Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/September 2012

Link to oldest articles

You know what was a pain in the neck in the July drive? The drive page had no link to the oldest articles in need of copyedit. Can we get that this time? Granted, the link may need to be changed as the oldest articles get cleared out, but it would be convenient to have. Dementia13 (talk) 03:41, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, are you asking for something that would link to a mixed list of all three or four of the oldest months, or just the very oldest month, e.g. July 2011? If the latter, there are links to each individual month in the "Wikipedia articles needing copy edit" infobox on the right of the drive page. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 03:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I see it now: you have to click on the "Show" link next to "Subtotals". I wouldn't have guessed that. That displays many months, which is excellent. Dementia13 (talk) 16:09, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning this, Dementia13. In the old days when there were zillions of months in the backlog, the infobox probably needed to be collapsed, but now I think we can afford to have it initially expanded. I've edited it to do that. --Stfg (talk) 11:35, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

28th Infantry Division (United States)

I have removed and userfied a subsection of the 28th Infantry Division (United States) article, which was tagged for copyediting, and notability. With professional advice, I decided to remove the subsection, totaling 2,469 words, from the article. My question here is whether I can have credit for this action in the September 2012 drive. The decision was not easy, and the actual removal did take about half an hour, including adding section names to the userfied article. I welcome comments from drive participants. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Alpha Co 28th Signal Bn 2003-2005

See User talk:Dthomsen8/Userfied Alpha Company for the former section Alpha Co 28th Signal Bn 2003-2005, removed from this article as being not notable, too detailed, and to minor a part of Iraqi Freedom to be made a mainspace article. This decision was made with advice from a distinguished military historian. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Alpha Co 28th Signal Bn 2003-2005

Section removed and userfied from 28th Infantry Division (United States) --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Section created on 22:24, 28 May 2012‎ 72.77.98.98 (talk)‎ . . (86,469 bytes) (+14,857)‎ . . (→‎Company A, 28th Signal Battalion)

MS Word copy of section totaled 2,469 words.--DThomsen8 (talk) 15:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

OK as far as I'm concerned. --Stfg (talk) 15:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Pages with bigger issues: new questions

Hi, all. I've so far run into two different situations that made me sorry that I started a copy edit on the articles.

First, Dinobots. This is a branch of the Transformers toy line and television series. The article suggests to me that they're not a very important part of the Transformers universe: they've appeared in few television episodes, and the article has very little real-world context and few references, apart from other Wikis. I left a note on the Transformers project talk page that asked whether the subject is notable enough for its own article, and suggested that it be merged. If that merge were to happen, and do so before the end of the month, would I lose credit for the words that I edited?

Second, Cannibalism in popular culture. Half of the page is content, and half is lists of trivia. The list section was the part that the editor who tagged the article was concerned about. I feel that the lists need to be deleted, and that any referenced or relevant content needs to be merged into the appropriate earlier sections. The earlier sections discuss various aspects of cannibalism in popular culture, and they're informative. The later sections are broken down by various types of media. I don't believe that there's a valid reason to divide according to media, especially since it causes duplication when works appear in multiple media or are based on true stories, and those sections are full of fancruft. I left a note on the talk page about this, but I don't want to make such a drastic change immediately, I'd like to give 2 or 3 weeks to see if there are any dissenting opinions. I'm not particularly open to them, as the page really needs this, but I realize that somebody's toes are likely to get stepped on. Should I make the effort to copy edit sections that I know I'm going to delete soon, or should I just merge/delete those sections with no discussion, break out the chainsaw and let 'er rip? Dementia13 (talk) 18:39, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The first part is easy: you'll definitely get to keep credit for making good faith efforts at copy editing, even if the article is merged and/or redirected later on. The second part is a bit trickier. Personally, I'd be bold and see what happens. Since you don't have some huge emotional investment in the content, you'll be able to both make clear-headed cuts, and not cry yourself to sleep later if people start undoing stuff. And you can have credit for the article as a whole even if you don't get the word count. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

