring to a current custom that began in a very old mythological story. Do you see what I mean? I'm not sure of the answer. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Corinne (talk) 03:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Corinne, I was trying to figure out what to do with that sentence, since it wasn't working for me with "are called", and the prior sentences in that paragraph used "have seen" and "blessed". I thought to check the various sources given at the end of the sentence in the body of the article that covers the same events. Unfortunately, source 1 (Mani) isn't online, and source 10 (Heinrich) didn't cover that part of the story. The only thing I had to go on was source 8 (Narayanan), which has the following: "However," says Krishna, "I will keep my word. Sudden clouds will shower water in the desert; they shall be called 'Utanka-clouds' always". Perhaps "From then on" should be "from that moment" or "from that day", or you might have another solution; I didn't want to make a major change to the sentence, and dealing with mythology/religious tales is complicated—to treat it as if it were fiction makes me uncomfortable. I'm not sure whether this is helpful or not. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Present simple after 'since' always sounds wrong to me, so I always change 'since then, this is done' to 'since then, this has been done'. Rothorpe (talk) 12:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, BlueMoonset and Rothorpe for your thoughts. I agree, Rothorpe, that simple present/present simple sounds wrong after "since". I just looked at it again and saw that I had incorrectly recalled the text: there is no "since"; it says, "From then on," which is nearly the same as "since", so your point still applies.

I went back and re-read the beginning of the lead. The first paragraph is entirely in simple present/present simple tense. The second paragraph, which I will copy here for ease of discussion, starts out with the present, then, as BlueMoonset pointed out, changes to past tense ("blessed" and "remembered"):

• Uttanka is one of the few persons described to have seen the Vishvarupa (Universal form) of the god Krishna. Krishna blessed Uttanka with a boon that would quench his thirst whenever he remembered him. From then on, the rare clouds that bring showers in the desert have been called "Uttanka's clouds".

I have two questions about this paragraph.

(1) The sentence "Uttanka is one of the few persons..." sounds as if it were describing a real person alive today. I believe this is still part of the myth whose story was begun in the first paragraph. I think "Uttanka is one of the few persons" needs to be re-worded to something like, "Uttanka is one of the few persons in Hindu mythology to be said to have seen the Vishvarupa..." I also think we should stay in present simple/simple present tense and change "blessed" to "blesses", "would quench" to "will quench", and "remembered" to "remembers".

(2) Nvvchar Would you say that the last sentence is describing a current custom in India that stems from the mythology or is relating part of the mythological tale itself? If the former, then the phrase "From then on" could be modified and/or expanded to explain that. If the latter, then I guess the present perfect "have been called" is all right because it would be clear enough that this is part of the myth. Corinne (talk) 15:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Corinne, how goes? Did you get this sorted out? Rothorpe (talk) 02:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Rothorpe I don't know. It looks like the ping isn't working for Nvvchar. I haven't looked at the article lately. I'll have to look at it. Corinne (talk) 03:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Rothorpe (talk) 12:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

• @Corinne: Thanks for the further views on grammar issues. I don't get messages on my talk page but I do see talk page comments every few hours. However, I was not well and was away on a trip for two days. As regards your two questions, I have made corrections in the text with regard to question 1 as suggested. The second question is about the usage of word "current custom". As it is relating part of the mythological tale itself, I feel no change is required.Nvvchar. 01:19, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Testing ping

West Virginian Did you get this ping? Corinne (talk) 01:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

• Corinne, I did indeed! -- West Virginian (talk) 12:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Oh, good. Thank you. Corinne (talk) 14:58, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Film Assessment

There are some films waiting for assessment in Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Assessment. Please consider. --106.66.180.39 (talk) 13:20, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Princess Johanna of Hesse and by Rhine

Hi.

I don't think the "family curse" section should be there as it's conspiracy theory nonsense, but having already been sent abusive threats by monarchist editors, I'm reluctant to remove it on my own. Can you help me with what to do. I'll send this message to others i trust and admins as well. Paul Benjamin Austin (talk) 02:29, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 38, 2015)

Transection of a human head Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Head Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: High diving • Plain dress Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:11, 14 September 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Anniyan

Hello, Corrine. Would you be interested in giving this 2005 Tamil film a copyedit? Do let me know. Thanks. — Ssven2 ^{Speak 2 me} 09:23, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Ssven2 I'd be glad to. Would you mind posting a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests? Then I'll accept the assignment on that page (if someone else doesn't get to it before me). Corinne (talk) 12:22, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I have posted it already. — Ssven2 ^{Speak 2 me} 12:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you!

		The Premium Reviewer Barnstar
		Corinne, I hereby award you The Premium Reviewer Barnstar for your extraordinary copyedits and reviews of Samuel Lightfoot Flournoy (West Virginia senator), Samuel Lightfoot Flournoy (West Virginia lawyer), Literary Hall, Thayer Melvin, Romney Academy, Romney Classical Institute, Joseph Sprigg (attorney general), John Baker White (Virginia), John Baker White (West Virginia politician), Robert White (judge), Charles M. Williams (academic), and Joshua Soule Zimmerman. Your precision, diligence, and grammatical prowess are greatly cherished, and the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors is an even more valuable resource because you are a part of it! -- West Virginian (talk) 14:20, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

West Virginian Thank you so much for this award! The award and your kind words mean a lot to me. Thank you. Corinne (talk) 15:04, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Corinne, you are quite welcome!! It is my pleasure. I cannot thank you enough for all you do! -- West Virginian (talk) 15:29, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyediting help with a GAN

I'm having a dispute with an editor at Talk:Number 1 to Infinity/GA1 over some grammar/English usage and I'm wondering if you could take a few moments and look the article over. I saw your edits to Thayer Melvin and thought that were very helpful, so I though of you for this other GAN.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:31, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 39, 2015)

"Boy on white horse" by Theodor Kittelsen Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Scottish mythology Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Head • High diving Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:10, 21 September 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Moodu Pani

Thanks for Anniyan's copyedit. This is the next article that I have worked on for GA. User:Kailash29792 is the main contributor to the article though and he has posted a copyedit request at GOCE. Do let me and Kailash29792 know if you would be interested in giving a good copyedit for Moodu Pani. Thanks. — Ssven2 ^{Speak 2 me} 13:30, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Ssven2 and Kailash29792 I haven't yet looked at the article, but if it is at all interesting to me, I'd be glad to work on it. I'm going to copy-edit another article now, and when I finish that, I'll look at Moodu Pani and probably accept the assignment at GOCE. I'll probably get to it in a couple of hours from now. Corinne (talk) 21:16, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Ssven2 I just noticed your comment to West Virginian on his/her talk page asking him/her if s/he would like to review Moodu Pani. Since you posted the comment right after I finished going through the article and copyediting it, I'm curious about why you would ask West Virginian to review it. Is that a different kind of review from the review I have just done? Corinne (talk) 02:51, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. I asked him to conduct a GA review since you had finished copyediting the article. — Ssven2 ^{Speak 2 me} 03:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Number 1 to Infinity/GA1

Hello. I appreciate your input, but I myself am pretty experienced in reviewing good article nominations and have had a fair few promoted myself. So if you were implying that I should pay more attention based on Sturmvogel 66 having reviewed more, then I am slightly disgruntled by that, as it's not about numbers and no-one is better than anyone else. Anyway, if you are saying that the song attained number-one status and it's not Mariah who does, then why is she credited with holding the record for most solo number-ones if you say it's not her who is number-one? She wrote them, she produced them, without her they wouldn't have existed to be number-one in the first place. They are her number-ones. She has attained five more since the release of her previous number-ones album, that cannot be disputed. This is not an FAC, and I don't believe this part needs changing. The alternative you proposed indicates that she released number-one singles, which is incorrect as you don't release a number-one knowingly, and that is why I've used "since attained". In short, I disagree with what you've suggested, but thanks.  — Calvin999 08:15, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Calvin999 I appreciate how much of a fan of Mariah Carey you are, but I don't believe you are an expert in the English language. In the way you are using it, attain is not the correct verb. If you don't like "release", then "acquire" or "amass" might work. If you read the full dictionary entry at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online, [2] you will see several definitions that are obsolete (OED gives the obsolete and archaic definitions along with the current meanings). The only one that applies today is Definition II (transitive verb) - #7. If you read Definition #8, you will see that that is the meaning you are using, but it is labeled Archaic – that is, really old-fashioned. If you read the synonyms there, you will see acquire is one of them. If you then read the full entry for acquire, [3] you will see several definitions. One of those is surely the right one. Corinne (talk) 13:29, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with being a fan or not, and I don't appreciate you saying "I don't believe you are an expert in the English language," which is a superfluous statement to make. "Acquired" sounds like she is collecting possessions, and "amass" indicates something much larger than 5 number-ones. I would use "amass" for album sales or single sales, which would be in the tens of millions. "Mass" means a lot, so as to "amass" would indicate as so. I know what archaic means, thank you. You may not have intended to, but you've rubbed me up the wrong way by insinuating that I am a fan writer, who is being bias in some way I assume, and that I don't understand the English language.  — Calvin999 14:30, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Calvin999 I'm sorry you have become irritated. I'm only trying to help you improve the article. I thought you were rather dismissive of Sturmvogel 66's comments, saying his last comment on this issue was "pedantic", and somewhat dismissive of mine, above, also. I certainly wasn't suggesting you were a fan writer since I don't even know what that means. This is the last comment I will make on this issue. This is the sentence as you have it now:

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring the number-one songs she had since attained: "Heartbreaker"...

What is wrong is the "she had...attained". A person doesn't attain a song (any kind). That's just not English. A person can attain a goal, a position, or a status. Mariah Carey attained fame, for example. Maybe she attained number one status as a singer, I don't know. Her songs can attain a position or status, also, so you could say that many of her songs attained the number one position on some ranking in the music world. So: she attained a status, or her songs attained a status, but she cannot attain a song. I think I know what you're trying to say. How about one of these? -

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring her songs that had attained number-one status. (or:)

• A number-one isn't a status, it's a position.  — Calvin999

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring her songs that had attained number one. (or:)

• attained number-one what?  — Calvin999

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring her songs that had attained the number one position in the rankings.

• It's not in a ranking, it's not the Olympics.  — Calvin999

If you want to make it clear that the updated version included her songs that had attained the number one position in the rankings since the first version of the album was released, you can add a phrase to any one of those sentences:

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring her songs that had in the meantime attained number-one status.

• I'll go with this one but removing 'status'.  — Calvin999

• In January 2015, Carey announced that she would re-release #1's (1998) with an updated version featuring her songs that had attained number-one status since the release of the first #1's album. Corinne (talk) 15:37, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

• Sounds too clumsy with saying number-one three times.  — Calvin999

I'm not saying that she has attained songs, I'm saying that she has attained number-one songs. There is a difference. I'm not being dismissive, you both said the same thing worded differently and I just don't agree. I'll go with your fourth one, even though I'm still not sold on it, but if one or two words is what is holding the review back from being closed. I feel like the original sentence is saying the same thing anyway but better.  — Calvin999 16:19, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Calvin999 These were just suggestions for you to use or modify as you wish. You didn't have to say what was wrong with each one. Since I'm not up on the lingo of popular music, I may have chosen the wrong noun (status), but it is number one in the rankings of songs – I believe the rankings are called the charts, so you could say "number one in the charts". ("Status" just means where something falls in a ranking.) Calvin, there is no difference except for an adjective in "she has attained songs" and "she has attained number-one songs". They are both using the verb attain incorrectly. I had no idea this difference of opinion would in any way hold up or close a GA review, but I believe if you left it that way and it got to a FA review, it would be questioned just as it has been now. Corinne (talk) 23:52, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

But I have no intention of taking it to FAC. So I don't see why such a fuss was made over one word.  — Calvin999 08:25, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Because it grates on me that you used it incorrectly. If you haven't noticed yet, every reviewer brings something different to the table depending on their own skills, interests and knowledge. When reviewing articles in subjects that I'm unfamiliar with, I tend to unleash my inner grammarian because I'd otherwise have little else to say other than comments about structure, flow and compliance with the MOS. Forex, I didn't notice that you didn't discuss how it charted outside the US and UK; it never even crossed my mind that not doing so demonstrated incomplete coverage of the album. And just in case you might be thinking that I've picked on you especially hard, consider my review at Talk:Leigh Woods National Nature Reserve/GA1 where about 90% of my comments related to the editor's language.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Have a barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		While I could have used a copyeditor barnstar, but I feel like it cannot justify how grateful I am for your tireless work you have made on to improve Termite and Iridomyrmex. As well as that, you are a very easy person to discuss any issues that are raised in the article, which is a bonus when I request a copyedit. In the long run this makes the GA review much easier, so I am internally thankful for your work. Burklemore1 (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Also, I should get around to fixing up the issues you have raised on my talk page. Burklemore1 (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Burklemore1 Thank you so much for this beautiful barnstar and for your kind words. They are much appreciated. Corinne (talk) 13:12, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

You are most welcome! Burklemore1 (talk) 13:33, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 11, 2015

Great work! I made a few tweaks. I'll go notify the FAC nominator that the article will appear at TFA (they usually won't know, unless they nominator the article at TFAR themselves). - Dank (push to talk) 13:36, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

TAFI

If you could, please take a look at some of my noms at TAFI. Some of them could need some more input. Appreciate it.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Bill Skarsgård, Gustaf Skarsgård, Anna Lindh, Yolanda Saldívar, Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden , Molly Sandén and Kerobokan Prison are those that needs one more input. Any help is appreciated. Cheers.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:54, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

BabbaQ O.K., but I feel kind of silly just agreeing "per nominator". I don't have the time or energy right now to study those articles to find reasons. I'm sure you wouldn't nominate the articles if they didn't need work. Corinne (talk) 23:07, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

If you could just review Molly Sanden as well I would highly appreciate it and I will not nag you again ;) Thanks again.--BabbaQ (talk) 23:14, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Did you mean review, as in copy-edit the article, or review the nomination at TAFI? If the latter, I've added my support. Corinne (talk) 23:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC) BabbaQ Did you see this? Corinne (talk) 21:28, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 40, 2015)

Personal finance – an example image of personal budget planning software Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Personal finance Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Scottish mythology • Head Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:07, 28 September 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Tag

Hi, thank you for your copy-editing of Mata Hari. Could you please add the GOCE-tag to the articles talk page. Thanks again.--BabbaQ (talk) 19:31, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Hey

Sneak a peek at my Sneek reply. Sca (talk) 01:18, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

So, did you survive the Blood Moon? Sca (talk) 13:24, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Sca Thanks for the link, but I had already seen your reply last night (and responded). It was raining here, so I wouldn't have seen the moon no matter what color it was. I don't remember ever seeing a "blood moon". I will certainly read that article, though. Did you see it? Corinne (talk) 15:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Viewed it from my back yard, then with fear & trembling hid under my bed and waited for the End. Shockingly dusty under there, though, so went to bed – and dreamed I was flying (again!).

