Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors

The month-long September copy editing drive has begun. It will end on Monday, 30 September, at 23:59 UTC. Sign up now!

WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors was featured in WikiProject Reports in the Signpost on 22 October 2007, 14 June 2010 and 26 April 2020.

This WikiProject has been mentioned by a media organization: Britt Peterson (20 February 2015). "Wikipedia's copy editor army". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 20 December 2018. more passionate about the perfection of language than many professionals [...] the copy editor army clearly feels a sense of pride and responsibility

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I have recently replaced, using AWB, hundreds of tautological instances of "due to health reasons" with "for heath reasons", and similarly for uses of "due to medical reasons" and "due to legal reasons". Naturally, I have excluded cases in quotations or the titles of sources.

Please consider this in your work.

Are there other, similar, phrases that need attention? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Andy. I can't think of anything else offhand, but will let you know if I do. All the best, Miniapolis 12:22, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Andy, thank you for your work. A few misused phrases and words I often find are:

• "Due to the fact (that)" --> "Because / Because of / Due to";
• unnecessary uses of "that"... "Dave Brown told reporters that the fire was deliberately lit";
• "Impact" and "impacted (by)" where the meaning is "effect" or "affected (by)"; "The train strike has impacted thousands of travellers today".

There's probably loads more but those may keep you busy for a while. :) Cheers, Baffle☿gab 21:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestions, Unfortunately, most of them cannot be handled as simple find/ replace operations in AWB. I will add those that can to my to-do list. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Although my availability is limited, I'm keen to get into GOCE again. I enjoyed it last year when I had plenty of spare time. I've selected three articles from the list and two look as if they'll be easy enough to improve. Jonny Bairstow, however, could be a nightmare. It is BLP and seriously unsourced. I suspect it contains original research.

I need advice about how much I can do under the GOCE banner. I think large amounts of unsourced content should be removed, assuming I won't be able to find sources, but that would probably halve the size of the article. What do you think? Thanks. PearlyGigs (talk) 00:06, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your help. I see that there are many "citation needed" templates at the Bairstow article, but, with 73 citations, I wouldn't call it "unsourced". It is a BLP, which requires strict adherence to being properly sourced, but I'm looking at things such as:

Bairstow played in all six England matches at the 2021 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, though he finished with just 47 runs and a top score of 16.[citation needed][58] (while his involvement in the tournament is supported, his personal score isn't).

From 2016 to 2018, he played for Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super League.[citation needed] (his playing for the league is mentioned online, but I couldn't find the particular date range; however, this is likely to be something for which sources could be found).

You would be within your right to remove unsourced text, but I myself would rather leave in such text, as long as concerned simple scoring and didn't involve extraordinary claims, such as of scandalous behavior or being the greatest player ever. Dhtwiki (talk) 04:00, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Dhtwiki. Thanks for your advice. I'll work my way through it and see what I can do. The main problem is the 2013 to 2014 section which has no citations at all. I've been looking at a couple of sites, mainly ESPNcricinfo, which might provide some of the missing references. PearlyGigs (talk) 04:15, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Dhtwiki. Nearly two weeks later, I've finally finished this. Fortunately, it's relatively easy to find sources for someone who is currently a top sportsperson. I decided to completely rewrite it, and I've revamped the structure so as to keep all relevant material together. I think it meets B-class now but it would be good to have a thorough review done, so I've added it to WP:GAN. This is the second cricket article I've tried to improve and they were both a collection of unrelated incidents following on from each other without any structure or cohesion. I think I'll stick to football! Thanks again for your advice. PearlyGigs (talk) 05:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Armenian Revolutionary Federation has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I'm not an official part of the Guild but I've attempted to participate in this month's copy editing drive. I tried to take on a meaty article in the requests section, Critical Role Productions. I've copy edited most of it but it's extremely heavy on unnecessarily long quotes from sources; is this my responsibility to fix, or should I leave quotes alone? To make this more natural would make the overall task significantly harder and basically be rewriting most of the article. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. StewdioMACK (talk) 11:21, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome, and thanks for your help. You don't have to be a GOCE member to participate in the drives and blitzes, but copyediting GA and FA candidates usually calls for a bit of experience. The request should be tagged as {{Working}} on the requests page to notify the requester and other potential copyeditors. I don't know what you mean by fixing quotes, since they ordinarily shouldn't be copyedited except for adding {{sic}} or similar minor fixes. FWIW, I look at an article first before deciding on a copyedit; it helps the rest of us to finish what's started. Have fun and all the best, Miniapolis 14:03, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@StewdioMACK: I'm going to mention a bit here if you do want to go further than a copyedit and rewrite some of the material. Heavy use of "unnecessarily long quotes" is not compatible with encyclopedic tone and can even run afoul of fair use. (In general, anything "unnecessary" should probably be trimmed.) You can paraphrase or partially paraphrase, or make a tighter summary of the material being quoted. In the last paragraph of Critical Role Productions § Industry expansion (2022–present), for example, there are three quotations which are all in agreement and building to the same point; they become repetitive, and the paragraph could probably be summarized in two sentences without any quotations. Since the article is intended for GAN, I'd at least mention the quotation issue to the requester. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:31, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments, Reidgreg. I've gone ahead and rewritten a lot of sections to reduce quote-farming, and I've added a "promotional tone" template to the top of the article. Haven't published my edit yet but will when I'm done with the copy edit. StewdioMACK (talk) 14:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation is exploring how to expand it's work on campaigns to support other kinds of collaboration. We are interested in learning from diverse editors that have experience joining and working on WikiProjects, Campaigns, and other kinds of on-wiki collaboration. We need your help:

• Take a survey about your experience with collaborations: with this Google Form
• Share examples of Collaborations or WikiProjects that have worked for you: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Campaigns/WikiProjects

Whatever input you bring to the two spaces will help us make better decisions about next steps beyond the current tools we support. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]