For the second, what I suggest is to remove the {{copyedit}} tag right now, so that other GOCE members don't pick it up and overrun you, and then you can afford to wait the 2-3 weeks you want. However it goes, you get credit for whatever you've copy edited, whatever transpires. --Stfg (talk) 20:05, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I've salvaged what I could from the lists, copy edited the prose, and removed the tag. Dementia13 (talk) 23:11, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I have to say, Dementia13, regarding any content that you feel needs summarizing, relocation into a better place or eliminating altogether, my advice would be to start the chain saw and let it rip. I agree with Torchiest. Be bold. You're the copy editor, do what you feel needs to be done. It can all be reverted, anyway, if people object and disagree with the scale of your edit. Then you can start a discussion on the talk page. Nothing will be lost. But your copy edit sounds like it will improve Wikipedia, and that's what we're all here for, isn't it? Better articles, so be bold, be fair, have fun. I often put a brief note with the Guild of Copy Editors copy edited notice on the article's talk page explaining the problems I found and corrected, but I make the alterations first. Richard asr (talk) 08:09, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I fully agree. The only reason I was patient about it was because a lot of people had piled stuff on there, and I didn't want to have a quick revert done just because somebody's favorite shout-out got deleted. The article got reduced by half, which actually is not so unusual. There was already existing support for this on the talk page, so I proposed the deletions and put an "In popular culture" tag on every section. The only thing that happened in the intervening three weeks was that somebody removed the tags, but also (arbitrarily) removed a lot of the cruft. A few of the deleted examples actually were deserving of further discussion, like Suddenly, Last Summer, but those can now be added in a relevant way instead of as a trivia list.

BTW, I often do that with the note on the talk page, though it's not always so brief. I list any problems I see that require research at a deeper level than what the copy edit involves. If the article has a maintainer, it gives them a good guideline for improvement. When articles get loaded with fancruft, I always advise that there's plenty of free web hosting available for anybody who wants to build that kind of site. Dementia13 (talk) 16:43, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Strawberry Shortcakes

I removed the copy-edit tag from Strawberry Shortcakes#Cast, since the section was merely a cast list, so to my mind the tag was absurd. No credit whatsoever. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I took a look and converted the hyphens to dashes, but it looked fine to me too. Right after that, the editor who initially added the tag re-added it. I've asked for a more detailed explanation, as I'm not sure what the issue is. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 01:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, ridiculous. I've done what they said they wanted and left a mild flea in the metaphorical ear. --Stfg (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention. It is doubtful anything more is actually needed. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Nicely put, thank you. I agree. --Stfg (talk) 22:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Stumbling block Mausala Parva

This article is about a period in a book of mythology called the Mahabarata. The article reads like an epic and details who-did-what-to-whom kind of stories in five different kingdoms / families etc. I am not sure if I should

1. Condense the article to present a more neutral and objective picture, or
2. rewrite the whole article to present a wholistic worldview of various secondary sources? Currently it has only one source, i.e. the book of Mythology called Mahabharata.

Please advise. -Wikishagnik 03:42, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

If you feel interested in it, the second option is wonderful. The first is also good. Other options that are acceptable, though not so good, are to simply copy edit the prose as is, or to remove the copyedit tag and put a {{GOCEreviewed}} tag on the article's talk page, but of course these just leave the article festering, and who knows when the next capable editor may find it? If you choose one of the lesser options, I recommend changing the "story" tag in the multiple issues to the following two:

| plot = September 2012

| in-universe = September 2012

which more accurately represent the problem. --Stfg (talk) 09:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

You could do what I did with MIDI during the July drive: get rid of it now by copy editing it or slapping a "reviewed" tag on it, and go back to it after the drive to fix it up properly. Dementia13 (talk) 02:13, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

This drive needs some help.

How about if we award a daily barnstar for largest # of articles for that day? Is there any place else we can post a banner encouraging people to join up? I've been focusing on goodies (requests) and oldies (the oldest 3 months). When I was doing shorties, my article counts were much higher and the backlog shrank faster... Lfstevens (talk) 06:38, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The places we advertise on are: the Signpost (Wikiprojects Report), the Rewards Board and the Community Bulletin Board. If anyone knows any other places, please give a shout. Voting for the August Copy Edit of the Month contest closes tomorrow (so get voting, everyone!), and when we know the result we'll be issuing a newsletter that will give a progress report and can encourage more activity.