Where's "here" – ?? Sca (talk) 15:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's somewhere in the U.S.A. Corinne (talk) 16:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Somewhere in ... the zone? Sca (talk) 16:29, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Have you been reading the article I just copy-edited? Rebirth (sculpture) Corinne (talk) 16:51, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

No and I ain't gonna, neither! Art, my foot! Sca (talk) 16:59, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Sca I assume you said, "Art, my foot!" because you didn't like the image of the sculpture. Well, if you read the article you'll see that a lot of other people in the town didn't, either, and protested against it, and the artist withdrew the design. One name that the local newspaper gave it was "Twilight Zone-something" (I forget exactly). Corinne (talk) 00:00, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Here in prosaic ol' Bozo, Idaho, there has been a series of 'public art projects' that stood for a while, then were banished to parks or simply trashed. One, called Northwest Angle, was a couple of steel-girder rectangles. Good grief. Who's kidding whom? Sca (talk) 00:28, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

PS: My guess is, you're in Seattle or Portland(ia). Sca (talk) 00:30, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

..for helping with the copyediting of the two articles. Could you please add the GOCE tag to both articles talk pages. Thank you.--BabbaQ (talk) 19:38, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

BabbaQ You're welcome! I was away for three days. Now I don't know to which articles you are referring. Should I be adding the GOCE template to every article after I finish copyediting it? If so, I'm sorry. I didn't know I should be doing that. I will from now on. Corinne (talk) 00:23, 24 August 2015 (UTC) P.S. I don't know where on the talk page to put the GOCE template. Corinne (talk) 02:40, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

"Please consider adding the template {{GOCE|user={{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|date={{subst:date}}}} on the talk page of articles you have copy edited" is what the WP:COPYEDITORS request page says. I interpret that to mean it is a personal preference whether or not to add the template (though perhaps it's encouraged); I also think a requestor adding the tag to the talk page in lieu of the copyeditor if they would like it there is reasonable (I've done that in the past).—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 01:07, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Godsy Godsy (second ping in case you didn't see this) I'm sorry to bother you again, Godsy, but I'm new at this.

(a) Do I just copy what you've written above between the no-wiki template, or do I put in my user name and the date somewhere in the template?

(b) Where, exactly, on the talk page do I put the GOCE template? Corinne (talk) 01:14, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

(c) Godsy, you asked me to add the GOCE template to two articles I've copyedited, but I don't know which two you are referring to. Corinne (talk) 01:34, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

West Virginian Would you mind reading what is written in this section, and then seeing if you can help me? I saw what you added to the talk page of the John Baker White article, but (a) I don't know what exactly I have to type, and (b) I don't know where I have to type it, and (c) I don't understand why what you wrote is different from the template Godsy wrote between the two parts of the no-wiki template, above. I'm totally confused. Corinne (talk) 01:34, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

No worries, I don't mind.

(a) You can simply copy the text above ({{GOCE|user={{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|date={{subst:date}}}}) and place it on the page assuming the following two statements are true: You are the one who performed the copyedit, and it is on the same day you finished the copyedit. You can manually enter the date if you're adding it later like this: {{GOCE|user={{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|date=August 1, 2015}}. This last example would be for if you were placing the template for another user on a date other than the date of the copyedit (manually filling out both parameters): {{GOCE|user=Godsy|date=January 5, 2015}}.

(b) Towards the top of the page in the "talk headers", an example of adding it is present on Talk:Adam's ale where I happened to add it at the time.

Hope that helps. If you link the pages you'd like it added to, I'd be happy to take care of it for you. Or if you'd like to try, I can check to make sure it looks good if you want.

—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 01:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Godsy I've just finished copy-editing the article Death of Tina Watson. I was about to add the GOCE template to the article's talk page at Talk:Death of Tina Watson, but I didn't know where to put it, above or below the other items. Usually, I put it above the Wiki-Projects, but usually there are other things after which I can put it such as "Article milestones", but I see on other articles that "Article milestones" only appears when it is listed as a good article. Should I place the GOCE template right at the beginning? Corinne (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Per {{WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors}}: The template is placed in the top section of the article's Talk page, below any WikiProject banners that are present. Regards,—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 23:51, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Godsy Oh, thank you. I hadn't seen that. Now do I have to go back and look for all the articles on whose talk pages I added that template in the wrong place? Or will someone fix them as they edit the talk page? Corinne (talk) 23:58, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

You can if you'd like, but it probably isn't necessary. Talk page banner order isn't something of huge importance. If it were something in the article namespace, I'd lean the other way, but it isn't.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 00:55, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Today's Featured Article/October 16, 2015

Dank The summary at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 16, 2015 is 1164. Do you want it trimmed a little? I've copied the paragraph here and drawn a line through what I think could be left out if you want the summary shortened. What do you think?

• On 16 October 1834 a massive fire largely destroyed the Palace of Westminster, the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament. The conflagration was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks that had been used as part of the accounting procedures of the Exchequer until 1826, which were being disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords. The blaze caused a chimney fire, initially under the floor of the Lords' chamber, then that moved up through the walls before spreading rapidly throughout the complex. The fire lasted for most of the night and developed into the biggest conflagration to occur in London between the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of the Second World War; massive crowds were attracted to the spectacle. By the following morning a large part of the palace had been destroyed, but the actions of the London Fire Engine Establishment ensured that Westminster Hall and a few other parts of the old Houses of Parliament survived. In 1836 a design competition for a new palace was won by Charles Barry who, in collaboration with Augustus Pugin, incorporated the surviving buildings into the new complex.

– Corinne (talk) 19:32, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

• • What you've done so far is fine, but let's otherwise leave this one alone; I asked Brian to do it. - Dank (push to talk) 20:03, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Btw, there's not a lot to do for Oct 15, but Oct 13 could use some attention, from either of us. - Dank (push to talk) 20:20, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank I had changed "although" to "but" because you've got a comma there. I see you changed it back to "although". That's all right, but then you should remove the comma. Adverbial clauses that follow the main (or independent) clause ought not to be preceded by a comma. I see this mistake often on WP. Corinne (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

It's not a problem for me if you remove such commas when you copyedit; I won't. As a general rule, I don't consider a certain usage of commas a mistake if everyone follows that usage from time to time. Also, I find that it's close to impossible to get people to change their comma usage; commas aren't the kind of thing people care about much. I fix the more egregious commas or lack thereof, and generally don't talk about commas much.

With regard to Oct 16, I shouldn't have asked Brian to handle it without letting you know that I was handing that page off; I'd prefer we not touch it. - Dank (push to talk) 17:15, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Oh, O.K. That's fine. I understand (and I agree with you that it's hard to get people to change their habits with regard to commas). Corinne (talk) 01:07, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Picking a wikiproject

Okay, we've collaborated enough now that I know I'll be happy with your work. I'd prefer that we switch over now to a regular routine where you pick one or more wikiprojects, and just do the TFAs for articles that have been tagged by those wikiprojects. Take your time ... it can be hard to choose. Obviously you want wikiprojects that tag articles that tend to show up at FAC, but it's also good to choose subject matter you're comfortable with, and also good to choose people you enjoy working with. Hylian Auree has WP:TROP covered, and I've got Milhist covered. - Dank (push to talk) 18:00, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Great! Thanks for your confidence in me. I just looked at the list of WikiProjects, and I know which ones I want to work on:

• All the Geociences - I studied some geology and mineralogy in college, so I've copy-edited a lot of geology and mineralogy articles already, and when I have questions, I ask a geologist editor (Vsmith). (Do I have to pick individual Wiki-Projects?)

• All the Geographical topics (Do I have to pick individual Wiki-Projects?)

and, if I get more:

• Paleontology
• Archaeology
• Anthropology
• History
• Art History

and, I have copy-edited a few plant articles. I'm not a botanist, but I do all right, and when I have questions, I ask botanist editors (Sminthopsis84 and CasLiber), but this is not my strongest subject. Corinne (talk) 01:05, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I like to edit articles about people, biographical articles, especially about writers, philosophers, explorers, painters, inventors, etc. Corinne (talk) 01:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

All those are fine (including botany), except that history, art history and biographies are a little broad; I'll handle those. You don't need to pick wikiprojects as long as we know which ones you're doing. The areas you've picked are narrow enough that I think you'll get to know the writers over time and they'll get to know you (if they don't already). - Dank (push to talk) 01:26, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Would you rather watchlist all possible TFAs, or should I let you know when one of yours is up? (At the moment, there's just one, on the 19th). - Dank (push to talk) 01:32, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, if I watchlist all of them, I guess I'd have to make the determination whether it is within my areas, which is fine, but I wonder, if I start working on an article that another editor also chooses, how would that be sorted out? Do you think that won't happen very often? I hate to give you more work, though. Whichever is easier for you is fine with me. Corinne (talk) 01:42, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

P.S. Do you want me to work on the October 19, 2015, article? I see it is about a plant. Corinne (talk) 01:44, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the 19th is yours. Hm, good point ... Auree is taking some, and I'm going to give Brian a few, so it would probably be best if I leave a message here when one of yours comes along. You're welcome to watchlist all the TFAs, though, or keep an eye on WP:TFAA, and if you see one that's in your areas and I miss it, let me know. - Dank (push to talk) 01:49, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

O.K. Corinne (talk) 01:58, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank I just finished the October 19, 2015, summary. I didn't know whether I should leave one common name or take out both, so I took out both. Also, it said, "shrub or (rarely) tree", so I didn't know whether to leave "tree" in or (since it's rarely a tree), remove it. Corinne (talk) 02:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

The botany writers will sometimes do a simple Google search to see if one common name predominates, and use that. Albany Banksia gets 4 times as many hits so I went with that. - Dank (push to talk) 02:39, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Today's Featured Article/October 14, 2015

Dank I just read the summary at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 14, 2015 about Mary O'Reilly. I did a character count and it came out at 1196, so it's within the range you gave me before. I don't know if you want it shortened a little bit. It's pretty well written as it is, but I've got to ask you about something. It's the second sentence in the lead:

• She worked at the Mint from 1904, for 34 years.

When I started editing on Wikipedia three years ago, that was the first time I had ever seen "from + year" used to mean "beginning in [year]" or "starting from [year]" or "from [year] onwards". I think I discussed this with Rothorpe, and we may have concluded that this was British English style (I don't remember). Also, I would never tack on a phrase like "for 34 years" after a comma like that. I would write:

• She worked at the Mint for 34 years beginning in 1904.

• She worked at the Mint for 34 years starting in 1904.

Do you want to leave it as it is, or change it? Also, do you want the paragraph shortened, or not? Corinne (talk) 19:12, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Since it's under 1200, I wouldn't remove stuff just to make it shorter (especially since it went through TFAR, so arguably, it's had some vetting). Agreed with you on both points. Question: given that the 10M Main Page readers may need an extra dose of clarity, should we be concerned about "Mary Margaret O'Reilly (1865–1949) was the Assistant Director of the United States Bureau of the Mint. She worked at the Mint beginning in 1904 ..."? If they're skimming (and most of them didn't come to the Main Page intending to read our column), they might think we're saying she was the Assistant Director beginning in 1904. Is that a problem, and is there a fix? - Dank (push to talk) 20:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank How about if we take out that short second sentence entirely? We can add a short sentence at the very end, perhaps: "She had worked at the Mint for a total of 34 years." Regarding October 16 (section below), if I understand you correctly, you'd rather I not make any further edits to the article. If I have misunderstood, let me know. Corinne (talk) 01:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes that's right. Agreed with your suggestion. Let me know when you're done with the 13th please. - Dank (push to talk) 01:37, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank I'm done with the 13th. Corinne (talk) 01:47, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Perfect. It's such a pleasure having someone on board who knows this stuff. - Dank (push to talk) 18:58, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank First, thank you for the kind comment just above. Second, I just saw your edits to the end of the October 14, 2015, article. Here's the first of the two to that sentence: [4] The reason I put "for a total of 34 years" and even added "Upon her retirement" to the beginning of the sentence, is so that there is no possible confusion with the information just preceding it. The way you have it, a reader might think (a) Roosevelt postponed her retirement after she had worked at the Mint for 34 years, or (b) when Roosevelt postponed her retirement date (in 1934), she had worked at the Mint for 34 years, both of which would be wrong. I'll leave it up to you, though. Corinne (talk) 02:09, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Oops, missed that. Okay, I made another edit, what do you think? - Dank (push to talk) 02:42, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Good. Corinne (talk) 19:05, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 41, 2015)

An example of musical composition – Scherzo in A flat (Borodin) Playⓘ Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Musical composition Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Personal finance • Scottish mythology Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Aucanquilcha

Hi Corinne, what's going on with the copy-edit here? Having skimmed through your conversation with Vsmith on his talk page, I can't see what progress was made (although it did clear a few points up). Are you planning to continue the copy-edit, or shall I return the request to the list? I didn't want to template you, seeing that you've commented on the request. Either way I'll ensure you're credited in the archive. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 09:31, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Baffle gab1978 In the days following my post at Requests, I saw the requesting editor and Vsmith were making edits, so I left it for a while. Every day or so I see another edit. I guess it's time I go back and read it through. Thanks for reminding me. Corinne (talk) 15:02, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

No worries, thanks for replying. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 19:53, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Valais and Tethys ocean

Just a note: there are easier things in life.

Valais Ocean, Tethys Ocean, formation of the Alps, formation of the Caspian Sea, Periadriatic Seam are linked together.

The Alps is the best known orogeny on Earth, but these things are still quite complex.

