User talk:Tanankyo

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Copyediting help required

I am in need of copyediting help quite soon on the 2008 Belgian Grand Prix page, an article currently on a GAR hold. If there is any way as an independent editor you could help out on said page, I would reward you handsomely... Apterygial (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

Welcome...

Hello, Tanankyo, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! Apterygial (talk) 23:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You

		The Copyeditor's Barnstar
		Thanks for rushing to the aid of the 2008 Belgian Grand Prix page, and hopefully helping to make it a Good Article! Apterygial (talk) 23:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-editing request

Hi, I noticed you are a pretty experienced copy-editor. I wondered if you could take a look at the Gregory House article, various users have been contributing to the page. It has been listed for FA candidatecy multiple times but has not been promoted yet, I think it would be nice if the article could be copy-edited before I list it for a peer review. It would be appreciated if you would take a look, but don't feel obligated to do anything. --Music26/11 15:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, nice work.--Music26/11 19:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're very welcome! tanankyo (talk) 20:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hiya Tanankyo

My current project on Wikipedia is increasing the quality and quantity of copyediting. We have people who are good with AP Stylebook and Websters, but we have very few people participating in article reviews who have many years of professional copyediting experience, and I'm wondering ... why? Some copyeditors have switched jobs, or are retired, or aren't sufficiently challenged, and wouldn't mind doing a little volunteer copyediting, and it would be nice to have more professionals in the mix. If you're interested in doing more, great; if not, this is just an informal survey, and I'd appreciate your ideas on what would attract more professional copyeditors.

Dan

Hey, Dan. Sorry about the length of time it has taken me to reply to your question, but I'll see if I can't shed some light. Personally, I decided to get more active on Wikipedia because the glut of grammar and punctuation errors was starting to grate on the English Major inside me. I had been making a lot of unsigned edits, and a friend finally convinced me that having a user profile would get my edits taken more seriously. As far as attracting more professionals to the mix, there's not a lot to be done. Anyone who is interested in making Wikipedia a better resource will, ideally, jump onboard and heave-to, though, to be honest, the learning curve involved in familiarizing oneself with the behind-the-scenes action here is, in a word, daunting. Perhaps you'd find some more response if the need for decent editors was made plain, or if there was some kind of test required of a person who is interested. The test would serve to show that Wikipedia is serious about the quality of editing it expects. I'm not sure if this helps at all, but I wish you the best in your quest to find good copyeditors.

"That Wikipedia is serious about the quality": I didn't follow, tell me more. Let's assume that the learning curve is small; people who already follow some kind of style guide in their day job are very much needed on Wikipedia, so I (and others) can always go behind your work looking to see if there is some guideline or policy point that you didn't know about. When you say you want Wikipedia to be serious, do you mean you want to be operating in a community of people that perform at a certain standard, rather than just editing random articles? There are over 2.5M articles, we can't fix all of them, but we can focus on the >2K Featured Articles, or the Good Articles, or the 30K articles on the DVD. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess what I'm getting at with the remark about being serious about quality is that right now, anyone online can make a change to an article. This, I know, leads to a lot of vandalism, and it can also be off-putting to copy-editors who take pride in their work; if necessary edits made in good faith to better an article can be reversed by a prankster, a zealous writer, or anyone else for any reason, the editor may think twice about donating their time. At least making sure contributors are required to have an account and be signed in before being able to make revisions would go a long way to show that Wikipedia is trying to make sure users are responsible, or at least trackable by something other than their IP address. tanankyo (talk) 00:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First, the Wikipedia DVD Version 0.7 is coming out soon with around 30000 articles, and of course, the articles can't be vandalized once they're selected for the DVD, so if you want to copyedit articles for next year's DVD, stick around. Second, we never delete anything, so even if you believe the quality of a page degrades after you work on it, you can always show people the version that you copyedited by pulling up the history. Third, banning anonymous editing is not going to happen, because of the arguments at WP:PEREN#Prohibit anonymous users from editing, and because we're quite familiar with the results. It's been done many times on Wikipedia (every time we "semi-protect" articles) and on other sites. It's hard to argue with success, and we're the top content site in the world ... there are 4 sites with more hits, such as google.com, but people are usually using them to get to someplace else. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:22, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link to the page about anonymous editing; I had no idea this is as old an idea as it appears to be with Wikipedia, and it's gratifying to know that the system has been tried and seen to fail. I apologize for beating the dead horse, as it were, but I can only plead ignorance. That said, and to get back to the original push of our conversation (the attraction of quality copy-editors), I think attracting editors isn't the problem, but rather keeping them around. This article I just read on MSN will hopefully address the problem: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28037910/from/ET/. As I mentioned before, the learning curve, not for the Wiki Formatting Manual, but for the nuts-and-bolts of working with an article, is daunting. A lot of people, myself included, who know English grammar and usage well, may not be able to easily wrap their heads around the myriad coding and tagging requirements to making an article appear correctly on Wikipedia. Making the editing process more user friendly will go a long way toward retaining individuals who are skilled at editing but don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time familiarizing themselves with the minutiae of html coding. tanankyo (talk) 03:02, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's a very reasonable objection. I'm hoping we can find a way to make it easier for people to copyedit the articles that are being reviewed for Featured Article or Good Article status without too much sweat. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So do I, though with my luck, I'll just be getting used to reading around the coding when the changes go into effect. Ah, well; isn't progress great! Thanks again for the insights, and if I can ever be of any help, please let me know. tanankyo (talk) 03:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

		The Copyeditor's Barnstar
		For the copyedit on the Melbourne Airport page. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. :) \ / (⁂) 03:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tanankyo, I have an article that needs copyediting as the main reason that is preventing it from becoming Featured Article, and I was recommended from \ / that you are a fantastic copyeditor. The article could certainly use some help and it would be great if you can go through it. An accompanying peer review is ongoing for the article; please feel free to comment on how the article can be improved. - Cheers, Mailer Diablo 07:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for copyediting the article! That was nice work. One thing, was the three dashes at the start of the article meant to do something? Other editors are asking about it. I intend to propose a rewritten lead on the peer review itself, so that it can be reviewed again by everyone before putting it up. Merry Christmas! - Cheers, Mailer Diablo 15:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- You are very welcome! In regards to the three dashes at the top of the article, if I put those there, I apologize; I didn't mean to. I know I was having a wee issue with copy/pasting a dash to remedy an incorrectly handled one in the article, so it may have been me. Good luck with the rewritten lead! Happy Holidays, tanankyo (talk) 20:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - The lead has been further shortened. If you don't mind, could you look it through once and see if it's grammatically correct. Please feel free to leave any specific feedback on the Peer Review if you'd like. Thank you once again, Mailer Diablo 15:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]