Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/July 2014

Question

Are individual editors supposed to calculate the 50% bonus for old articles when updating stats, or will this be done at the end? Thanks in advance.  Philg88 ^♦talk 05:38, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

It will be done at the end by coordinators. During the drive, enter the actual number of words in the article or section that you edit. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:55, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Jonesey95, just wanted to check.  Philg88 ^♦talk 04:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Sardinian banditry

I am thinking that Sardinian banditry (5851 words) has excessive detail, and I am considering doing extensive cuts, as I did in May 2014 on the article Kutch Gurjar Kshatriyas contributions to the Indian railways. I have added this article to my working list, and tagged it as being copyedited. Please take a look and tell me what you think.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Vučitrn may need some of the same effort.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The banditry article is new, less than a month old. You are correct that it needs copy editing. You might communicate with the primary author of the article to see if he/she has plans to continue working on it, or if now would be a good time for a copy edit.

The list of names is too much. The first few sections should be combined into one, with paragraph breaks (and reliable sources). The later sections need paragraph breaks.

The article has potential. I wouldn't cut it to the bone, given that it is so new; it may be a subject worthy of full treatment if it is well-sourced and tells a good story. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:27, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Both articles have potential, but I am getting ready for London and Wikimania 2014, so I know that I am not going to do either of these long articles. I will put back the copyediting tag for Sardinian banditry (5851 words) for anyone else to do. Vučitrn (7860 words) is available for the last day of the drive. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:06, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Leaderboard

Hello Wikipedians! I will be taking a short wikibreak due to family issues. Is anyone willing to update the leaderboard while I'm on my wikibreak? Cheers! Brandon (MrWooHoo) • Talk to Brandon! 13:38, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your edits. Editors are supposed to update the leaderboard themselves, so I'm sure it will be taken care of. Coordinators will check and post a final leaderboard at the end of the drive. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:21, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

A stretch goal?

We have almost cleared the 166 articles in the two target months, and the month/drive is not even halfway over! Great work, everyone.

Can we try to clear out May 2013, and maybe even June 2013, before the end of the month? That would leave us with only 13 months in our backlog, down from 17 months at the beginning of the drive. I think we can do it, or at least come very close.

We are also only about 40 articles away from 2,236 articles, our lowest backlog total ever. We can definitely get below that number if we keep on editing at the current pace. (We have to edit more than 40 articles, since about 150–200 articles will be tagged for copy editing during the rest of this month.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:48, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Folks have been doing a pretty amazing job clearing out the oldest two months in under two weeks! Would it make sense to officially declare May 2013 articles "old articles" for leaderboard/bonus point purposes to motivate people to clear that out? Tdslk (talk) 04:07, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Support making May 2013 "old". Lfstevens (talk) 03:55, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

My fellow coordinators? Paging Baffle gab1978 and Miniapolis. I would support an ad hoc change to make May 2013 articles "old" articles for the purposes of this month's drive. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:59, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Seconded; the idea is a good 'un, especially as there's half a month of the Drive remaining. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:02, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Done. I will add a separate section to call attention to this change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:47, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

(←) So when I update the progress chart (midnight UTC is early evening where I live), should I should add May to the old-articles parameter or will that mess us up? Miniapolis 18:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Good idea. I forgot to do this. I have made the change. It's a little clunky, but seeing the number go down every day is motivating. I think May 2013 was at about 125 articles a couple of days ago, so we have already made good progress. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:36, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Removed indef-blocked editor's section

I've removed the Drive articles list section created byCarriearchdale because she's been indef blocked per this diff, and thus can't participate in it. If that's not acceptable, please feel free to revert my edit. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Addition of May 2013 to the "old articles" list for this drive

Attention all July 2014 drive participants: per the coordinators' consensus above, May 2013 has been added to the "old articles" list for this drive. That means that if you copy-edit an article tagged in May 2013, you should add *O after the word count in your complete article list, and you will receive a 50% word count bonus for that article.