We do have ups and downs like this, and this one isn't terrible. We're doing well on the requests, which is the most important thing. We'd need to speed up a little to complete all the oldest months, but at current rate we'd clear August and September and make October quite small. I think the number of months in the backlog is more significant than the number of articles in it. Your focus on the requests and oldies is helping a lot.

One point I would make is that quite a lot of articles are being taken up from the most recent months, August and September 2012. This may be a mistake because those articles are in many cases very new and are likely to get either deleted or significantly altered in the coming few weeks, thus largely wasting the copy editors' efforts. Many of the oldest articles are very tough, but for those who prefer to avoid those, it may be most sensible to go for the articles in the middle of 2012 at present. --Stfg (talk) 21:42, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that some of the new articles are also very long, so editors who take those may get tied up for a length of time on efforts that may be wasted. I don't think there are many very long articles among the oldest. Didn't the pace pick up toward the end of the month last time?

Can't help much with the daily pace for now. I've got a request article that's got 10,000 words in about 11 sentences. It's like breaking rocks. Dementia13 (talk) 02:05, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Interest in the copy edit drives increases and wanes, and that's normal. We have completed nearly half of the target group, so we're on track to meet our primary goal. As long as the target group continues to drop at a good pace, we can consider the drive a moderate success. Stfg is right that some of the recently-tagged articles will be deleted, and it's impossible to know which ones they will be. The older articles are likely geting more page-views, so in my opinion it's better to concentrate our efforts there and on the requests page and not worry too much about the overall number in the queue. -- Dianna (talk) 15:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Agree with above. We've had larger and smaller drives, and through it all, the total continues to steadily drop. As long as we keep trimming back the oldest articles, we're doing fine. I've also been plowing through a very large article that has been sapping my energy, but once I finish it, I'll make an effort to work through some of the older articles too. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 15:50, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

(←) A TfD has voted to delete the {{Wikify}} tag, of which apparently there are around 19,000 in place. One or two people have started going through them, changing Wikify to various other tags. Sometimes the choice is {{copyedit}}, and also {{spacing}}, which gets into our categories too. From what I've seen, the replacement tags are being chosen carefully, and there's nothing we should try to do about it. Except think about strategy, because this may mean that rate of new copyedit tags may rise quite steeply for a while. --Stfg (talk) 21:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Yikes. I was wondering why we seemed to be losing a lot of ground all of a sudden. Oh well, I'll guess we'll be doing bimonthly drives for a while yet. Not sure what other changes we could make to our current pattern. I'm assuming all the tags will be dated September 2012, and not backdated? It might be better to backdate, since that would help us find what may be higher priority articles. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 22:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The editor I've noticed is setting the date to September 1012. They appear to be working through the Wikify monthly categories starting with the oldest. July 2009 has been emptied and they are doing August 2009 at present. Only a small proportion (around 10%, I think) are being set to copy edit. I'm sure we could make a request, but not yet sure whether or not we'd want to. I'm gonna sleep on this. What do you think? --Stfg (talk) 23:16, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I've made a request to slow down while we think about how to handle it. --Stfg (talk) 23:22, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

P.P.S. I've also asked User talk:Ryan Vesey, who proposed the TfD, for help with this. --Stfg (talk) 00:27, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Ryan Vesey is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and has just started a new academic year there. He is a good Wikipedia editor, but he may also be busy with studies.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:39, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I've never really liked having the change in the total number of copy edit tags as our metric for whether or not we are making progress, and this gets at exactly why. When an article gets copy edited, and the tag can be removed, that's progress. When an editor adds a copy edit tag to an article that merits it so that we can go and fix the article, that's also progress. These things should not be in conflict. We really should be measuring our success based on the number of articles edited alone. Tdslk (talk) 04:04, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, guys. I can hold off with the tagging until the drive's over, but it has to be done at some stage. I've got no problem with backdating the tags, if it helps. DoctorKubla (talk) 06:19, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the offers, DoctorKubla. There's nothing to be sorry for -- you're helping the encyclopedia, of course. All we need is clarity about what is going to happen and how we're going to handle it.

