User talk:Corinne/Archive 16

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En-dash and em-dash

Baffle gab1978 I thought I had asked you a few weeks ago why you used the en-dash and em-dash templates {{ndash}} and {{mdash}}, and you said it was just easier than typing the code for a no-break space and then the en-dash, but that they were essentially the same. I replied that I liked seeing the en-dash or em-dash in the edit window because it helped in editing. Was it you who I asked about that? I have looked on my talk page and in the last two or three archives, but I can't find it. I'm asking because another editor, Checkingfax, changed a no-break space plus en-dash to two separate templates, one for the no-break space and one for the en-dash, in Allegra Versace: [1]. I want to know if there is a good reason for using those templates instead of a no-break space and then en-dash. Also, what does the {{mdash}} accomplish that an em-dash (—) doesn't? Corinne (talk) 01:20, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Corinne, a Bot came through many pages I had edited and removed the HTML sequence codes like   commenting that they were "invisible Unicodes" which they are not, so now I just replace those codes with templates when I see them. The templates that are wrapped in curly braces just lead back to the same HTML sequence codes, but the Bot can't see that.
I just make my first template that combines a non-breaking-space, an en dash, and another non-breaking-space in to one tiny template. Here's the shortcut for it: {{snds}}. Note: (mnemonic: s= space, nd= ndash, s= space). I created several other mnemonic shorthands to pull it up. The full template name is: Spaced en dash space.
I'm still working on the documentation for it, so some of it does not apply. I cloned it and edited it from the {{snd}} template documentation.
I don't have an endash or mdash on my keyboard, and the ones we can click on in the edit window don't land at my desired insertion point and I have to go find them and then copy/paste them to the correct spot.
In summary, I stopped using the HTML sequence codes directly because the bot was replacing them anyway. I hope you find a use for my brand new template too. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:18, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax Hmmm... Very interesting. I'm surprised you don't have an en-dash or em-dash on your keyboard. All sorts of useful things, including those, are right below my edit window when I'm in Edit Mode. Do you see, under where it says "Save page", "Preview", and "Changes", and below that is "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page", and below that "Common edit summaries - click to use"? Below that, at the left side, is a box. if you click on the tiny black arrow, a menu opens up. If you click "Wiki markup" to select it, you will see all the useful things to the right of the word "Insert". Then, when you want to use one, such as the en-dash, you put your cursor where you want to insert the en-dash (with a click), then click on the en-dash. Sometimes (especially when I'm working on a long article and am making a lot of edits that I don't want to lose if something goes wrong), I highlight what I want to replace the en-dash with, and then click on the en-dash. For example, if I want to change an em-dash to an en-dash, I highlight the em-dash and then click on the en-dash (from the list of symbols, etc., after "Insert").
The reason I use no-break-space, and then en-dash, and then a regular space, is because if the en-dash comes at the end of a line, I want the en-dash to stay just to the right of the last word. I don't want the en-dash to appear at the beginning of the next line. The regular space after the en-dash ensures that the line will break after the en-dash. I wonder, with your template that has the space in the template, whether it will allow a line-break after the en-dash. I don't know what happens with an em-dash. I don't know whether the template mdash automatically allows a line-break after the em-dash, or whether the word just before and the word just after the em-dash stay stuck to the em-dash. I usually use the spaced en-dash instead of an em-dash anyway; I like what it looks like better. Corinne (talk) 02:36, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Corinne, yes I've tried using those wiki markup buttons, but my laptop and my mobile phone both lose their insertion point and the wiki markup lands wherever it pleases, so I gave up using it.
My new macro template {{snds}} (or one of its many aliases) will be helpful for words like where you want both words to stay conjoined but you want a space on both sides of the en dash. I come across a lot of articles that have regular-space/hyphen/regular-space and my template would serve those. If you want the 2nd word to wrap on to the next line if needed you should use the {{snd}} template instead. That one puts a regular space after the en dash so the word will still line wrap. My new template puts a non-breaking space before and after the en dash. As for em dash, if you put a regular space before and after it, then it will break before or after the em dash as the line space dictates. The {{snd}} template is more suited than mine if you have long lists of en dash spaced items inside a table or such and you want them to break in to natural paragraphs but always ending each line with an en dash. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 03:42, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

(←) Hi Corinne; yes it was me you asked about the dashes, but I can't find the conversation right now and I can't remember where we had it either. {{mdash}} doesn't do anything special; it renders —; I normally subst it (type {{subst:mdash}} to leave an actual mdash in the code. The same isn't true of {{spaced ndash}}, which renders & n b s p ; & n d a s h ; & # 3 2 ; (minus spaces) when substed. I also prefer seeing the actual dashes in the code, but I'm lazy and don't want to have to type & n b s p ; – all the time, or fish out an ndash from the character map (as I just did!). Each to their own, I s'pose, and it's all valid code. :-) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:29, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Here we go: [User_talk:Baffle_gab1978/Archives/1#Indian_National_Congress its here]. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 05:28, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Baffle gab1978 and Checkingfax, both. Checkingfax, I may use one of your templates from time to time. I'll try it out. Regarding your difficulty in inserting an en-dash, I also use a laptop, and I discovered that the cursor moves and other things change if I don't hit the key to lock/disable the built-in pad, the one you use with your finger. (I use a mouse.) If I don't lock/disable that pad, then while I'm working, my hand will inadvertently touch that pad and all sorts of crazy things will happen such as the screen zooming out or scrolling down when I don't want it to, and difficulty getting the cursor to stay where I want it to. Of course, if you're used to using that pad and not a mouse, you can't lock/disable it. Regarding the em-dash, according to MOS:ENDASH, an em-dash is supposed to be unspaced, that is, no space either side of it, so when I see a spaced em-dash, I remove the spaces. If it comes at the end of a line, I'd rather it break before the dash than after it, but I suppose it's not a big deal if it doesn't. I just wondered if one of the templates for the em-dash ensured that it broke at the end of a line (right after the em-dash and before the next word), even without a space being there. Corinne (talk) 13:17, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Sticky on the left, loose on the right em dash

CC: Natalie.Desautels
Dear Corinne, I made a sticky on the left, loose on the right em dash template, using a zero width joiner on the left, and a zero width non-joiner on the right, and an em dash in the middle.

The template is a mouthful: {{zero width joiner em dash zero width non joiner}} (click on the blue link to see the documentation).

I created three shortcuts for it including: {{nsmdns}}

The mnemonic for that is: no-space m-dash no-space

You put no space before the template and no space after the template. I hope you like it. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 15:23, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Checkingfax Wow! Just like that, you made a new template? I'm so impressed! Did you make all those others, with the various sized bullets, too? What's the "tlx" at the beginning of the template (in edit mode)? Corinne (talk) 16:39, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Dear Corinne, no I've only made two simple templates so far. Those others were already there.
The tlx keeps the template from "firing" on this talk page. Click on blue link {{tlx}} to read the documentation on that. On a Talk page without the tlx the template show up as the end result (an em dash). tlx is a way to display the template. It's a bit confusing to me because if somebody looks at the code they might copy the tlx part too when all they really want is the nsmdns part of the template. There are other ways to display templates without them "firing" like: tl, tlq, etc. Each one displays a different way or has limitations, like tl is similar to tlx but tl does not allow any piping within the template or it will truncate the displayed template. You can use nowiki too to keep them from firing, but then they don't show up with a blue clickable link like tlx or tl allows. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:20, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi Corinne, More on using {{tlx}} when showing a template example: in your copy/edit cheat sheet up above if you use this code:
{{tlx|convert|13100000|km2}} it will render like this:
{{convert|13100000|km2}} which will make the word "convert" show up as a blue clickable link that will take you to the "convert" documentation page that will show you all the various parameters for the "convert" template. Take out the nowiki tags around the first example of the template, and replace it with the tlx and the pipe, then the word "convert" will light up in blue and the tlx will not render (you won't see it when you look at your cheat sheet). I find it's handy to be able to quickly get to the various "convert" parameters that way. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 20:43, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax Thank you! This is helpful to know, but I decided to keep the example conversion templates for high numbers separate from the link so that an editor who wants to use them doesn't think they have to put in the "tlx" and create that blue link to the conversion template page. They, or I, can just use the template as it is, just changing the numbers as needed. I had already kind of memorized most of the common conversion templates; it was the high numbers and the square kilometers that I sometimes couldn't remember. But it's always good to have that direct link to the conversion template page. Several times I haven't been able to find it. I wonder if you would look at the way I formatted it above. Is there any way that the link to the conversion templates could be made other than with curly brackets? Corinne (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Allegra Versace

Checkingfax I was surprised when I saw these two edits to Allegra Versace: [2] and the next edit, [3]. In the first one, you changed a hyphen to an en-dash between "long" and "standing". This word can be one word. See [4], or it can be a hyphenated word (see the alternate spelling in that Wiktionary entry), but I have never seen it with an en-dash. I really think you should change that back. In the second edit, you changed a hyphen to an en-dash between "ex" and "fashion model", in the noun (or noun-as-adjective) "ex-fashion model". That's a normal use of a hyphen. See all the example words at [5]. I don't understand why you changed it to an en-dash. I hope you'll consider changing it back to a hyphen. Best regards, Corinne (talk) 17:34, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Dear Corinne, let me do more research on when a hyphen is required. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:23, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Dear Corinne, OK I made the requested changes at Allegra Versace. Sorry about that.
I also made a new template to make a no-space bold middot: {{bolddot}}. That is just one of the shortcuts to the actual template name. It's sticky on the left, and will allow word wrap on the right.
Can you do me a favor and help out a friend to actually copy-edit the lead for the Michael Laucke article? Everything in the lead is well researched and well referenced in the body, but the lead sentence structure and flow is still a bit awkward. Whatever grabs you, just fix it. Thank you.
PS: I finally figured out to do interwiki links properly. For longstanding you do: [[wikt:longstanding]] or you can do [[wikt:longstanding|]] or if you forget the abbreviation, you can do: [[wiktionary:longstanding]] or [[wiktionary:longstanding|]]. In the second examples, the pipe is a "magic" pipe which makes the colons disappear and what comes before the colons disappear too. In all cases you don't get that blue flag in the upper right corner of the link either‍—‌it just looks like a regular wikilink.
If you want to do long links for interwiki or for diffs the guidelines also tell us to strip off the https: part and only leave the remaining link from the //. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 06:43, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax Oh... Thank you! I hope I can remember all this. Corinne (talk) 15:03, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax I am ready to work on the lead in the Michael Laucke article, but I see you are working on the article, so I'll wait. I'm sorry I didn't get to it right away. I had things to do today, and when I finally logged in to WP, I felt I ought to finish the article I had been working on (Urumi (film)) before I started anything else. Corinne (talk) 00:06, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi Corinne, can you copy edit the whole Michael Laucke article? BTW, it's already getting 5000 page views a month! Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 01:44, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

CE

Hello there! I was looking for a copy-editor for Sonam Kapoor. A wiki-friend of mine suggested me to ask you. Would you mind copyediting (it's been already ce'd by a user so it's looking much better)? -- Frankie talk 14:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Frankie Thank you for your request. Have you already posted a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests? If not, would you do that, and if another editor hasn't accepted the assignment before I do, I'd be glad to look at it. I'll be looking for the request. Corinne (talk) 15:29, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
I would bother GOCE if it were not at FAC at the moment (GOCE takes a long time to consider a request). But I did post it outside GOCE and I wasn't lucky enough to get a response. -- Frankie talk 20:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
FrB.TG I can only accept one assignment at the GOCE requests page at a time, but I'm between articles right now. I've just finished one article and haven't yet accepted another one. If you post a request right now, I will go to the requests page and accept the assignment. I'm just curious: is there a time limit or some kind of deadline on this? Also, if your article is up for review for FA, isn't there a special peer-review page for those articles? Corinne (talk) 00:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Okay I've posted the request at GOCE. There isn't a deadline for FAC but if an article does not get a response for a long time, it might fail. Also, I am looking forward to your work. :-) -- Frankie talk 07:50, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

FrB.TG Oh, my gosh. I just realized that I had forgotten about your request and my promise to copy-edit this article. I will accept the assignment right now and get to work on it. Next time, feel free to remind me if I let too many days go by. Corinne (talk) 00:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
OMG again. I just realized that I had already copy-edited this article. I placed a GOCE template on the article's talk page on October 27, 2015. I guess I forgot to add the "Done" template on the Requests page. Let me know if you need help with anything in this article or any other articles. Corinne (talk) 00:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

You absolutely did not forget the copy-editing. It's just that your and the two others' copy-edit didn't satisfy some reviewers. Let's see if it attracts another copy-editor. Thanks very much for your copy-edit. -- Frankie talk 14:20, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

TFAs for you, if you want them


Dank Thank you for your helpful edit summaries accompanying your copy-edits to this article. I will learn from them. Not that you need anyone to agree with you, but I agree with all of them. However, I hope you won't mind if I discuss one with you: [6]

Here is the sentence as it is now:

  • Ants in these groups measure around 5 to 15 millimetres (0.20 to 0.59 inches) in length, apart from the larger queen ants.

I also don't like to see "being..." used too often, but the way it was worded before, with "..., with the queen ants being larger", was correct. Perhaps you have a particular reason for wanting to avoid it, but in any case I can understand if you prefer not to use it. If you really don't want that construction, I think another wording needs to be found because I don't think "apart from the larger queen ants" is right. The fact is right, but the construction isn't.

Perhaps:

  • All ants of this species apart from the larger queen ants measure around 5 to 15 millimetres...in length.

Once you specify "ants in these groups" (i.e., the major and minor workers), you no longer need "apart from..."

Or:

  • Ants in these groups measure around 5 to 15 millimetres...in length; the queen ants are larger.

