Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/November 2013

Requests goal for November 2013 Drive

The goals for the November 2013 Backlog Elimination Drive are stated as "... to reduce the overall backlog by as many articles as possible, with a focus on those that have been in the queue for the longest (August and September 2012) and to complete all requests made on the GOCE Requests page before August 2013." For the Requests, shouldn't that be "before October 2013," since the Requests being completed are down to September and October 2013? JudyCS (talk) 03:16, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep. Fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Ödland

What does the oldest article Ödland need for copyediting purposes? I did reflink on the references, added one reference to the lede, and added talk page WikiProject templates. That's hardly enough to take credit for an old article. Advice?--DThomsen8 (talk) 02:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's what I see in a quick skim: Inconsistent serial commas; photo caption needs work; inconsistent italics for album titles; track names italicized instead of in quotation marks; inconsistent caps in song titles; "own their own"; possible ENGVAR inconsistency: "realised" and "organization" (this may be OK in some ENGVAR or other); misspelling of "Lewis Carroll"; overall awkwardness of prose, as if it has been written by a non-native speaker who was quite good at English. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your insight. I will attempt it. This is British English, so those spellings are correct.--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:55, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Mithila, India

I did take credit for Mithila, India, although it still has problems with copyright and POV. Advice?--DThomsen8 (talk) 02:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

You can try to address the POV issues if you want, or just leave it tagged. That's not a copy editing job, but as an editor, you can always give it a shot. As for the copyright issues, I don't see it tagged for that, so I don't know where the problems are. Read WP:COPYVIO if you have not already. It should help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:24, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I will pursue the copyvio as described on the talk page.--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:57, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

On a slightly related note, I was copy editing Symbols of Bohol, and found that practically all from 'Provincial Seal' down was copied from the source, so I deleted what I couldn't re-phrase. Is that OK? Thanks, Matty.007 17:02, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

It's excellent. You can also put {{subst:cclean|url=link to the source text}} on the article's talk page if you like. It's described in WP:Cv101, a very useful quick overview of our copyvio handling procedures. --Stfg (talk) 17:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have done this, thanks. Matty.007 18:18, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I deleted the entire Ancient History subsection, after an aborted attempt to use the Cclean template, probably my inabilities, but the copyright violation is gone, no great loss.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:21, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's the main thing. I think you may have copied the text for the cclean from the edit window here rather than from the page window. My fault. I presented it that way so as to provide a link to the template. If you want to do it, type exactly

{{subst:cclean|url=http://muzaffarpur.bih.nic.in/muzaffarpur_HISTORY.htm}}

on to the talk page, but don't create a section header and don't sign it, as the template does both of those. (If you're taking this from the edit window, just the part between the nowiki tags.) I would have done it, but it would have added my sig, whereas the credit belongs to you. --Stfg (talk) 23:15, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Progress chart

Hi, may I point out that the progress chart says

{{GAN changes|2013|10|31|224|3104}} {{GAN changes|2013|11|1|214|3039|3104|3104}} {{GAN changes|2013|11|2|209|3004|3039|3104}}

Note the GAN part. Is this the right table? Thanks, Matty.007 14:22, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing this. As far as I know, this is the chart we have always used. If you have a recommendation for a chart that works better, link to it here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:59, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response, I wasn't sure if this was for Good Article Nominations and had been used in mistake, thanks for telling me. Thanks, Matty.007 15:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Note of Caution on long edits

I had an 3+hour session of difficult editing wiped out by an edit conflict involving a bot on the article Yakshagana several days ago. The bot owner hadn't thrown the switch to have it skip articles with the GOCE "Extended Editing Session" banner up. Indeed, he didn't even know of its existence. I now understand the the addition of the {{nobots}} template with the GOCE template would have avoided this. Thought I'd pass it on before getting back to my editing tomorrow. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 19:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Check history before beginning

A while ago, Stfg made the excellent suggestion to remove the {{copy edit}} tag before beginning an article as an alternative to {{GOCEinuse}} (which kept getting removed from longer articles on which I was working). Over the past few days I've had two conflicts with the same editor; after removing the tag, rolling up my sleeves and getting to work I discovered (once in a TP post, and once when checking my watchlist) they were also copyediting the article. They seem to be working on the oldest articles, although I don't think they've signed up for the drive and it doesn't sound like they're going to change the way they do things. So it's a good idea to also check the page history before starting a copyedit, and don't assume that because the tag's still on that no one else has "claimed" it. There's plenty of fun for everyone :-). All the best, Miniapolis 16:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Good advice. I always check an article's history before doing all but minor editing, just to see if there has been recent action or contentious editing. If things have been calm for a while, I take my time with editing. If things are very active, I'll work on small sections quickly, saving frequently in order to avoid edit conflicts. If things seem crazy in the history or on the Talk page, I generally stay away. I don't need more conflict in my life. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:04, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, rather than treating it as an alternative, I replace the {{copy edit}} with {{GOCEinuse}}. Those clashes are very frustrating, aren't they! --Stfg (talk) 18:06, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Concerned about a new editor

Does someone have time to check the contributions of User talk:Fudukamichiyo, please? He/she is introducing grammatical errors in most of the articles he/she edits. Can an experienced editor or admin give some kindly discouragement please? --Greenmaven (talk) 03:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Last call

The November drive is over, and we almost cleared the backlog! We have closed the drive. It's OK to enter any final changes and stats, despite the Big Red Warning. Your Drive Coordinators will start working on a drive summary sometime in the next 24 hours, so please make sure you have your final list of articles soon. Remember that the Leaderboard does not update automatically, so please check your stats. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)