Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/May 2016

Expatriates in the United Arab Emirates

Expatriates in the United Arab Emirates is tagged for copyedit, May 2015, with 5171 words, and I see polishing (Linkrot, adding Wikilinks) to be done, but very little copyediting, if any. Advice?--DThomsen8 (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

There is a considerable amount of work to be done on this article, if you are willing. I started working on it. The sections I did needed removal of puffery, conversion of numbers to words, fixing of run-on sentences, punctuation fixes, grammar fixes, removal of repetitive OR, and more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Another article to check

Whitewater controversy too! Leschnei (talk) 01:46, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

• From the lead: "she continued to pursue it" – make it clear who "she" is.
• "This period featured high-interest rates in general," – remove the hyphen and rephrase this awkward sentence beginning.
• "McDougal decided to go into banking instead,[11] and then acquired the Bank of Kingston in 1980 and the Woodruff Savings & Loan in 1982[15] renaming them the Madison Bank & Trust" – awkward and missing a comma
• I always recommend reading prose aloud, slowly, if you are looking for copy-editing opportunities. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

• Great suggestions. I'll get back to this unless someone else does it first! Leschnei (talk) 11:41, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

One more

And Utica Psychiatric Center. I just fixed a few references. Someone else had already done the rest. Leschnei (talk) 02:45, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

• "The building stands over fifty feet high, five hundred and fifty feet long, and nearly fifty feet in depth." – should probably use numbers. Check WP:MOS.
• "As for capacity, recorded in 1850, ..." – awkward
• There are spaces between terminal punctuation and references. See WP:REFPUNCT.
• No explanation of what "Old Main" is.
• Is it "Utica State Hospital" or "The Utica State Hospital"? The article uses both, inconsistently.
• The history section starts in 1852 and then jumps back to 1843.
• Fix curly quote marks. See MOS:QUOTEMARKS.
• "The Utica Crib was named after the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica where it was heavily used in the 19th century to confine patients." – missing a comma, but should be fixed more comprehensively to remove restating the full name of the asylum that is the subject of the article.
• There is plenty more, but that should get you started. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:57, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestions, I'll work on this some more. Leschnei (talk) 11:38, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Parallels between Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

Parallels between Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey needed some polishing changes, including categorie and talk page WikiProject templates, which I have done, but I see very little, if any copyediting to be done. Advice?--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:16, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8:, if you think the article's don't need any further copy-editing; feel free to remove the c/e templates. If you've done clean-up work and some c/e I'm happy for you to claim them for the drive. Neither article appears to be in dire need of a c/e, and may have been tagged by mistake. If a reviewer questions the c/e, feel free to link them here. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 00:08, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

If you want to be detail-oriented, you could fix the curly quotes (per MOS:QUOTEMARKS) and convert the page-range hyphen to an en dash (per MOS:DASH).

"6" should probably be "six" (although one could argue that it parallels "24"), and the headers need to be converted to sentence case. I would also link ekphrasis. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:02, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Help for a new editor

I haven't done copy editing on Wikipedia before, so I would appreciate it if someone could look over my changes on Villabuena de Álava/Eskuernaga. It appears to be a direct Google translation of the Spanish wiki site and the town website, and it is a bit of a mess. I removed the 'underlinked' tag and added an 'unreferenced' tag. I won't remove the 'copyedit' tag until it has been OK'd. Thanks. Leschnei (talk) 13:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks good; I changed {{Unreferenced}} to {{No footnotes}}, since the external links are sources. Feel free to remove the {{Copy edit}} tag. Thanks for your help and all the best, Miniapolis 15:57, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Leschnei (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Question about word count

Do we want the word count before copy editing or after? Leschnei (talk) 19:11, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Before. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:27, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Titius–Bode law

Does the copyedit tag on Titius–Bode law tell us what to copyedit? It is in the middle of a section, but the whole section has grammar and wording problems.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:43, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

That's a strange one. It appears that an editor meant to tag only a section of the article. Use your best judgement. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:14, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Caste panchayat

Is Caste panchayat to be copyedited, or not? Check the history before answering.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Either intentionally or accidentally, Etaft reverted Caste panchayat to a three-month-old version with a misleading edit summary. I have undone that edit. Unfortunately, that means I undid subsequent good-faith copy-editing by Matterington. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:52, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

I will re-edit it. Matterington (talk) 00:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Matterington. Sorry for the inconvenience. I think it was for the best. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, my apologies for the error. How do you think it happened? This was my first try at editing a wikipedia entry, so would appreciate guidance on how to avoid doing this again. Thank you. Etaft (talk) 21:57, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't know how you would end up accidentally replacing an article with a three-month-old version. The only thing I can think is that you were looking at the article's history, clicked on an old revision, clicked Edit, and ignored the big warning in a pink box that says "You are editing an old revision of this page." I find it hard to imagine a new editor even knowing about the article history, however, so I am mystified. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:21, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Help:Editing and its associated links may be useful. I checked your contribs, and it doesn't seem to be your "first try at editing a wikipedia entry"; although I don't use Visual Editor (and therefore don't know what havoc, if any, it can wreak :-)), I'm with Jonesey that it's an odd mistake for a newbie (and you're a more patient editor than I am, Matterington). All the best, Miniapolis 23:27, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Should names in other languages be translated for English pages?

I was looking at Museum of Cultures (Lugano), which is translated from the Italian page, it:Museo delle culture (Lugano). The top heading gives the name in English, but throughout the text and in the figure legend, the Italian translation is used. My question is - what is the general procedure here? Do we leave it as a mix of languages or change them all to English? Leschnei (talk) 12:12, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

It looks okay as is to me, since the native Italian name is in the lead sentence. {{Translated page}} should be placed on the talk page linking to the it.wp page, and excessive use of the Italian name can be replaced with the English name or "the museum". All the best, Miniapolis 16:54, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks Leschnei (talk) 20:06, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Bravissimo!

You should all be extremely proud of yourselves: reducing the backlog to below 1500 and taking care of 886 tagged articles plus a few dozen Requests. What an amazing drive. Congratulations to all! BlueMoonset (talk) 00:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

I'll second that. Great job, everyone! – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Awesome! ZettaComposer (talk) 12:56, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Amazing progress! When was the total ever below 1500?--DThomsen8 (talk) 23:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Never. 1,774 was our previous low. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:30, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Wow I just saw this great news; well done everyone and thanks a bunch! That can go in the newsletter tomorrow! :-) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 01:42, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

By the way, Baffle gab1978, the 886 number comes from the listed reduction of 727 plus another 159 that offset the addition of the 159 May tags. However, a number of the May tags were also taken care of during the month—I distinctly remember the May number being reduced sometimes from day to day—so the 886 number should almost certainly be more than that, even before you add in the 32 unfinished Requests from the end of April (four of which were being worked on at the time). BlueMoonset (talk) 04:24, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The total number of articles handled was easily over 1,000. In a typical month, about 300 articles are tagged for copy-editing, so ending May with only 159 articles in that month's list means that we took care of about 150. I know that I hit 20 or 30 articles tagged in May 2016, and a couple of other editors worked on that month as well. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:07, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The influx seems to have slowed a bit lately. At this rate, we may only(!) need one more year to clear the backlog. If we pull that off, they should hold a parade! It's been a long time coming. Lfstevens (talk) 17:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

(←) I should explain the figure in the newsletter (197) is the total of all articles claimed in the drive, as stated on the Barnstars page under "Article count". I didn't just stick my thumb in the air (or anywhere else)! Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 22:20, 2 June 2016 (UTC)