Also, the heading for this section says, "TFAs for you, if you want them", but you only gave me a link to one article. Are there any others? Corinne (talk) 00:40, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Drat! I knew it didn't sound right but couldn't spot the error; thanks for that. I've fixed it. On the other question: yes, there will be others. - Dank (push to talk) 00:52, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Also: yes, "with the queen ants being larger" was correct. Just FYI, it's hard for me to explain the whole ranges of responses we get at FAC to "with" + a present participle. All I can do is just make a judgment call when I see it. - Dank (push to talk) 01:01, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank I understand. I also think that construction should be used sparingly, but I don't think it is incorrect. It's just got to be used in the right place, and not very often. But if there is widespread objection to it, I can see why it would be easier to avoid it altogether. [See below for response to your other comment.]
Dank First, I'm glad you weren't upset with me.
I'm not.
Second, the November 29 article looks interesting. If it's short, that means I've got to read the article and add a bit from the article to the paragraph, right?
Yes.
What do you mean "We get a lot of FAs tagged by WP:MA? I'm sorry. I don't know what that means. I'm always interested in history, so yes, once I understand what you're referring to. Corinne (talk) 01:05, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
I mean that a lot of Featured Articles that we see at WP:TFA have a tag from Wikiproject Middle Ages on their talk pages, that is, those guys have decided that the article is one they're interested in. On the upside, the writing tends to be good, and the writers are knowledgeable and friendly. On the downside, there's a bit of a learning curve. But sure, I'll start giving you those. - Dank (push to talk) 01:29, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh. Thanks! Corinne (talk) 01:35, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

With Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 29, 2015, and TFAs in general, time is of the essence, as the lawyers say. I'd prefer not to notify the nominator until they have a summary to look at, and Brian and Chris would like for me to notify nominators as soon as possible ... they'd like for nominators to have a couple of weeks to work on the article, if it needs work, before it hits the Main Page. If you'd like to do some research on how to handle these Middle Ages articles before you give it a try, then I'll take this one and you can do the next one. - Dank (push to talk) 14:27, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

O.K. I'll do that. Corinne (talk) 15:23, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank, was I supposed to do the summary for Israel the Grammarian (Nov. 29)? Is that why you said "Time is of the essence?" If so, I'm very sorry. I guess it's because my talk page is getting so full of different things that, if you assigned it to me, I didn't see it or didn't remember. Regarding doing research on articles about the Middle Ages/medieval history, I don't know where I'm supposed to look. I found a list of past featured articles organized by subject matter, and in the history section there is a long list, and I saw only one on the Middle Ages, History of Lithuania (1219–95), but when I clicked on it I only saw the full article. Did you want me to look at TFA summaries of those types of articles? If so, where would I find them? Corinne (talk) 23:19, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
This is the list of Middle-Ages FAs. Just pick out a few that interest you and read the lead sections. Don't worry about getting up to speed; I'll always go through after you're finished. I'll try to be clearer about which articles I'm giving you. - Dank (push to talk) 01:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank Thank you. I've already read one, and I will read more. I have to ask you, though, something that puzzles me. You said to read the lead sections. Does that mean that the summaries we write for the Main Page then become the lead of the article? I know leads can be quite a bit longer than the summaries we write. So, what is the connection between the summaries we write and the leads of articles? What am I supposed to be looking for, or learning from, in the leads of the articles on the Middle Ages? Corinne (talk) 21:43, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
My work at TFA hasn't usually been reproduced in the article lead, unless someone decided they liked the way I put something. It's not necessary to read our Middle Ages articles, if it doesn't feel like a useful exercise. - Dank (push to talk) 21:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank Thanks for your reply. Sorry to bother you. I know you're usually busy. I guess you thought that it would help me to become more familiar with the subject matter, and I'm sure you're right. I've read (and copyedited) a few Middle Ages articles, but I certainly wouldn't mind reading more. Corinne (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Oba Chandler

If you find time for it, please take a look at the article about Oba Chandler. It is a article that I have edited a lot over the years. So any improvements etc are welcomed. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 09:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

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Is this what you meant to say?

Tryptofish I am not very knowledgeable about the workings of ArbCom, but I hated to see what you've been going through recently, and I wanted to express some kind of support for you. I've been reading all the comments on your talk page, and I came across a sentence you wrote that I wanted to ask you about. It's in this edit [7], and it is this sentence:

  • If one looks at my initial reaction after the block was lifted, none of what I am doing in this poll would ever have happened if some members of ArbCom (with, let it be noted, some notable exceptions, who you can see commenting wisely in some talk sections above) got defensive and in effect lawyered up, or actually went on an offensive and started making further attacks on me.

I wonder if this is what you really meant to say. Shouldn't it read:

  • If one looks at my initial reaction after the block was lifted, none of what I am doing in this poll would ever have happened if some members of ArbCom (with, let it be noted, some notable exceptions, who you can see commenting wisely in some talk sections above) had not got[ten– in American English] defensive and in effect lawyered up, or actually went on an offensive and started making further attacks on me.

Weren't you missing the negative there? This is now early in the discussion, but, if I am right, you may want to correct it so that anyone reading this in the future is not confused by it. If I am wrong, then I guess I don't understand what you were saying. Best regards, Corinne (talk) 23:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! You are absolutely correct, and I'll fix that now. Honestly, this whole thing is just frying my brain. But you made a good catch there. (As expected for a good copy-editor!) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:09, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
User:Tryptofish I think the reactions you've gotten to your informal poll are interesting, and probably somewhat predictable. Your friends will support and encourage you, and those editors who are normally contentious will continue to be so, and some seem to be using your page to vent about ArbCom, going a bit off-topic. I can certainly understand your reasons for wanting to conduct the informal poll (may be useful in the future, may influence some ArbCom members either now or later), but at some point I think you will probably say to yourself that further discussion is a waste of your valuable energy, and that you have more important things to do; only you can decide when that will be. I wish you the best, though. Corinne (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Understood, truly. And thank you. Barring the very unexpected, this is the last discussion that I plan. Do this, get done with the awful GMO case, and then archive everything at my user talk and go back to content editing. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh, and the people who have been sympathetic to me are not just my friends, also some admins and other editors who never posted at my talk before. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Vaudeville

Rothorpe If you'd like to hear an amusing song, listen to "How can they tell that I'm Irish?" The recording is at the lower right-hand corner in the article on Vaudeville. Be sure to put the volume up to at least 75% on your computer so you can catch as many of the words as possible. Corinne (talk) 02:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Almost nothing amuses me nowadays, but I'll give it a try... Rothorpe (talk) 02:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
They can 'tell that he's a Mick' because of the accent, presumably. Which was largely impenetrable. However, a good set of pictures to go with it. I couldn't get a sound out of Wikipedia, but loud and (at least in theory) clear at YouTube. Rothorpe (talk) 02:54, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Rothorpe So it didn't amuse you at all? I thought it was a clever song, and sung well. What pictures are you referring to? Corinne (talk) 14:04, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
My hearing isn't perfect and all those years of EFL... The pictures come with the version of the song at https://www.youtube.com. Just type in the title. Rothorpe (talk) 14:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

FAC request

Hi Corinne, I would be really grateful if you could do a prose review of this article. Thanks, —Vensatry (Talk) 07:05, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Vensatry I will. Normally, I would ask you to post a request at the WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests page, but since I'm already working on an article there, I can't accept another assignment on that page until I finish that one. I will post questions and concerns here. I skimmed the FAC review page to which you provided a link. I saw there was some discussion of "works predominantly" (but didn't read it carefully). I also wonder about that phrase. The verb "works" has a kind of general meaning; it doesn't say much by itself. I prefer something closer to what she actually does.
  • An actress who has featured predominantly in American and British films
  • An actress who has appeared mainly in American and British films
  • An actress who appears mainly in American and British films
  • An actress whose career thus far has been mainly in American and British films

- Corinne (talk) 00:29, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Providing link to the article: Freida Pinto. Corinne (talk) 02:10, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Rothorpe I haven't received a reply from Vensatry, so I'd like to ask you for your thoughts. Corinne (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
I like the second one best. Viva the present perfect! Rothorpe (talk) 21:38, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
Rothorpe Thanks, and I agree. Here's another one for you. The very next sentence is:
  • She was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and decided to become an actress at a young age.
(You'll see in the revision history that I added the comma after "India", following the model of city + state: ...Chicago, Illinois,...) But upon second look, I wondered if it would read better as:
  • She was born and raised in Mumbai in India, and decided to become an actress at a young age.
Do you like "in Mumbai, India,..." or "in Mumbai in India,...", or even "in the city of Mumbai in India"? Does the first one look and sound too much like an address? Corinne (talk) 23:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
Of course she was born and raised in Bombay, India, actually. Thus does English pay for being a world language... Any example which shows the postparenthetical comma after a location is fine by me, as there are so many missing in WP. And I usually go for the shortest version, which that happens to be. Rothorpe (talk) 23:16, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
O.K. I'll leave it as it is, then. Thank you. Corinne (talk) 23:42, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
@Corinne and Rothorpe: Sorry for the delay in getting back; I was terribly busy in real life for the past two days. Actually, I wanted Corinne to review the article. Thanks for the copyedits. I can see some improvements in prose. As for this sentence – 'She was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and decided to become an actress at a young age.' – I don't think a comma is needed after India as the second clause is a dependent one. What say? —Vensatry (Talk) 09:47, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
I'd say the comma is essential to seal off the parenthesis that is 'India'. Rothorpe (talk) 14:07, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Fine by me. Thanks to both of you! —Vensatry (Talk) 06:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Argentina

I'll leave the credit to you. I also happen to be fairly young and headstrong, so apologies for any consternation that it might have caused you. I'll hop on over to the requests page and see what I can do. dschslava 01:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twomcvms (talk • contribs)

Twomcvms Thank you. No problem. Just a word of caution regarding the requests page: you can only accept one article for copy-editing at a time. When I first started working on that page, I would accept two or three that looked interesting to me and work on all three at the same time. I was told I couldn't do that. You have to finish one, and add the "Done" template, before you can accept another one. Once you accept one, try to finish it in a day or two for a short article and within three or four days for a longer one. The GOCE keeps statistics to show how quickly we get the copy-editing done (you can look for the statistics). Finally, when you finish copy-editing an article, you can post the GOCE template on the talk page of the article, below most of the other things at the beginning of the talk page. See the templates in the box at the upper right corner of my talk page. (Use the first one if you are posting the template on the day you finished the copy-edit. The date and your user name will appear automatically. Use the second one if you are posting on a later day. You would manually enter the date you finished the copy-edit and manually add your user name. Be sure to put your user name, not mine.)
If you have any questions, you can ask User:Baffle gab1978. Oh, and don't forget to sign your posts with four tildes ~~~~ You forgot to sign your post just above. Corinne (talk) 02:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Corinne I'll just lurk about in the depths of wikipedia and catch the little errors for now, as I'm going to be really busy soon. Thanks for the advice.
dschslava 02:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Elections

Vsmith I see in my watch list that a lot of editors I know (through editing) have gotten a notice about the current ArbCom (or is it Arbitration Committee, or is that the same thing?) elections. I didn't get one. Am I allowed to vote? If not, why are some other editors who are not administrators being invited to vote? Corinne (talk) 01:48, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

From the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015 page
An editor is eligible to vote who:
(i) has registered an account before Wednesday 00:00, 28 October 2015
(ii) has made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday 00:00, 1 November 2015 and,
(iii) is not blocked from the English Wikipedia at the time of their vote.

I'd say you are quite eligible. I don't know what criteria the mass mailing used - maybe those who voted last year (?) Vsmith (talk) 03:05, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Vsmith Thank you, V. I did vote last year (I think). Maybe it's because I changed my user name within the past year. Corinne (talk) 03:08, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Ah, that's just what I came here to say. Rothorpe (talk) 03:12, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Tryptofish I read your recommendations regarding the best people to vote for in the ArbCom elections, but now I can't find them. I wanted to look at them again, and then vote. Can you direct me to them? Thanks. Corinne (talk) 16:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Tryptofish/ACE2015. Also, if you go to the candidates description page or most other election-related pages, there is a template at the bottom that links to all the voters guides (but of course we all know that mine is the best!). Thanks for asking! As for that notice of eligibility to vote, I see that a whole lot more went out today, so they seem to be coming in successive batches. (I also saw that some notices were attempted to be delivered to article talk pages, so it's not the most infallible software.) In fact, I got mine today, even though I already voted yesterday! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:43, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Tryptofish Thanks. I just voted. I clicked on "Submit Vote". Then it gave me an option to save a "receipt" as a record of my vote, but I didn't need that, so I hit the back arrow in the upper left corner of my screen, and it said "Hello, Corinne, you have voted..." then gave an option saying that if I wanted to vote again, I could, but I didn't want to. Then I used the back arrow a few times to get back to my talk page. I hope that using the back arrow doesn't cancel out the votes I submitted. Corinne (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
You are very welcome, of course. And I see that you finally got the invitation, below! There is a way to check whether your vote was recorded (or if you need to do it over). If you go to any of the election pages, look for a link to the Voters Log. It's a list of everyone who has voted. You can page through until the end, and look to see if you are listed there or not. If you are listed, you are all set. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:41, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Tryptofish I found my user name there, so I guess my vote was recorded. I'm sorry to bother you again. I wanted to ask you about something I saw on your talk page and maybe other talk pages, too. It's "tl;dr". What is that? Corinne (talk) 22:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
No problem (and I'm watchlisting your talk page now). TL;DR stands for "too long; didn't read". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh... Thank you. I can see how that could be useful. Corinne (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC) Right after I saved this, I saw a notice at the top of the page that said something like "This month is Asian Month", but it contains a grammatical or typographical error. Corinne (talk) 23:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC) Now I don't know where I saw it. It's not on the Main Page, and it's not at the top of my watchlist or talk page. It was one of those banners that one sees from time to time at the top of either the main page or the watchlist page. Corinne (talk) 23:02, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
There are pages like MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details, where various messages of this sort are prepared (other categories of notices are described at the top). I wasn't able to track down which kind of site notice that particular one is, but I think the place you could report that, if you want to, is Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Asian Month. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you again, Tryptofish. I looked at that talk page, then looked again for the banner and couldn't find it. I decided not to leave a comment, at least not at present. I wonder if it was removed as soon as it was added because someone noticed the typo. Corinne (talk) 23:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
No, I've been seeing it on and off for several days. When I see it, I very quickly (as in, without even reading it) click on the "dismiss" button, after which I never see it again as long as I am logged in. But if you delete all cookies on your browser, and/or exit and restart the browser and log in again, the notice will come back. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I just found it. It's at the top of Climate of Argentina, an article I've been copy-editing. However, it has been changed since I saw it twenty minutes ago. Before, it had a phrase that included "you contributions". Of course, "you" should have been "your". But that phrase is not there anymore. Now there is another error. It says this month is "the Wikipedia Asian Month". There should be no "the". I think I'm not going to say anything about it. Probably someone from the project will notice it. Corinne (talk) 23:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC) And why is it at the top of the "Climate of Argentina" article? Is Argentina now considered part of Asia? ;) Corinne (talk) 00:00, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
The World Is Flat. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:03, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I know