Keep up the great work! Your GOCE lead coordinator, – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:49, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I removed the copyedit tag from List of rail services in Rhineland-Palatinate as not needed. Feel free to check it out.--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:38, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

New article popped up as August 2012

Hello fellow copyeditors. There have been new articles that popped up as August 2012. The August article has already been copyedited (by me.), and the tag was added in August, then the tag was removed (I think), then it was re-added. I put *O, but should I change it? The article was called Farum Cats Australsk Fodboldklub. Brandon (MrWooHoo) • Talk to Brandon! 13:03, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Also, [1] this article had a copyedit tag for January 2013, when the edit was on July 2014, so I went ahead and changed it to July 2014. Cheers! Brandon (MrWooHoo) • Talk to Brandon! 13:06, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Brandon, the tag on Farum Cats Australsk Fodboldklub was messed up in June 2013 here and was fixed here, so you should leave the *O in place since it was probably the oldest-tagged article in the backlog. As for the second article, Dropzone67 added the tag in what seems to be a copy-and-paste vandalism from another article. It looks as though that editor is hell-bent on getting blocked. Thanks for fixing the tag. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 01:22, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

This sort of thing also sometimes happens if articles are rolled back to a much older version. Looking in the article's recent history is usually a useful thing to do when you are confronted with any number of mysterious problems with articles. Strange things often happen when an article is vandalized or edited erroneously. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:38, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Reviewing/standards

Hi all, Curious about others' standards for what constitutes copyediting an article, I've been glancing through some of the copy edits done this month. Suffice it to say, there are dramatic differences in the number of issues remaining after editors are done with an article. Although we do have a formal review process in place, the one person who has signed up to review this drive has not made any edits to Wikipedia since the 4th, and no articles have been reviewed. I would volunteer to be a reviewer, but as someone who is "competing" for barnstars this month, my opinions might be seen as biased. Perhaps an experienced editor would be willing to step up?

More generally, I feel like it would be helpful to be clearer about what constitutes an "acceptable standard". The main drive page tells us: "No rubber-stamping of articles. Be thorough and complete in your copy edits, and make sure all the i's are dotted and the t's crossed. The prose in copy edited articles should comply with the Manual of Style and be free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors." Even the best of editors, of course, won't produce text completely free of errors, so what do other editors consider "acceptable"? Has there been a discussion on this before? The many pages of the GOCE mean there are also many talk pages, and it is hard to search through them all. Cheers, Tdslk (talk) 19:29, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Good questions! Perhaps we have not done enough reviews. I can see this by having copyedited a long article many months ago, and then it gets tagged for copyediting again, and done again.

I believe that the GOCE has trusted the members to both review and compete in the drives. Yes, we are sometimes rather competitive, but we are also hard-working. Tdslk, go right ahead and volunteer to review, and go to it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:24, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Articles reviewed by the Guild of Copy Editors

My effort so far on the July drive has been the addition of {{GOCEreviewed|user=Dthomsen8|date=July 2014|issues=Awaiting deletion results before copyediting}} on the talk pages of articles with PROD or AfD tag. Articles go in Category:Articles reviewed by the Guild of Copy Editors and disappear from the category if actually deleted. Perhaps the GOCEreviewed tag may be deleted for other reasons by editors who see it and realize it should go, and a copyedit tag placed on the article. Currently there are 831 articles in the category.