What I now think is that we should welcome DoctorKubla continuing as now, not delaying till after the end of the drive and not backdating the tags. If the tags were to be backdated, we'd suddenly aquire two years' more monthly categories, and that would change the landscape strategically as well as being demoralizing. If September 2012 and one or two later months become a lump, at least we have about a year's notice of that lump to think what to do with it. And it's better not to delay, because the sooner we can see the size of the problem, the sooner we can get to grips with what to do about it.

I was wondering whether we can do something with the progress chart to give a better picture of what we're accomplishing day by day, for example by calculating totals to exclude the current month. But that would only be for the sake of appearances, and the progress chart isn't the whole story anyway -- it doesn't include Requests in its picture. Does anyone feel the need for this? What we can do, at any rate, is have the end-of-drive newsletter summarise in terms like "we reduced the existing months by X, and the current month added Y to the total".

Any more views please? --Stfg (talk) 09:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

One possible advantage of delaying: There was some talk at WikiProject Wikify about having tag-replacement be one of the goals of our next drive (our problem is that people are still using the {{wikify}} tag, so to clear the backlog we need to start removing them faster than they're added). If we have our drive in October, so as not to interfere with yours in November, I reckon we'd probably get through the bulk of the backlog in one fell swoop. So there'd still be a sudden influx of articles to copyedit, but they'd mostly be confined to the one monthly category. DoctorKubla (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, it's a thought. At any rate, if you wouldn't mind holding of for a day or two so we can have discussions, it would help. ttyl --Stfg (talk) 17:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Although we have had a big leap forward today, down to 2593, this is a one-time leap due to the efforts on the list below and some AfD articles with tags changed. Keep up our usual efforts, and if you can look at articles in the list below, do so. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:27, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

C could you give a link to where the discussion about the October drive objective is happening, please? I couldn't find it a moment ago. --Stfg (talk) 09:17, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikify#New drive, although it's not a very substantial discussion, so I don't know if there's any consensus for this yet. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:18, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Having seen that, I don't see any harm in carrying on what you were doing whenever you like. There could be around 600 person/hours' work just to review and decide/implement a sensible course for each tag. Sooner you start, sooner you finish. Thanks for your offer to delay, though. --Stfg (talk) 12:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

@DoctorKubla:I like the idea of holding off your project changes until November, which will put the big peak in edits in a single month. I must confess that I hold off adding the copy edit tag myself during a drive month, and then adding it in the following month. I did add a request for copy editing as a result of work on the Article Rescue Squadron. Stfg says go ahead. What do others think? --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:44, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Tagging, correctly done, benefits Wikipedia. Is there a reason to delay tagging besides for the sake of the change in the number of articles tagged metric? Summing up everyone's contributions, I count 262,272 words edited in 183 articles so far this month. Adding tags to more articles shouldn't detract from that accomplishment. Tdslk (talk) 16:40, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Support backdating tags.

Support continue with the retagging at your leisure.

Lfstevens (talk) 05:45, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Preferably not backdating tags. It will recreate around 24 categories that we've cleared. Best tag to current month, as DoctorKubla was doing. --Stfg (talk) 08:09, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Lists as copyedit requests

Consider List of archaeological excavations in Jerusalem as just one example of a list in which it is unclear what needs to be done. Perhaps it is merely adding Wikilinks, which formerly came under the Wikify tag. Should that be copyediting?

That is hardly the only instance. I just did List of political parties in Spain#Political parties running for the Spanish general election, 2011, where what was requested was capitalization of a few party names. The requester could have done it. I did a major reorganization, but I also fixed some links, did the capitalization, and deleted a lot of entries on the list. Did I go to far?

My point is that being a GOCE member doing articles in a drive, it is sometimes unclear just what I need to do to remove the tag. Spelling, grammar, clarity of thought, all very important. Adding many Wikilinks? Maybe not. I frequently look at lists, because sometimes they are quite easy. But sometimes it is unclear what is to be done. What do other members think? --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:52, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Perhaps ask original nominator? That is kinda annoying. Regards, TBrandley 01:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

There's still a tag for adding links: {{Dead end}}. But I think sometimes people are unclear about what tags are what, especially since they change from time to time. Some editors use {{copyedit}} to flag minor issues of MOS conformance around presentation issues like capitalization, italics, etc, that don't really matter much below GA level and aren't really copy editing either. Still, it may be easier just to do it than to debate it.

There's no clear dividing line, is there? The core job is the things you said: spelling, grammar, clarity of thought, but then it's nice to leave the article as good as we can. I always tackle over- and underlinking. One editor working on this drive is tackling citations too -- even finding and adding new ones. That's brilliant if you want to do it, but not essential for the removal of a copyedit tag. Finally, perhaps how much of our effort an article is worth depends on how much effort its creator or champion (if any) is making. I certainly take more care with requests than with Randy's garage band.

In the Jerusalem article, links seem to be the main issue, but I'd also look into whether "City of David" is the correct name for something or just a POV term for Jerusalem. In the Spanish political parties, the version when the tag was added had much of that section in ALL CAPS. Someone dealt with that before you arrived but failed to remove the tag. Anyhow, what you did was great. --Stfg (talk) 10:28, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words about the Spanish political party section. Definitely WP:BB application for me. I am going to apply the Dead end template after looking at the "City of David" issue. Beyond that, I am going to look at all the articles beginning with the word "List" in the copy-edit category, to see if other tags are more appropriate.

I have made a list of copy edit requests starting with "List of" below, and have started to do some of them. I invite other GoCE members to join me in looking at articles in the list, and seeing if other tags are more appropriate. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:28, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent idea. One general thing: very often, articles called List of XXX episodes turn out to be plot dumps, frequently including all sorts of mundane details at the level of who washed the dishes on the night of the fatal events yada yada. Not infrequently, {{all plot}} plus {{in-universe}} can be added, and the article {{GOCEreviewed}}. --Stfg (talk) 14:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Quite right, we can get those changed to other tags and off our totals. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:32, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Copyedit requests beginning with "List of"

At least some of these requests can be changed to other tags, such as {{Dead end}}. I provide this list of 50 articles for all GoCE members to work on. Sorry, I missed three at the beginning of the list. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

• List of Advanced Generation mobile weapons  Done No credit. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:54, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Aerosmith outtakes  Done No credit.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei episodes  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 02:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Army Cadet Force units Y changed tag —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:56, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Ask Dr. Rin! episodes Y just plot stuff --Stfg (talk)
• List of Beyblade characters
• List of Bob the Builder episodes  Done Plot --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:50, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of breakout characters GoCE members, feel free to comment in AfD.

  ? I can't see why the link to the deletion discussion is still a redlink, even though the discussion page exists. --Stfg (talk) 08:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  No longer a redlink now. --Stfg (talk)