There should be a en dash in that article. So you are correct. From what I can see atleast. If you have more questions or thoughts please contact me again. Regards,--BabbaQ (talk) 22:23, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Joyce Vincent

Hi, Corinne. You might be interested in investigating the moving date of birth in this article (which incidentally tells a remarkable story). I left a note on the talk page. Rothorpe (talk) 03:59, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Rothorpe Thank you. I'm not so interested in the changing date of birth, but I did read the article. It's quite a sad story. She seems to have had so much potential. I was puzzled by "bedsit". We don't use that word here. I read the article linked at the word, and saw the equivalent words and phrases (SRO and rooming house), but even those are not really common here, even in the big cities. More common are studio apartments (besides regular 1- or 2-bedroom apartments). I also thought it was interesting that no one at the public housing agency noticed, or was notified, that the other half of Vincent's monthly rent was not being paid. Here, I think the accumulating arrears for the part of the rent for which she was responsible would not have gone on for so long. The article also said Vincent's television and heat continued to be paid through automatic debits and "debt forgiveness". Did she really have that much money in her bank account that her bills could be paid every month for more than two years? I didn't read the link at "debt forgiveness", but I doubt we'd find anything like that here. There are a couple of puzzling things about this story. Corinne (talk) 17:12, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Hello, Corinne. I remember reading this. It looks as if I forgot to reply. Sorry! Do you still want to elaborate? Rothorpe (talk) 02:36, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman

Hello, I am not sure if you already did this or not but was wondering if you proofread the footnotes for any problem as well as the main body. Thank you. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

User:KAVEBEAR I guess I had not proofread the footnotes. I guess I didn't even realize those were footnotes. Thank you for pointing this out to me. As I copy-edited the footnotes, I also made a few more small edits to the main text. I changed "his" to "Henry's" twice to avoid ambiguity. If you prefer "Pitman" or "Hoʻolulu", we can change them. Corinne (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Srimanthudu

I feel very happy to inform that Srimanthudu, an article you copy-edited upon a request at WP:GOCE/REQ, has become a GA today. It also happens to be my 20th consecutive one (a streak of 20-0) and i thank you for the c/e which helped me a lot. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 16:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Pavanjandhyala Thank you for telling me, and congratulations! I was glad to help. Corinne (talk) 18:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

barnstar

The Copyeditor's Barnstar
For improving Trevor Kincaid. LavaBaron (talk) 00:49, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, LavaBaron! It's much appreciated. Corinne (talk) 13:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Devadasu

Hi Corrine, this is Srivin, thanks for copyediting Devadasu, regarding the "clarification needed" tags, I dont think it is needed anyway. Please nominate the article. Srivin (talk) 13:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Srivin First, you're welcome. Second, I looked again and re-read my edits, including the two "clarification needed" tags and accompanying notes to editors. Those things really need clarification. If you don't clarify them, there is ambiguity, which is not good in expository writing. These are rather simple to clear up. Just answer the questions that I posed in the notes that accompany the tags. If you need help, perhaps Kailash29792 can help you. Third, I've never nominated an article for anything. Baffle gab1978, am I permitted to do that? If so, how do I do that? Corinne (talk) 14:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Srivin, you have already nominated the article for GA status. All you have to do is, clarify the issues and wait for a reviewer to take up. Pavanjandhyala (talk) 02:13, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

What was that template?

Baffle gab1978 What was that template you gave me a while back that I could put at the top of an article to ask editors not to edit the article until I am finished copy-editing? I couldn't find it on my talk page. Corinne (talk) 02:08, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Not quite "fixed the ping", as pings require a signature to be placed in the same edit as when they are made/corrected. Also, I got pinged for this as well likely because you transcluded Baffle gab1978's user page. At any rate, the template should be {{GOCE inuse}}. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 02:14, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
Drcrazy102 Thank you! I am so sorry. I hadn't pinged anyone in a while, and I got the template wrong. I am very sorry about that. Corinne (talk) 02:27, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
No worries Corinne, ironically I just finished an updated version of WP:Notifications when I got notified via the transclusion. Have a good week; Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 10:52, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi Corinne, I don't see your pings because I've turned them off in my preferences. I don't particularly like pings; i think they're analagous to shouting at someone across a room rather than walking up to the person and speaking directly. "Oi, you over there—yeh you! I've just mentioned you in a conversation, you'd better listen cos we're all talking about you over here." That's not my style—your page is on my watchlist anyway, and you can always use {{whisperback}} if needed. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 23:35, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Text formatting question

I have just finished copy-editing the article Edith Södergran. Throughout the article, but especially in the section Edith Södergran#Bibliography, the titles of some of her poems or collections of poems, which are mostly in Swedish, are written first in italics and followed (usually in parentheses) by the translation of the title in English, in Roman (regular) font and enclosed in quotation marks.

I wondered whether the quotation marks were needed around the English translation of the titles. I had seen somewhere in the MoS that translated titles should not be in italics and should not be in quotation marks, but now I can't find it. If you can show me the relevant guideline in the MoS, I would really appreciate it.

I even wonder whether the titles in Swedish need to be in italics. I wonder whether it makes a difference whether it is a title of a poem or a title of a book, because in English, according to the MoS, a book is a major work and is supposed to be italicized while a poem is a minor work and is to be in quotation marks. Does that hold true even if the title is in a foreign language?

Rwood128 Do you know anything about this? Corinne (talk) 02:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

  • Starting with the quotation marks, see this Manual of Style entry. There it says give the translation in parentheses without special formatting and in the example there is no quotation marks. As for whether or not the main title should be in italics the same page makes the divide depending on if it is a "short" or "long" poem. Long poems are in italics, short ones are in quotes. --Stabila711 (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Stabilla711! That's very helpful. Corinne (talk) 13:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Red user name

Drcrazy102 I saw an invitation to vote on wishlists at the top of my page, so I looked, saw a category titled "Editing", clicked on that, and read the various proposals. There is one I thought would be very helpful, so I voted support (had to correct an asterisk to a number symbol) here: [8]. After I saved, I saw that my user name was red. Why is that? It's also red in Commons (the pictures). Corinne (talk) 03:10, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

P.S. Can you help me with the question I posed in the section above this? Corinne (talk) 03:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

That's more because you haven't created a profile page on WP:Meta or WP:Commons. They are separate wiki-places, as well as WP:Wikinews. Each one uses a "different" login, even though Editors have a "universal" login - hence the fact that you could edit without creating a Meta or Commons account first, because you already had one. There are a lot of technical details which I don't have a clue about, but this is the bare-bones reason for why you have a "red user link"; you don't have a profile on those servers - yet. Once you make a profile page on those servers, the links should change to the normal blue colour which indicates that the page-link works, i.e. that there is a profile page at the target URL. Hope I made some/enough sense in that ramble.
I'm just responding to your question/s about the diff-link template from User talk:Drcrazy102#Murder of Meredith Kercher, I'll be a few minutes while I hunt down the coding parameters of the templates to better explain what I was implying, then I'll see about finding something for your questions above but it should be somewhere in WP:MOS, probably WP:MOS#Naming maybe?. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 03:40, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Drcrazy102 – On another issue, I could never remember what the template was for putting quotes in green, for example in a talk page discussion, so when I saw it just now, I added it to my list of useful templates at the top right of my talk page (above). Would you mind looking at what I put there and correcting me if I wrote anything wrong? I wasn't sure whether quotation marks were needed. Is there a time when one would use quotation marks, or are they usually not used? If there are instances where one would use quotation marks, does it matter if the quotation marks are green (that is, placed inside the template's curly brackets), or black (that is, placed outside the curly brackets)? Corinne (talk) 16:57, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Dunno (Don't know), but I would probably lean towards "outside brackets" since the quotations are not actually part of the quote. Seems to be more of a personal preference on coding. Cheers, 03:35, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Pine and cypress

Sminthopsis84 What's the difference between a pine and a cypress? (I was just reading Callitris.) They look different, but in some ways look similar. Do they share a common ancestor? Is there an article that discusses this difference? Corinne (talk) 00:13, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Pine and cypress are rather distantly related within the conifer group. Callitris is neither a pine nor a cypress. It is more closely related to Cupressus type cypress, but in a different subfamily. I've removed the claim that a common name is inaccurate from the Callitris page (and I see no justification for saying that the claimed but unsourced usage is becoming more common, though perhaps if one person says it often enough that statement could be accurate). Common names have no hierarchical structure that reflects anything to do with ancestry, they are just mnemonics. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:18, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Recent difficulties

Hafspajen I'm sorry to see what Phil has had to go through recently. I think she lashed out in anger because she was angry and hurt. I didn't know what to say, though. I just read your deleted comment [9], and I wanted to say that I thought it was quite well written, and I wondered why you deleted it.

How are you, by the way? Corinne (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, now I see you added it back. Good. Corinne (talk) 17:47, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

December 20 TFA The Wrestlers

Iridescent I just wanted to commend you for this edit [10] Thank you for catching that, and your choice of words to replace "black and white" is excellent. I knew when I was creating the summary that it didn't sound right, but didn't think of how to fix it. You are really sharp, Iridescent. Corinne (talk) 17:17, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome; this one will have enough of a time of it with well-intentioned editors wanting to capitalize "black" and "white" without adding fuel to the fire. ‑ Iridescent 23:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Nothomyrmecia

Rothorpe I have just finished copy-editing Nothomyrmecia. I have a few questions. I'm going to post most of them at User talk:Burklemore1#Nothomyrmecia, but I'm going to post this one here.

The last sentence of the second paragraph in the lead is:

  • The ant is sometimes referred as a living fossil because of its primitive body structure, stimulating several studies on its morphology, behaviour, ecology, and chromosomes.

Is it clear to you what, exactly, is stimulating studies on the ant's morphology, etc.? Is it the referring to the ant as a living fossil, or its primitive body structure, or both?

Should I not worry about this sentence? Corinne (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

"The ant's status as a so-called 'living fossil', owing to its primitive body structure, has stimulated studies…" ‑ Iridescent 01:10, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Iridescent! Sometimes, especially when I've been editing for a couple of hours, I can see that something is wrong but I can't think of the best wording. Thank you again. Corinne (talk) 01:15, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, I guess I might as well post all of my questions in one place. That way I'll have three good editors who can help.

2) The first sentence in the second paragraph of Nothomyrmecia#Taxonomy is the following:

  • John S. Clark described Nothomyrmecia in 1934 as a new genus of Myrmeciinae, though with some hesitation due to its apparent similarity with the Eocene Baltic amber fossil Prionomyrmex unknown to him and of which remained only in literature descriptions and figures.

There is something awkward and not quite clear about the second half of this sentence. I presume that it was the Eocene Baltic amber fossil Prionomyrmex that was unknown to Clark. Perhaps, "..., which was unknown to him,..." would be better than just the phrase "unknown to him". What do you think? Also, the subsequent clause, "and of which remained..." is not clear to me. Perhaps grammatically is correct but the word order makes it stilted. Calling Iridescent or Rothorpe and/or Burklemore1... Corinne (talk) 01:24, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

'...which was unknown to him and of which there remained only descriptions and illustrations in the literature'? Rothorpe (talk) 03:33, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
I felt like this part was going to be problematic, so I thank you for bringing it up. Even before I began my first edits it was here, because of previous controversy. I'll do some fixes. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

3) In the middle of the third paragraph in Nothomyrmecia#Behaviour and ecology is the following sentence:

  • Nothomyrmecia is a polyandrous species, where a queen can mate with one or more males in a single mating season; the average number of mates per queen is around 1.37.

The clause after the semi-colon reads:

  • the average number of mates per queen is around 1.37.

Burklemore1, are you sure it should be "the average number of mates"? Not "the average number of males"? Corinne (talk) 01:51, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm happy with the changes, it is clearer. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Christ I'm dumb. Did a little rewrite. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:50, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

4) Toward the end of the fourth paragraph in Nothomyrmecia#Behaviour and ecology are the following sentences:

  • In some nests, colony founding can occur within a colony itself when a queen dies, taken over by one of her daughters or by adopting a newly mated queen which restricts reproduction among workers. This method of colony founding may render a nest immortal.

Regarding the second (short) sentence, really? "Immortal"? Is that normal word usage in entomology? Corinne (talk) 01:54, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I doubt it, despite the source stating this itself. Perhaps we could rewrite it and say a colony may last beyond its expected lifespan or something like that? Burklemore1 (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Did some changes. I realised no ant colony can be "immortal", but I have said that they may last beyond their expected lifespan. Just thought I'd do that but I would like your opinion for other alternative suggestions (if you have any). Burklemore1 (talk) 03:29, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
I know nothing about ants, but I'd be inclined just to go with something simple like "unusually long-lasting". Remember, as well as people with a lot of prior knowledge, this also needs to work for people who don't know one end of an ant from another but just happened to stumble across the page, so you don't want to be using any term of art that has a different meaning from its normal English use if you can help it. (Giano said long ago that one should always write as if addressing a bright 14-year-old, which is possibly the single most sensible piece of advice ever given on Wikipedia.) ‑ Iridescent 11:07, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
I certainly agree. Burklemore1 For the long-lasting ant nest, how about: "...making it more likely that the nest will continue to be active", or is that too long? Or "will extend the lifetime of the nest", or something like that? Corinne (talk) 16:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Too true Iridescent, especially when I want this article at FA it has to fully address itself professionally and understandably to all people, especially those who are unfamiliar with ants. I have went along and changed the sentence to one of your sentences Corinne. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:06, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I hope you don't mind that I went ahead and re-worded the two sentences you worked on. I want to ask you about this sentence, which appears near the end of Nothomyrmecia#Behaviour and ecology:
That's OK. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:06, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Waste material such as dead nestmates, cocoon shells, and food are disposed of far away from the nest.
I'm just wondering why food would be included in a list of waste material. That's the way it sounds now. If only "dead nestmates" and "cocoon shells" are waste material, and "food" is just another thing that is transported, the first two should be grouped, and food kept separate:
  • Waste material, including dead nestmates and cocoon shells, and food are disposed of far away from the nest. [But "disposed of" doesn't go with "food"]
If you want "food" to be included in the list of waste material, perhaps "food remnants" would be more accurate:
  • Waste material such as dead nestmates, cocoon shells, and food remnants are disposed of far away from the nest. Corinne (talk) 17:11, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Used one of your suggestions. Perhaps food remnants is what I actually meant rather than food that readers may mistake as freshly captured insects that they dispose of for no reason. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:11, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Burklemore1 Yes, that is what I was thinking. Regarding the method of founding a colony within an existing colony, you perhaps didn't notice that I had already re-worded that sentence. I don't know, but I prefer present tense "extends" to future "will extend". You changed "the life of the colony" to "the life of the nest'. If you want to keep "nest", that's fine, but would you consider changing "will extend" back to "extends", or, if you don't like that, perhaps "tends to extend the lifetime of the nest"? Corinne (talk) 03:17, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Corinne, My apologies I was using one of your suggestions here and didn't notice you actually edited it. I'll change it back to what you originally wrote. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:18, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Burklemore1 I just saw on your user page that you are left-handed. You might appreciate seeing this video of a left-handed pianist. (Just click on the picture.) [11] I'd like to suggest that you not read anything below the picture until after you listen to as much of the piece as you'd like to hear. Pay close attention to the pianist's hands and the keyboard, and see if you notice anything unusual. Corinne (talk) 03:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I noticed that the notes are swapped around, with the low notes on the right hand side and high notes on the left. It's pretty much mirrored in a way which makes it really interesting, thanks for sharing that. I didn't even know there were pianos made for left-handed people. :-) Burklemore1 (talk) 03:49, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