Some references:

• Christian Gnägi, Toni P. Labhart (2015). Geologie der Schweiz (in German) (9 ed.). Ott Verlag. p. 208. ISBN 978-3-7225-0142-0.
• The TRANSMED Atlas: the Mediterranean Region from Crust to Mantle. Springer Verlag. 2004. p. 141. ISBN 3-540-22181-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

Regards --Chris.urs-o (talk) 06:41, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2015)

Costumed performers from the 2006 Bristol Renaissance Faire Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Costume Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Musical composition • Personal finance Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Thiruvilaiyadal

I happened to notice that you have some experience in copyediting Indian films (Moodu Pani and Anniyan) before. Would you like to give Thiruvilaiyadal, a 1965 Tamil film, a copyedit for a potential GA nomination? Thank you. Thamizhan1994 (^{Appo Pesu}) 11:58, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Twofingered Typist has accepted my request for copyediting as I asked him first before coming to you as I thought he was busy. Thank you. :) Thamizhan1994 (^{Appo Pesu}) 13:03, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Re that user

Corinne, I'd really just ignore him. We're wasting our time; let him get on with it and don't work on any of "his" articles. As his replies show, he is supremely graceless, not to mention patronising (posting a link that he thinks demonstrates a cast-iron rule rather than some piece of regional whimsy). Regards, Ericoides (talk) 08:17, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Ericoides Thanks, and I will. I just read the link you provided, and in the answer read something – "Some people use "which" restrictively, which is more or less okay (and popular among writers of British English) as long as no commas are involved" – that finally explains why I see "which" used to introduce restrictive clauses so often on WP. I had seen it sometimes before I started editing WP but not as much as I have seen it on WP. I had just gotten tired of changing "which" to "that", so I finally stopped, unless (a) the clause is non-restrictive and should stay as "which" or (b) it just doesn't sound right. It's amazing how, when a little grace and courtesy is so easy, it is just too difficult for some editors. Corinne (talk) 17:56, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

TFAs

Nov 1 and Nov 2 both look fun, you're welcome to do them. Nov 2 came from Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Shah Rukh Khan, and there's not much to do except whittle it down (it's currently at 1367 characters) ... those guys have a pretty good sense of how to write TFA summaries. Nov 1 didn't go through TFAR, and the trick for that one will be to expand the TFA summary (which came from the lead) with information in the article that will appeal to Main Page readers, if you can find any ... the lead is too short for TFA. - Dank (push to talk) 22:26, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank I read the November 1 article, and I made a few minor copy-edits. I struggled to find anything to add to the summary. Maybe the information about the ll of her 14 foals that won a register of merit and the amount they collectively earned in races, if it's not already in the summary. Would you mind taking care of this one? Horse racing is just not one of my interests. I was puzzled by something in the article, though. It's not that important, but I thought I'd ask. I normally add a no-break space to prevent a single letter or initial of two (or three) initials from ending up on one line and the other single letter or initial ending up on the next line, as in "A. B. Green", or to prevent a single digit from ending up all alone at the end of a line. In this article I also thought the "L" of "Barbara L", the name of the horse, should not end up on a separate line from "Barbara". I was going through the article adding a few no-break spaces when I saw that whoever had written this article had added a lot of no-break spaces, many more than I usually see, and in places where I thought it would not have been so bad if there had been a break there. I didn't want to say anything, but I just thought I'd point it out. I'm going to look at the Shah Rukh Khan summary now. Corinne (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure, I'll be happy to do it. Per my standard disclaimer, no-break spaces are one of the things I don't pay attention to. - Dank (push to talk) 01:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank, what do you think? I got the November 2, 2015, summary down to 1210 characters. Corinne (talk) 23:42, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

1200 is the cap. - Dank (push to talk) 01:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh. I forgot. I cut out an unnecessary sentence. Corinne (talk) 01:27, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Very nice work, no complaints. - Dank (push to talk) 02:17, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2015)

Ice hockey is an example of a team sport. Pictured is an 1893 ice hockey match at Victoria Rink, Montreal. Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Team sport Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Costume • Musical composition Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:06, 19 October 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Termite (energy source section)

As per the GA review, it has been put on hold because there is an apparent copyvio in the energy source section, but I am really terrible when I'm trying to reword things (I unintentionally disorganise, change meaning or add grammatically wrong sentences at times), so I may need some assistance. Also, I'm sorry I haven't been caught up with the issues you have raised, I will get to them when the copyvio has been cleared. Burklemore1 (talk) 15:20, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Burklemore1 I'm sorry the GA review has been put on hold, but I'm sure it will be resolved and you can continue working on it. No problem. There's no rush as far as I'm concerned. Let me know when you want me to take a look at the article again. Corinne (talk) 15:26, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

That's okay, I should be able to rewrite the whole section very soon. I may be slower than usual though. Having two other GA nominees being reviewed, it isn't very easy to balance them all evenly. And I shall, just watch closely to my edits so my potential errors can be fixed. Burklemore1 (talk) 15:39, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I have rewritten the section, so please feel free to check it out and correct anything I may have done wrong. Burklemore1 (talk) 04:17, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the GA reviewer for the Termite article. Things are looking good so far, so Burklemore1 doesn't really have to worry. You've done a really good job copyediting it, and because of that, I'm going to have a tough time giving Burklemore1 a tough time. I'll manage to find stuff to carp about, though! (heh, heh, heh ...)

Nice place you got here. You've decorated it with some of my favorite photos in all of Wikipedia! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 23:25, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Stigmatella aurantiaca Thanks! I'm glad you approve of my copy-edits to Termite, and I'm glad you like the images on my user page. I think that's great you noticed the same photos in Wikipedia articles. I just looked at your user page, and your page is interesting, too. I'm so impressed by the titles of articles you've written and worked on. I think if I had another life to live, I'd study that stuff. (The closest I got to it was a course in crystallography and mineralogy in college.) Your diagrams are fabulous. I love them. What does your user name mean? Corinne (talk) 00:54, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your compliments! For scientific illustration on Wikipedia, I've adopted a deliberately flat and minimalist style, usually using no more than a handful of colors. This is in complete contrast to the volunteer work that I do (such as flyers for the local public library) using 3D rendering software. I especially like it when I can simulate an observation or effect using a computer to work out the math and to draw the images that I assemble into an animation.

Stigmatella aurantiaca and Myxococcus xanthus are bacteria that I worked on when I was a graduate student. Myxobacteria are social bacteria which form "wolf packs" and which hunt other bacteria, fungi, and even the occasional eukaryotic microorganism. They have complex life cycles reminiscent of the life cycles of eukaryotic slime molds. I highly recommend taking a look at the videos that I've included in the external links of Myxococcus xanthus and Myxobacteria such as Video: Myxococcus xanthus preying on an E. coli colony and Myxococcus xanthus fruiting body formation. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 05:18, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Jack jumper ant has proven to be the most difficult article to work on so far, but Termite will also be very challenging (yet worthwhile). ;) Burklemore1 (talk) 12:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Stigmatella aurantiaca Wow! Those are great videos! I watched several in a row. How did you get such close-up images? E. coli is not such a great bacteria, for humans at least, right? So I guess it's a good thing that other bacteria can destroy them. Are the other bacteria actually eating the E. coli? I guess this kind of thing goes on all the time among different kinds of bacteria. Did you see the videos that followed yours that are set to music, like this one [5] and the one right after it that is set to what is, I think, a tune from a James Bond movie, or are those yours, too? Corinne (talk) 16:09, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

No, those videos aren't mine, but I personally knew several of the people who took them. Hans Reichenbach (not the same as the one in Wikipedia) was still alive when I was a graduate student. He was on a visit to the United States and tried to recruit me to his lab. I also knew Eugene Rosenberg (who tried to recruit me to Tel Aviv University), Dale Kaiser, Marty Dworkin, and bunches of other people in myxobacterial research. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 16:38, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Stigmatella aurantiaca I was just looking at your recent edits to Termite. Most seem fine, but I wanted to discuss two changes with you, both at this edit [6].

1) In this sentence:

• "Termites antennae have a number of sensory functions. They include a scape (one of the three basic segments on the insect antennae), a pedicel...

You added "antennae" but neglected to change "termites" to either "termites'" (plural possessive) or "termite" (noun as adjective) right before it. Then, in the next sentence, you changed "This includes" to "They include" (presumably to match the plural "antennae"), but in doing this you introduced some ambiguity because in the previous sentence there are two plural nouns, "antennae" and "sensory functions". Since what follows "They include" look like parts of antennae, I assume you want "they" to refer to "antennae", not "sensory functions". This needs to be cleared up. I read the rest of this sentence, and the next, and I do not see any details about the sensory functions of termite antennae, so it's not clear why that statement is there. It just goes right into a list of the parts of the antennae.

2) Later, we read these two sentences:

• The structure of the legs is consistent with other insects. They include a coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia and the tarsus.

You again changed "This includes" (in the second sentence) to "They include". From looking at what follows "They include", I assume by "they" you mean "the legs", but, again, there is ambiguity because of the two plural nouns: "legs" and "insects". Also, the subject of the first sentence is really "structure", not "legs". By switching to "legs", you're abandoning any further mention of "the structure". I recommend changing "They" to "The legs": "The legs include".

• The structure of the legs is the same as that of other insects: the legs include...

or:

• The legs are the same as in other insects: they include... Corinne (talk) 00:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections. Unclear pronoun antecedents are a major downfall. I see them in other people's writing, but somehow I don't see them in my own. Selective blindness hits us all. The other mistakes I attribute to being distracted by an emergency at work.  :-( Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 02:29, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Stigmatella aurantiaca That's all right. Thank you for not taking umbrage at my corrections and explanations. I never know whether another editor really knows the grammar but just overlooked something or doesn't really know the grammar. I provide the explanations to save time but also to allow the other editor to make the changes. I also sometimes miss things and make mistakes and am chagrined when I see them corrected by another editor. Corinne (talk) 02:35, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I've finished making my final swoop through the article. Could you go through and fix any mistakes that I've introduced, after which I can promote? Thanks! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Stigmatella aurantiaca First, thanks for your confidence in me. I'm going to read through the article once more from beginning to end. I've just read a few sections and made a few changes. (I hadn't read the article in a while, so was seeing it with fresh eyes.) I'm going to take a few hours' break, but will continue reading later today, if that's all right. I wanted to ask you about one section. It's the second paragraph in Termite#Description. I'll copy it here for ease of discussion:

• Consistent with all insects, the anatomy of the termite thorax consists of three segments: the prothorax, the mesothorax and the metathorax. Each segment contains a pair of two legs. On alates, the wings are located at the mesothorax and metathorax. The mesothorax and metathorax have well-developed exoskeletal plates; the prothorax has smaller plates. The thorax consists of three plates, known as the pronotum, mesonotum and metanotum.

You'll have seen in the edit history that I did make one or two small changes in this paragraph, but not enough to change any meaning. I noticed, though, a little problem. The first sentence says, "the anatomy of the termite thorax consists of three segments". The last sentence starts, "The thorax consists of three plates". (I didn't think "termite" was necessary before "thorax" here, but if I'm wrong, feel free to put it back in.) I think it's a little confusing to say, "the thorax consists of three segments", then describe the segments, and then say, "the thorax consists of three plates". Do the plates, by any chance, cover the segments? If so, perhaps the verb could be changed in the last sentence. Perhaps, "The three segments of the thorax are covered by plates known as the pronotum, etc." Corinne (talk) 17:59, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

It is almost impossible to present this information properly without an illustration, and there is no available diagram on termite morphology in Commons. Much of this section is generic, not being specific to termites. I thought it best to just delete the sentence about the pronotum, mesonotum and metanotum as excessive detail in the absence of a diagram. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:28, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

O.K. I've resumed reading. I have two questions about the following sentences which appear in the middle of the first paragraph in Termite#Diet:

• Most so-called higher termites, especially in the family Termitidae, can produce their own cellulase enzymes, but they retain a rich gut fauna and rely primarily upon the bacteria. The flagellates have also been lost in Termitidae, a result of the diversification of their feeding habits.

1) I don't remember reading about "higher termites" anywhere. Has this phrase been defined somewhere in the article? Don't you think it should be explained somewhere?

2) I don't understand the presence of the word "also" in the second sentence. I don't see where we have said that Termitidae, or any other species, has lost something, so why "also"? Corinne (talk) 22:24, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Do you mind if I re-arrange the sentences in Termite#Parasites, pathogens and viruses? I think all the sentences about parasites should be together, then fungi, then viruses. Right now, it's parasites, then fungi, then parasites again, then viruses. Also, in that section is a sentence that puzzles me. It's this sentence:

• Certain nematodes are an intermediate host, with chickens being their final host.

Are you sure this is worded correctly? This section is about parasites (etc.) that sometimes infect termites, making the termite the host. I should think that the termite is the intermediate host of (or for) some nematodes, on their way to infecting chickens. No? If you think this is worded correctly, and nematodes are the host, then what is the reason for including the sentence? Corinne (talk) 01:13, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Regarding that same section, Termite#Parasites, pathogens and viruses, I don't understand the reason for including a photo of a dead cockroach covered with a parasite. Even if that parasite also infects termites, I think there should be a photo of an infected termite, not a photo of an infected cockroach. If one cannot be found, I would still remove the photo of the dead cockroach. Corinne (talk) 01:47, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

In the first paragraph in the section Termite#Communication are the following two sentences:

• When termites go out to look for food, they forage in columns along the ground through vegetation. A trail can be identified by the faecal deposits or runways that are covered by objects.

I don't understand the second sentence. Does it mean that a trail can be identified by a scientist, or does it mean that a trail can be identified by termites? If the latter is meant, why not use the active voice: "Termites identify a trail..."? Also, I don't understand the last part of the second sentence: "by the faecal deposits or runways that are covered by objects"??? Don't you mean "by the faecal deposits or runways that cover objects along the way? User:Burklemore1 If you haven't already been watching my talk page, you might be interested in all my questions that I've been addressing to User:Stigmatella aurantiaca. Stigmatella aurantiaca, I just realized that the second word of your user name sounds a bit like "Our Auntie Akka" :) Corinne (talk) 02:00, 18 October 2015 (UTC) Corinne (talk) 02:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, I'll address some of your concerns while Stigmatella aurantiaca isn't available (I'm not sure where he/she lives, so I can't be certain though). I have done the following:

• For the "higher termites" part, this is used by scientists to group specific families of termites. This is what I found from a .edu wiki site that can classify termites into specific groupings: "There is a distinction between lower termites and higher termites, mentioned throughout many studies of termite guts. Lower termites have many species of bacteria along with protozoa, while higher termites usually just have the bacteria and a more elaborate anatomy while lacking the protozoa. ". The following source was cited: Breznak, J A; Brune, A (1993). "Role of Microorganisms in the Digestion of Lignocellulose by Termites". Annual Review of Entomology. 39 (1): 453–487. doi:10.1146/annurev.en.39.010194.002321. Where would you like this added? Description? I have also removed "also" from the specific sentence you have mentioned.
• You're more than welcome to rearrange the parasites section if you would like to, for the sake of this article retaining its high quality.
• Removed sentence about the chicken being the host and such.
• Removed photo of the fungi infecting the cockroach. It was more of an illustration as to what it does to its hosts. I figured it doesn't need to be "insect-specific" as long as it illustrates what it does, giving readers a glimpse of what some infected termites go through.
• For the faecal depoists part, it is how people and scientists can identify tracks. Most of the time termites don't visually identify these because they're blind, but rather they construct the tracks and leave pheromones on the track so other termites can walk along these trails. As for your second concern, the runways are covered by objects to avoid sunlight and predators. It's pretty much a safe passage for termites. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:08, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Two editors working simultaneously on the article is more than enough. I'll stand aside while you two go through this polishing step. Too many cooks spoil the upside down pineapple cake and all that. Let me know when you are finished, and then I'll take one final look. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:41, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

No worries. I may have addressed them all except for one, because I'm not sure where to put the potential new content. Burklemore1 (talk) 13:35, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• I presume that you are referring to the distinction between lower and higher termites? I found Radek (1999), a good review that is not hiding behind a paywall. Given a choice between putting the content in Termite#Taxonomy_and_phylogeny versus Termite#Diet, my choice would be Diet, for two reasons:

1. It seems to me (Warning! WP:OR) that the distinction between lower and higher termites makes as much taxonomic sense as the distinction between dinosaurs and birds. Birds are dinosaurs. Likewise, "higher termites" are those of the Termitidae family, while the "lower termites" are everything else. The lower termites do not constitute a monophyletic taxon.

2. Taxonomists can be divided between "lumpers" and "splitters". Radek is a lumper, dividing termites into seven families, while Krishna et al. are splitters, dividing termites into twelve families. So including extensive material from Radek in the Taxonomy and phylogeny section could possibly confuse things a bit. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 18:04, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

As you suggested, Termite#Description would also be a good choice of where to place this content. It all depends on the "spin" that you want to put on the material. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 18:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Y I have added a new paragraph in the diet section. Please double check my edits.

Stigmatella aurantiaca I saw your comment earlier (couldn't find it just now) where you said you thought three editors working on the article at the same time were too many, and that you would wait. I just wanted to say that the reason I draw Burklemore1's attention to this on-going discussion was that I thought it was his/her article, and, because the discussion was here, I didn't want Burklemore1 to think I was going behind his/her back. I really think you ought to feel welcome to comment here, or on the article's talk page where I've posted additional comments, at any time. I think the decision as to whether it is ready for GA or, later, for FA, is better made by you and Burkelmore1 than by me. I'm just here to help. Stigmatella, did you see my comments, above, that had nothing to do with the higher vs. lower termite discussion? Re Alt text, how does adding an alternate caption help vision-impaired readers, and is it only done in captions? Corinne (talk) 22:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

1. I started working on alt text because there could be no risk of conflict between those edits and what you and Burklemore1 are working on, and

2. alt text is not required for GA status.

3. Different screen readers work slightly differently, but they all search the source for text that may be meaningful to a low-vision user. Let's take the image of the termite nymph. If there is no alt text, the screen reader sees the following:

<div class="thumbinner" style="width:222px;"><a href="/wiki/File:Termite-by-RalfR.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Termite-by-RalfR.jpg/220px-Termite-by-RalfR.jpg" width="220" height="131" class="thumbimage" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Termite-by-RalfR.jpg/330px-Termite-by-RalfR.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Termite-by-RalfR.jpg/440px-Termite-by-RalfR.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1391" data-file-height="826" /></a>

<div class="thumbcaption">

<div class="magnify"><a href="/wiki/File:Termite-by-RalfR.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"></a></div>

A young termite nymph</div>

In the absence of alt text in the image, the screen reader sees that there is a link to a file named "File:Termite-by-RalfR.jpg", another link with the title "Enlarge", and a div block with the text "A young termite nymph".

4. A typical screen reader would put it all together and recite: "File. Termite by Ralfer. Japig. Enlarge. A young termite nymph."

5. Some screen readers make the (usually) intelligent decision that a raw file name is seldom of much utility to a user and would more simply recite: "Enlarge. A young termite nymph."

6. In the presence of my image alt text, the screen reader ignores the link destination in favor of the preferred alt text and recites: "A termite nymph looks like a smaller version of an adult, but lacking the specialisations that would enable determining its caste. Enlarge. A young termite nymph."

7. Carefully written alt text helps a low vision reader to understand an image. See WP:ALT

Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 02:25, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I have just slightly read the source you provided, and there seems to be a lot of good material. However, we should be cautious on what to use because I wish to avoid our new sentence(s) or even paragraph to be excessively detailed. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Alt text needs to be detailed enough that a low vision user can acquire a decent mental image of the figure, without the description going into excess. It helps to close your eyes, just listening to the words. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 03:17, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Btw Corinne, I think it's fine to have your input whether the article is ready for FA or not. It helps get a broader perspective as to where the article currently stands. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:36, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Finish with GA first. Corinne had some questions about the Termite#Defence section that need to be addressed, and then we can close out this chapter of the article's history. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 03:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Will do, I'll work on the discussion about the "higher termites" and "lower termites" afterwards. Burklemore1 (talk) 05:04, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Burklemore1 I worked on the organization of the section Termite#Parasites, pathogens and viruses, trying to make the paragraph better organized and the sentences flow logically. I don't know if I moved the references to the right places. Can you check that? Also, I wasn't sure if the species mentioned in these sentences: "M. anispliae is known to weaken the termite immune system. Infection with A. nomius only occurs when a colony is under great stress." were parasites or fungi. If they're parasites, I need to move these sentences up in the paragraph. If they're fungi, the sentence can stay where it is. You'll see I broke up one sentence to put parasites with the parasite material and fungi with fungi material; I figured that mites were parasites. Corinne (talk) 18:36, 19 October 2015 (UTC) Thanks, User:Stigmatella aurantiaca for the explanation. Do you mind if I make some minor changes to your wording? I'll make the changes, and if you don't like them, you can revert. Corinne (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I have checked the section and all references are still cited to their respective sentences.

Burklemore1 In the section Termite#As pests is the following sentence:

• It is possible that colonies can even thrive in warm buildings located in cold regions.

Since "can" expresses possibility, you don't need both "It is possible" and "can". The phrase "It is possible" kind of suggests that it is theoretically possible but no one has seen it happen yet. If that's the case, the phrase has to stay there. If "can even thrive", or even just "can thrive", is sufficient, they we'll remove "It is possible". Of course, if scientists have really seen it, perhaps we could change the whole sentence to: "Colonies of termites have been seen thriving in warm buildings...." If you want to keep "It is possible," I would change it to: "It is possible that termite colonies could thrive in warm buildings..." Corinne (talk) 19:04, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Y Used one of your suggestions.

In the third paragraph in the section Termite#As pests you have this sentence:

• Most attacks occur at harvest time; crops and trees are attacked during the dry season or when they are still in the early stages of growth.

(I just changed "when it is harvest time" to "at harvest time".) The second half of the sentence kind of contradicts the first half of the sentence. Can you resolve this contradiction? Corinne (talk) 19:20, 19 October 2015 (UTC) "During the dry season" is all right; the weather is usually dry around harvest time. But "when they are still in the early stages of growth" contradicts "at harvest time". Corinne (talk) 19:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Y Removed.

One last item:

In the section Termite#In science and technology is the following sentence:

• The lignocellulose polymers break down into sugars from unidentified enzymes from the termite gut, and this process transforms the polymers into hydrogen.

I noticed this construction: "from unidentified enzymes from the termite gut". Stylistically, it is best to avoid using the same preposition twice in close proximity. Here, you've got "from....from....". I'm wondering whether one of them could be changed to another preposition or phrase. Are sugars from enzymes? Is that really correct? Don't enzymes normally help break things down in digestion? Also, are enzymes necessarily from the termite gut, or could they be in the termite gut? Corinne (talk) 01:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry that I didn't get around on addressing your comments, a few personal problems got in the way and I only just got home. I have been out since 2pm and I have only just come back at 3am, so I'll be heading off to bed. After, I will work on this article. Burklemore1 (talk) 16:13, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Y Did some tweaking.

Lay-out

Ho corinne. I've tried some versions; see the history. persoanlly, I'd recoomand to stick witht the show/hide version of the links; I think that looks best. But alas, that's my opinion. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Crisco 1492 Can you help me format the top of my talk page? It looked O.K. when I asked JJ to figure out why my automatic archiving no longer worked. He saw that my user name in the archiving template had not been changed to Corinne when I changed my user name about six weeks ago, and he fixed that. But in the process he changed the width of the box/column in which I had all my links so that it was narrow. Before that, I had gotten it just wide enough that each of the links was on its own line, and the painting by Bonnard was to the left of the list of links, about the same size. When I asked JJ to try to get it back that way, he put all the links in a show/hide. I don't want them in a show/hide since I use them often. I also don't want the Bonnard painting to appear twice, and I don't want my table of contents really narrow like it is now. I'd like the Signpost to be at the right, just below the first image of Chittagong, and the table of contents to the left, but not so narrow, then, below that, the Bonnard image at the left and the list of links to the right of the Bonnard image. Can you do that? I'd be very grateful. Corinne (talk) 17:02, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• Like this? If you'd rather the links are more or less on the same line, just remove the "width: 50%" parameter from the table above. I'd recommend keeping the TOC easily readable, personally. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:57, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

• Crisco 1492 Thanks, Chris. Well, it's a little better. I agree with you about the ToC, and that looks fine as it is. However, neither of the Pierre Bonnard images appear. The file is in red letters. I only want the second one, however, so could you delete the first one (and make the other one appear)? Also, is there any way that the first section of the actual talk page could show up below the Bonnard image and the box with the links, not squeezed along the left side? Finally, and this is the least of it, could you take out any extra space between lines in the box with the links? Thanks. Corinne (talk) 00:16, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
  • You'd need to see if the file was deleted or moved, or if this is mistyped. I don't know where the original file was. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 03:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

It has been deleted. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:03, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492: {{-}} forces a start of the the threads below the fancy stuff? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:06, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• Sorry, misread. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 05:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry? For what? @Corinne: I've placed the links and the Signpost/Archivebox next to each other, ad removed the deleted picture. How do you like it this way? The table with the links and the Signpost fills 60% of the horizintal space, which is fine at my monitor. How about yours? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492: the break was fine! I didn't know that trick; I've added it to my tools-page. Let her have a look please at the version with the links and the Signpost next to each other; otherwise we just go back to the vertical positioning (Corinne, sorry for the house-decorators arguing here! We'll work it out). Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:49, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• Oh, sorry about the overwrite. Must have had an edit conflict. Agree, let's let Corinne pick. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 09:48, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I've set the width of the the Table of Contents at 340 px, and the links-box at 540px. These are fixed widhts. At my screen this fits, but it may be different at Corinne's. If so,let us know. The links-box at the center, and the Signpost and the Archives-box can be swapped, of course. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 10:28, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you both, JJ and Chris, for working on this. Can you move the Signpost and Archives up so that they are to the right of the ToC (without making the ToC narrower; it's O.K. now), and then put the box for the links under the Archives, kind of to the right (the box doesn't have to be so wide)? I'd still like to put a painting to the left of the links box, if that's possible. Corinne (talk) 18:28, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Joshua Jonathan That's a nice painting; thank you for adding it. It's in the right place, but I have a small screen and it goes off to the left too far. The box for the links can be narrower; that might bring the painting in a little. How about the rest of it (see just above)? Can you move the Signpost and Archives up so they are to the right of the ToC? Corinne (talk) 18:52, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

You mean, right next to the TOC, and not at the right side of the screen? And should the Signpost and the archive box above each other, or besides each other? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 18:56, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

No, I like space between the ToC and the Signpost/Archives, so the Signpost and Archives can be at the right side, with the Signpost just above the Archives box, like it is now. Corinne (talk) 19:10, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Joshua Jonathan Can you put the Signpost and Archives box to the right of the ToC, way over at the right margin so there will be space between them and the ToC? Corinne (talk) 19:16, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Like this? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 19:20, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Joshua Jonathan Well, it's better. Can't you put the Signpost and the Archives box to the right of the ToC? Also, can you make both the picture and the box with the links a little smaller (that is, narrower)? Corinne (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

• I see the issue: on my screen (1366 * 768) the painting and archive/signpost box are too big, so they are pushed below the TOC. Corinne, to get the best results we'd need to know what resolution you usually view Wikipedia at. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:16, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Chris, I have a small laptop, so I view my screen at 150% resolution so I can read the text easily. Corinne (talk) 17:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• That explains it. You're probably not going to be able to get all three in line on a low resolution screen, especially at 150% size. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:40, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Crisco 1492 What do you mean by "all three"? Below Chittagong image, Toc on left, Signpost on right, Archive box below Signpost. Below ToC, a painting on left and links box on right, below Archive box. Corinne (talk) 00:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

• Okay, guess I wasn't sure what you wanted. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 10:40, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

JJ? Chris? It doesn't look good now, but I don't know how to fix it. Can you use the gallery layout that I saw at WP:Image tutorial? Corinne (talk) 22:38, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Corinne, why not just out the picture above or below the links-box? In that case, there's surely enough space at your window. Otherwise, what doesn't like good now? Anyway, I've made the picture smaller now. @Crisco 1492: I've set the whole table at 50%; maybe we should just fit is with a fixed size in pixels? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 03:28, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Joshua Jonathan First, thank you for your efforts. I looked at it at lower resolutions. I started at 100%, then at 110%, then 125%. In all those, the Signpost is to the right of the ToC, and all the others are below the Signpost. When I go to 150%, the Signpost drops to below the bottom edge of the ToC, but still at the right, which is O.K., but the Archives, painting and links box are all below the Signpost. It would be nice if, at 150%, the painting could be at the left side, with the Archives and links box to the right. But if that's too difficult, I'll just leave it as it is. Corinne (talk) 18:56, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I've made the picture even smaller. It is also possible to fix the bridge-painting at the left, but then that would be a permanent fix. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 03:40, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

November 2015's featured articles

Dank I just saw the summary of the November 7, 2015, featured article. I did a count of the characters and it's at 1,069 characters.

(a) Do you want to leave it like that? Is the count all right?

(b) Do you want a review of the prose done, and, if so, do you want me to do it? Corinne (talk) 01:00, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I just looked at the November 8, 2015, summary. I'd really like to work on that one if it's all right with you. Corinne (talk) 01:02, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely, November 7 and 8 are both in your bailiwick, enjoy. Nov 8 was written by Moni3; I expect we'll be seeing more of her Florida-themed articles. Lengthwise, 1000-1150 is best, 950-1150 is second best, and 900 and 1200 are the caps. - Dank (push to talk) 01:19, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank I just read the summary for the November 7 article, and it seems fine as it is. As I mentioned above, the character count is 1,069, which is within the "best" range. I just wonder about "its flowers, which are...blossoms". Are both words needed? I thought "blossoms" was another word for flowers. But I suppose it could refer to the individual flowers in a cluster, and using the word makes it possible to describe that arrangement. Also, I wondered whether that sentence and the next should be made into one sentence (they're two types of Russian sage) or left as is. Corinne (talk) 17:48, 23 October 2015 (UTC) (No, I guess not. The second sentence is too long to add anything to it.) Corinne (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks much, I'll have a look. - Dank (push to talk) 17:54, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Sigh... I guess I'm not doing a very good job. I would normally notice things like the two "commonly called" phrases, but I guess I thought botanists know what they're talking about, and I hesitate to correct what they've written. The same with eliminating "flowers" the way you did. I guess it's a case of "Be bold" here, too. I hadn't thought to look for an article so that the phrase "common sage" could be used. I guess I need to give these summaries more thought. I'm sorry. Corinne (talk) 18:11, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Hey, don't worry. I've been doing this in a law office for several decades, then for 8 years on Wikipedia, and almost a year in the TFA job. And I'm constantly finding things I missed the first time around. You've got plenty of time to get up to speed. And we're really talking more about knowing what FA-writers will put up with than about right and wrong. - Dank (push to talk) 18:24, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I'll come back to Nov 7 later today. You're doing Nov 8, yes? - Dank (push to talk) 18:28, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, I'm working on Nov. 8 now. Corinne (talk) 19:00, 23 October 2015 (UTC) P.S. Your opinions are welcome regarding the two questions I asked Baffle gab1978 in the Trajan section below. Corinne (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC) Finished November 8 summary. What do you think? Corinne (talk) 19:15, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Nov 7: "(1 ft 8 in–3 ft 11 in)" is what the convert template produces, so I'd prefer to leave it alone, but someone may add spaces around the dash on TFA day. - Dank (push to talk) 21:30, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Nov 8: I've got a few more edits to make. "Florida crackers" is in the lead but not in the article text, and more readers will have heard the somewhat racist "cracker" meaning than will have heard the definition in our Florida cracker article, so I'm going to write out what it means. The last 3 items in the same list don't quite fit in the list. - Dank (push to talk) 22:14, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank I've been looking at, and admiring, your on-going edits to November 8, 2015, on the St. Johns River. I just wonder about "touching" for a river. I'm not sure that's the best verb. I know the original summary (before I started cutting) distinguished between "runs through" and "runs along [the edge of]", but I thought, for a brief summary, it wasn't necessary to make that fine distinction, so I left it just "runs through". If a river runs along the edge of a county, it is also running through the land of that county, isn't it? I think "runs through" is more descriptive of what a river actually does than "touches" or "touching". If you want to bring in a bit of that distinction without using too many words, perhaps "runs through or along [twelve counties]", but I think just "runs through" would be sufficient. But, of course, it's your decision (and you're the more experienced summary writer).