• List of The Venture Bros. characters
• List of Artemis Fowl characters
• List of Gabriel Knight characters
• List of Star Fox characters  Done Didn't see any comma splices, and most of the run-on sentences were in the voice credits. -gameon123 23:19, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Street Fighter characters  Done copy edited --Stfg (talk)
• List of characters in Transformers: Prime
• List of counts of Austria-Hungary  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Dan Vs. episodes  Done Nothing to do --Stfg (talk) 20:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of DC Multiverse worlds
• List of Defenders members  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of England football team songs  Done No credit. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:10, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Game & Watch games
• List of GoGoRiki episodes Y changed tags --AngusWOOF (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Gossip Girl characters
• List of Grey's Anatomy characters
• List of hospitals in Bangladesh  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 01:53, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of hospitals in Iceland  Done No credit. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:24, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Huntik: Secrets & Seekers episodes Y plot & more --Stfg (talk)
• List of James Bond villains
• List of The World God Only Knows characters Y changed tags --AngusWOOF (talk) 16:42, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• King of Jerusalem  Done --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:16, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of largest peaceful gatherings in history Y just one section was tagged, only needed minor work —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of LGBT characters in video games
• List of Ninja Gaiden characters
• List of objections (law) N In my view this is good to copy edit. Only thing is, it should either be moved to "List of objections (US law)" or globalized. --Stfg (talk)
  • We've a tag for that, which I've added. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:42, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Pashto-language films Y changed tags --AngusWOOF (talk) 16:59, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of people known as The Great  Done No credit. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:54, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of PlayStation Vita games  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 17:28, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of Porphy no Nagai Tabi episodes Y plot (& checked for copyvio, but found none) --Stfg (talk)
• List of programs broadcast by Alpha TV Y changed tags --AngusWOOF (talk) 21:15, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of recurring Tugs characters
• List of Resident Evil characters
• List of Sands of Destruction episodes Y plot --Stfg (talk)
• List of Tamil-language television channels  Done No credit. --AngusWOOF (talk) 17:03, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
• List of The Berenstain Bears characters
• List of The Jeffersons episodes N good content, well-summarised plot; should c/e --Stfg (talk)
• List of The Law of Ueki episodes Y plot --Stfg (talk)
• List of The Stand characters
• List of Transformers: Energon episodes Y plotty thing --Stfg (talk)
• List of Ultimate X-Men story arcs
• List of unsolved deaths -- I've replied on its talk page. It's not bad, but I think a c/e would help. It could probably be done quite quickly. --Stfg (talk)
• List of war apology statements issued by Japan

My thanks to those who are checking articles in this list. We are down to 2,595 right now, due to this effort and others. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:07, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Haha, I love this. Dish some of these back to WikiProject Wikify since we're dishing articles off to you. I'm joking of course, but I'm a bit busy today. I'll try to comment on the above discussion tomorrow. I did a quick run of catscan and found out there are 406 articles that are tagged for copyediting and one of the various Wikification categories. Perhaps we can sometime try to deal with those two sets jointly. Many editors do some level of copyediting while they are wikifying so that might make your goal easier. Ryan Vesey 02:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

You have me stumped there. On several of the lists I looked at yesterday, I removed a {{Wikify}} tag. This was particularly the case with articles I tagged with "all plot" and "in-universe", because those tags imply a need to rewrite (for fair use), and there's no point in wikifying stuff that needs rewriting any more than there's any point copy editing it. By the way, many of us also wikify as we copy edit, in ways like adding wikilinks, converting HTML markup and suchlike. In what way have we "dished" any back to the Wikify project? --Stfg (talk) 16:46, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

As I pointed out, I was joking. It was related to Dthomsen8's comment above about replacing some with {{Dead end}}. Ryan Vesey 01:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

There are four lists shown above that are serious subjects unrelated to entertainment or games. I am unsure what to do about them, so I invite other GoCE members to have a look.

• • List of largest peaceful gatherings in history Y just one section was tagged, only needed minor work —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
  • List of objections (law) (my view given above: shouldn't change tag) --Stfg (talk)
  • List of unsolved deaths (my view given above: probably shouldn't change tag) --Stfg (talk)
  • List of war apology statements issued by Japan

Please show any action taken on the main list above. Thank you. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:52, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Lists of characters

Quite a lot of those we haven't dealt with yet are lists of characters. I don't know how to handle those. Are the expectations of such lists documented anywhere? --Stfg (talk) 20:03, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a decent amount of information at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists#Guidelines. Could take a while to sort through it all though. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 20:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. On a quick look, there don't appear to be any special considerations for lists of characters -- nothing different from what would apply to an article about one character, anyway. --Stfg (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Vietnam Colony