TFAs for you

  • December 11 or 12, your choice. - Dank (push to talk) 01:50, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
  • December 16. - Dank (push to talk) 01:33, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
  • December 15. - Dank (push to talk) 20:51, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
  • December 19, but only if Middle Ages articles interest you enough that you're willing to copyedit most of the ones that go through FAC. We'll start transitioning now to a job that involves both FAC and TFA, as much or as little as you want to do. - Dank (push to talk) 23:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
  • December 20 ... same deal, do this one if you want to also copyedit art history FACs. - Dank (push to talk) 02:49, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Okay, you've done well. Which two wikiprojects would you like to do FACs and TFAs for? (You can change your mind at any time.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:49, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
I guess Geosciences (especially Geography and Geology) and History (other possible ones are Paleontology, Astronomy, Engineering, Animals/Zoology, Botany). Corinne (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Few articles have WP:HIST's wikilabel on the talk page, because that wikiproject is mostly defunct. You probably want a more active wikiproject. - Dank (push to talk) 23:16, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank Is this the page I should be looking at to find the most active projects? Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes (I thought I saw another similar list but can't find it now.) Not many of the topics I named are near the top of that list. I guess I don't care which topic, within those areas I listed, plus literature, biography, exploration, entomology, ecology, and birds. Can you help me find two active projects? Corinne (talk) 23:40, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Sure, give me a few days. - Dank (push to talk) 01:26, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Of the ones you mentioned, the 3 wikiprojects that will give you the most work at TFA are WP:MAMMALS, WP:PLANTS and WP:FUNGI. You're welcome to tackle all three if you want them (which would give you Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 22, 2015, btw), or to pick other wikiprojects. FWIW, I think you'll do fine, so I'd like to back off and try to let this initiative work the way I originally imagined it ... that is, your job is to "support on prose" (when possible) for your chosen wikiprojects at FAC and write their TFAs, so you'll be taking your cue from them more than from me. If you want those wikiprojects, I'll go make an introduction for you on the wikiproject talk pages. - Dank (push to talk) 01:30, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, thank you, Dank, for finding those projects.
  • I'd like to work on all three, but if I find (after a while) that there are too many articles and it's taking too much of my time, can I back off and relinquish one of them?
    • Yes, you can change your selection at any time ... I'm assuming there will be changes. (I started off suggesting two wikiprojects, but now that I see how narrowly the articles are tagged, my guess is you'll want 3 ... I don't want to go above 3, in part because I want to pull in more people doing the same thing, over time.) Lots of things could happen. You might really enjoy a subject, but then you find you have a hard time getting to a meeting of the minds with the FAC nominators. Or, FAC nominations in one of those wikiprojects could taper off, and you might want a more active wikiproject. - Dank (push to talk)
  • When you say "support on prose", I assume you mean help improve the prose and make it clear and encyclopedic in tone, kind of what I've been doing all along, right?
    • Pull up WP:FAC and search for "Dank" ... if they haven't promoted all the articles I've been supporting already, you'll get a good idea from that of what "support on prose" means. Basically, you'll be copyediting with a lighter touch than we use at TFA, enough so that the prose passes FAC standards, in your view. There's a chance this plan will fail for one reason or another ... I'll keep an eye on what's going on. - Dank (push to talk)
  • How will I know when to make the summary? Is it after it has been approved for FA status, and after Crisco et al. places it in the TFA queue (which I guess is way down the line if it hasn't even been approved for FA status yet)?
    • Watchlist all the TFA pages ... when one of yours shows up (you'll know for sure by checking which wikiprojects have tagged the talk page, but it will usually be obvious which ones are mammals, plants or fungi), don't ask me, just jump on it. - Dank (push to talk)
  • Can I still come to you when I have a question, or would you prefer I ask someone else? Corinne (talk) 01:42, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
    • You can always ask me, but most prose questions at FAC will come down to whatever the consensus is between you, the FAC coords, the other reviewers, and the nominators. If I'm intruding too much, then that's a sign that the plan isn't working. - Dank (push to talk) 01:57, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
O.K. Thank you. Where do I go to find the articles I'm supposed to work on, or will someone notify me? Corinne (talk) 02:08, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
They will show up at WP:FACL, or you can keep WP:FAC watchlisted. - Dank (push to talk) 02:18, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I just saw the December 22 article at WP:FAC for December. I counted the characters, and it's at 852, which is a little short, but I saw that the article is not very long. Should I add a bit from the article to bring the character count up to 900 or 950, or just copy-edit it and leave the count more or less as it is? Corinne (talk) 03:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Always aim for 1150, but if you can't find enough tightly written, interesting material, then you can settle for less. If the lead is too short, always read the whole article to try to find something worth inserting. - Dank (push to talk) 03:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I'll do December 11, about the fish. Thanks! By when should I have it done? Corinne (talk) 02:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
There isn't a deadline on doing it, exactly, but Brian and Chris like for nominators to have two weeks' notice that it will appear on the Main Page, so I'll leave a note on their user talk page no later than this Friday. It would be nice if it's done by then, but not necessary. - Dank (push to talk) 02:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank O.K. I will get to it later today. May I ask you something? You'll see in the next section below this that an editor asked if I had copy-edited the "Notes" section on an article, Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman, that I had copy-edited about two weeks ago. Upon looking at the article again, I remember now that I was unable to access the "Notes" section. I've tried by clicking "Edit" in that section and by clicking "Edit" at the top of the article. I only see "Notes - Reflist". How can I access the notes so that I can copy-edit them? Thanks, and Happy Thanksgiving. Corinne (talk) 17:37, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
In the editing window, the footnotes appear throughout the text, just as references do. - Dank (push to talk) 18:56, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank I got it down to 1075 characters. I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate this short sentence into a nearby sentence: "The pallid sturgeon can live up to a century", but couldn't. Also, I saw "the pallid sturgeon" is repeated a few times and probably should be reduced. I'd have to give it more thought (and possibly do more re-arranging) to accomplish both of those. If you do manage to reduce those, perhaps the fact that it matures at about 15 years could be re-added. Feel free to work on it, as always. Corinne (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
Sure, happy to help, I'll do a bit more on it tomorrow morning. - Dank (push to talk) 04:12, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank Wow! You did a great job improving the December 11 summary. I'm sorry you had to do so much, though; I hope I haven't disappointed you. I guess I wasn't aware I was free to change the wording as much as you did. I thought I was just supposed to shorten the summary by removing as much as possible to get it down to the right number of characters. What you did with this summary is what I normally do when I'm copy-editing articles for GOCE, so I'm capable of doing that, but I'm sure you could probably improve whatever I come up with . Corinne (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm not disappointed ... I'm only guessing what people will want. I'm glad you liked it. - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
Btw, after recent discussions at WT:MAIN, I'm putting more effort into raising the character count to the mid 1100s, if it's below that. I just expanded this TFA a bit. - Dank (push to talk) 16:36, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
Dank Can I do the summary for December 15, December 16, or both? Corinne (talk) 01:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Dank I finished December 16. It's at 1101 characters. What do you think? Corinne (talk) 03:53, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I removed one linked word; otherwise it looks excellent. I'll look again tomorrow. - Dank (push to talk) 17:31, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I finished December 15. That one was more difficult than December 16. I got it down to 1129 characters. What do you think? Corinne (talk) 03:35, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I finished December 19. It's at 1194 characters. I don't know if you want more taken out. If so, perhaps "including the right to a mint" could be taken out. Corinne (talk) 01:56, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
Brava. This one and Dec 16th are really excellent. - Dank (push to talk) 02:10, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank Thanks! I just finished December 20. It's at 1149 characters. Corinne (talk) 04:01, 5 December 2015 (UTC) Corinne (talk) 04:01, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I just saw your edits at [12] and read your edit summary. I think both the "s" on "painting" and the re-wording are excellent catches. I didn't like that "was making" anyway, and I think you're right to make it clear that the motivation for this painting is unknown. I also wonder about this sentence:
  • Etty was best known for his paintings of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings but had also painted men involved in various forms of combat.
I'm wondering whether this would sound smoother:
  • Though best-known for his paintings of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings, Etty had also painted men engaged in various forms of combat.
[Changed "involved" to "engaged".] What do you think? – Corinne (talk) 00:34, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent, those were your edits ... thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 00:39, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Dank and Iridescent Oh my gosh, I just realized those were Iridescent's edits. I was so used to seeing a few edits by Dank after I finished working on a summary that I didn't notice Iridescent's user name there. So, Iridescent, the accolade goes to you. Corinne (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Not "Though best known"; Etty is a quintessentially English topic, and "Though" to start a sentence is an archaism in BrEng which only really survives in "Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer". I'd be reluctant to use its BrEng equivalent, "Although best known…", as starting a sentence with a conjunction on the main page will bring down the wrath of Eric Corbett (and light up WP:ERRORS like a christmas tree). This is a bit of a tricky sentence, as although Etty's best remembered now for nude history paintings he painted pretty much every subject you can think of, and the point being made is "men wrestling wasn't a significant departure for him, even though it may seem incongruous to readers who only know him for nude women" (which will be most readers who know the name at all). Maybe While nowadays best-known for his paintings of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings, Etty work also included men engaged in various forms of combat, but that's a bit of a mouthful. ‑ Iridescent 20:10, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent Hmm. That's interesting about "though". I hadn't heard that before. (It's too bad the Brits gave it up; it's quicker and lighter than "although".) Regarding the sentence, do you really need "nowadays"? Since the "best known for" is true for many but not all readers, how about using "perhaps" instead of "nowadays"? Also, instead of "Etty's work also included", how about "Etty's work often depicted" or "Etty's work also depicted"?
  • While perhaps best known for his paintings of nude or near-nude women in historical and mythological settings, Etty's work often depicted men engaged in various forms of combat. – Corinne (talk) 23:19, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
  • "Often" is stretching it—he churned out around 1000 significant works in his lifetime, of which perhaps half a dozen were combat scenes (The Combat is probably the best-known). He's a bit of a pain to summarize briefly, because he was so prolific in so many different fields, which is why the lead of William Etty is longer than a fair few articles. I don't really see a problem with "best known for" unvarnished; it's undoubtedly true that those who know of him, will know him best for his nude female studies. "True for many but not all readers"; with a few exceptions like Sky, Earth, etc there's no topic with which one can assume every reader is already familiar (30% of American adults are unaware of the date of the 9/11 attacks), and "best known for" carries an implicit "best known among those who know". ‑ Iridescent 23:40, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent O.K. I understand. So you're saying, just "While best known for..." How about "also" instead of "often" in the second clause? Corinne (talk) 23:44, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
"Etty had also painted"? (I wouldn't lose much sleep over this one; as low-traffic TFAs go, this will be right up there. Some Ettys work as clickbait—the most-viewed DYKs in June and August this year were both on Etty—but this one doesn't have either a particularly eyecatching image, a striking story for the blurb, or a title that piques the curiosity. If and when Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', which has all three, runs, it will be a different matter.) ‑ Iridescent 00:05, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Signpost exit poll

Dear Wikipedian, you recently voted in the ArbCom election. Your username, along with around 155 other usernames of your fellow Wikipedians, was randomly selected from the 2000+ Wikipedians who voted this year, with the help of one of the election-commissioners. If you are willing, could you please participate (at your option either on-wiki via userspace or off-wiki via email) in an exit poll, and answer some questions about how you decided amongst the ArbCom candidates?

  If you decide to participate in this exit poll, the statistical results will be published in the Signpost, an online newspaper with over 1000 Wikipedians among the readership. There are about twelve questions, which have alphanumerical answers; it should take you a few minutes to complete the exit poll questionnaire, and will help improve Wikipedia by giving future candidates information about what you think is important. This is only an unofficial survey, and will have no impact on your actual vote during this election, nor in any future election.