My suggestion is an August effort to look over those articles and change them into active copyedit tags where appropriate. Yes, I understand that this will add to our backlog, but at least some of these articles are worthy of our efforts. Perhaps we could place them in a different category from our usual backlog, and count them differently (maybe extra credit?) in the next blitzes or drives. What do you think? --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:11, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the idea has potential, but I think it would need to be undertaken by Guild regulars who know what they're doing with categories and tags, and how to assess articles for copy-edit suitability. Suitability for c/e is almost never a cut-and-dried assessment and leaves a lot to subjectinity of individuals. I'd propose the articles to be re-tagged for c/e would have changed significantly from their GOCE reviews. I'd be happy to see this idea progress, but I wouldn't want to saddle the Guild with spam or vanity articles, unreferenced BLPs, copyvios and the like. Anyone else? Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 01:54, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Another way to handle this might be to create a new module called {{GOCEafd}} or similar, which automatically populates the category Category:Wikipedia articles with copyedit pending from XXXX. This could also have a "reason parameter" (AfD, PROD, or whatever). The category(s) could then be linked from somewhere on the project page.  Philg88 ^♦talk 06:26, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I've done some thinking since my unqualified support for the idea. Since the backlog is still well over 2,000 articles and there are relatively few active copyeditors, maybe we should continue whittling away at the backlog (and the requests page, since its wait time is still over a month—that's my choice for the August blitz) before tackling this. All the best, Miniapolis 13:42, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The backlog of 2199 articles at the end of the drive is excellent work, but we still have much to do. I think my idea about the Category:Articles reviewed by the Guild of Copy Editors should be put on hold for now. I may personally change a few myself, but I have found that some of the older ones have been fixed up and no longer need copyediting at all. I can just take out the template and reduce the list. If the Blitz is after August 20, I could participate, but I am off to Wikimania 2014 next week. If I get a chance, I will try to recruit for the GOCE! --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Baffle gab1978, and I think Philg88's idea of creating a different tag and category for these is very good, as it would separate these temporary ones from the durable GOCEreviewed that Baffle mentions. --Stfg (talk) 11:19, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree Philg88's idea of creating a different tag and category for these articles. It should be implemented. Who can do it?--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:16, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Happy to take it on.  Philg88 ^♦talk 12:37, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I've now created {{GOCE pending}}. All feedback welcome.  Philg88 ^♦talk 07:30, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Good work, User:Philg88. Does adding the date mean that there will be separate subcategories by date, just like the copyediting categories? Will the existing articles have {{GOCE pending}}. DThomsen8 (talk) 09:57, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Hopefully yes, but I'd like confirmation from a template guru like Redrose64 to check that I got it right. As far as existing articles are concerned, I'm afraid that the template will need to be added manually.  Philg88 ^♦talk 14:57, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Last call

The July copy editing drive ends in one hour. Please make any final edits to your article lists and the leaderboard (it is not updated automatically) in the next 12 hours or so. It is OK to edit your section of the page, and the leaderboard, even though the page is archived and says not to edit it.

Barnstars will be distributed in the next few days. Thanks to everyone who participated. We hit a new record low for our backlog count and nearly cleared out three months of articles! – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Problem with 001Jrm's word counts

Hi, I just checked some of 001Jrm's stated word counts whilst checking the leaderboard. I've found at least two that are over-inflated; List of ninja video games stated at 13,457 was 6,075 when I copy-pasted into M$ Word (the list includes tables); that's being generous because I left in the section titles, and lists we normally ignore, etc. Levett, claimed at 11,536 came out at 4,495 using the Word method and excluding refs. The WP tool shows 1,686 for the same article.

I'm assuming s/he has somehow got the wrong idea about the page size tool, or about copy-pasting into a word processor. Meanwhile I'll check a few more and amend his/her word counts; I'll also notify him/her of this conversation. Meanwhile I'm tired and I'll take this up tomorrow. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 03:06, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for letting me know! It's actually my first time joining the drive and I don't know how to use the WP tool, so I'll be saying sorry now if ever I did wrong. If I'm not mistaken, we should write the words of the article before copyediting, right? Well, I did that. What I do before editing is I'll search the article on Wikipedia and the words (+ other details) will pop-out from my search. For example, when I search "copy editing" here, [11 KB (1,542 words) - 06:48, 29 July 2014] will appear under the article. Was that a wrong move? 001Jrm (talk) 05:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@001Jrm: FYI If you add the following line to your custom javascript: importScript('User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js'); you will get a "page size" option in the lefthand toolbar. You can add the script through Preferences->Appearance->Custom Javascript. If you're unsure what to do let me know and I'll fix it up for you. Cheers,  Philg88 ^♦talk 05:36, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I customized my javascript already and it worked. However, my problem now is counting the words before I edited the page. Thanks for your help! 001Jrm (talk) 06:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

PS. Oh, I figured it out already! Last problem... Should I edit the drive by myself although it's already closed? 001Jrm (talk) 06:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you can edit your list yourself. That will be helpful. Go to each article's History and click on the date and time of the version just before you started editing. Use the Page Size tool on that version. Thanks!

The Page Size tool does not count lists or tables. If you want to count lists or tables because you edited them, the easiest way to do so is to copy and paste the content of the list or table into Microsoft Word or a text editor and then use that software's "word count" function to get a rough count of the words. You can add that to the count given by the Page Size tool. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:59, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Done updating my list. If ever there are still mistakes and/or discrepancies, please let me know. Thanks so much for all of your understanding and help! 001Jrm (talk) 05:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)