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

Could someone check my copyedits of Operation Pillar of Defense?

It's a really long article, and I wanted to make sure someone else agrees it's consistent before I take off the copyedit template. Thanks! -- MatthewDBA (talk) 13:15, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Great work! I made a few tiny, tiny copy edits to this long article. You can see them here. The article had inconsistent use of the serial comma, which is common in multi-author articles. I tried to make it consistent. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:48, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I really tried to keep track of those commas; I'm not surprised that I missed some. And I may have to review the various sorts of dashes. I see you made some changes there as well. I'll go ahead and pull the template off. -- MatthewDBA (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

You can read all about dashes at MOS:DASH. I haven't memorized the whole thing, but I know a few tricks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

@MatthewDBA: have you come across User:GregU/dashes.js? I run it after each copy edit that I do. You need to check what it does, but it's usually right and is a lot easier than distinguishing all those little horizontal lines by eye. Just add the line

importScript("User:GregU/dashes.js");

to your monobook.js and clear your browser cache. --Stfg (talk) 18:26, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Abeed copyediting

Abeed is in the copyediting list, but it does not have the usual copyediting tag. I do not see how to change this article to remove the article from our copyediting list. I presume that satisfying the tags {{awkward|date=September 2013}}{{elucidate|date=September 2013}} may be the answer, but that is a matter of content that I do not know how to do.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:31, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

{{awkward|date=September 2013}} is the tag that adds it to the category. I have removed the "awkward" tag and left the "elucidate" tag, since that is the one that really applies. The sentence in question is not awkward, it just needs more explanation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:26, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the information on the tag. Our copyedit list gets shorter by several actions. I want to look at the awkward tagged articles, but I don't know how to do that. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

In fact, the tag puts articles in the copyedit list, but I don't think there is any easy way to find such articles.--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:13, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

How to find articles using {{awkward}}: Go to {{awkward}} and click "What links here" in the left sidebar. Look for article names followed by "(transclusion)".

Another way: Go to catscan, paste "Wikipedia articles needing copy edit" into the Categories box, set the Depth to "2", and type "awkward" into the "Has all of these templates:" box (don't put the quotation marks in any of the boxes). I get a list of eleven articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:00, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Those eleven articles would be interesting to examine, and if copyedited would shorten our list.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:20, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I have edited all except one of the ten articles tagged with {{awkward}}. If anyone wants to take a crack at Jorge Briz Abularach, be my guest. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:05, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Sitting on the fence

I removed the {{Multiple issues|{{grammar|date=March 2014}}{{tone|date=March 2014}}{{cleanup|reason=grammar,syntax,word choice, expansion|date=March 2014}} }} tags applied to the article by User:AnomieBOT. I have fixed some problems with the article, but I have not changed the tone or the grammar. I would welcome the advice and opinions of other editors on Sitting on the fence. Can the User:AnomieBOT be blindly accepted, or does it sometimes go too far?--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

AnomieBot is a helpful little bot that adds "date=" parameters to tags. Human editors added the tags in question, and AnomieBot put dates on them. In short, trust AnomieBot, and use your own brain to evaluate human edits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I made a mistake there. Anyway, I have left the article as it was, no change in tone or grammar.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Copy editing for too many unclear abbreviations?

The article AAP 2014 Lok Sabha Candidates has the copyediting tag This article may require copy editing for too many unclear abbreviations.

There are abbreviations of Indian political parties, Indian states, and perhaps others, all in two tables. Does this problem falls within the task of copyediting by GOCE members?

Incidentally, until I added a title line, the page length was zero.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a classic case of WP:IINFO. I've nominated it for deletion and removed the copyedit tag pending the result of the AFD. --Stfg (talk) 01:34, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for a good solution.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:40, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Tempo (comics)‎

Can someone take a look at this article. After I did my copy edit, someone went in and put a lot of "issue needed" tags throughout the article. Not that they are not needed, but I left the reference needed citation at the top of the article. Thoughts? Onel5969 (talk) 01:00, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I took a look at Tempo (comics)‎, and the absurd number of {{issue|date=March 2014}} tags should be removed. More sources are needed, but this should be a repeated comment on the talk page. I would suggest that you get rid of the tags, and add an explanation on the talk page. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:55, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8: Thanks. Have done that.Onel5969 (talk) 02:21, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Last call

The March copy editing drive ends in less than an hour. Please make any final edits to your article lists and the leaderboard (it is not updated automatically) in the next 12 hours or so. Barnstars will be distributed in the next few days. Thanks to everyone who participated; we did a great job of trimming the oldest articles and editing a lot of Requests. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:45, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Oops I forgot about the time change and altered the ombox message an hour early - sorry!:-D Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 01:18, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

March in the green by 13 articles

After being in the red most of the drive, we finished in the green by 13 articles. Part of that was due to making AFD articles into review status. We did cut down on the oldest articles, which are Good work, GOCE members!--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:21, 1 April 2014 (UTC)