  All questions are individually optional, and this entire exit poll itself is also entirely optional, though if you choose not to participate, I would appreciate a brief reply indicating why you decided not to take part (see Question Zero). Thanks for being a Wikipedian

The questionnaire

Dear Wikipedian, please fill out these questions -- at your option via usertalk or via email, see Detailed Instructions at the end of the twelve questions -- by putting the appropriate answer in the blanks provided. If you decide not to answer a question (all questions are optional), please put the reason down: "undecided" / "private information" / "prefer not to answer" / "question is not well-posed" / "other: please specify". Although the Signpost cannot guarantee that complex answers can be processed for publication, it will help us improve future exit polls, if you give us comments about why you could not answer specific questions.

quick and easy exit poll , estimated time required: 4 minutes
  • Q#0. Will you be responding to the questions in this exit poll? Why or why not?
  • Your Answer: Yes
  • Your Comments:
  • Q#1. Arbs must have at least 0k / 2k / 4k / 8k / 16k / 32k+ edits to Wikipedia.
  • Your Numeric Answer: 16k
  • Your Comments: I think arbs need to have a lot of editing experience, and have gotten to know Wikipedia policies well, before they can be an effective arbitrator.
  • Q#2. Arbs must have at least 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7+ years editing Wikipedia.
  • Your Numeric Answer: 2
  • Your Comments: It is possible for an active editor to make a sufficient number of edits and gain the necessary experience in two years.
  • Q#3. Arbs...
A: should not be an admin
B: should preferably not be an admin
C: can be but need not be an admin
D: should preferably be an admin
E: must be or have been an admin
F: must currently be an admin
  • Your Single-Letter Answer: C
  • Your Comments:
  • Q#4. Arbs must have at least 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7+ years of experience as an admin.
  • Your Numeric Answer: 0
  • Your Comments: (See my response to the previous question.) It would take careful screening and consideration to select an editor who has not yet been an admin, but I believe there are some who would qualify.
  • Your List-Of-Usernames You Supported: Don't remember.
  • Your Comments: I followed the recommendations of an editor I like and whose opinions I value. It is important to me that an Arb be able to reduce drama, lower tensions, get along well with other Arbs, express themselves clearly and concisely, and make carefully considered and nuanced decisions.
  • The Quick&Easy End. Thank you for your answers. Please sign with your Wikipedia username here, especially important if you are emailing your answers, so we can avoid double-counting and similar confusion. Corinne (talk) 18:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
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the extended exit poll, estimated time required: depends
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  • Q#9. For potential arbs, good indicators of the right kind of contributions outside noticeboard activity, would be:
A: discussions on the talkpages of articles which ARE subject to ArbCom sanctions
B: discussions on the talkpages of articles NOT subject to ArbCom restrictions
C: sending talkpage notifications e.g. with Twinkle, sticking to formal language
D: sending talkpage notifications manually, and explaining with informal English
E: working on policies/guidelines
F: working on essays/helpdocs
G: working on GA/FA/DYK/similar content
H: working on copyedits/infoboxes/pictures/similar content
I: working on categorization e.g. with HotCat
J: working on autofixes e.g. with AWB or REFILL
K: working with other Wikipedians via wikiprojects e.g. with MILHIST
L: working with other Wikipedians via IRC e.g. with #wikipedia-en-help connect or informally
M: working with other Wikipedians via email e.g. with UTRS or informally
N: working with other Wikipedians in person e.g. at edit-a-thons / Wikipedian-in-residence / Wikimania / etc
O: other types of contribution, please specify in your comments
Please specify a comma-separated list of the types of contributions you see as positive indicators for arb-candidates to have.
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  • Q#10. Arbs who make many well-informed comments at these noticeboards (please specify which!) have the right kind of background, or experience, for ArbCom.
Options: A: AE, B: arbCases, C: LTA, D: OTRS, E: AN,
continued: F: OS/REVDEL, G: CU/SPI, H: AN/I, I: pageprot, J: NAC,
continued: K: RfC, L: RM, M: DRN, N: EA, O: 3o,
continued: P: NPOVN, Q: BLPN, R: RSN, S: NORN, T: FTN,
continued: U: teahouse, V: helpdesk, W: AfC, X: NPP, Y: AfD,
continued: 1: UAA, 2: COIN, 3: antiSpam, 4: AIV, 5: 3RR,
continued: 6: CCI, 7: NFCC, 8: abusefilter, 9: BAG, 0: VPT,
continued: Z: Other_noticeboard_not_listed_here_please_wikilink_your_answer
Please specify a comma-separated list of the noticeboards you see as important background-experience for arb-candidates to have.
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  • Q#11. Arbs who make many comments at these noticeboards (please specify!) have the wrong kind of temperament, or personality, for ArbCom.
Options: (same as previous question -- please see above)
Please specify a comma-separated list of the noticeboards you see as worrisome personality-indicators for arb-candidates to have.
  • Your List-Of-Letters Answer:
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  • Q#12. Anything else we ought to know?
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Detailed Instructions: you are welcome to answer these questions via usertalk (easiest), or via email (for a modicum of privacy).

how to submit your answers , estimated time required: 2 minutes
  • If you wish to answer via usertalk, go ahead and fill in the blanks by editing this subsection. Once you have completed the usertalk-based exit poll answers, click here to notify the Signpost copy-editor, leave a short usertalk note, and click save. The point of leaving the usertalk note, is to make sure your answers are processed and published.
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Processing of responses will be performed in batches of ten, prior to publication in the Signpost. GamerPro64 will be processing the email-based answers, and will strive to maintain the privacy of your answers (as well as your email address and the associated IP address typically found in the email-headers), though of course as a volunteer effort, we cannot legally guarantee that GamerPro64 will have a system free from computer virii, we cannot legally guarantee that GamerPro64 will resist hypothetical bribes offered by the KGB/NSA/MI6 to reveal your secrets, and we cannot legally guarantee that GamerPro64 will make no mistakes. If you choose to answer on-wiki, your answers will be visible to other Wikipedians. If you choose to answer via email, your answers will be sent unencrypted over the internet, and we will do our best to protect your privacy, but unencrypted email is inherently an improper mechanism for doing so. Sorry!  :-)

We do promise to try hard, not to make any mistakes, in the processing and presentation of your answers. If you have any questions or concerns, you may contact column-editor GamerPro64, copy-editor 75.108.94.227, or copy-editor Ryk72. Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping Wikipedia. GamerPro64 14:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

GamerPro64 Thanks for asking me to participate in the survey. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything saying whether or not my user name will accompany my answers (that is, be visible) in the Signpost if I reply on-Wiki (or even via e-mail). Corinne (talk) 17:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

More than likely we will not be needing to use peoples names when complying the answers together. In the event we do otherwise, If you wish to remain anonymous, that can be done. I can leave a mental note that you would like that to happen. GamerPro64 17:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
GamerPro64 I don't mind the compilers seeing my user name. I just didn't want it included with my responses to the poll questions in Signpost. Thanks. Corinne (talk) 17:46, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi Corinne, our plan at the moment is to batch up the results into sets of ten responses, and then sum-or-average out the responses. For those that respond off-wiki, this gives a modicum of privacy. For those that respond on-wiki, their answers are obviously visible if someone were to go *looking* for the results, but the actual Signpost-piece would not be calling out individual usernames in the results-table. If we were to use some pull-quotes, from comments made, *those* would likely be attributed by username (since unlike the numeric and alphabetic information it isn't usually possible to "average"/"sum" an English-language quotation with nine others), but a pull-quote would be something we would check with you first about, beforehand. I like this bit particularly: ...able to reduce drama, lower tensions, get along well with other Arbs, express themselves clearly and concisely, and make carefully considered and nuanced decisions.  :-)     Publication is intended to happen here, WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-09/Arbitration_report, which is a draft-version for the final piece this weekend. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 18:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Is that you, Mandy? Welcome back! and GamerPro64, I expressed my concerns before I actually read the questions in the poll. I decided to answer the short poll because I'm not that familiar with the workings of ArbCom so I would not have an opinion on many of the questions in the longer poll. After I completed the poll, I realized that I couldn't even remember who I had voted for, so there was no reason to worry that I might offend anybody by revealing who I had voted for. You're welcome to use that quote and attribute it to me if you wish. Corinne (talk) 18:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Okay, sounds good. Also, Mandy? GamerPro64 18:59, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Hafspajen pretends to think my name is Mandy. Which it is not!  :-)     So we have a running joke that I call them Mandy, and they call me Mandy. The origin was some youtube video of an old BBC gag-show, which struck Hafspajen's funnybone. Apparently now the Mandy-rumour is spreading! ..gasp.. Soon, we'll all be Mandy....  :-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
75.108.94.227 Oh. I hadn't seen you calling Hafs Mandy, and I didn't know (but should have guessed) that Mandy wasn't your real name. It's just easier to call you by a name than a number. Corinne (talk) 21:34, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I answer to Mandy :-)     Or to hey-you. Hafspajen has other even-sillier names for me as well. Corinne, you can call me Mandy if that strikes your fancy, or pick a name you'd like to call me (don't call me Hafspajen though because that will *really* make things get silly :-)     Most folks just shorten the anon-address and call me 75.108 or somesuch -- pings and wikilinking do not actually notify anons, which is a quasi-on-purpose wiki-technology limitation, so it is easier and more sensible just to abbreviate or select a nickname. "You can call me Timmy, you can call me Slimmy, you can call me Ginny, just don't call me late to dinn-y!" As the old saying may or may not go. p.s. Oh, and if I may say so as a talkstalk, don't ask if you can work on Meat-Stall-with-Holy-Family, is my advice, just WP:BEBOLD. Hafspajen will be glad to have your expert help, I would say. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Mandy, I was going to click on "Send thanks", but I didn't see the option. I'm puzzled. Is the "send thanks" option usually available on one's own talk page, or not? I thought it was. Well, thank you. I had never heard that expression (with "Timmy", etc.). I had only heard, "You can call me --, but don't call me late for dinner." All right, I'll be bold regarding the meat stall painting article. I only asked because Hafs has sometimes asked me to wait until s/he is finished with an article. Corinne (talk) 22:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the rhyming one is my own rather silly variant. You may henceforth refer to me as Late For Dinner -- Lfd for short -- pronounced "elf'd" I would guess? -- if that is the pseudonym you find easiest to remember.  :-)   p.s. As with the ping-technology, thanks-technology is not permitted for anons. "Encouraging" people to register a username, one can only presume, is the rationale for both limitations. However, if you wish to join in solidarność with your fellow wikipedians who happen to be anons, there is currently a tech-wishlist-vote going on, until the 14th. See the overview at meta:Community_Tech/Community_Wishlist_Survey_description and the proposals at meta:2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey#Proposals_to_vote_on (thanks-for-anons is in the notifications-subgroup). Though personally, I would rather have the no-nested-ref-tags bugfix. p.p.s. Good, please don't let Hafspajen, I mean, User:Mandy, exhibit WP:OWN behavior... we must be strict with our artist-typEs, otherwise they will Expand their artist-Empire across the 'pEdia!  ;-)     Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 23:24, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
The non-pinging and inability to thank IPs are design features, not bugs. In some parts of the world (most significantly the UK) IPs are hyperdynamic, owing both to a shortage of available addresses and the way the infrastructure is set up. (BT, the biggest of them all, is structured so that each of its members connects via the router of the nearest available member, rather than being restricted to "your" router, and the IP addresses of each individual router also changes regularly; consequently, it's not unusual to rotate through a dozen different IP addresses in the course of a single editing session if one is in a crowded area with a lot of routers in range.) With that in mind, allowing pinging or thanking of IPs would confuse the hell out of large numbers of people visiting Wikipedia and receiving "other peoples' mail". ‑ Iridescent 00:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Iridescent Hmm. If I had known this before I voted (at the link 75.108 provided, above), I probably would have voted "Oppose". Is it too late to change my vote there? Don't you think it would be a good idea to vote (neutral or oppose) there and explain why? Corinne (talk) 00:44, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Since this is Wikipedia and people want proof of things, an easy experiment is to pop over to Special:RecentChanges, warn a bunch of IP vandals, and wait a few days for the confused "Why have I just received a warning? I've never edited Wikipedia in my life" comments from the next person to be allocated the IP address to roll in. (MZMcBride once—sensibly—deleted the talkpages of IPs with no recent comments on their talkpage, for this reason. The shitstorm of aggrieved "how dare you delete a talkpage" comments had a decent claim to be Wikipedia's nadir of stupidity.) ‑ Iridescent 01:01, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Regarding voting, I doubt it really matters. This is one proposal WMF engineering (who for all their faults, are considerably more knowledgable about IP routing than those voting) are virtually certain to veto. ‑ Iridescent 01:05, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
As a quick experiment, signing as an IP here; I'll sign again in a few hours and I'll lay money that, without doing anything to the router etc, my IP address will have changed. 80.44.184.86 (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
And it's already not only changed address, but changed provider and location; note also that this new address has previous contributions. Since I'm the first to edit Wikipedia on it since those edits were made, had thank/warn been in place then, I'd have just received a two-year-old notification for edits I knew nothing about.78.146.19.70 (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent I'm serious. This is important information. I'm sure you realize that many of those voting "Support" simply do not know about this. Other than posting a link to this, the end of a very varied section (that includes my replies to the exit poll questions), which I'd rather not do (I could insert a new section heading, though, if you think that's a good idea, and then link to that section), how can I convey this to other voters without presenting your words as my own? If you will vote (no, presumably) there, including your rationale, I will change my vote to "Oppose". 75.108.94.227 You must be reading all this. What do you think? Corinne (talk) 01:12, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

The voters may not know it, but the WMF certainly know it and they're the ones that mattered. If you rustle up one of the techies or checkusers, who see for themselves every day just how frequently IP addresses hop, they'd probably do a better job of explaining it than I could. There's also a converse situation in some countries, where a few IP addresses are shared by multiple users; most notably Qatar, where the entire country used to share a single IP address, the blocking of which caused a minor international incident. ‑ Iridescent 01:18, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Oh, my gosh. Corinne (talk) 01:24, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Redrose64 Redrose64, I need your advice. I saw you have answered questions at the Village Pump Technical page, so you may be able to help. Please see the exchanges in the second half of this section, starting with the "Outdent" and "Mandy, I was going to click on "Send thanks," but... I have already gotten an answer to that question, so that's not why I pinged you. Keep reading. You'll see that Iridescent elucidated some issues about sending "thank-you's" to IP editors. From what Iridescent explained, I feel that the problems associated with doing that are serious enough that I would consider changing my vote from "Support" to "Oppose" (see the link that Mandy, or 75.108, provided, above), but, with all those Support votes already there, what would that accomplish, unless I copy and paste Iridescent's comments there? I think that someone who knows the issues should vote "Oppose" and explain why, or add an advisory comment to the list. I would not like to be helping to approve a proposal that creates more problems for people both on-wiki and off. What do you advise, and is there anything you can do? Corinne (talk) 01:38, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Pinging RexxS as well, given that last time I saw him we were discoursing at length about IPv4 saturation and I'm fairly sure he was making more sense than me. ‑ Iridescent 01:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

(Fair warning: I haven't fully read everything above, I'm just kind of blabbing.)

There are Phabricator Maniphest tasks tracking the ability to thank IP users and tracking the ability to ping IP users. I'm not sure either were intentional design decisions, per se. As I recall, there's interest in fixing both, if possible.

Ideally we'd find a way to eliminate the use of IP addresses altogether. It's a tricky problem given IP ranges and how they're used to combat abuse via IP range blocks. If we used a different scheme other than IP addresses, we'd likely lose some anti-vandalism flexibility. Plus there's a fundamental question, if we switched to another "anonymous" scheme, whether the goal is to prevent users from being able to easily decipher the IP address or whether it's more of a matter of not so readily exposing it in the user interface. There's a somewhat important distinction between the two. In some ways, if we used a scheme that converted an IP address to a decipherable string, we might be really misleading users who choose not to register a user name into thinking we're protecting their IP address. But if we use an entirely randomized scheme (e.g., every logged-out edit uses a random string), we'd immediately lose the ability to track a particular user (good or bad) and we'd lose the ability to do blocks of "similar" users in a range like we currently can with IP addresses.