I was about to start copyediting Vietnam Colony but have discovered there is another article Vietnam Colony (1994 film) that refers to the same film. It looks like it's a remake of the film, but it's done by the same company. What makes it more confusing is that it takes the same exact plot summary was placed in both films with the older one being slightly more detailed. I really don't know what to make of it. Should it still be copyedited? AngusWOOF (talk) 18:37, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I have added a See also section on both articles, pointing to the other film article, and I have added the appropriate templates on the talk:Vietnam Colony (1994 film) page. Now it seems to me that the appropriate course is to propose a merge of the two articles, and while that is pending remove the {{GOCEinuse}} tag on the Vietnam Colony article, and place a {{GOCEreviewed}} on both of the article talk pages. When someone (perhaps the article creator) does the merge, copy editing could be requested again. If this course of action is followed, the September drive number is improved by one until the merger is made. Thank you, AngusWOOF, for calling this situation to our attention. I hope you will like my proposed course of action. You should be the one who removes the {{GOCEinuse}} tag, and either of us could propose the merger. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:50, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I checked again and they do have different producers/directors, but there is no clear difference in plot besides the names of the characters. I can't tell if the 1992 was a pilot, the 1994 an imitation, or any of that, other than there are "facetious claims" links that James Cameron's Avatar film swiped the plot from the film. Will go ahead and remove the GOCEinuse tag in the meantime. AngusWOOF (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Please note that these two Bollywood films were in different Indian languages, Tamil and Malayalam. After looking more carefully, I think we can leave the situation just as it is. We are GoCE members, and during a drive we need not get into every problem or issue found in articles tagged for copy editing. While waiting for a response here, I just acted on Polyphenol and talk:Polyphenol to remove the pending copy edit, and leave other issues to experts. We may never see that one again, or if we do, there may be little to do after other editors go to work.--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Safety valve#types

The Safety valve#types section is tagged for copy editing, back in October 2011, but after consulting a mechanical engineer, we are agreed that the section is a mess, and of no use to any engineer or casual reader who might consult it. What this section needs is for a mechanical engineering expert to provide an entirely new section. I am going to tag it as needed an expert, and I will remove the copy editing tag, and add a template on the talk page with an explanation. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Bhati

The Bhati article is now tagged for copy editing, with a date of May, 2009. How can a date more than three years back suddenly appear in September, 2012? --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:50, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks to be another disputed article with one editor unilaterally restoring an old version. I reverted to what looks to be the agreed upon version. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 02:08, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, just what was needed. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:04, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Gone but not forgotten

Just deleted, with regret, from a village article: "On the flip side, for a wayward visitor the whole village can smell one hell of an onion stink, especially if it rains during the harvest season." --Stfg (talk) 11:14, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Hahaha, I love those little jewels of nonsense. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 15:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Gotta love those villages. In case you haven't run across it, I've found this script handy for Indian places that use the deprecated Infobox Indian jurisdiction template: User:Utcursch/Migrate Infobox Indian Jurisdiction to Infobox settlement. Lfstevens (talk) 03:30, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Just slapped an Overly detailed tag / GOCEreviewed on Parvathipuram, Andhra Pradesh. It mentions "there are 54 revenue villages and 26 panchayats in Parvathipuram mandal" and then lists each and every one of them (and not very clearly either), along with all the banks. Most city articles list public schools and public buildings. This one might as well list all the post offices and gas stations, oh wait, it did for the post office. Well, if you feel like chopping, have at it. AngusWOOF (talk) 08:02, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I chopped a similar list yesterday. Those types of listings really are outside of the scope of Wikipedia. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 13:42, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. I just applied that script to the town. Now if someone could rewrite those paragraphs, some year.AngusWOOF (talk) 22:55, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

List of Game & Watch games

Not sure if Dementia13 will be back in time to complete this, which is the only remaining tagged old article besides one that I am about to complete. Does anyone else want to try finishing it? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 19:46, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Dementia13 seems to be on it (last save about 4 minutes ago), so all is well. Impressive work today generally, by the way. Those last ten or so articles were pigs, and as of 12 hours ago, I wasn't expecting us to complete. --Stfg (talk) 21:05, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Haha, I felt the same way. But we always seem to snowball in the last few days. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 21:16, 30 September 2012 (UTC)