Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/September 2011

Talk-page for: WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/September 2011

Need perhaps 80 editors in effort

In the July 2011 drive, there were not enough active editors to reach the goal (which is about 500 articles because over 100 more articles were tagged into the total during July). I am thinking of ways to get more editors to join, by mentioning this drive in various discussion boards (such as already at the Village Pump WP:PUMPTECH). If we had 80 participants, and each fixed 10 articles, then that would clear 800 articles from the backlog list. However, I realize if 40 editors were newcomers, then the questions to the coordinators might become overwhelming, so it would be good to attract more veteran editors. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

• Began placing notices for editors to join: I have been putting notices wherever I could find a notice-board. So far:

• WP:Community_portal - Notices, as "Need editors for WP:GOCE backlog..."
• WP:Editor_assistance/Requests - as "Need 50 copy-edit helpers for WP:GOCE backlog"
• WP:PUMPTECH - Village Pump, for reducing (copy-edit) banners

I am asking editors to consider fixing just 10 articles, at first. Hopefully, they do not get scared with the "3,900" articles needing to be fixed. Perhaps someone knows some semi-idle editors, who will also pass the word. More later. -Wikid77 22:08, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Goal must be more than 500 articles to make progress

Monthly progress chart

Date	Number of articles	Change from previous month
April 30, 2010	8323	+212
May 31, 2010	7563	−760
June 30, 2010	7582	+19
July 31, 2010	6293	−1289
August 31, 2010	6300	+7
September 30, 2010	5,575	−725
October 31, 2010	5,601	+26
November 30, 2010	4,974	−627
December 31, 2010	5,151	+177
January 31, 2011	4,518	−633
February 28, 2011	4,672	+154
March 31, 2011	3,850	−822
April 30, 2011	4,158	+308
May 31, 2011	3,737	−421
June 30, 2011	3,953	+216
July 31, 2011	3,615	-338
August 31, 2011	3,947	+332

Graph shows declining interest in copy editing and wikification tasks

It is clear, from past efforts, that a reduction of 10% of the backlog, during each drive, is not enough to offset the other articles being tagged for copy-edit. We need to get more participants and set the goal higher, such as 20% of the backlog during each drive. Although only "100" articles get added during the drive, perhaps another 400 get added during the alternating non-drive months. The more participants we have, the easier the task for each person might become. I am not sure how the goals are decided. -Wikid77 21:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the need to raise the goal for the drive when we're only coming close to meeting our 10% goal most of the time. If we had more participants, however, our goal could be increased, but since we only have 30 participants, we should keep our current 10% goal. Plus we do take into consideration the number of articles tagged daily and monthly; that is, we do account for the articles that are tagged as well as the articles that are untagged when we make our goal. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 21:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Our first drive was in May 2010. Around 500 articles are tagged for copy edit each month. If no one works on the tagged articles during non-drive months, we lose our progress towards reducing the backlog. However, if we select from the articles that were tagged in 2010, we at least improve our situation as we are cleaning up the articles that have been tagged the longest.

The problem is the level of participation has declined over time. It is difficult to attract and retain interested editors to the project. Any ideas on this aspect of the problem would be appreciated. --Dianna (talk) 14:02, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Is this happening to other Backlog drives? If so, we might want to discuss this with them so we can all see improvement. If there's just one Backlog drive that's maintaining a constant, or even a growing, number of participants, perhaps we could consult them? The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 16:09, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

We did discuss this during the previous drive. I did a quick assessment of a sample of the "copy edit needed" tag additions during the last drive. The initial sampled results were here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors/Newsletters/August_2011.