IP addresses can also be used to track conflict-of-interest editing, editing from a school, editing from Congressional offices, and more. For better or worse, of course. We've found ways to use the ability to research an IP address (geolocation, WHOIS info, etc.) beneficial, but it also cuts against Wikimedia's privacy values to store and expose IP addresses indefinitely. (There's a sub-point on the use of "anonymous users" instead of "IP users" given that anonymity when using an IP address to edit can be quite questionable.)

One idea floated has to been to adopt the model that MeatBallWiki and others used, allowing a user to enter an unused user name in the edit window and assign that user name to their edits when saving the page (and also register the user account and log the user in). This would allow good-faith users, but would still be problematic for bad-faith users. Not as problematic as many people initially think, however, given that we're really just short-circuiting the "create an account" process. The abuse/misuse from (for example) user names such as "Jimbo Wales sucks dick" wouldn't be enhanced in this scheme, but it would create password-less accounts, which would be weird. If we put these password-less users into the user table alongside everyone else, it would make thanking and pinging them trivial, at least to send the messages. Receiving them might be a lot trickier. :-)

We could also do away with the concept of logged-out users and simply require everyone to log in, but I think this is fairly anti-wiki. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:51, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman

Hello, User:Corinne. Can you provide another comment on this again? I believe your concern was that chiefess can't be found in some dictionaries, correct? The term can be founded Merriam-Webster. I don't agree with the recent insertion of "Ke Alii (The Noble)" for many reasons and believe the user will edit war with me unless another user steps in to mitigate. The term High Chief (the noble) is used by scholars in this field, the translation high chief(ess) is used in the academic sources this article is citing, and chiefess is found in all those other dictionaries I've provided link to. The direct Hawaiian term "Ke Ali'i" is also only used in Hawaiian language articles or sources (a search on Google Books reveal that it is only found largely in Hawaiian language book) and rarely used in English books or articles except when directly citing the title. The translation or use of the term Miller is proposing is marginal at best and most important not found in any of the scholarly sources I am using here or by any of the historians that I am getting the information directly on Pitman from.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 03:13, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. I appreciate your input very much. I am not returning to the article but again, thank you.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Mark You're welcome! Why not continue with the discussion until a consensus has been reached? Perhaps you're both right and can come to some agreement. Don't give up so easily. Wait for input from other editors and see where things lead. Best regards, Corinne (talk) 01:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I am not giving up. I am walking away from conflict that has become uncivil. Many times we are both right on many levels, but deciding which route to go can be the daunting part. After the accusations of racism and bigotry it is impossible to see anything more on that discussion from the editor as good faith. But one cannot approach an editor in that manner. I always feel if there are at least other editors interested in contributing, then just stepping away still allows work to continue and I can go back to work elsewhere without the conflict. The difference between a content dispute and a conflict is very much illustrated here. The editor has a clear conflict with me. It really is a matter of dispute resolution not to add on to a situation when it has become disruptive. There are many ways to handle it but I just make note of the situation to an admin and then just leave the whole thing alone.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:27, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Mark Oh, I am sorry. I did not see any of those accusations. I just now looked at the talk page again and saw a whole other section of discussion that I hadn't seen before; I'm too tired now to read it, but I can certainly understand your preference to step away. Probably a wise decision. Corinne (talk) 03:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 51, 2015)

The word scandal is used a few times in several bibles like Douay–Rheims Bible.
Hello, Corinne.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Scandal

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Princess Leia • International law

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 01:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

GA review page headaches

I've moved your comments to the bottom of Talk:Telopea_truncata rather than here as that was on the transcluded GA review page....it's a mistake I've made before myself with old GA review pages........Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:17, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Cas Liber I saw that earlier, but thanks for notifying me. I didn't know I shouldn't add to that kind of page. I don't know what "transcluded" means. Does this mean one shouldn't add any comments to any GA review page if one is not a "reviewer"? Or is it because the article had already been promoted to GA status? I'm sorry. I don't know all the rules regarding GA or FA reviews. Corinne (talk) 19:33, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Ok, generally once an article is promoted then that process is closed. So I the case of Telopea_truncata it is now at FAC, so the page for article-related discussion germane to the FAC is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Telopea truncata/archive1. But some people still use the article talk page, especially if they just have a few points. While the FAC is open, keeping discussion there helps the coordinators get an idea of the whole discussion. I got into FAC as it is the best way of ensuring stable/consensus versions - especially if wikipedia will at one point move from growth to maintenance phase. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
... and a "transclusion" (Simple How-To of Transcluding and the Hardcore How-To) is when a page is 'visually' shown without the source text (what we write when editing) being visible. So it's kinda like Wiki made visual shortcuts to pages and this is how templates such as {{Template}}, {{Ping}}, {{GOCE inuse}}, etc. work on Wiki. So I can transclude my talk page edit notice by using {{User talk:Drcrazy102/Editnotice}}.
But this isn't "actually" on your page, it's still on the sourced page (User talk:Drcrazy102/Editnotice) but is visually rendered as being "on the page". Hope this helps explain transclusion and how you've actually already used transclusion ... every single time you finished a GOCE copy-edit or used a template. Have a good week Corinne; Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 23:34, 14 December 2015 (UTC) PS: Feel free to remove the transcluded editnotice if you want, it is a bit large for casual talkpage comments.
Drcrazy102 Thank you so much for explaining. I removed the large transcluded edit notice (because it was so large), but I loved seeing the photo again (but why is it so large, with a lot of white space above and below it?). I have inadvertently transcluded other editors' user pages, twice, I think, when I put "User" instead of "U" when pinging someone. You know that saying something is "on the page, but isn't actually on the page" sounds a little weird, don't you? ;) But thanks again for taking the time to explain. Corinne (talk) 01:34, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
No worries Corinne, I love helping to improve the technical (or at least templating) knowledge of others. It does sound weird, and I'll be the first second to admit it, but it's why I put some many caveats and conditions in that sentence. Not sure how writing Corinne (talk · contribs) would transclude, but if you used {{User:Corinne}} with a colon (:), not a vertical bar (|), then that would transclude the userpage.
The grammar of templates/transclusions are a finicky thing, almost as bad as copy-editing a game article sometimes, but still easier than trying to make a table using Wikicode with cells that are larger than the 1x1 formatting like I'm about to post at Talk:LGBT adoption#Using tables for chronology sorting and making existing tables "sortable". (That link will take you to the section when I post the table(/s), for now it is the talkpage link.
The editnotice was probably missing the "constraint" table around it that is templated around the notice when used on an actual edit-page, as opposed to transcluding the notice's message to a talkpage. Ah well, big puppy picture! Now, in the words of Baffle gab1978: It's time to [leave] this behemoth thread and get on with some more copy-editing before my reputation as a mainspace editor gets torn to shreads [sic]!
Always a pleasure, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 02:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC); update: the link is now live if you want to see a behemoth of template coding, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 02:34, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Doctor Crazy Wow. That must have taken a lot of time to put together. Well done! By the way (hope you won't be annoyed; it's the copy-editor in me), in your note below the table, you wrote "it's" when it should be "its" (possessive adjective): "placed into its respective tables". It is very likely, though, that no one will notice. Corinne (talk) 02:40, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
trout Self-trout - How could I make such a rookie mistake? Fixed it now so that no-one has the basis of launching the argument "He misspelt 'its', therefore he is incompetent. I call for him to be blocked indef!" though it would be an outside chance. Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 02:47, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Doctor Crazy I've got to ask you, if you're not too tired, where you got your user name from. I mean what prompted you to adopt it? (I'm not asking you to reveal anything personal.) Also, why do you distinguish between "Drcrazy102" and "Doctor Crazy"? If you don't mind my saying so, I think the first version, with "crazy" in lowercase, and the number next to it, draws less attention to the word "crazy", so would be slightly more conducive to you being respected as an editor. The really new version that you said you like, with Room 102 of the Mental Asylum, may tend toward the opposite. Those who get to know you will know that you are eminently worthy of being respected, but those who don't know you very well might be put off. But maybe that doesn't bother you, and I apologize in advance for anything I've said that may annoy you. Corinne (talk) 03:13, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Corinne, so long as people ask without a malicious intent, I don't mind answering questions like these but whether you find the stories lies answers interesting or not ... that's a different story.
  1. So to reverse engineer the creation of one of my online monikers; I was originally going to go with Drcrazy101 for a Gmail spam account (not me spamming others, but for websites that looked dodgy, etc.) but that was taken, so I thought "Hmmm, lets add 1 and use 102". The Drcrazy101 was based on standard spam naming conventions: "mad scientist" + "[[[List of sciences (alphabetical)|insert science subject]]] Class 101", hence {Doctor of Science = Dr.} + {mad = crazy} + {101+1} = Drcrazy102.
  2. I want to find the people that actually know how to code a user link properly, and to pre-empt you here - yes, {{u|Drcrazy102|Doctor Crazy}} will work to notify me and it renders as Doctor Crazy. Just like a plain link, but templated! *giggles in delight*
  3. (Wasn't really a question, but I'll answer anyways) It helps me find the editors that are actually here to do some good, rather than **** around with the editors, the articles, both or other Wikithings - even if they do some good somewhere in the depths of AfD, or template coding.
  4. Like I said at the start, it doesn't bother me but I do get a good laugh out of the twits that try to pull me down. It's usually the fact that I only have a "few" edits to my account that troubles some, but I do massive copy-edit changes, so I'd prefer a "change number count" rather than an "edit count" but I can only imagine how much fun that would be to even try and code.
Did I miss any points? Plus, I'm in a completely different timezone where we still have daylight right now, so I'm not tired but thank you for the concern. I hope you enjoy my various Easter eggs and may the Gods never have cause to find fault with you, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 03:41, 15 December 2015 (UTC) P.S. Enjoy dessert!
Drcrazy102 has given you a brownie! Brownies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a brownie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. †

User:Drcrazy102 Thank you for your explanations and your patience, and for not being upset with me. I understand most of what you wrote, but I don't understand how your user name helps you find editors who are here to do some good. Also, why would anyone want to block you? You've been so gracious in answering all my questions. What do you mean by Easter eggs? I looked at the link and still don't know what you mean. (By now, you're probably thinking I'm a bit slow-witted.) Corinne (talk) 03:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC) Oh, I forgot to thank you for the brownie. I love brownies. Corinne (talk) 03:54, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Never would I be upset with you Corinne for any of this, it would take something a lot worse for me to be peeved at you and another level for annoyed, then upset.
  • So the username helps because it acts like a filter, in that "good" editors pass by without comment but "bad" editors get caught by commenting on my moniker. So that's my username helps catch the bad editors who want to mess with other editors in non-constructive ways.
  • I had an admin who wanted to have a go at blocking me a while back (not for username, I kept collapsing his comments in a DRN case because they were attacking/commenting on the conduct of a user rather than the contribution of the user, and they got upset and tried tag-teaming. Fun anecdote) but who knows? I may make a misstep in this labyrinthine horror we call "Policies and Guidelines" or I might just step on the wrong toes one too many times. Some editors look for any reason if they don't like you editing against their POV or sources. Just watch WP:ANI for long enough and you'll see what I mean, not that I would recommend any dosage of ANI to anyone as nice as you.
  • So an "Easter egg" is a link that doesn't actually quite go where it says it does. So if I wrote "Macbook" but connected the link to Apple, that's an Easter egg. I do a lot Easter eggs on user talk pages, mainly to help lighten the mood, though I also use Easter eggs when referring to policies, guides, essays, etc. on various pages though, occasionally, I do it just to inject some humour.
  • I don't think you are slow-witted at all. If I tried explaining any of this to my grandmum, she wouldn't have a clue and she's fairly smart and up-to-date on most Apple tech (compared to other old folks at least). So you are at least getting some idea of what I'm saying which is a good thing; if you weren't listening or "acting deaf", different story but I am 99.99% sure you are (at least) trying to, if not actually, understanding what it is I'm saying. I also know other editors who don't have a clue about any of the stuff we've discussed and would by mind-boggled by the concept of some of this.
  • I've had to substitute the brownie so it doesn't keep changing who gave it to you, though who doesn't love giving themselves brownies?
Have a good one, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 04:34, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Karma...