I also wanted to ask you about your addition of a comma in the sentence about two lists. I know this is a stylistic decision, and perhaps you feel the comma enhances the distinction between the two lists that are so opposite to each other, but when the second part is not a complete clause, I generally do not use a comma. I think the word "but" is sufficient to indicate the contrast. Corinne (talk) 16:38, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Would "runs through or alongside" work for you? On the comma ... I need to explain my process. I have a bunch of copyediting projects going (on- and off-wiki), and what works best for me, when I know something's wrong but I haven't decided how to fix it, is to just walk away. Some solution will usually occur to me within 24 or at most 48 hours, then I go back and fix it. You'll know when I'm still trying to figure out what to do ... those are the times when I don't say "done" in an edit summary. I'm still trying to figure out what to do on this one; the last sentence doesn't work for me. - Dank (push to talk) 22:48, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank How about "runs either through or alongside"? Otherwise, "runs through or alongside" is fine. Thanks for explaining your method. I do that sometimes, too, and I'm often surprised when I go back to something and immediately see the best wording and wonder why I hadn't seen it the first time. Corinne (talk) 23:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC) The last sentence sounds good now. Corinne (talk) 23:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Happy to help. I'd prefer "runs through or alongside". For any individual reader, either the two expressions mean the same thing (in which case, the longer one is redundant), or they don't. If they mean different things, the most likely meaning for the second is an exclusive or: either through, or alongside, but not both. But the St Johns does run both through and alongside some counties. - Dank (push to talk) 23:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Mosquito

I'm just letting you know that I am going to start working on Mosquito, and if you would like you can add any input in regards to my edits. If you're also willing to copyedit it when I am done, please feel free to. I thought I'd let you know about this. Cheers, Burklemore1 (talk) 16:58, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi

If you want to, please take a look at my TAFI noms for Astrid Lindgren and Omakase. Appreciate it.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:22, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

BabbaQ I didn't want you to think I was ignoring your request. I thought I'd first finish was I was working on and then look at them. I'm copy-editing a long article (Trajan), in response to a request at WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests. When I finish that, I will look at your articles. Corinne (talk) 19:56, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

BabbaQ I'm almost finished copy-editing Astrid Lindgren. Before I save my edits, I wanted to ask you whether it will create problems for you if I leave a few "clarification needed" tags with hidden notes to editors (that is, you). You can read my notes, fix things, and delete the tags and notes in a short time, but I don't know whether the tags and notes will impact the article's selection as a "Today's Featured Article". Corinne (talk) 16:50, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Since I'm not getting a response from BabbaQ, can you tell me whether a few "clarification needed" tags with notes to editors will negatively impact whatever upcoming selections there may be for BabbaQ's article "Astrid Lindgren"? I've made all my edits and am hoping for a reply before I save my edits. Corinne (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Brianboulton I need your help. I should have asked this question before I started editing. A long time ago, when I was asked to copy-edit an article that was being reviewed for FA, I was told not to place "clarification needed" tags in the article because it would negatively impact the selection of the article, perhaps because of the suggestion that the article was still in process or unstable. I don't know if that applies to Astrid Lindgren at this point, and I don't want to ruin any chances for this article. If I wait any longer to get an answer, I may lose all the work I've just done on the article. Can you answer the question I've posed above? Thanks. Corinne (talk) 17:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

BabbaQ, Dank, and Brian -- Forget it. I decided to go ahead and save all my edits, including the tags and notes, because if I waited any longer, all the work I did might be lost. I certainly hope I haven't messed things up for you, BabbaQ. Corinne (talk) 17:16, 25 October 2015 (UTC) Oh, I wanted to tell you that I got rid of "SEK" because I thought it would mean nothing to English speaking readers who don't know that abbreviation, and I left what was in the link, "Swedish krona", but I realize that might be singular, so you might have to write out the plural. If you really prefer "SEK" be there, feel free to put it back. Corinne (talk) 17:19, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2015)

Models promoting Zombieland at San Diego Comic-con. A zombie comedy is a horror comedy subgenre that involves zombies. Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Comedy horror Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Team sport • Costume Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:09, 26 October 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

History of Baden-Württemberg

Doug Weller I know you're busy, so this will be two quick questions. (I'm asking you because I know you have an interest in history.) I'm copy-editing History of Baden-Württemberg. In the section History of Baden-Württemberg#Further Austria and the Palatinate I see a lot of boldface type. Is all that boldface necessary? This is the only section that has it, except the very beginning of the article.

Also, the two-sentence fourth paragraph of that section starts with this sentence:

• Politically, Further Austria was ruled by the Duke of Austria until 1379.

Do you see any need for the adverb "politically" there? It suggests that the writer wanted to make a distinction between a political ruler and a figurehead ruler, but I don't see a figurehead mentioned. Corinne (talk) 17:18, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I was only involved with the article because of some socking. See MOS:BOLD, indeed the entire page for guidance on your first question. And yes, politically doesn't seem necessary, and the sentence seems misplaced chronologically. Unsourced too of course. Doug Weller (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Doug Weller Thanks, Doug. I read the section on boldface. I also looked at the article that gives an example of a re-direct name that should be bolded. It says James Tiptree, Jr., redirect from Alice Sheldon. I looked at that article and saw the two names in boldface, but I didn't see anything that indicated it was a re-direct. The MOS:BOLD section mentioned "incoming re-directs", but how do I know if something is an incoming re-direct unless I actually see "Re-direct from X" at the top of the article?

The MOS:BOLD also said the word or phrase that is the subject of a linked article (a subtopic of the larger one) could be in boldface. In the History of Baden-Württemberg#Further Austria and the Palatinate, I guess "Further Austria" and its other names should be in boldface because there's a linked article for it, but how about all the other ones lower down in the section? Even if there is an article on each of them, there is no link in that section to those articles. I'm really sorry to bother you again. Once I learn these things I won't forget them, and it will be useful to me when copy-editing articles. Corinne (talk) 23:23, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

University of Cambridge

Charles01 I just wanted to say that I actually didn't know whether experts in demographics have discovered a "normal" distribution of population according to age, but I thought, if they have, then "distort" would probably work for describing the ballooning of one age group. I searched for articles that might give more information. I know what you mean, that "distort" could carry a negative connotation, but, on the other hand, using "affect" (without saying how) is kind of bland. I wasn't actually arguing for going back to "distort"; I was just suggesting it might be worth reading more. I only skimmed those articles, but I didn't see the word "distort" anywhere. I usually don't do much research except for reading other Wikipedia articles. I concentrate on fixing small errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, font, spacing, and grammar, and trying to improve sentences and paragraph cohesiveness. That keeps me busy enough. While I was reading your comment, I thought that perhaps that sentence is not necessary at all. If it needs to be said, perhaps a more straightforward sentence saying that it is a university town, so the population of 18- to 24-year-olds is higher than in non-university towns, but that's kind of obvious, isn't it, once you know what a university town is? I wanted to add that I appreciate your well written comments. It's rare to read good writing on talk pages. Also, I wanted you to know that I didn't write that comment to challenge your edit. Corinne (talk) 23:27, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks. No further thoughts. Much too early. Need to get dressed. But in principal I agree it's good to try and work through these ticklish bits. Best Charles01 (talk) 04:36, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Trajan

Baffle gab1978 I just began copy-editing Trajan yesterday, and left off editing late yesterday to get some sleep. I now see that two other editors are making changes to sentences I was working on yesterday. I am still working on those sections, and even after I finish reading an article once, making edits as I go, I always go back and re-read the article to make further changes and improve sentences. I don't want to say anything to those two editors since the edits were made in good faith, but is there any way you could say something to them, or put a working notice at the top of the article, so that no one edits until I am finished? Corinne (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2015 (UTC) Corinne (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Corinne, you could place {{GOCEinuse}} at the top of the article, or the section you're working on, and hopefully those editors will hold off for a while. If you're getting lots of conflicts it might be worth waiting a few days for things to settle down. If the article is under constant development or there's disruptive activity we can put the request on hold and discuss whether to decline it if there's not much point copy-editing it. You can also abandon your c/e; just leave a short note on the request and preferably inform the requester.. Sometimes an ongoing c/e will prompt other editors to edit the article when they receive notifications by e-mail, or on their watchlists. We have to rely on others' good faith that our work isn't wasted, but GOCE has no special privileges and we can't stop other editors working on the articles. I'll look over the articles history in a short while. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 23:29, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Baffle gab1978 At the beginning of the fifth paragraph in the section Trajan#The Correctores: Greek/Roman relations, it says "the Greek elite intellectuals". I hadn't heard that phrase before, and I'm wondering whether it should be the more common "the Greek intellectual elite" or "the Greek intellectual elites". I don't know if there is a significant difference between "elite intellectuals" and "intellectual elite". What do you recommend? Corinne (talk) 17:36, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, the last two sentences of the second paragraph of the lede are now (after I changed "Nerva" at the beginning of the second sentence back to "He"):

• After a brief and tumultuous year in power, culminating in a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva was compelled to adopt the more popular Trajan as his heir and successor. He died on 27 January 98 and was succeeded by his adopted son without incident.

I think it's clear enough that "He" is Nerva (and not either Domitian or Trajan), but I wanted to ask you what you thought. The first sentence says Trajan was Nerva's heir, so "adopted son" in the second paragraph is Trajan, so "He" can't be Trajan. I just like to avoid constant repetition of a name if at all possible. What do you think? Corinne (talk) 17:40, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd leave "elite intellectuals" as it is; I don't know much about Ancient Roman society so I can't comment on any differences. I'd let the requester worry about that one. I think your "He" and "adopted son" are fine; it's clear from the context of the earlier text who we're referring to there. Avoiding repetition is good as long as it doesn't confuse the reader. I hope that's helpful; all IMO of course. ;-) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 23:41, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Cplakidas I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts about "elite intellectuals" vs. "the intellectual elite(s)". Unfortunately, I changed it before seeing Baffle gab1978's recommendation to leave it as it was. Of course I'd be glad to change it back. Corinne (talk) 23:49, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Corinne! I'd say "intellectual elite" is more accurate to describe what is meant, i.e. the prominent literati and philosophers. Constantine ✍ 07:55, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Baffle gab1978 In the section Trajan#Period of peace: public buildings and festivities, which do you prefer:

• One notable act of Trajan (this is the way it is now), or:

• One of Trajan's notable acts. Corinne (talk) 01:25, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

The latter, provided it is correct and appropriate in the context (I haven't read the text). Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 18:39, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Corinne: I have modified two points in the Trajan article, according to your copy-editing suggestions. Please tell me what you think of it. Cerme (talk) 01:41, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Cerme The changes you made didn't help much. Here is one of the sentences as it is now:

• This had to do mostly with curbing overenthusiastic spending on public works as a means of channeling ancient rivalries between neighboring cities, which vyed with each over "extravagant, needless [...] structures that would make a show".

• You need to say whose overenthusiastic spending on public works it was.

• You need to explain/say who used the spending on public works as "a means of channeling ancient rivalries between neighboring cities" and how the spending helped to channel the ancient rivalries. That phrase – channeling ancient rivalries between neighboring cities – especially "channeling" – is just not clear enough, at least to me.

• Who, or what, vied with each other?

Also, if you read the next sentence, and then read about two paragraphs later, you'll see that you have repeated the statement about the need to increase the number of junior members of the oligarchy, and that they felt disinclined to present themselves as members of councils because they'd have to spend more money. You may have used slightly different words, but it's there twice. Figure out the best place to put it and delete the other one.

I took away the quotation marks around "better" because they're unnecessary. Pliny really did believe it was better, so "better" means "better". When you put it in quotation marks, you're kind of saying that "better" really means something else. What I was suggesting earlier about this was to explain what the upstart plebs were and why Pliny would think it was better not to have them on the councils (explain briefly, of course, or use links). Corinne (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Corinne. I shall follow your suggestions to the letter. RegardsCerme (talk) 17:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Corinne, I have revised the text at the two points we discussed above, according to your suggestions. Hope I have done it better nowCerme (talk) 20:04, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

TAFI

When you find time for it please review my latest noms at TAFI. Isabel Adrian and Josephine Bornebusch. Appreciate it.--BabbaQ (talk) 14:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, BabbaQ, but I can't find either of these. Also, could you point me to a list of criteria if there is one? I haven't spent much time at these pages. Corinne (talk) 02:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Cenozoic

Apokryltaros If you're not too busy, I wonder if you could explain the graphic time-line in the upper right corner of the article on the Cenozoic. I don't understand why the Cenozoic is vertical but the Mesozoic is horizontal. I see the progression of years (is that "millions of years before present"?) on the left, so I can kind of understand the block of time for the Cenozoic, but I don't understand why Mesozoic is across the bottom. I also don't understand why the Mesozoic is turquoise and why there is a turquoise band to the left of Cenozoic. I guess they are supposed to be two different shades of blue, with the lighter one meaning "Phanerozoic" (but I don't know what that means, either). I guess the Paleogene, Neogene, and Quaternary are sections of the Cenozoic. Corinne (talk) 01:12, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

In response to a request for a copy-edit of Megalodon at WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests, I am going to read through the article. I promise you I will be very careful not to change anything I am not sure of. I may ask you for your opinion on some things, if you don't mind. I know archaeologists and paleontologists have their own lingo, but I have to ask you about the use of the preposition "under". I have edited quite a few botany articles, and I never saw that preposition used to indicate the genus, or family, or species of a plant. Is "under" used more in paleontology? See the second paragraph of the article, which I will copy here:

• The taxonomic assignment of C. megalodon has been debated for nearly a century, and is still under dispute. The two major interpretations are Carcharodon megalodon (under family Lamnidae) or Carcharocles megalodon (under the family Otodontidae). Consequently, the scientific name of this species is commonly abbreviated C. megalodon in the literature.