I am intending to do a weekly sweep of the articles added during September to try and reduce the number added to the totals whilst the drive is running. The other problem is that those added during August will also have impacted on Category:All articles needing copy edit. Chaosdruid (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Penalties

"If a rough consensus finds a copy edit is not of an acceptable standard, the tag will be re-added and the editor will be assessed a penalty of 1,200 words plus the length of the article reviewed." I find this statement quite off-putting. If I, or anyone else, is doing their best to improve an article in need of copyediting, the idea of penalising them for failing to reach the high standards required seems repugnant to me. Tesco has a slogan, "Every little helps". In the same vein, I would have thought any improvement to an article is better than none. When was the last time you actually used this sanction? Is not the other option, "The reviewer may also give advice on how the edit could have been better, without penalizing the editor", both sufficient and preferable? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:37, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

We were worried about quality control in the beginning, but I suppose the latter option is better than the former now. It'd probably be best if we did change it. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 13:31, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

The penalty is rarely assessed, as it seems pretty bite-y. --Dianna (talk) 14:37, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

If it's bite-y, should it be removed? The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 22:16, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

This has been there since the drives started, and nobody has mentioned that they were offended by it all this time. Some penalty warning is necessary, to stop people from gaming the system. The penalty itself is quite lame. What if I copy edited five 10,000 word articles, and on each one, all I did was really copy edit two paragraphs from each? I would have a word count of 44,000 words after the penalty. Some warning regarding gaming is needed. The other drives, such as the GAN drive, does have a penalty warning. What we are trying to say is, "If you're thinking of gaming this, then move along, as we will find out and gaming this will not work." But perhaps this should be re-worded in some way. --SMasters (talk) 01:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually "1,200 words plus the length of the article reviewed" would mean you'd have a word count of -6,000 words. Having said which, that level of checking would be unlikely to happen, so you wouldn't actually get penalised for all five articles even in the unlikely case that a penalty was applied. Nonetheless I agree a warning system is necessary, even if rarely (if ever?) used. However, hypothetical penalty or not, plenty of gaming of this system is done anyway. --jjron (talk) 17:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course, you are so right! I think I was half asleep when I worked that out. :) --SMasters (talk) 17:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a penalty of 1,200 words plus half of the article's word count would work? For odd numbers we could round up or down to the nearest even number. If 1,200 is still a problem we could cut it in half to 600, as well. Thoughts? The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 17:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Cwmhiraeth's concerns are about the number of words for the penalty, but the entire concept of the penalty itself. --SMasters (talk) 17:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand that, but as you said we do need a way to find the gamers and deal with them. If we took away this penalty, gaming the system (so to speak) would become even easier than it is now. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 17:40, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh OK, I'm suggesting that we keep things as they are as it has worked well all this time and we have had active participation in our drives even with this implemented from Day 1. We are not the only ones that have a penalty warning. Other drives have them as well. --SMasters (talk) 17:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I second that. From a personal perspective, when I came to participate in a drive for the first time, the warning didn't really put me off, but made think to myself 'I better do this right cos they'll be checking and I don't want to get pinged'. Not that I ever intended to cheat the system of course, but it may be enough to at least make most people think twice and try to do it right. Having been here for a few drives now, I think the second option of 'warning and suggesting improvements' is almost always applied where a breach is detected, at least in the first instance. And maybe if the warning is enough to put some users off completely, then perhaps their skills (or ethics) would be unlikely to be up to scratch anyway? --jjron (talk) 10:36, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Beware bots supporting vanity pages or resumes

I will be more careful not to copy-edit vanity pages. I was recently fooled (completely) by bot-edits, made by smart-edit robots (on WP+Commons), who seem to have disguised a vanity-page (with few/no reliable sources), because those bots improved the article, plus images, to seem like some art experts cared. After a typical complex hour of editing, and source-checking, I found article "Vale (author)" (done now!) had almost no sources, but seemed to be a "professionally" illustrated article, from 8 artwork images; however... the article (+8 images) were uploaded by a single-purpose account (inactive now), during a week in June 2009, who then (re-)created the article in September 2009. So how can a 2-week user do such a professional disguise? Well, the bots came months later, adjusted the wording, then added "professional" titles to those 8 quick images (as if some art-expert actually cared), which gave me the impression that the artist "Vale" was admired by professional photographers annotating artistic photos of this important (yet non-published?) "art-master" (Vale who?). I had no idea that image-bots could fake crude image-uploads to look like carefully, precisely, annotated art-masterpieces (rather than 2-week WP:SPA vanity-images). I apologize if "Vale" is actually notable, somehow, but all the evidence says:  "vanity-page" with 8 bot-faked vanity-images. Beware. -Wikid77 22:51, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