FWIW I have a plant at FAC too....Telopea truncata...but don't feel pressured. To balance Karma I will go review some FAC stuff too...cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:19, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

... in addition to Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca. Did you want to work with PLANTS, FUNGI and MAMMALS, or would you be happier with other wikiprojects at FAC and TFA? - Dank (push to talk) 02:28, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank Well, first, thank you for asking. Second, my general feeling is that I'll work on whatever you need me to work on. Third, I'd be happy with those, or any others (just not certain topics I have no interest in such as sports, popular culture, business, video games, etc.), but I have a question. It seemed to me that the Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca and Telopea truncata articles were already so well written that I only made a few minor edits (and even one or two of those were changed). It almost seems as if I'm not needed. Will there be articles that need more copy-editing than those? Or are those minor edits precisely what is needed? I think articles on animals (and birds, and insects) are much more interesting than articles on plants and fungi, but I'll do those, too. I also really like articles on geology, mining, and environmental topics. Corinne (talk) 02:49, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I forgot to look in the histories, I was doing a search at WP:FAC on your username. With the disclaimer that I'm looking at just your edits, I really like your work on Telopea truncata and Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca. The FAC coords typically need a minimum of three supports that they have confidence in before they'll promote an article. Not many reviewers "support on prose", and coords aren't always willing to count these supports as full supports, but I think they're likely to treat your prose supports on that level. When it works, the service of frequent prose-supports for a wikiproject can make a big difference in that wikiproject's success rate at FAC. (This is just my experience, stop me if I'm mansplaining). 1. Writers gain confidence in taking articles to FAC because it's less likely that prose will be a stopper. 2. If you choose to copyedit and support on prose before other supports, the article is less likely to be archived quickly for lack of support. 3. Nominators will only need a minimum of two "full" supports, which makes a big difference, on average.
So, to recap, the purpose of offering people the chance to do TFAs is that I'm trying to find people willing to do prose supports at FAC for whatever wikiprojects they want to support in this way. Now that you've copyedited those two articles, do you think they're in good enough shape to offer a support on prose for either or both? - Dank (push to talk) 03:48, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
You're welcome to add all animals (including WP:BIRDS and WP:INSECTS) to the list of TFAs and FACs you can jump on, if you like. We don't get a lot of geology, mining, and environmental topics at TFA, but I'll keep an eye out for those as well. - Dank (push to talk) 03:51, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Ok try to look for articles that have been written be folks that have not nominated many (or any) Featured Article candidates before. These folks need encouragement to reinvigorate the process and build ongoing participants. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:34, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Right, I'm not saying you shouldn't jump on other FACs as well, that would be silly :) I see you're doing other FACs and that's great. - Dank (push to talk) 13:58, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank Thanks for your positive feedback and for your explanations. Cas Liber Thanks for your suggestion. Dank, you are definitely not "mansplaining". I had never even heard that word before this. I glanced at the article, and no, you are not doing that. A lot of this is new to me, so any explanation is helpful. (By the way, in the lead of the Mansplaining article, it says The Atlantic. I've often seen the article "the" left out of newspaper titles and just left lowercase. It bothers me that The New York Times is often written "the New York Times". So why is The Atlantic written with "the" included, capitalized, and in italics?)
Back to the topic now. Dank, I'm beginning now to understand what you mean by "support on prose", something you mentioned in an earlier comment. I hadn't really understood what you meant by that. I had taken it to mean something like, "Just be there to help an editor with the prose". I guess you mean something different. I think I understand now that you mean "indicate my full support for an FA nomination based on the quality of the prose of the nominated article" on an FAC review page. Am I to understand that I can copy-edit the article and then, if I think it the prose is in good shape, immediately indicate my support for the article (to be approved for FA status), on the FA review page? That's like saying "I think my copy-edit was satisfactory" and no more needs to be done regarding the prose. Wow. (I know that sometimes, there will be things that are unclear or poorly organized and I can post questions and concerns, and let the editor who worked on the article work on it a little more to clear those things up. In those cases, I would wait to support until after those things are cleared up, right?)
One more thing, you both used some wiki-jargon that I don't understand.
Dank, you said, "You're welcome to add all animals (including WP:BIRDS and WP:INSECTS) to the list of TFAs and FACs you can jump on". I don't even know what this means. The only thing I know how to do is what you told me before, to watchlist all the TFAs so I can write the summaries. Can you please explain to me step-by-step what I'm supposed to do, or what I can do?
Cas Liber, you said, "Try to look for articles that have been written by folks that have not nominated many (or any) Featured Article candidates before." (a) How do I look for these kinds of articles? and (b) How do I identify these editors who have not nominated many FA candidate articles before? Thank you both for your patience. All I've been doing for three years is copy-editing articles. I rarely commented in GA or FA reviews. I thought those were for selected reviewers. Corinne (talk) 00:32, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Aaah ok, some explaining....anyone is welcome to post comments at an FAC - the aim for the nominator is to fix all fixable issues suggested by reviewers to make the article as good as possible. The process needs more reviewers. The Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates page has the newest nominations at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom. The rule of thumb is at least three reviewers being happy with the article as a mimimum. This guide - Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches - might help. The process is desperate for more reviewers. This page - Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations - has a list of everyone who has successfully nominated a Featured Article. So if someone is missing from here (notwithstanding a username change) then they are possibly a newbie. Best thing might be to scan down to pages you're interested in. Familiarity works both ways - pages should be accessible to those unfamiliar with the topic (and hence reviews from them are useful) and be correct and comprehensive (hence reviews from those familiar with the topic are good too). A good place to start might be to look at some of the older pages with one or two supports and begin a section offering suggestions. If you cannot offer any more suggestions to improve then consider offering a support vote...or if not, then consider what it is about the article that is holding you back from supporting. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:46, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Cas Liber Thank you so much! That's very helpful. Can you tell me what Dank meant by "You're welcome to add all animals (including WP:BIRDS and WP:INSECTS) to the list of TFAs and FACs you can jump on". Add where? Add how? Add from where? Add to what list? Does he mean just "add articles to my watchlist", or something else? (I assume "jump on" means (for TFAs): "go ahead and write the summary" and (for FACs): one or more of these: copy-edit the article, express my support (or non-support), make suggestions for improvement, or express concerns about wording, clarity or organization. If that's not right, please correct me.) Corinne (talk) 02:03, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
(a) plan of FAC seems right. If in doubt make the suggestion rather than copyedit the page, unless a no- brainer. Have a go and I will check your contributions later (b) regarding mainpage requests, look at my contrbutions - see "user contributions" in left hand column when one is on a user's page (i.e. go to my userpage and click "User contributions" and you will see what I have been editing. Main page requests are made at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests. I'll make one or two and you can see. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Casliber I just looked at Fuscospora gunnii and saw a cite error in "Taxonomy". Did you know it was there? Just thought I'd point it out in case you hadn't seen it. Corinne (talk) 02:17, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Corinne, I was replying to your comment that "I think articles on animals (and birds, and insects) are much more interesting than articles on plants and fungi, but I'll do those, too. I also really like articles on geology, mining, and environmental topics." I'm saying: that sounds fine, go ahead and do them at TFA. To see what "support on prose" means, click on WP:FAC and then search for that phrase. You'll see that I've offered something called "support on prose" for many of the articles currently up at FAC. Looking at what I've done should explain it better than I can. - Dank (push to talk) 02:16, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Answering another question: I don't know why, but The Atlantic is almost always written that way. It's usually The New York Times, but not always: for instance, "a New York Times story". - Dank (push to talk) 02:21, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Susanna and the Elders (Tintoretto)

Hafspajen Ooo. It's beautiful! Thanks for telling me about Susanna and the Elders (Tintoretto)! (You do know you have the title of the Meat Stall painting above the image, don't you?) Do you want me to copy-edit the article when you're finished working on it? If so, just let me know.

Also, what do you want to do about that phrase in the Baigneuses article, "in the large"? It doesn't sound right in English. We either have to choose another expression or remove it. Corinne (talk) 15:30, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms

Hafspajen I just read your article A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms and enjoyed it very much. I wonder if you would mind if I copy-edited it. I saw a few minor errors here and there. There are one or two things I would ask you about before I change anything. If you don't want me to touch the article, that's fine. Corinne (talk) 18:44, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Sure. It certainly needs some extra attention... !!! Hafspajen (talk) 11:45, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 52, 2015)

Hors d'oeuvre, also known as an appetizer or starter, is a food item served before the main courses of a meal.
Hello, Corinne.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Hors d'oeuvre

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Scandal • Princess Leia

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:08, 21 December 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Yo Ho Ho

MarnetteD|Talk is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec15b}} to your friends' talk pages.

Make sure to click on both pictures to see them full size Corinne as they will give you a chuckle. May your 2016 be full of joy and special times. MarnetteD|Talk 03:45, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you so much, MarnetteD! Best wishes to you, also. Corinne (talk) 01:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings!

Hello Corinne: Enjoy the holiday season and upcoming winter solstice, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, North America1000 19:43, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message
Thank you so much, Northamerica1000! Thanks for thinking of me. Best wishes to you, too. Corinne (talk) 01:07, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!


May 2016 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls or vandals!

All the best

Gavin / – SchroCat (talk) 23:22, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your delightful Christmas greeting, SchroCat! What a pleasant surprise. Thank you for thinking of me. I wish you all the best for the holidays and for the coming year, too. Corinne (talk) 01:11, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(Season's Greetings)

Viggo Johansen: Happy Christmas (1891)


X
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
X
Frohe Weinachten und
alles gute zur neuen Jahr!
Wesołych Świąt i
Szczęśliwego nowego roku!
Linksmų Kalėdų ir
laimingų Naujųjų Metų!
X
Sca (talk)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you very much, Sca! What languages are those? How are you doing, by the way? I haven't chatted with you lately. What have you been working on? Best wishes to you. Corinne (talk) 01:09, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

German, Polish, Lithuanian. Cheers! Sca (talk) 01:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Hello Corinne: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Frankie talk 14:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

Best wishes for the holidays...

Season's Greetings
Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Hafspajen (talk) 11:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Hafspajen Thank you, and I wish the same for you. This is a beautiful ornament! You always find the most interesting pictures. Corinne (talk) 16:19, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Corinne
Wishing you a joyous Christmas and a prosperous new year!
BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 17:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
BoringHistoryGuy Thanks! What a nice surprise! I can't believe I've never come across you or your user page before. I love the photo of the Pa. museum on your user page. That's a really nice shade of orange in the background. Well, thanks again, and best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you. – Corinne (talk) 17:44, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's greetings!

Iryna Harpy (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas6}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks, Iryna Harpy, and best wishes to you, too. Corinne (talk) 03:38, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Bangladesh

Corinne, I fully understand if you want to abandon this one; there's been over 100 edits since your last one. Us pen-pushers at the Guild need to know what to do with the request. ;-) I'll probably put it on hold if you abandon it, because of the ongoing editing. I hope you're having an enjoyable Crimbo. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 02:44, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Baffle gab1978 I'm sorry. I guess I should have made a decision and posted something on the Requests page before this. I was kind of waiting to see if the editing would quiet down. I also didn't want to post "Abandoned" on the Requests page. I think I'll leave off copy-editing this one. I'd be grateful if you would put "On hold" or something. By the way, I think I copy-edited this article about three years ago. It was one of my first copy-edits (way before I joined GOCE). The article has probably changed a lot since then. I'm having a quiet Crimbo (I had never heard that term before; where is that from?), thank you. Corinne (talk) 02:56, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
No worries; thanks for letting us know. It's fine to place Abandoned on requests; it alerts us to edit-wars, conflicts and other ongoing problems that interfere with copy-edits. "Crimbo" is a UK English slang word; I've heard it around the Midlands where I live but i'm sure its common elsewhere in England and maybe the wider UK. I'm having a quiet one too. :-) Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 03:25, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Request no Declined; thanks for your help. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 19:09, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 53, 2015)

Hello, Corinne.

The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

Person of the Year

Please be bold and help to improve this article!

Previous selections: Hors d'oeuvre • Scandal

Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:10, 28 December 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Johan Krouthén-Motif

Thanks!
Nice. We will get this thing to be a GA, as Northamerica1000 planned. Hafspajen (talk) 19:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Wow! Pink! Just ever so slightly surreal. Kind of like:
Spring, by Henryk Weyssenhoff. 1911.
Hafs, what's the right word for that, when it's almost realistic, but the colors make it slightly abstract? Corinne (talk) 19:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


  • Supercalifragilistixexpiallidoushen? Supercalifragilistixexpiallidoushen?Hafspajen (talk) 19:33, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Carl Rungius - Big Horn Sheep on Wilcox Pass (1912)

Pentecost

Checkingfax I was just beginning to read the article on Pentecost. I made a few minor edits. Then I noticed that there was an external link in the lead. Is that supposed to be there? Corinne (talk) 01:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Corinne. It does seem like a weird protocol. The verse uses a template called {{bibleverse-nb}} (nb stands for: no book) which calls out to an external website for a reference. I do not understand why that is allowed. Maybe post a question on the template's Talk page. PS: The template also requires hyphens between page ranges, when MOS DASH requires en dash between page ranges. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 04:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
PS: Unless the lead data is controversial there should be no need for a citation as the data and citation should already be used in the body of the article. Have you ever read the WP essay WP:CREATELEAD? I have found it to be very helpful. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 05:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

(watching:) lead or elsewhere, instead of external bibles, we have internal ones, example Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:12–23) ({{Sourcetext|source=Bible|version=King James|book=Matthew|chapter=2|verse=12|range=–23}}) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:35, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

colon, semi-colon, comma, period, or nothing

Dear Corinne, What do you think this sentence needs to make it flow? Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 04:04, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

.

Can you take a look here? I get the impression people are talking about different things. And somebody removed a bit of the lead, that was not quite necessary, too. Hafspajen (talk) 18:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Hafspajen I didn't go back and look at earlier edits. If you want me to, I will. I left a comment on the article's talk page, though. I came across a short article that I wondered if you had seen: Sharawadgi. I had never heard that term before. Maybe you could add a little to the article. Corinne (talk) 20:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC) P.S. There is an error in the citations at the bottom of the page, but I don't know how to fix it. Corinne (talk) 21:11, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Yeah, but not in the West.. whatever they mean about that. Hafspajen (talk) 21:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Johan Krouthén

Hafspajen I was just looking at Johan Krouthén out of curiosity, having seen you were editing it, and I was looking at the images in the gallery. I'm just wondering if you need to mention the artist's name at all. The name is included in each caption in the gallery. The article is about him, so the paintings in the gallery ought to be by him, so, is it necessary to include his name? Corinne (talk) 19:22, 30 December 2015 (UTC) Corinne (talk) 19:23, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

  • Reall crappy gallery, that one. No names, best. Wasn't me who made that. Hafspajen (talk) 21:45, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Hafspajen The gallery looks much better now, Hafs. What do you think about changing "Three reading women" to "Three women reading"? It would sound more colloquial (more normal). Also, regarding the painting at the upper right, what does "Harvestad gård" mean? (Looks like "Harvard yard", which is the name of a place at Harvard University, and which people use to show what the Boston accent sounds like: Havvad ya-ahd). Can you translate that and put the caption into English, or, if you can't because it's the name of something, add a word or two to explain what it is? Corinne (talk) 23:53, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Sure! "Three women reading" sounds good. And gård means estate. Or .. manor, perhaps? Hafspajen (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

HafspajenI did a search on Google for that phrase (the caption) and I saw a heading "Harvestad - Wikipedia" and clicked on it. It was an article in, I guess, Swedish. I saw an option "Translate?" and clicked on that. I got the gist of the article even though it wasn't a very good translation. In English, "Harvestad" is translated as "Harrow Town". It was originally four farms, and the ownership is traced all the way back to the 1300s! The article gives the successive owners up to the 20th century. At some point, the town of Linkoping became the owner, and they sold the main building. I wonder if the painting is of the main house, or building. I don't know if the phrase "Harvestad gård" refers to the entire estate, including the four farms, or just to the main house and the land right around it. Would you say, "Harvestad manor", "Harvestad estate", "Manor house at Harvestad", or "Main house at Harvestad"? Corinne (talk) 00:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

?? Dunno what I would say. It can be used both about the main house and the land right around, to, meaning farm. How about YOU? Hafspajen (talk) 00:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, the painting is of a house, so how about "Manor house at Harvestad estate"? I couldn't find anywhere on en-WP to link "Harvestad". Corinne (talk) 00:30, 31 December 2015 (UTC) Oh, I just saw you had already changed it to "Harvestad manor". That's fine, too. Corinne (talk) 00:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
"Manor house at Harvestad"?

