Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/January 2015

Starting Article Number?

The starting article number is shown in the progress chart as 2198, but clicking on All Articles shows the category at 2171. A difference of 27 is hard to understand. I changed Gulrej Khan King to be {{GOCEreviewed |user=Dthomsen8|date=January2015|issues=awaiting deletion decision}}, but that only is one, not 27.--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:49, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the count is always based on the number in the box. I see that there are in fact 27 fewer articles when I click on the link. I have no clue what causes the discrepancy. Tdslk (talk) 20:17, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The count in the Progress Chart is updated manually, usually by one of the coordinators (but feel free to do it yourself, if you see how it's done). This update needs to be done daily at 00:00 UTC. I'm not worried about the 27-article difference; it is likely due to the 30-hour difference between the time you saw 2,171 and the time when the Progress Chart was updated. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:21, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

(Actually, I think it's something other than the time lag. When I look at the main page currently, the "All articles" count in the big box is 2,189. But when I click on all articles, the text says "The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 2,163 total." Which is a weird little discrepancy.) Tdslk (talk) 18:42, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The latter count is just wrong (out of date) in most categories that have over 200 articles in them, and that count can stay wrong for months at a time. If you start at the top of the category and click through page by page, counting up by 200 at a time, you will find that you get within one or two of 2,189. I believe the count in the big box (after clicking refresh). – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Can I count this article on my list?

I'm currently working on One World Trade Center. Although I started copy editing the article before the drive started, I'm still working on it. Can I count this, or can I only count those that I started working on during the drive? --Biblioworm 21:32, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Do a good job, I will do a review, and then go ahead and count it, unless someone else objects.--DThomsen8 (talk) 03:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm relatively new to this, so I'm still learning... --Biblioworm 03:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Or, perhaps I should just count from the section that I was editing when the drive began, which was the "Opening and post-opening" section. According to the prose counter, there were 5,008 words from that section to the bottom of the article. --Biblioworm 16:03, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Possible quality issue with Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard

RaptorexGaming recently listed Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard on his "completed" list. I'm a little concerned that the job might not be as complete as it really should be; only a single comma was removed. I'd appreciate outside opinions from my fellow coordinators and other more experienced copy editors. (I said that I was going to do QC work in the elections, so expect this.) --Biblioworm 01:00, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for doing some QC; it is needed. I made some specific suggestions. We have found that simply marking an article as  Not done can be discouraging to new editors, so I try to give helpful, specific examples of further things to look for in the article.

FWIW, we have also found that a simple Y suffices when an article has been substantially improved and/or when only tiny copy editing needs remain. Further commentary, even when meant in good faith, has been misinterpreted. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I just read through it quickly, and I didn't see any glaring errors. It might be an article that got marked for copy-editing that didn't really need it. I actually wouldn't have taken that final serial comma out, believing, as I do, in commas, lots of them. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, I meant to put it in working instead of completed, I am still editing it. Thanks for the advice and help. RaptorexGaming (talk) 12:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Dodona's Grove

After putting some effort into Dodona's Grove, I believe that what is needed is not so much copyediting as rewriting and references. I have tagged it as needing an expert in English literature, and unless someone says otherwise, I am not taking credit in the January drive.--DThomsen8 (talk) 02:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I might take it up after I finish my current article. I've already corrected a couple of things. It reads as though it was written by an expert (or someone who's been overlaying post-Elizabethan literature with a lot of jargon, too much of it slightly off: "at thropomorphs", "raison d'entre", "learnéd"). Dhtwiki (talk) 04:37, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Colross

This seems to be pretty well written already. What have I missed? JacobiJonesJr (talk) 00:33, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

You definitely made some improvements already. My suggestions, some of which are judgment calls:

• "began constructing the mansion 1799–1800" strikes me as awkward.
• I think the lead section is too long, but I haven't read the guideline lately; I would remove some of the history details from the lead.
• This sentence is backwards: "The excavation of the Colross site resulted in 79 condominium buyers walking away from their purchase agreements, due to the delay in construction of the luxury Monarch Condominium project."
• Inconsistent use of curly quotes and straight quotes.
• "Fairfax County, Virginia " needs a comma at the end. See the second bullet at MOS:COMMA.
• "famous 'bounty jumper'" looks better like this: "famous 'bounty jumper' "
• Remove commas from "activist, Alice Cook (1903–1998),"
• "those nearby Abingdon" does not make sense. A word is missing, I think.

That's what I see from a scan of the first half of the article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

If this makes any sense, request articles are generally better written to begin with than backlog articles but require more painstaking copyediting (because most are—or will be—Good Article nominations or Featured Article candidates). Thanks for your help and all the best, Miniapolis 18:55, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

University of California Davis Graduate Studies

I started editing this article but found apparent inconsistencies in text that I wasn't able to resolve. So I checked the Talk page and found there was a Merger proposal and some discussion of the accuracy and sourcing of the information provided in the article. Merger proposal

The article itself is only 281 words.

An example of the confusing text in this article is:

"The UC Davis graduate division has a long history in the California system, particularly at the Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco campuses."

How can the UC Davis graduate division have a long history at the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses?

"This longstanding academic tradition began in the fall of 1925, when 12 students received graduate degrees from the College of Agriculture through a partnership with the Graduate Division at University of Berkeley [sic].[3][4] Over the years, the UC system's inter-campus graduate group programs continued to grow, interact, and collaborate. The first graduate degrees were awarded from the UC Davis campus in June 1949.[5]"

If 12 students received graduate degrees from the College of Agriculture in 1925, how could the first graduate degrees from the UC Davis campus have been awarded in 1949? The relationship between the College of Agriculture and the UC Davis campus isn't clear. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 06:54, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

That article should definitely be merged into the main UC Davis article and then redirected. I recommend copy editing it as much as you can, leaving notes like {{clarify}} where clarification is needed, then adding the merge tags to both articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:52, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the direction. I'll edit what I can and add the merge tags. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 18:21, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I've added the clarification and merge tags to both articles, but I'm not sure what credit, if any, I should take for this. Also, the article was cleaner than I remembered it, so I checked the History tab and found that it had been edited by others participating in the elimination drive. Since I have a general question about this, I'll discuss in a separate section on this Talk page. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 15:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Warriors Orochi 3

When I run the word count for this article, it seems that text in the bullet lists isn't included in the word count. There is a significant amount of text in the bullet lists in this article. How should this text be counted? ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 07:40, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Copy the relevant text to a text editor outside of your web browser, then run the text editor's word count function on it. Add the numbers by hand and report that number for the drive. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do that. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 18:22, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Duplicating Effort?

On a couple of articles I'm copy editing in this drive, I've noticed that other copy editors are working on the same articles. The way I discover this is that I notice the text changes between periods when I'm editing (I have an odd and sporadic schedule so even on short articles, I sometimes have to take editing breaks). When I check the History tab for the article I see that another copy editor participating in the Drive has edited the article. This is both confusing and disconcerting.

I identify the articles that I'm working on in my section on the Drive page, but to know what other editors are working on or have completed, I have to Show the list for each individual person participating in the drive. Then I have to hope that everyone in the drive is also checking the articles I'm working on or have completed.

Is there a protocol or tool to easily ensure that we're not duplicating effort or stepping on top of each other? Am I missing something?

In Blitzes, there is a master list of articles and you can see in a single location who "owns" each article. I realize that because Drives are based on external lists of articles, it's not easy to build a master list, but is there a way to compile the list of  Working and  Completed articles in a separate section of the Drive page?

I appreciate any help or direction. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 16:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

If you find it confusing when others edit an article that you have been working on, you can tag the article with {{GOCEinuse}}. It doesn't prevent anyone from working on the article, but it does give them a notice that edit conflicts may be more likely. Most people will stay away for a while. Just make sure to remove the tag when you are done.

I try to find a block of time when I won't be interrupted, then edit the article until I am done. I find that this approach works for me, except with very long articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, thanks for your help and direction in this endeavor. I'll use {{GOCEinuse}} and will try to work my schedule to complete articles, or at least sections of articles, in one sitting. ˘ | ˘ Hwajae^{talk • contribs} 02:24, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The first thing I do when editing an article is remove the tag and save. That way the article doesn't show up as needing ce any more, so I rarely run into conflicts. I tried GOCEinuse, but got push back from some other editors, esp for long articles that may take me days to buff into shape. Lfstevens (talk) 03:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

My technique, also, especially on short articles. {{GOCEinuse}} and removal of the copyediting tag is best on long articles.--DThomsen8 (talk) 03:33, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that I do the same thing. When I decide to edit an article, the first thing I do is make a quick edit to remove the copy edit tag, with a summary like "Beginning [[WP:GOCE]] copy edit". – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:19, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The idea of removing the copy-edit template might suit me, as my current article (Pallithode) is the only one remaining of August 2013. That page has been marked as "done", but I suspect other editors have wasted time looking at it, only to find the one article is being reviewed. I probably should remove the tag to prevent that from happening. I hadn't thought of it before, because, until I'm done, it's still an article in need of copy-editing.

I've had a problem with encountering articles that are being worked on, several at a time, by an experienced editor, without placing the GOCEinuse template, where I've placed that template and start to pre-review the article. Fortunately, I didn't waste too much time reading the article and researching the subject, which I find helps me, or I would have been more miffed, when I started editing, to find the edit history filled with the other editor's work. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:29, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Just a "thank you" for all of you who are helping with this drive. :) ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Mid-drive update

We are halfway through this month's drive, and we are almost halfway through the 212 articles that comprised the three oldest backlog months at the beginning of January. Can we provide high-quality copy edits to the remaining 118 articles from September and October 2013? I think we can do that by the end of the month.

A few reminders:

• The main goal is to ensure that article prose is in good shape. Do not just do a quick pass over an article and remove the copy edit tag simply to get it out of the backlog list and take credit for it.
• That said, it is acceptable to change the copy edit tag to another cleanup tag if the article's prose is too hopeless to copy edit, or if the article should really be deleted, or it is otherwise not ready for copy editing. You don't get to count that article toward your drive totals, but you get the satisfaction of helping to clear the backlog and improve the encyclopedia (a tiny bit).
• Update the leaderboard! The leaderboard on the drive page is intended to foster a bit of friendly competition and appreciation for the work of your fellow editors. It is updated by you, not by magical wikibots. When you finish an article, add it to your list and update the leaderboard if you are in the top five of any of the categories. Again, don't do a weak job on articles just to pad your leaderboard stats; we're here to build an encyclopedia, after all.
• Have fun! If it turns out that you don't enjoy copy editing, that's fine. We still love you. There are lots of other ways to contribute to Wikipedia.

See you in the backlog! – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Red Gate controversy

The Red Gate article has {{copy edit|reason= the use of "Red Gate" v "Red Gates" has been at odds with each other since 2005; see multiple discussions on the talk page|date=January 2015}}. While the talk page confirms the controversy, copyediting is not the remedy. How do we remove the copyedit tag without removing the controversy notice, and pointing to the talk page?--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The copy edit tag is not correct for the need described. I would remove it and propose on the talk page that whatever the outcome of the naming discussion, an edit notice be placed on the page.

While you are at the page, giving it a quick overall copy edit before removing the tag would be a friendly gesture. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

So I did a bit of cleanup, left a statement about not copyediting on the talk page, and put a cleanup tag on the article with Twinkle.--DThomsen8 (talk) 05:36, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Geo-Blocking

The Geo-Blocking article has several problems, but I am doubtful that copyediting is the remedy. How should we deal with this article?--DThomsen8 (talk) 05:29, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

The copy edit tag was added here, just this month, by a very new editor using a new program called WP:Page Curation. Perhaps that should be reviewed. The article does look like it could be broken up a bit by some judicious paragraphing (it's all dense text). Dhtwiki (talk) 06:17, 27 January 2015 (UTC)