The article is written in a very pretentious style and difficult to improve. An example, - In a sense, his general catalogue differs from all paleontological comparison of his epoch, yet when he recklessly abused upon vertiginous promises of the 20th century. What is that supposed to mean? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

The only source in that article is for a book whose ISBN number doesn't return anything in google books. I can't see any other references to the guy in google either. I think it should be nominated for AfD, personally. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:13, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Parts sound like they were dropped into Babelfish and the output pasted here. Other parts sound very much like the output of one of those Gibberish Generators (q.v.). "Write me 3 paragraphs about poetry", for example. I can find no meaning in "in which the truthful compulsion delays among the alternatives of an ordinary uncertainty. So in poems, such as "Sales Derrumbadas", which describes in the declination of its rhythm, how a notorious orb serenely ends". Any Spanish speakers who can check the ESWIKI article to see if it makes any more sense there? If not, perhaps it should be flagged for removal?  ☢ Prompt Critical ☢  15:12, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

The person who uploaded the file of Vale's self-portrait, user:Simon, Sebastian, claims he is the copyright holder of the portrait. Ergo, Vale=Simon, Sebastian. Vale, the article, was created and largely written by Simon, Sebastian (both the English and Spanish versions), ergo it's a vanity page through and through. Tdslk (talk) 15:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Use of commas

I am inserting many commas into articles, and I am reminded by an "urban legend" that British readers do not like so many commas. Bear with me as I use commas in the following text. In U.S. English, very often commas are added after dates, because in the idiomatic style, dates typically end a line of thought (example below), and the dates can be qualified by the ending text. For example: "The Mayflower first arrived in Massachusetts in October 1620, after a long voyage," versus "The murder occurred on October 31 that year, around 11:00 at night". In the first example, the date is sufficient as October 1620, and the long voyage does not qualify the date. In the second example, "October 31" is qualified with "that year" as part of the date, then the comma is added because the hour "11:00" does not quality which day of the year. For decades in American English, a comma has been added after the year in dates, unless extra text qualifies the date: "The severe winds on the Gulf Coast began the day before the August 2005 landfall of Hurricane Katrina, beginning on the evening of August 28, not 29, due to the large spiral of the storm". In that sentence, the phrase "August 2005 landfall" specifies a qualified event. The general concept is to avoid a garden-path sentence (of the form, "The cotton clothes are made of grows in Mississippi"), by adding commas: "The cotton, clothes are made of, grows in Mississippi" with a parenthetical expression between commas. However, should more commas be omitted in articles which use British English? -Wikid77 (talk) 20:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I had no idea! American and British English differences#Punctuation makes no mention of any of this. A pretty good site about British English punctuation is this one by Larry Trask of the University of Sussex. I am British, and it makes sense to me. Is there a good site describing American usage?

• "The Mayflower first arrived in Massachusetts in October 1620, after a long voyage." For me, this comma can be either preset or absent, with a very subtle difference in meaning. The unmarked sentence would omit the comma. Adding it makes the following words feel a bit more like an afterthought.
• "The murder occurred on October 31 that year, around 11:00 at night." I need that comma, but I wouldn't need one in "The murder occurred on October 31 that year at around 11:00 at night." It feels as if the ellipsis makes it necessary.
• "... the August 2005 landfall...". A comma is surely impossible here, as "August 2005" is an adjective phrase qualifying landfall - nothing parenthetical about it. (By the way, that sentence needs "because of" instead of "due to".)
• That's a beautiful example of a garden path sentence, but "The cotton, clothes are made of, grows in Mississippi." ... really? Good is "The cotton that clothes are made of grows in Mississippi." (Forty years ago a British student would have been told to write "The cotton of which clothes are made grows in Mississippi.", but that feels quite stilted now.) In British English, no comma is possible here.