Reference errors on 30 December

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:20, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Hafspajen I made a lot of small edits to this article. I can't find where I broke the reference name. Can you find it? Corinne (talk) 00:32, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Woa, I voted out that bot cos it made me crazy. I never find those, ever. Hafspajen (talk) 00:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax Can you find it? Corinne (talk) 00:35, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax I see you found it. I must have changed a hyphen to an en-dash without realizing it was a date in a reference that apparently requires hyphens. Thank you. Corinne (talk) 01:59, 31 December 2015 (UTC)....Now I see you corrected another mistake I made. I had added a period after "p". I didn't know that when it says "ref name=", there is to be no period after the "p" and before the page number. Where can I read about these reference formatting details? Corinne (talk) 02:02, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Dear Corinne, for continuity if you want to, you can go back and put those periods back in to the reference names‍—‌just be sure you change it the same way in all instances of the same reference name. I almost did it myself, but then I noticed several reference names lacked the period. It is your call. Let me know if I can assist. After you add the periods, do a Preview of the page, then jump down to the References section and be sure there are no red error messages within the references showing. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Dear Corinne, I do not see where you broke any references, but I did fix three anyway. Here is one that AnonomieBot fixed: [13]
I added a couple of periods to page numbers, and took out some spaces after p. or pp. for continuity. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:07, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Checkingfax So you're saying that a page number in a reference with a name can have a period after the "p" and before the page number, or not, but they've got to be consistent? I thought I had gone through and added the period to all of them, but I must have missed a few, and you changed them back to no period. As long as they're consistent, I don't mind leaving them the way they are now. It's too much work, anyway, to go back and change them. I saw the one that the bot had fixed; I didn't think that was my edit, but I'm not sure. But your suggestion to click Preview and look at the references before saving is a good idea. I'll try to remember to do that. By the way, do you feel like looking at the issues with Francis of Assisi? See Hafspajen's request a few sections above this and the last discussion on the article's talk page. I had copy-edited this entire article about a year ago, but I guess it has changed a lot since then. Corinne (talk) 02:28, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Corinne, I did not remove any periods from actual references‍—‌only from the name of the reference (e.g.- ref name="blah blah p.17" became: ref name="blah blah p17" without taking the period out of the actual reference). What I did was add a few periods to page numbers for harmony with what you had done, and I noticed some stray spaces after the p. or pp. so I removed those. Then I saved my work. Then I scrolled down to the reference section and saw several red errors (3) and went after fixing those. The easiest fix was just to remove the period from about five uses of the named reference and to fix the two named references names (sic) and move on. Look at the diffs to see what I changed which was minimal.
The reference name can have periods or not, and the reference can have periods and there is no technical limitation on that, but once you name a ref and the ref name has a period in it, then going forward to repeat that ref name for subsequent uses of the ref you have to use the exact same ref name. Ping me back if I need to add more clarity to my muddled reply. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Checkingfax I want to assure you I wasn't upset with what you did; far from it. I really appreciate your explanations and help with editing. I'm glad to learn things I didn't know before. I think I was just a bit confused by that phrase, "reference name". I have never written an article and haven't learned a thing about adding references, so I didn't even know what that was. (I'd like to learn more about references.) Your reply wasn't muddled. You just wrote "the" twice in succession, but that's all right. Corinne (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Corinne, There is no need to name references unless you want to reuse the reference. Without naming reused references it would create a lot of reference cruft. Once a reference is named, you only have to use the name to repeatedly use that particular reference.

A simple reference looks like this:
<ref>http://www.i-shot-the-sheriff-but-i-did-not-shoot-the-deputy-too/folder1/folder2.html</ref>

If you wanted to reuse that reference throughout the article you can give the reference a "name", like this:
<ref name="eric clapton">http://www.i-shot-the-sheriff-but-i-did-not-shoot-the-deputy-too/folder1/folder2.html</ref>

When you are ready to repeat the reference you just need to use the "self closing" name like this:
<ref name="eric clapton" /> (the / self-closes the tag)

In a simple reference, the </ref> tag closes the end of the reference, but in a named reference you open and close the reference within a single tag.

Once you name a reference you have to very cautious to repeat it verbatim.

When ReferenceBot sent out that diff I should have scrolled down to the reference section first and looked for red error messages and I would have been able to troubleshoot things more effortlessly. It was tedious on my eyes to look at all the micro-edits in the diff itself to spot the boo boo.

PS: Naming references works with templated references too, the ones that look more like this:
<ref name="eric clapton">{{cite web|url=http://www.i-shot-the-sheriff-but-i-did-not-shoot-the-deputy-too/folder1/folder2.html | title= Eric Clapton's Latest Song | date=5 January 1974 | publisher=''[[Variety]]'' | accessdate=30 December 2015}}</ref>

When you want to repeat the use of the reference all you need is:
<ref name="eric clapton" />

Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 05:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


HNY

Peace bell, Dessau

Likewise – Happy New Year, Corinne! Sca (talk) 17:00, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year!


Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. --BabbaQ (talk) 18:44, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year Corinne!

File:Happy new year! --) (6605281377).jpg Happy New Year
Wishing you good health and happiness in 2016. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:41, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Your UserPage - and recent Hemingway edits

What a beautiful UserPage! -- Absolutely gorgeous by any standard. And, thank you so much for your recent edits to the Hemingway articles; I fear many of the typo's and errors you detected, and corrected, may have been mine. Herewith - a 'Barnstar'. --- Professor JR (talk) 12:30, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

A Barnstar for you!

The Surreal Barnstar
Awarded to: Corinne
In Special Appreciation and Thanks - for recent edits and needed corrections improving articles on several members of the Hemingway family. --- Professor JR (talk) 12:30, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Professor JR Thank you so much! What a nice surprise to find your lovely message and the barnstar on this first day of the new year! A good way to start off the year! Best wishes to you for a good year ahead! Corinne (talk) 14:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Corinne: And all best wishes to you, as well, for 2016. Cheers! --- Professor JR (talk) 17:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

A simple *nquiry

Hello, Corinne, and a Happy New Year's Eve! Now, my *nquiry is: how do you spell *nquire? Rothorpe (talk) 03:44, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Rothorpe I spell it "inquire". I would spell the noun "an inquiry", but we don't use the noun as much as the verb. How do you spell them? Corinne (talk) 13:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming. I don't know which I normally use, but there's also "enquire", which Merriam Webster says is chiefly British. So presumably you'd never use that spelling? Rothorpe (talk) 17:03, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Rothorpe, The slogan for the National Enquirer "magazine" used to be: "Enquiring minds want to know." That is the only time I use Enquiring (and I Cap the E). Firefox red tags it as a possible spelling error. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 18:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Interesting. Thanks for the link, founded in 1926, so maybe the E spelling more common in America then. Rothorpe (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Rothorpe Now you've got me puzzled. Of course I've seen the magazine title. Also, I've never heard of any newspaper called the "Inquirer". I've heard of the Inquisition, though. I'm sure we use "inquire" and "an inquiry". But when we say "inquire", it often sounds like "enquire", or half-way between the two. Strange word. Corinne (talk) 22:30, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, they're homonyms for me, both beginning i-, so my query was about spelling. Rothorpe (talk) 18:22, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Charles Marion Russell

Hafspajen I hope you don't mind that I changed the text formatting in the captions in Charles Marion Russell. I think italics looks better than quotation marks for the painting titles, and italics is used in the MoS guide for image captions. I noticed the the captions for the first gallery are flush left (that is, left justified), but the captions for all subsequent galleries are centered. I much prefer flush left, but I don't know how to change those captions from centered to flush left, that is, of course, if you agree. Corinne (talk) 01:08, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Very GOOD. Ideal. Hafspajen (talk) 16:22, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

P.S. How do I change the font size back to 100%? I see that the font size was changed to 110% for the previous section, the New Year's message. Corinne (talk) 01:11, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

P.S.#2 Happy New Year!

Champagne

– Corinne (talk) 01:13, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

  • OH, my - WHY don't I get your pings? Hafspajen (talk) 16:20, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Something happened to your page. Hafspajen (talk) 16:22, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Hafspajen Thanks for fixing my page, and thanks for the images. What (or who) is that person? I couldn't read the German description in the image file. Can you translate it for me? Corinne (talk) 18:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Student teatergupp, in Germany, basel. Performing the trollwood=? Hafspajen (talk) 18:50, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you and...

Many thanks for your good wishes Corinne and the stunning landscape with which you accompanied them. In return I wish you not only a good year, but fulfillment in the face of obstacles both online and offline. People with your commitment and talent are always in short supply, and never more than now.
All the best,
Jon
JonRichfield (talk) 19:35, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

L. A. Ring

Hafspajen Do you like the look of the gallery in L. A. Ring? Corinne (talk) 00:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Yes, what's up? Hovering text? Hafspajen (talk) 00:15, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
It looks like the semi-transparent caption is covering part of the each image, and in the case of the second painting, the Harvest, it is covering 90% of the painting. I don't like this type of gallery. Corinne (talk) 00:21, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

-,Stol is chair, yes :) Hafspajen (talk) 00:34, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh-oh. I've got to change it, then. Thanks. Corinne (talk) 00:38, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Jansson

Added your Sunrise over the rooftops by Jansson to my winter paintings gallery. Sca (talk) 16:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Sca Yesterday, I went one by one through all the artists who lived in the late 1800s to early 1900s in List of Danish painters and List of Swedish painters. I was looking for an early 1900s post- or neo-Impressionist painting that was mostly red that would balance The Blue Kitchen at the top of my talk page, but I didn't find one. I liked the Jansson painting, though. I thought of you and your winter paintings gallery when I came across a page with a nice gallery that had quite a few winter paintings in it. I'll try to find it again and give you a link. Corinne (talk) 20:50, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Another TFA

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 7, 2016, on geology. - Dank (push to talk) 17:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Dank Thank you for telling me about this. I thought I had to wait until January to see the list for January and watchlist all the January articles, but now I see that they are already there, so I watchlisted all of them. I'm sorry I didn't see the sparrow article or I would have done that. I see you're working on it. Corinne (talk) 00:03, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
I worked on the January 7 article. It's now at 1091 characters. Before I started, I read most of the article. It seemed to me that the abundance of nature on the Table Rocks is a more prominent topic than the history, and I thought about including a sentence about the mounded prairie and vernal pools on top of the rocks, but when I added it (and looked at it in preview), it brought the count up to 1197. I also thought about taking out the clause about it not being protected until the 1970s, but since I didn't know what to add to the summary, I decided just to leave it. I thought the summary (especially the history information) seemed like a collection of facts, but I didn't know how to smooth it out and make it sound more like a prose paragraph. Maybe I'll look at it again tomorrow when I'm not so tired. Any ideas? Corinne (talk) 02:59, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Excellent job. I made a couple of minor tweaks. These TFAs often sound more like a collection of facts than a paragraph ... that's a shame, but I think readers understand that when we condense an article down to around 1K characters, the summary is going to have to jump around a bit. - Dank (push to talk) 03:23, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank This summary is fine, and I'm not suggesting changing this one, but, for example, couldn't we summarize the history and say that from X year to X year (when it was protected), the rocks were subjected to, or underwent, some development, including X, Y, and Z, that is, fitting the examples of development into a sentence? Or does that add too many characters to the summary? By the way, I hope you have a nice Christmas and a happy, healthy 2016. Corinne (talk) 01:17, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Do what you like. Happy holidays! - Dank (push to talk) 01:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

May I add a wish? Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4, is planned to be TFA for Easter next year. It's an "old" article of many authors, just in GA review. I think it would profit from copy-editing, to unify the prose. - Canvassing: I am also looking for someone who can do a review of the Christmas cantata mentioning laughter, - it's high time. Happy holiday, - my greeting will be on my talk from 24 December, - no individual cards, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:20, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Dank I just looked at January 14, 2016. It's at 1040 characters. Do you think it needs a bit added to it from the article, or is the length all right as it is? Corinne (talk) 00:09, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

That's an acceptable length. - Dank (push to talk) 01:16, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank First, I removed some unnecessary words. Then, since it was a bit short, I added a few sentences to the summary. I counted the characters and since it's 1278, I went back to remove a bit, but now I don't see what I added. I see my edit in my contributions and watch list, but not in the summary. Why not? Where can I find them? What did I do wrong? Corinne (talk) 21:48, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank Dank...? I just saw at the TFA page that your first name is Dan. Do you prefer being called Dank or Dan in conversations? I guess I need to purge the page in order to be able to see the newest version, but I don't know how to do that. I read WP:Purge and still don't understand. But this is the first time I've had this problem. Corinne (talk) 23:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank or Dan is fine. Click on Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 14, 2016 and you should be able to see what you've done. - Dank (push to talk) 00:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I finished January 14. I got it to exactly 1150 characters. Corinne (talk) 00:32, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Nice work. - Dank (push to talk) 18:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Dank I'm sorry -- I didn't even see this until now or I would have thanked you long before this. I was wondering why I hadn't heard anything. I guess your comment got buried by later comments. Now, I just saw that January 14 was blanked? At the author's request? Why? Corinne (talk) 21:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry? Click on Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 14, 2016. - Dank (push to talk) 21:39, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Dank Oh. Earlier this afternoon I had been looking at my watchlist and I saw your user name, with "Deletion log" to the left of it, and Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/January 14, 2016 (in red), and "One author who has requested deletion or blanked the page". I didn't notice that it was just the talk page, and I thought the article had been blanked or deleted. I guess I don't know what all that means. I'm sorry to have bothered you. Corinne (talk) 00:04, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Dear Corinne, To put a purge tab on every page, after you login, go to this link and scroll down to the Appearance section, and checkoff the box for: "Add a "Purge" option to the top of the page, which purges the page's cache when followed", then go to the very bottom of the page and click on Save. That should put a purge near the top of each page (but not at the very top). It might be hidden under another tab which you will have to hover on to reveal the Purge link. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 04:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, Checkingfax! I've done it. Before, when I read the instructions at WP:PURGE, I thought "Appearance" referred to the "Appearance" tab in the horizontal collection of tabs when you click on "Preferences", but there was no option there. I had never noticed that there was an "Appearance" section in the "Gadgets" tab. Thank you so much! Corinne (talk) 15:06, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Francis of Assisi

Hi, Corinne. I looked at Francis of Assisi and made several edits regarding the chronology but in my opinion it is still a bit of a hot mess regarding the chronology, prose, and flow in the Early life section. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:46, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

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