Is it "under", as in "classified under"? (In botany, they use "in".)

Also, whether or not "under" is correct for "under family...", but especially if it is correct, there's another "under" that I wonder about: "and is still under dispute". I wonder if "in" would be better: "is still in dispute"? Which do you prefer? Corinne (talk) 01:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

In response to your first question, the "bar" for the Mesozoic Era is because the start of the chart has been cropped at 70 million years ago, i.e., the timeline of the Cenozoic Era is starting at 70 million years ago. As for your second question, I assume palaeo-zoologists and zoologists use "under" to refer to a subtaxon's placement in a supertaxon, i.e., "file this species under Amphiaspididae," but, as far as I know, one can just as easily say "in Amphiaspididae," too.--Mr Fink (talk) 02:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh. O.K. Thank you, User:Apokryltaros. Here's another question about Megalodon: In the middle of the paragraph in Megalodon#Decline in food supply are the following two sentences:

• Whale migratory patterns during the Pliocene have been reconstructed from the fossil record, suggesting that most surviving species showed a trend towards polar regions. The cooling of the oceans during the Pliocene restricted the access of C. megalodon to polar regions, depriving it of its main food source, the great whales.

In the first sentence, it sounds like "most surviving species" means "most surviving species of whales". If this is correct, the last part of that sentences seems to say that "most surviving species (of whales)" spent more time in the polar regions than they had before. If my interpretation is correct, then I don't understand the second sentence.

If "most surviving species" means "most surviving species of megalodon", then I think it should say that, but then the second sentence is repetitive. Corinne (talk) 03:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I amended that statement for clarity, and yes, I agree there's too much repetition in that section, though, I'll try to fix it some more in the morning.--Mr Fink (talk) 03:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Isthmus of Panama

Apokryltaros (I get side-tracked reading linked articles while I copy-edit long articles like Megalodon.) I just read Isthmus of Panama, and I saw a few minor things I'll fix later, but I wanted to ask you about something. In the section Isthmus of Panama#Biosphere is the following sentence:

• The tropical climate also encourages a myriad of large and brightly coloured species: insects, snakes, birds, fish, and reptiles.

I was wondering why amphibians were not included in this list. Aren't frogs amphibians? I thought the brightly colored frogs of Central and South America are well known. Also, there is nothing here to explain how the "tropic climate...encourages...large and brightly coloured species". (Also, a minor issue, why is this in British spelling when it's about the Americas?)

Also, I wanted to point out the "citation needed" tag at the end of the Isthmus of Panama#Geology section to you and/or Vsmith. It has been there since September 2013. Corinne (talk) 20:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I swapped out "snakes" with "amphibians," and I elected to amputate that statement with the citation needed tag, as the extinction of most of the endemic South American mammals occurred prior to the isthmus' formation, and had little to do, if at all, with "surviving cold."--Mr Fink (talk) 21:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Great! Thanks. Corinne (talk) 23:39, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2015)

Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Allegra Versace Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Comedy horror • Team sport Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:22, 2 November 2015 (UTC) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Megalodon

Apokryltaros and Rothorpe I wanted to ask you both what you thought of this sentence. It's the second sentence in Megalodon#Skeletal anatomy:

• To support the beast's dentition, its jaws would have been massive, stouter, and more strongly developed than those of the great white, which possesses a comparatively gracile dentition.

I'd like you to focus particularly on "its jaws would have been massive, stouter, and more strongly developed..."

In those three modifiers, we have:

• massive – an adjective in the base (regular) form

• stouter – a "short" adjective in the comparative form

• more strongly developed – a "long" adjective in the comparative form ("more developed"), with an adverb to intensify the adjective (at least I think that's what it is).

I'm wondering whether "massive" should be in the comparative form ("more massive"). If so, is this combination all right? –

• more massive, stouter, and more strongly developed,

or should we substitute a "long" adjective for "stouter" so all three are "long" adjectives (using "more"). What do you think? Corinne (talk) 19:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I think we should go with "more massive, stouter, and more strongly developed" in my opinion.--Mr Fink (talk) 20:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks. Corinne (talk) 20:12, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Apokryltaros, I've got to ask you about this sentence, the second-to-last sentence in the section Megalodon#Skeletal anatomy:

• The team stresses that relative and proportional changes in megalodon skeletal features are ontogenetic in nature in comparison to those of the great white, as they occur in great white sharks while growing.

(You'll see in the edit history that I changed "in comparison to that of the great whale" to "in comparison to those of the great whale", assuming that "those" refers to "relative and proportional changes".)

I don't understand this sentence. I skimmed the linked article Ontogenetic, and it seemed to say that ontology had to do with development of a creature during its lifetime. If that is correct, then the "relative and proportional changes in megalodon skeletal features" occur while it is developing, or growing. So where is the comparison, if those same features "occur in great white sharks while growing"? Corinne (talk) 20:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused, too, as, as far as I can tell, the sentence sounds redundant.--Mr Fink (talk) 20:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Apokryltaros Do you mean that the entire sentence is repeating something said elsewhere, or that part of this sentence is repeating something else within the sentence? I don't know anything about this topic, so I think I had better leave the cutting to you. Corinne (talk) 20:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

That particular sentence, in that to describe something as "(features that are) ontogenic in nature" is to mean "features that occur while growing."--Mr Fink (talk) 20:41, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Apokryltaros O.K. Well, I'm glad to learn that I had understood that correctly. If we delete "as they occur in great white sharks while growing" (to remove the redundant part), I still don't understand the sentence. There is some kind of comparison being made between megalodon and the great white, but what is it, exactly? Can you make it clearer? Corinne (talk) 20:46, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I think the team is implying that the differences between megalodon and the great white are ontogenic in nature, i.e., that the differences between them are due to the megalodon developing longer/further.--Mr Fink (talk) 21:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh... Thanks. Corinne (talk) 23:39, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Apokryltaros I have another question. It's about a sentence in the middle of the section Megalodon#Oceanic cooling and sea level drops:

• The major reason cited is the decline in ocean temperatures at global scale during the Pliocene.

There are two things wrong with this sentence:

(a) It's not clear what the sentence is about. "The major reason" for what?

(b) This sentence seems to interrupt the flow of sentences in the paragraph. If it's important for this sentence to be in the paragraph, perhaps it would be better in a different place. Corinne (talk) 00:37, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

P.S. The sentence right before this says: "Expansion of glaciation during the Pliocene tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets, resulting in significant sea level drops." Then comes the sentence I quoted: "The reason cited is the decline in ocean temperatures...". It looks like "The reason cited for the significant sea level drops", but it doesn't make sense that the reason for sea level drops is a decline in ocean temperatures. Corinne (talk) 00:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

I have an unrelated question about a sentence just below these sentences:

• Fossil evidence confirms the absence of C. megalodon in regions around the world where water temperatures had significantly declined during the Pliocene.

How can scientists know the temperature of the ocean in the past? Also, how can scientists know the temperature of different parts of the ocean in the past? Corinne (talk) 00:59, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

By examining the various mineral precipitates in marine strata with the understanding that specific precipitates form in specific temperatures, in conjunction with examining fossil plankton with the understanding that specific varieties only live in specific concentrations in specific climates and environments.--Mr Fink (talk) 01:31, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Apokryltaros Oh. Thank you! How about my question just above that one, about the article? Corinne (talk) 14:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

After rereading that statement, I found it redundant, in addition to being confusing, so I opted to remove it altogether.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:14, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Termite

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:01, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Mayabazar

Hi Corinne. Thanks for the c/e. I've rewrote the plot section and my friend cum FAC (not opened yet) co-nominator Ssven2 made a few changes. Visit the section once and make/suggest changes required if any. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 11:14, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

i tried to clarify the detail. If you think i didn't, here is a source which explains the story in detail. Read it, and decide what to do. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 15:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I read part of it; it's a nice story, but I didn't have the patience to read all of it.

I think "their status and [their] wealth" makes sense, but "their wife" does not (unless they are all married to the same woman). From what I read, it is Yudhisthira's wife (don't know if I got the spelling right), so couldn't you say that? Also, why don't you say anywhere in your plot summary that it is one of the Pandara brothers (Yudhisthira) who joins in the gambling? I think that would help. Isn't it he who loses his family's wealth and social status and his wife? I think that's much clearer.

I don't think that note "c", re status quo ante, adds anything. I read the linked paragraph/article and I don't see the connection to the story; I think using just ordinary words is better. Corinne (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, all the five Pandavas were the husbands of Draupadi. And, all the Pandavas lost their wealth, liberty and Draupadi. Yudhisthira was representing the five and Shakuni was representing the hundred Kauravas. Strangely, we can see neither the Pandavas nor Draupadi throughout the film. In a scene, Krishna comes to know that Draupadi is being disrobed and saves her. That's all. That incident was dealt in a detailed manner in other films. This is mentioned in detail in the plot because most of the conflict in the story revolves around this incident. And regarding the quote, i changed it to "Later, Duryodhana's father Dhritarashtra declared the game's result as void and restored everything back to normal". Would that suffice?

Lastly and surely optional. I suggest you to try to watch the film (original version, not the colourised version as many portions were omitted in the latter) once in your extremely leisure time. That may help you understand the story well. It is surely worth your time and being India's greatest film of all time, it will surely not disappoint you. Our YouTube (India) showed no video with subtitles. Perhaps your country's YouTube may! Let me know if you intend to, and also when you've completed watching it. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 17:17, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

When I read (as I was copy-editing the article) the praise for the original black-and-white version of Mayabazar, I was intrigued and thought I might like to see it. I'll look for it. Regarding your addition of the sentence, "Later, Duryodhana's father Dhritarashtra declared the game's result as void and restored everything back to normal", I'm puzzled. (a) How much later did he do that? Was it way after all the other action, including the weddings, or was it before the weddings? Because, if Dhritarashtra voided the results of the game soon after the game was over, then why would anyone fear that the Pandavas would wage war on the Kauravas in retaliation, and arrange a marriage to force Krishna to support the Kauravas? That statement throws everything else in the plot summary into confusion. Corinne (talk) 17:27, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I just changed the wording to explain the special characteristic of the box. However, I seem to recall that X asks Y to stand on the box, but someone else (can't remember who) gets to it first, and then speaks. The way it is now, X asks Y to stand on the box and speak, and he does. Do you want to fix that, or leave it as it is now? Corinne (talk) 17:30, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I know that my edits would create much confusion. What actually happened (in the epic Mahabharata) is, after Krishna saved Draupadi, Dhritarshtra declares the game's results as void and restores them back to normal on ethical grounds (and as a paternal uncle to the Pandavas). Shakuni and Duryodhana are against this and they challenge Yudhistira for one last game on the next day in which, if the Pandavas lose, they have to go for a thirteen-year exile along with Draupadi. Thanks to Shakuni's manipulation, they lose the game and are sent to exile. For that humiliation, they retaliated. Since Krishna is the almighty himself, Duryodhana and Shakuni want to stop him supporting the righteous Pandavas in the war, so that the Kauravas can easily win. The above content is actually said in just two to three scenes with limited dialogues (mostly in the climax). Since mentioning all that would not be appropriate, i left it to the readers to understand that Mayabazar is an adaptation of a fictional folk tale based on Mahabharata (mentioned in the lead section). Mayabazar is not an intense film, it is more humourous and satirical.

Second, When Y blamed Krishna, one X asks Y to stand on that box. Y agrees, stands on it and due to that power of that box, he starts speaking the truth involuntarily (he wants to refrain, but nothing allows him to do so). I am damn sure only this happened. One good solution to this and the above confusion is that, please try to watch the film soon. The GA reviewer and copy-editor to watched the film post the GAR and it helped us all a lot. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm. (Thank you for your continued patience in explaining all this.) Now, I haven't gone back to the article yet, but based on what you just told me, why don't you leave this out since it's an intermediate step before the losses and humiliation of the Pandavas after the game: "Dhritarshtra declares the game's results as void and restores them back to normal on ethical grounds." I think this unnecessarily lengthens your plot summary. For Western readers who are not familiar with the Mahabarata or that folk tale, I think it would help to explain how the (five?) Pandava brothers could all have the same wife (Draupadi). For a Westerner, that's just unheard-of (ie., almost impossible to believe). Perhaps a reference to the Mahabarata or to symbolism or to Indian culture in the past...? Now I'll go look at the article. Corinne (talk) 00:39, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

In Mahabharata, practically every event/decision in the epic is unorthodox, opposed to common practice, and yet somehow within Dharma (righteousness). Thus, when taken within this larger context, Draupadi's polyandry is just one among many examples of an uncommon practice which is nevertheless legitimate (source: Quora). Anyways, Mahabharata is very long, dark, gory, emotional, political and ambitious whereas Mayabazar is simple, humourous and lighthearted. I gave almost all the information you asked. Now, please visit the article and make the changes in the note you feel necessary. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 03:35, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Copyeditor's Barnstar
		For your excellent work on Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1301). Thank you. Have a nice week! Borsoka (talk) 04:46, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Borsoka Thank you so much for the barnstar and for your good wishes. They are much appreciated. Corinne (talk) 23:55, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

India House

Dank I was just looking at your edits to India House, and I saw this edit: [7]. I know that in the next edit you moved the period to outside the double square brackets of the link, but I don't understand your addition of "Bal Gangadhar Tilak" after a pipe. It's the same name as before the pipe. What am I missing?

It wasn't my choice, I was using VisualEditor. Neither I (per my standard disclaimer) nor the people who coded VE (judging from the thing you just pointed out) care a lot about things the reader can't see. - Dank (push to talk) 13:55, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

On another issue, I've seen you placing commas before adverbial clauses ("......., although....."). I've always understood that no comma is to precede an adverbial clause that comes after the main, or independent, clause. Corinne (talk) 04:18, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I follow FAC style (to the best of my ability), and that's not FAC style. Also: The Sense of Style is currently available for $8.48 at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sense+of+style&sprefix=sense+of+style%2Caps%2C191. I recommend it highly. Two things are relevant here: the first part of the last chapter, which talks about why bad writing advice seems to be so persistent in certain style manuals, and the section on commas, especially the very first sentence in that section: "The first of the comma's two major functions is to separate parenthetical comments about an event or a state – the time, place, manner, purpose, result significance, writer's opinion, and other by-the-way remarks – from the words that are necessary to pin down the event or state itself." (p. 285) Also see the advice to insert a comma "Before a contrast adjunct" (p. 290), and the general advice on "prosodic" commas, commas that indicate a breath or pause. - Dank (push to talk) 13:55, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Dank I looked at the page Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and I didn't see anything specific about the style to be used in featured articles. Is there a separate page on that? Corinne (talk) 00:01, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. - Dank (push to talk) 00:11, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Urumi

Hai, could you please help copyediting this Indian film article Urumi (film). Article contains a lots of matter, but badly written. So need good copy editor to do some work. Requesting for your help. --Charles Turing (talk) 18:48, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Charles Turing I'd be glad to copy-edit the article. I'll do it as soon as I finish working on another article I've just agreed to copy-edit. Would you please list it as a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests, either now or when I've finished copy-editing the other article (you'll see the one I'm working on). Thanks for asking. Corinne (talk) 19:49, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. I had submitted the request. Charles Turing (talk) 19:24, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Dank I need your help. I've gone through the article once, and made a number of edits, but I feel the article still needs some work, and I've kind of reached my limit of interest and knowledge. I'm thinking particularly about these issues:

• Some sections may be a little long;

• the formatting of both the film Urumi is different; outside of quoted statements it is in italics, but in some of the quoted statements it's in single quotation marks or even double quotation marks. I hesitated to change anything in a quote;

• here and there are a few colloquial phrases such as "The box office fetched" and "caught the eye of" (though not as many as before I started editing). I don't know if those can stay or not;

• I wasn't sure about the correct formatting for groups/magazines/on-line sites (?) "Nowrunning", "Syfy" and "Rediff" in the section Urumi (film)#Reception. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. If you'd like credit for copy-editing at WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests, I will let User:Baffle gab1978 know. Corinne (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

• P.S. I just remembered: there is an error in one of the references at the bottom of the page. Corinne (talk) 23:48, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Baffle gab1978 See my comments just above this. Can I write "Done" at the Urumi request for a copy edit even though I think a few more things need to be looked at? I've done what I can. Corinne (talk) 00:17, 9 November 2015 (UTC) If you want to address the issues I raised in the list above, I don't think Dank would mind. Corinne (talk) 00:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2015)

Marie Serneholt at the 48th Guldbagge Awards. Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Marie Serneholt Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Allegra Versace • Comedy horror Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:34, 9 November 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Would you like to help out at WP:TFA?

Hi Corinne. I'm somewhat familiar with your copyediting work (having crossed paths at FAC and having checked some of your recent edits), and I'd like to invite you to do a few WP:TFA summaries. If you're interested, pick a subject area you enjoy or a wikiproject you have a good relationship with, and keep an eye out for new articles that Chris and Brian post at WP:TFAA. I'll be happy to help. - Dank (push to talk) 23:24, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank Ooo...thank you. I'd love to help. I clicked on the link WP:TFAA and saw what looked like summaries of featured articles, with a date above each one. It looks like those summaries have already been written. I guess I'm not clear on what you want me to work on. Corinne (talk) 00:07, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Great. I recommend you watchlist these four pages:

• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 9, 2015
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 10, 2015
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 11, 2015
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 12, 2015

Within a few days, all of those links will light up. Pick one of those to work on that you're comfortable with ... they will come either from article leads or from WP:TFAR (and most of the work will be done already if they come from TFAR, but there will probably be things you'll want to tweak). You're welcome to pass on those if you like and pick one from the next batch of four. I reserve the right to fiddle with your results to comply with other people's rules (MOS, FAC standards, etc.), but don't worry about that ... just do whatever seems right to you. - Dank (push to talk) 14:27, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

They're up ... do any of those appeal to you? - Dank (push to talk) 02:29, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Even though I read the fourth one out of curiosity, I'm more interested in the first three. I can get to one or more of them tomorrow, after I finish copy-editing Termite. Corinne (talk) 03:22, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Great. - Dank (push to talk) 13:32, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank, I've done all I want to at Termite (I went through it once and then about 2/3rd's of a second reading. It's a very long article.) So now I can start on this project. I'm a little confused, though. When I click on each link, above, it looks like a summary has already been done. The summaries look like the ones you see on the Main Page that end "Full article...". What do you want me to do? Did I wait too long, and someone else did the summaries, or am I supposed to write a one-paragraph summary? (If I'm supposed to write a one-paragraph summary, what is that for?) Corinne (talk) 01:54, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

You didn't wait too long; the pages haven't been edited since Chris created them. For Oct 9, he copied in the current article lead, which is 1394 characters. (I can tell by using this page.) That needs to be reduced to between 900 and 1200 characters (not including "(Full article...)" at the end), and I try to aim for 950 to 1150. I also tend to make small tweaks for grammar and readability, because the Main Page gets 10M hits (as opposed to up to around 20K hits that the article itself will get on its TFA day), so I do a little rewriting for a readership that includes less sophisticated readers. I also try to minimize redundancy. You can look at some of the TFA summaries I've done to see what I mean ... it's easy to create a diff between the page that Chris or Brian created and my final version. - Dank (push to talk) 02:11, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I see Oct 10 isn't identical to the lead of the article; that's because it was nominated at TFAR for TFA, and the nominator did their own article summary. I usually find things I want to tweak, even when a summary has already been done. - Dank (push to talk) 02:17, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Btw, when I count characters, I'm counting the text the readers see, not wikitext in the edit window. - Dank (push to talk) 02:18, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank Oh.... Thanks! I have two more questions:

1) Where do I work on the summary? In my sandbox? Here on my talk page? Or somewhere else?

When I was getting started at TFA, I used my sandbox ... you're welcome to do that or to make the edits directly to the page. - Dank (push to talk) 02:33, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

2) When you count characters, do you just copy what you've written and paste it into the blank box that's at the link you gave me, or am I supposed to copy the script that is under that blank box and paste it somewhere? I tried copying it to my talk page, but it looked weird in preview so I didn't save it. Corinne (talk) 02:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I paste text into the blank box and click on "Calculate characters". - Dank (push to talk) 02:33, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Dank. I finished the first one. How does it look? I got it down to 1,076 words. If you don't like it, perhaps you'll like the previous version, one edit back. Corinne (talk) 03:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

You're doing great ... you see some of the same things I do, and you're doing some things I wouldn't do. The mental workout this gives me is worth the price of admission. Before we get started: I'm going to be insisting that we do some things my way rather than your way ... but I want you to know that this isn't the way I usually operate, it's a reality that comes with TFA. People want their FAC and TFA copyeditors to make the same calls that have been made before, and the coordinator job requires a certain fussiness. So for now, I need to be pretty hands-on. I hope that's okay. So, some comments:

• "and their colour has inspired more unusual common names such as port wine banksia and strawberry banksia.": The rule at TFA is: no aliases or alternative names, apart from one common name if the article has a scientific or foreign-language name.
• Paragraph break: sadly, TFAs are written without paragraph breaks. (There are times they'd be really handy, but space is limited and paragraph breaks are frowned on at the Main Page.)
• "relatively hardy": stet. Wow, this one is hard. I'll run through the relevant issues so you can plug this into your calculations in the future. Yes, academese and journalese are stuffed full of adjectives used mainly to CYA (cover your anatomy), to vague-ify any assertion to the point where no one will ever successfully challenge it, without a lot of thought given to whether the noun alone might suffice. But that's the point ... these (sometimes awful) choices often come from the sources, and on Wikipedia, some level of faithfulness to the sources is required. I think it's a great idea to skim a Wikipedian's prose to see if they're the culprit, the one who seems to be inserting unnecessary fudge-words ... in this case, Cas is either writing the prose or vetting it, and he doesn't have this bad habit, so my usual call would be to just leave this alone and not bring it up (but note that I just pinged him, so I guess I'm bringing it up :). Also, note that technical terms can have a meaning for experts different from the common meaning, so for all I know, the word "hardy" implies survivability under particular conditions, and this banksia doesn't quite rise to the challenge, in which case "hardy" alone would be technically incorrect. Cas might enlighten us on this.
• "It is a gnarled tree up to 10 m (33 ft) tall": stet. When I hear "gnarled tree", I'm not thinking of something 33 feet tall, and the image alone doesn't give a sense of scale, so I think we need the numbers here.
• "1–3 m (3.3–9.8 ft)": Good call on ex-ing this. A rule of thumb at TFA is: most readers who see our TFA summary weren't planning on reading it, it just happens to be the first thing that comes up on the Main Page, so as soon as we throw in a lot of numbers (of any kind) or scientific jargon or lots of long words, we've lost most of our potential readership. (That has to be balanced of course against the needs of accuracy, clarity, and fidelity to the article.)
• "or a lower spreading shrub in the more northern parts of its range.": In general, I'm not looking for a reason to toss the writer's text, I'm looking to keep it. My instinct is to keep this bit, but I'll have to check the character count when I get done. But I'm going to rewrite it: "or, in its northern range, a spreading shrub." (Make sense?)
• "firewood banksia": No bolding at TFA. I will of course use italics or quote marks for words-as-words, but not for common names, except that I'll use italics for a name in cases where it would otherwise be mistaken for running text. (I'm leery of the inherent ambiguity with quote marks ... do they denote scare quotes? words-as-words? post-modernism gone wild? a title? a word I think the reader won't be familiar with? an attempt to disambiguate from a more common meaning? I'm comfortable with quote marks when I know my reader, but I'm very careful with a broad readership.)
• "paler grey green": I'm fine with the change to "paler green"; we have to cut somewhere, and this place is as good as any. I also agree with your choice to leave it alone in the article; it's not a mistake, just a stylistic choice. Cas, if you're reading this, it would also be fine to restore it, it's not like we're tight on space here.
• "are often two-coloured red or pink and yellow": stet. Removing "often" changes the meaning, and FAC writers sometimes get ornery over these kinds of changes.
• "birds and in particular honeyeaters are prominent visitors.": We've got room for this, though I rewrote it to: "honeyeaters and other birds are prominent visitors."
• Okay, 1008 characters now. Anything between 1000 and 1150 is great, and 900 to 1200 is allowed.
• No need to do anything with the images; David Levy and Chris have those covered.
• Nice work! - Dank (push to talk) 19:17, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
• Oh, I just noticed you gave me the option of restoring "but its sensitivity to dieback from the soil-borne water mould Phytophthora cinnamomi makes it short-lived in places with humid summers." I don't have a preference; Cas might. - Dank (push to talk) 19:31, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
• Btw, great work on Termite. - Dank (push to talk) 20:46, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
• The Oct 10 TFA is a tough one, I'll do it. Oct 11 looks fun, if you want it. - Dank (push to talk) 21:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) User:Dank Thanks! and thank you for the pointers. When deciding whether to leave a word in or take it out, do I need to look at the original source? Corinne (talk) 21:38, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I never go that far. Sometimes I'll ask the writer if it's okay to take it out. - Dank (push to talk) 21:55, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Dank I just finished the October 11, 2015, TFA summary. What do you think? I got it down to 1,063 characters. Whew, it's difficult to keep cutting and consolidating! I took out things that seemed either less important or less interesting than what I left in. Corinne (talk) 22:27, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank Did you see this yet? I may have added the link to your user name after I signed, so you might not have gotten the notification. By the way, other science and technology articles I helped with to get them to FA are Epacris impressa, Radiocarbon dating and Oil shale in Estonia, in case you'd like to look at them. I have another question: I see a note at the top of the page when I am working on a summary that says I am supposed to purge something after I work on it. What is that? Corinne (talk) 23:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll get a chance to look at it in an hour. If you add "?action=purge" after a url, that makes transcluded pages show the most recent changes (for instance, if you're looking at WP:FAC, it will fetch the most recent version of all the individual FAC pages to display). You don't need to purge when you're working on an individual TFA to see your changes. - Dank (push to talk) 23:54, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

My ears were burning....menziesii is really grey-green not green but otherwise reads ok. thx for playing with it.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:11, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Heh ... I hope your eyes were burning too, I pinged you above. (If you didn't see the ping, I'm going stop pinging entirely, it's too unreliable.) I've restored the one "grey green" from the original text. - Dank (push to talk) 12:50, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank I just learned about a week ago that if you add the ping after you have signed, the ping won't work. You have to sign again if you add a ping to a comment that's already been signed. Corinne (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. I did sign, but the signature was several paragraphs down; I'll try signing the same paragraph with the ping from now on. - Dank (push to talk) 22:08, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I looked at the October 12, 2015, TFA (the last one of the four, above), and it looks like the summary has already been done. It's at 1186 characters. Do you have any other summaries that need to be written? Am I supposed to look somewhere for further ones or wait for you to provide links? Corinne (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I did October 12. Up to you ... if you like, you can watchlist all the remaining October TFA pages (the ones at WP:TFAA), so that as Chris creates new TFA pages this month, you'll be able to get to work on the ones you like. - Dank (push to talk) 22:08, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

O.K. I'll watchlist the TFAA page. Thanks for all your help. (I'm sure I'll need it again.) Corinne (talk) 22:26, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Watchlisting WP:TFAA itself will work if you pull up the page daily with "?action=purge" at the end; then you'll be able to see when the red links turn blue. OTOH, I'm watchlisting all 31 days in October (before most of those pages have been created), so that they show up on my watchlist as soon as the pages are created. You may want to do that too. I also need to watchlist the pages so that I can respond if someone edits the pages. - Dank (push to talk) 22:31, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Dank, but I couldn't find anything with the "action-purge" thing at the end. I don't even know what you mean by "page daily". Regarding watch-listing all 31 days in October, I found the list for each day of October. I clicked on "watch". There was a question: "Do you want to watchlist this article?" and I clicked on "Yes", and it said, "This article has been added to your watchlist." But how do I get back to the list to add others? If I use the back-arrow, am I erasing the addition of that article to my watchlist? Corinne (talk) 22:47, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

If you watchlist all the pages, you won't need to purge, but in case you ever want to purge a page: you won't find "?action=purge" in Wikipedia; you have to type that in yourself in your url bar (the one that starts https), after the url, then hit Enter, to "purge" a page, which will reload all the pages transcluded into that page. (So, for instance, formerly red links will turn blue, if those pages have since been created.)

Using Alt-backarrow will not unwatchlist a page; I use Alt-backarrow repeatedly to get back to WP:TFAA after watchlisting. "page daily" meant "page, every day". - Dank (push to talk) 22:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Oh. Thank you. Now I understand. So if I watchlist WP:TFAA, then, every day, or every few days, I add the "action-purge" thing to the url, hit enter, then it's updated.

Yes, but you won't need to do that if you watchlist Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 13, 2015, Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 14, 2015, etc. - Dank (push to talk)

Regarding what to do after watchlisting a particular date-page/article, I guess you hold the ALT key down while you press the back arrow (the one on the keyboard in the group of up-down-left-right keys). I've never used that combination (but of course I will if that's the best thing to do). I usually use the back arrow that's in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen. Do you know if these have the same result?

Exactly the same, whichever is easier.

Dank, would you mind explaining two things to me? One is "transcluded". What does that mean?

If you pull up for instance WP:FAC, you'll see a very long page that has a bunch of Featured Article Candidate pages on it, one after another, including (currently) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Runaway Scrape/archive1. The individual FAC is said to be "transcluded" to the WP:FAC page: if you make an edit to it, you'll be editing the individual FAC, not the WP:FAC page. Likewise, WP:TFAA transcludes each of the individual TFA pages for a whole month, and displays them all, but if you start to edit one of them, you'll suddenly be working on the the individual TFA page for a particular day.

The other one is this: I don't understand what you mean by a page being created. I thought these articles have already been written, some, apparently, a while ago. What is the new page that is being created? Is it just the summary page? Who creates that initial summary that needs paring down? Thank you in advance for your patience. Corinne (talk) 23:44, 27 September 2015 (UTC) Dank... Corinne (talk) 00:18, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The Featured Articles have already been written. Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 10, 2015 is an example of a TFA page, a short summary that will appear at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page on October 10. Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 15, 2015 hasn't been created yet ... if you click on that red link, it will take you to a page that doesn't have any article text, and you can watchlist it just like any page. As soon as Chris creates that page, it will show up in your watchlist. - Dank (push to talk) 01:48, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Dank I was just looking at the TFAA page, and I looked at the summary for Charles Domery. I wondered why there was a comma after "Polish soldier" in the first sentence. I would not put a comma there. Corinne (talk) 01:06, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

How about these sentences? George Washington was our first president, known as the "Father of His Country". Bunny Bread is a market leader, available in grocery stores statewide. Are these commas okay? - Dank (push to talk) 01:17, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank Yes. There's a difference between these two sentences and the first sentence in the Charles Domery paragraph. In these two sentences, the subject is already known and/or identified.

That doesn't seem to be the difference. In "Bunny Bread is a market leader", the subject is unique, and the predicate nominative is one of many, just as in "Charles Domery was a Polish soldier". In both sentences, the subordinate clause is being used in a nonrestrictive sense. There are a few who would be offended by the Domery sentence if we left off the comma to give it a restrictive sense, for the same reason that "He was an Italian with a big appetite" might be read as offensive ... are we implying "He had a big appetite, even by Italian standards"? The nonrestrictive comma gives it the meaning, "He was a Polish soldier, and he was noted for his appetite". - Dank (push to talk) 03:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

In the first sentence in the Domery paragraph, the two phrases, "a Polish soldier" and "noted for...", are both being used to identify Charles Domery. He was a Polish soldier who was noted for eating a lot (whatever it says). If you put a comma before "noted for", you are making it an afterthought, which minimizes it, when in fact it is the most important part of the identification.

Other way around ... the "payload" of a sentence, the new information or the intended point, is most likely to be the last thing said, not the first (although there are exceptions, of course, and the first sentence in an encyclopedia article sometimes reverses the usual order). Chapter 4 of The Sense of Style covers this in some detail. - Dank (push to talk) 03:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

He was not just a Polish soldier. He was a Polish soldier who was known for eating a lot. (I think I prefer "known for" over "noted for".) Also, in your first example, it says "our first president". It doesn't say "a president". If it said, "was a president [who was] known as the father of his country", then you could leave out the comma because the phrase "known as the father of his country" is essential to identify the person.

In the second example, "Bunny Bread is a market leader, available in grocery stores statewide", it is really, "Bunny Bread is a market leader, [and it is] available in stores statewide". The last phrase (a shortened clause) is giving additional not-particularly-important information and is not being used to identify Bunny Bread.

You could also say that the sentence is really, "Bunny Bread is a market leader that is available in stores statewide." If this is intended, the adjective clause "that is available in stores statewide" is modifying "market leader" and is restrictive – it is essential for identifying "market leader" – thus, no comma before it; and, if this is intended, it can be written like this, or "that is" can be removed, leaving: "Bunny Bread is a market leader available in stores statewide". In this case, "available in stores statewide" is important information. In the first way, preceded by a comma, this information is less important.

Bunny Bread is a market leader, [and it is] available statewide.

Bunny Bread is a market leader that is available statewide. Bunny Bread is a market leader [that is] available statewide.

At least that's the way I see it. Corinne (talk) 02:55, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank Should I assume that you skipped the rest of my verbose post since you commented early on (above)? ;) I hadn't thought that those types of sentences would offend anyone. You think it might be offensive if it were worded, "Charles Domery was a Polish soldier who was noted for his unusually large appetite"? I don't see how that can be offensive. What if it just said, "Charles Domery was a Polish man who was noted for his unusually large appetite"? If you took "who was" out of each one of those sentences, would you write, "Charles Domery was a Polish man, noted for his unusually large appetite"? I wouldn't. Those "who" clauses are restrictive, not non-restrictive. Here is a non-restrictive clause: "That man is Charles Domery, who is known for his large appetite." Here, the man is already identified; the information in the clause is extra information and not needed to identify him. I think you'd like it to be, "Charles Domery was a Polish soldier, and he was known for his unusually large appetite." That makes being a Polish soldier and being knownn for his large appetite equal in emphasis. Is that what you want to convey? If so, I would write the sentence just like that. If you think one is more important than the other, then you use subordination, or you could write, "A Polish solder, Charles Domery was noted for his unusually large appetite", or "A soldier in the Polish army in the late 18th- to early 19th-century, Charles Domery was noted for his unusually large appetite." What do you think of that? Corinne (talk) 03:41, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I read the whole thing ... I replied inline because I was responding to specific sentences. I was about to add roughly the same thing you just did ... that if this sentence were any sentence other than the first sentence of the article, then "Charles Domery (c. 1778 – after 1800), a Polish soldier, was noted for his unusually large appetite" or "The Polish soldier Charles Domery (c. 1778 – after 1800) was noted for his unusually large appetite" would be preferable to what we have now, for exactly the reason you give. Unfortunately, it's the first sentence, so we're somewhat constrained by WP:LEAD. (Although ... you make a good point, let me think whether I want to be bold enough to deviate from LEAD, since this is TFA and not an article.) - Dank (push to talk) 03:51, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I just saw your second comment. Where is, or who is the author of, The Sense of Style? Also, I have been wondering whether this is a British English/American English difference. I have noticed British English-speaking editors adding commas in places where I would not use them, such as this kind of shortened clause. I would actually never write, and in fact have never even seen before I began editing on WP in 2012, I think it was, the kind of sentence with which I started this conversation. Are you, by any chance, a British English speaker? Corinne (talk) 03:46, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Lifelong US resident. See The Sense of Style. - Dank (push to talk) 03:54, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Okay ... LEAD be damned, we'll do it our way. - Dank (push to talk) 04:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

There's another issue we hadn't broached yet ... there are Wikipedians who go ballistic over any occurrence of "known for" or "noted for". Till now, I was thinking that we couldn't get around it, but now that we've reworded the sentence, I think it works without "known for" ... what do you think? (See Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 12, 2015.) - Dank (push to talk) 04:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Btw, back to where this all started: I'm looking for people to write a few TFA summaries. I've been suggesting this plan for many months, and gotten basically no support for it, because FAC writers would apparently prefer to deal with one person rather than several. Things came to a head recently when there were a couple of TFAs that I didn't want to work on, for one reason or another, but now that I've gotten started with looking for help, I want to try to make this work. My position is that wikiprojects react very positively at FAC and TFA when they feel they have a copyeditor "of their own", someone who knows their wikiproject standards as well as FAC and TFA standards, at least well enough to get the job done. So, where this is going is ... be thinking about which wikiproject(s) you enjoy working with the most, and after you've picked a few more TFAs to work on, I'll ask you to specialize in TFAs for one or more wikiprojects. - Dank (push to talk) 16:59, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank O.K. I'll give that some thought. I see you re-worded the first sentence of the Charles Domery summary. I like it. It's nice and short and simple. I don't know what you mean by "LEAD be damned". Was there some sentence pattern we were supposed to use? I just want you to know that I'm always open to learning something new and hearing other viewpoints, and unless something is clearly ungrammatical, apart from explaining my point of view on a style issue I'm not going to get upset if something doesn't end up the way I would write it. I appreciate being able to discuss things with someone as knowledgeable, courteous and kind as you are. Corinne (talk) 18:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Why thank you, you're very easy to work with too. Many have interpreted LEAD to require a "was" in the first sentence of this type of article; I took the "was" out for a while, but I changed my mind and put it back. I think this is the first version of the first sentence we've arrived at that's unlikely to cause a problem at WP:ERRORS ... so thanks for bringing this up, you were right that there was a potential problem. - Dank (push to talk) 18:10, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Dank I thought you were going to assign articles to me for writing or shortening summaries. I see you've been writing quite a few, and you haven't asked me to write a single one. Corinne (talk) 16:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

You gave me a list of topics. It won't work for you to do all the history or biography TFAs; that's too broad. You asked about art history; I can add that to your list if you like. Other than that, none of the new articles have been in your list of topics (except Oct 31, Cucurbita, which I had done before it showed up). Is there a TFA I've done that you were looking forward to doing? - Dank (push to talk) 16:24, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank No, I hadn't been looking. I only saw them as they appeared on my watchlist as either being already completed or still being worked on. I was just waiting for assignments. Can you give me some history and biography articles? Corinne (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure, I'll find some for you to work on in the next batch. Sorry for the miscommunication; I was just looking for a few people to work on a few TFAs. - Dank (push to talk) 01:22, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Dank Kind of on this same topic, I thought you were going to assign TFA summaries to me occasionally. Would you prefer that I just choose one that looks interesting and just start editing? Corinne (talk) 00:15, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

No, please don't edit random TFAs ... as I've said, I'm keeping an eye out for TFAs in your subject areas and I'll let you know. (Btw, Nov 21, which was scheduled today, was mostly done already when it arrived.) I've got a lot on my plate and a very busy week, I'll try to answer your questions next week. - Dank (push to talk) 00:35, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

TAFI talk

• Hello Corinne:

You are invited to participate in this discussion at the TAFI talk page regarding improving the automation of project processes and management of the project. Your input is appreciated.

Sent by Northamerica1000 using mass messaging on 15:12, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

A usage question at Talk:Foundation of Moldavia

Hi Corinne, I've chosen the Foundation of Moldavia article as my next GA review. Borsoka and I started a discussion of whether the word, "founding" better befits the title than "foundation". Perhaps you could look over the discussion at Talk:Foundation of Moldavia#Questions prior to GA review and give your opinion, since I see that you are interested in and knowledgeable about English usage. Sincerely, User:HopsonRoad 21:24, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

Hello, Corinne. Does this name mean anything to you? You might be interested in my talk page note. Rothorpe (talk) 18:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Rothorpe No, I had never heard of her, nor any of her books. Perhaps the books were outdated by the time I was reading children's books. I wanted to ask you about one of the titles in the left-hand column. It's called A Round Dozen, and it is followed by "by Roberts Brothers". When I hovered the mouse over Roberts Brothers, it says they were publishers. (a) Shouldn't it say, "published by Roberts Brothers"? and (b) why is the publisher given for this book and not the others?

Quite so. I'll change it - or do you think it should be removed? I'm inclined to keep it; others may appear. I first heard of What Katy Did long ago, though couldn't have named its author.

I have no opinion about the title of the article.

I was curious about the question raised in the comment just above yours, so I was reading the article about Calvin Coolidge to see if he was president while Woolsey was writing, and he wasn't. I could find no connection, except that there apparently were quite a few Coolidges in New England. See Calvin Coolidge#Birth and family history. Corinne (talk) 02:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Rothorpe (talk) 03:41, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Marie Serneholt

If you want to, please take a look at the article about Marie Serneholt, which is this weeks selected TAFI article. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 16:27, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Precious again

teaching English to speakers of other languages
Thank you for quality collaborative contributions to articles such as Cucurbita, teaching English to speakers of other languages, achieving to make "sentences clear and concise, flow smoothly, and make sense", for exquisite edit summaries, for a bounty of inspiration on your user page full of colourful and peaceful images, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:56, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

A year ago, you were recipient no. 1032 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:47, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt Thank you so much, Gerda! You cheered me up. Your recognition and praise mean a lot to me. Thank you for thinking of me. I hope you are well and enjoying the fall. Best regards, Corinne (talk) 16:25, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

David Rolf

Dank and Rothorpe I need both of your opinions:

In response to a request for a copy-edit at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests, I have been reading and copy-editing the article on David Rolf. It was pretty well written as it was; I only made a few small changes. However, there is something that is bothering me, and I'd like your opinion. In the lead, the first sentence of the second paragraph is:

• Rolf grew up in Cincinnati and was influenced by members of his family, including his mother, who worked as a unionized teacher, and his grandfathers, one of whom was a General Motors employee and United Automobile Workers (UAW) member who participated in labor demonstrations, and the other, his paternal grandfather, a Procter & Gamble employee who funded law school and eventually became a lawyer and politician.

Well, now that I look at it, there are two things that are bothering me. I'll take the easy one first:

1) Do you think the sentence is too long? If so, how would you break it up?

(a) Rolf grew up in Cincinnati. He was influenced by... (and all the rest).

(b) Growing up in Cincinnati, Rolf was influenced by... (not really breaking the sentence up, but the sentence could still be broken up)

(c) Rolf grew up in Cincinnati and was influenced by members of his family, including his mother, who worked as a unionized teacher, and his grandfathers. [BREAK SENTENCE HERE] His maternal grandfather was a General motors employee....... His paternal grandfather was a Procter & Gamble employee who....

2) The other thing that bothered me was "a Procter & Gamble employee who funded law school". It wasn't clear to me what was meant by "who funded law school". I figured it was "who paid for law school" because right after that it says he "eventually became a lawyer", but I think "who funded law school" sounds odd. (Also, it says that David Rolf's father was a lawyer, so I thought, maybe he was paying for his son's law school education.) Later, in the second paragraph in David Rolf#Early life and education, we read:

• He observed the evolution of his paternal grandfather's career, who worked a third-shift job at a Procter & Gamble soap factory in order to fund law school, eventually becoming a lawyer and local politician.

Here, "worked...at a Procter & Gamble soap factor in order to fund law school", is a little clearer, but I think I still prefer "in order to pay for law school" or "in order to put himself through law school". What do you think? Corinne (talk) 01:25, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

1. I prefer version C. 2. Yes, that school doesn't need funding. 'In order to pay for' is plain English. Rothorpe (talk) 02:21, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't have time to copyedit much more than the articles at TFA, FAC, Milhist A-class, and Milhist Peer Review. Sorry. - Dank (push to talk) 03:03, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2015)

A continuum of goods and services Hello, Corinne. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Goods and services Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Marie Serneholt • Allegra Versace Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:16, 16 November 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI •

Barnstars

Vsmith I've never given much thought to collecting and prominently displaying the few barnstars I've received, but I've been thinking that it might be nice to put them all in one place. Is there any way to find them easily and put them on my user page? I think it would be too tedious to search for them manually. Corinne (talk) 23:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry - never bothered with those, just archive them and roll on. Guess you could do a search on your talk archives for "barnstar" or something like that. Well - I did keep one on my /experimental subpage from Feb. 06 because it was personalized and neat. Vsmith (talk) 03:32, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Vsmith O.K. Thanks. Corinne (talk) 14:21, 16 November 2015 (UTC)