--Stfg (talk) 22:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

• I read that punctuation guide at the University of Sussex web-link, but it did not discuss the commas after a long prepositional phrase and after time-dated phrases. In the U.S., the Chicago Manual of Style is a popular reference for punctuation, but I am concerned with time-dated and long phrases. For example:

• Time-dated phrases: "Once upon a time, ..." or "Long ago, ..."
• With long prepositional phrases: "Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, ..."
• Prepositional phrases over 5 words: "For all creatures great and small, ..."
• Preconditions to the sentence: "Every move you make, every step you take, ..."
• A conditional phrase: "If I had a nickel for every time I edited a page, ..."

Those are the types of sentences, with long phrases, where I am adding commas into the sentences. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

These all seem perfectly reasonably to me in terms of British punctuation. --SMasters (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps these are cases of what the Sussex page calls "bracketing" commas, but one of the weaknesses of their presentation is that it isn't always quite clear whether a phrase or clause at the start or end of a sentence counts as "bracketing" or not. SMasters, how good do you consider the Grammar Slemmer site? For introductory phrases it suggests a funny 4-word rule; for introductory clauses it has no such rule and what it says is, I think, consistent with British usage. --Stfg (talk) 09:37, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Edit-conflicts on popular articles

I had forgotten that the popular articles are likely to be edited by several people per day, so those articles are likely to be trouble when trying to complete copy-editing by the deadline. In particular, "Constitution class starship" was somewhat in an edit-war, while I was also editing the version for copy-edit of problems. In general, the highly popular articles are mostly ready-for-prime-time, so the recent tagging for copy-edit is just baiting for edit-conflicts, and copy-edit tags on popular articles might be another form of overkill in tagging. The recent categories are likely to contain excessive, overkill tagging:

• Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit from September 2011
• Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit from August 2011

Hence, perhaps avoiding highly-popular articles in those categories would reduce frustrations. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:36, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

We have a template, Template:GOCEinuse, for this purpose. We need not worry about edit conflicts if editors are being courteous and letting us do our work. If, however, you still come across an edit conflict, don't worry; rather, if you believe it's a problem, let the editor know on their talk page. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 02:48, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Using {{GOCEinuse}} (or just {{inuse}}) is vital, to warn off another editor picking that article from the category lists. --Stfg (talk) 11:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Both these tags are also available through Twinkle under "Tag" (if you use it). --SMasters (talk) 12:26, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

People tagging all the recent articles

I have been noticing all the newly tagged copy-edit articles, more than 74 in one day. I think a list of frequent-tag authors will help to anticipate which articles to copy-edit. In particular:

• User:ThatPeskyCommoner - tags {multiple issues} in a few articles each day
• User:Orenburg1 - tags {Copy edit|date=} in a few articles each day
• User:Smackbot - dates the maintenance tags, which get the current month
• User:Helpful Pixie Bot - dates maintenance tags, causing the article to appear in this month's category

Of course, there are over 100,000 articles which could use some amount of copy-editing (or perhaps {cleanup} tags), but when the pages have just a few problems, the articles are also getting the {copy-edit} tag. However, those articles can be very fast to copy-edit, with perhaps less than 50 spelling or grammar issues per page. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:36, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

We don't want to discourage anyone, so we can't urge them to stop. All we can do is step up our copy editing rate to compensate for this influx of articles into the queue. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 02:45, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I've copy edited several articles tagged by Orenburg1, and those articles were in need of editing, so I think their getting tagged is perfectly fine. That a high rate of tagging is hurting our stats is more the fault of how we calculate our stats. The more important number seems to me to be how many total articles we edit, not the change in the number of outstanding tags. If we edited 2000 articles this month, and 2000 copy edit tags were added to articles that needed copy editing, that would seem to me to be a good thing. Tdslk (talk) 14:51, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

That would contradict the reason for having these drives, which is to reduce the copy edit backlog, not copy edit a certain amount of articles. But I do see where you're coming from. I'll give this more thought. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 18:40, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

My concern is that if articles are tagged much more quickly than we can copyedit them (as seems to be happening, thanks in part to Twinkle), participation in the drives may fall off and the backlog will swell to an unmanageable level. That has already happened with articles in need of wikification; the backlog seems to grow by the minute, and the bimonthly drives are Sisyphean as a result. Trouble is, it's difficult to tell ahead of time which articles need only a once-over (as opposed to a major overhaul).--Miniapolis (talk) 15:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of you may have noticed that my wiki-time has been greatly reduced lately due to real-life stuff I am working on, and I am afraid that this is having a big impact on our stats, so sorry. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to not stress about what may prove to be only a temporary bump in the road but to carry on with the work, and focus on higher profile and more important articles for the time being. For example, a lot of the recently-created tagged articles (as many as 15%) will not even be here in a couple of months; they will not survive the deletion process. So it is better to work from the other end of the backlog, imho, in order to not copy edit articles that are potentially slated for deletion. Also, when preparing to tackle a complex or time consuming article such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) (season 7) it might be prudent to check out the page views and one will quickly see that our time is better spent elsewhere at present. --Dianna (talk) 15:55, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to sort articles by page views? Also, a "total articles edited" count would help control that Sisyphean feeling one gets from upward-pointing red triangles. Tdslk (talk) 19:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I have been using CatScan to help me find more important articles to edit. Unbeknownst to most of mankind, each wikipedia article is assigned a sequential unique ID number :) One would presume that the more important articles would be long-standing early created ones. Method: Set the depth to 5. Place "Wikipedia articles needing copy edit" in the Categories box. Articles with an earlier creation date appear closer to the top of the list. Search reveals Columbia (help with ordinals); History of Islam (section); Lex Luthor (section); Osama bin Laden (section); Chevrolet (section); you get the idea. Not sure how to tally total articles copy edited; perhaps SMasters knows where to get this info. --Dianna (talk) 20:55, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I think it's not possible to sort articles by page views. If someone knows how, then please do share with us. – SMasters (talk) 11:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

retagged

The article Music therapy was claimed by one editor as being "complete". I reviewed it and determined that only a small part of the article had been processed; significant work remained to be done. In other words, the work was wholly inadequate. I have therefore reinstated the {{copyedit}} tag, and made a note on the project page. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:33, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the same editor did this again. Instead of reinstating the tag, though, I'm going to copy edit the article personally and leave a message on the editor's talk page. They will still receive credit for the copy edit. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 17:38, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Drive status

As for previous drives, I took a screen shot of the table at the end of the drive, and have replaced the dynamic table with it for a historical record. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 00:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! --SMasters (talk) 01:50, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Copyedits not added

Hi,

I have two copyedits outstanding. I preferred to spend yesterday working than doing the admin side. I didn't expect it to be closed up so promptly! Best, --Ktlynch (talk) 10:40, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we are quite efficient. Why don't you finish them as soon as possible and put a note next to them, then see how the awarding coordinator wants to treat them? --SMasters (talk) 10:50, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, SMasters. Since the page has been locked down I'll note them here. BBC News (6689) and Broadcasting House (1452). Best,--Ktlynch (talk) 12:13, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem

On the final numbers page, Wikid77 says that they don't want to participate in the "word count contest" (undoubtedly referring to the leaderboard awards). However, I do need the complete word count to figure out which barnstar to give to him/her, and most of the articles (138 of them) do not have the number of words next to them. I'm going to figure these out, but it'd take a while alone, so could someone assist me? Please put the word counts on the totals page. Thanks, The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 19:32, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Given that Wikid77 edited ten 5000+ articles, as well as some 128 others, I'd say you can safely assume that the total exceeds 100,000 words. (Awesome work, Wikid77!) Tdslk (talk) 22:30, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

True, but I still need the exact word count so I can calculate their new rollback words. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 00:16, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

They stated that they are not interested in participating in the word count awards, so I don't believe rollover words need to be calculated. Maybe confirm with Wikid? --Dianna (talk) 06:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I sent Wikid a message yesterday, but they haven't responded yet. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 13:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC)