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September 2012

GOCE September activities

  Disregard
 – Just projectspam.
Extended content
Reminders from the Guild of Copy Editors
 

A quick reminder of our current events:

  • The August 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the discussion and voting stage until midnight September 14 (UTC).
  • The September 2012 Copy Edit of the Month Contest is in the submissions stage until midnight September 30 (UTC), when discussion and voting begin.
  • The September 2012 Backlog elimination drive is now underway! The event runs until midnight September 30 (UTC). The goal is to copy edit articles with the oldest tags and complete all requests placed before September. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who participates, with special awards given to the top five in the following categories: "Total articles", "Total words", "Total articles over 5,000 words", "Total articles tagged longest ago", and "Longest article".

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

– Your drive coordinators: Stfg, Allens, and Torchiest. Message delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 04:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 12:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 13:15, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 13:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Tom Cruise

  Resolved
 –   I feel I have to recuse myself per WP:COI.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Tom Cruise. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 14:15, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Have to pass on this one, I think, as a conflict of interest. As a former Electronic Frontier Foundation employee, from the period during which EFF's anti-Internet-censorship position brought it into frequent conflict with the "Church" of Scientology's attempts to abuse the legal system to silence websites critical of Scientology, I don't I should comment on this. The fact that I consider CoS a fraudulent, dangerous criminal organization probably wouldn't bode well maintaining a neutral point of view, given that Cruise is a long-time celebrity shill for Scientology, as well as a fine actor. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 15:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Chaos and consistency

  Resolved
 – Done.

Allo. Thanks again for the help earlier with Gloss templates. (That's the buttering up part ;)

I'm honestly/earnestly curious about your comments at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Responses. I collect perspectives as a passion/hobby/inclination, and am wondering what aspects/precedents I'm unfamiliar with, in this instance. Can you point me towards some examples (either specific articles, or abstract/overarching issue-summaries, are fine. I can extrapolate well, but need clues!), either in that thread, or here, or privately?

The onion of context must grow! Thankee ;) —Quiddity (talk) 20:37, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

I've commented further there. Basically, you just need to skim the last 10 years of [{WT:MOS]]. About 95% of disputes over style here are specialists of one kind or another trying to force their oh-so-special style preference, derived usually from some very narrow academic journal context, on the entire rest of the world, readers and editors, if they ever dare to wander into the topic "owned" by the specialists. These people are fortunately starting to dwindle - many of them literally quit Wikipedia in a huff rather that admit that they should write in a generally comprehensible style for a general readership instead of ape the weird nitpicks of academic publishing in a context in which they do not make sense and aren't undestood by anyone but the handful of subscribers to those particular journals. It's a cancer, but one that seems to be curing itself slowly over time. Not least of which because of the efforts of myself and some other MoS regulars to stop letting them take over Wikipedia and abuse it as a platform of trying for force language change. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  Resolved
 – Fixed.

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:File names

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:File names. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 16:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Template merger discussion

  Resolved
 – Responded at that discussion.

Hi! I just noticed that you weren't notified of this merger proposal. I don't know whether you'll agree with the nominator or with me, but you certainly should have been invited to comment. —David Levy 20:09, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Hope I provided a voice of reason. :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:27, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
You did (as usual). (-: —David Levy 01:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Your Credo account access has been sent to your email!

  FYI
 – Just a notice

All editors who were approved for a Credo account and filled out the survey giving their username and email address were emailed Credo account access information. Please check your email.

  • If you didn't receive an email, or didn't fill out the survey, please email me at wikiocaasi at yahoo dot com
  • If you tried out Credo and no longer want access, email me at wikiocaasi at yahoo dot com

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me. I hope you enjoy your account! User:Ocaasi 15:38, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 16:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

GOCE mid-drive newsletter

  FYI
 – Just projectspam.   Declined No time to participate in the drive this month.
Extended content
Guild of Copy Editors September 2012 backlog elimination drive mid-drive newsletter
 

  • Participation: Out of 37 people signed up for this drive so far, 19 have copy-edited at least one article, about the same as the last drive. If you've signed up but haven't yet copy-edited any articles, every bit helps; if you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Join us!
  • Progress report: We're almost on track to meet our targets for the drive. Great work, guys. We have reduced our target group of articles—August, September, and October 2011—by about 44%, and the overall backlog has been reduced by 58 articles so far, to around 2600 articles. The biggest difference between this drive and the previous one is a stronger focus on large articles, so total word counts are still comparable.
  • Don't forget about the Copy Edit of the Month contests! Voting for the August contest has been extended through the end of the month. You don't have to make a submission to vote!
>>> Sign up now <<<

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Newsletter delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:19, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Dispute on Andy Segal page

Mr McKandlish,

You disputed the information on Andy Segal page that I created. You have posted false information and if this behavior continues, you will be contacted regarding a slander suit. Please refrain from posting anything false until you are sure that it is true. All of the information posted in the article of concern has sources that can be documented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.173.111 (talk) 21:19, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

You probably just got yourself blocked, and I've moved this discussion to AN/I, per Wikipedia's zero-tolerance of legal threats policy. (And of course I categorically deny that I've posted any false information.) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 07:15, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Update: User was blocked, per WP:NLT.SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:23, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 16:16, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

The "context solution"

  • Quiz

From Apple Corps' 2009 liner notes for Let It Be: "When this plan was eventually discarded, The Beatles reunited at their own studio in the basement of their Apple HQ."

From Apple Corps' 2009 liner notes for Abbey Road: "In the early part of 1969, the Beatles had recorded in their own studio in the basement of the Apple office building".

Which did Apple get right and which did they make a mistake on and why? ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 02:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The first one is correct, because the name of the band is "The Beatles", not "the Beatles". They got it wrong the second time because record company marketing flacks are not grammarians. Even entertainment industry journalists (i.e. those most often writing about bands) are not grammarians, they're journos whose job it is to spit out as much prose on deadline as possible. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 06:22, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Are you sure they aren't both incorrect? Anyway, so you admit that Apple cannot get this straight but somehow you think Wikipedia editors will not argue over each individual occurrence? Why is this a better option then either "the" or "The" throughout. Also, why cite grammar when grammar is clearly in support of "the". Every style guide we researched supports "the" for grammatical reasons and not one supports "The". So you seem to want to side with grammar but also disregard all style guides. I find that confusing. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 23:26, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Replied at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles. Please do not fork discussions like this, by raising the same questions on individuals' talk pages as raised publicly e.g. at RfM. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC) PS: I realize that some people would argue for "the" instead of "The" in a construction like "Since the 1980s, the Beatles have been dying one by one", because it refers to the bandmembers as individuals (the construction "...The Beatles reunited" actually doesn't pretty much by definition - it's about the reuniting of the band as, well, a unit), but this is ridiculous hairsplitting that does nothing but sow confusion. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 17:15, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this

  Resolved
 – Redir created as suggested.

Hi - I am always happy to find a template on someone's page that I've never encountered, but fits a need I've had. I'm talking about {{moved discussion to}} - brilliant! It only would be better if it could be rendered {{mdt}} for amnesiacs like me who will go through a few rounds of saying "moving" until I get it right, but that's me. Very useful, thanks.   Tvoz likes this.. Nice to meet a compatriot anthropology major - although mine dates back to sometime before they were convinced that Neanderthals could speak - I've seen you around the project for years, of course. Cheers! Tvoz/talk 16:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Redirects are easy to create; {{mdt}} and {{mdf}} now work.  :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 06:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
  Duh. Tvoz/talk 08:39, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Category talk:Indexes of topics

  Resolved
 – I have nothing to say at this time; I'm more interested in seeing what others think on this one, then maybe chiming in later.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Category talk:Indexes of topics. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 17:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Intelligent grammar

  Resolved
 – Just a chat.

I like your reasoning, and your intelligence. I thank you.--andreasegde (talk) 20:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome, though I'm not sure what you're referring to. :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 00:26, 22 September 2012 (UTC) Oh, you mean about The Beatles. Well, glad to be of service. :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 07:17, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Why is 4,000 things to argue over better than 400?

{{Dissregard|1=Wrong venue.}}

What would you say to the assertion that the context "solution" only exacerbates the problem? We are currently arguing over about 400+ articles, should we adopt your suggested "solution" we would have 4,000+ individual occurences to argue over. Why is this better, educate me please, because I cannot see any advantage to this whatsoever. ~ GabeMc (talk|contribs) 04:11, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

[Please stop trying to fork the discussion between the public one at the RfC/RfM, and my talk page. I decline to discuss anything substantive with regard to the band name capitalization in user talk, because it just means I need to re-discuss it at the proper venue, and I don't have time for this redundancy.] It's simple: Don't change the official names of thing to suit whims, like not personally liking "The Beatles" in mid-sentence. That is all, please drive though. See longer post of mine at the RfM page on how to handle cases of a single Beatle being referred to, etc. This stuff is not complicated at all. Nothing creates any sort of "4,000 individual occurrences" problem, other than continuing to assert that it should be "the" or "The" depending on some kind of positional determination. You are railing against a confusion that you yourself have created. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 07:04, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

New message from Gareth Griffith-Jones

  Resolved
 – Just a chat.
 
Hello, SMcCandlish. You have new messages at Gareth Griffith-Jones's talk page.
Message added 09:51, 22 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Good morning Mr McCandlish, The request and motive contained in the posting linked in this tb is, in itself, self-explanatory. However I have wondered about this posting and why a direct approach is not being made here. Would appreciate your guidance.

As a footnote, you and I had a little fun on "His Grace" 's talk page regarding scare-quotes and ellipsis usage. Gareth Griffith-Jones (GG-J's Talk) 09:51, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what to tell you. I'm unclear on why the approaches being used are the ones being used (e.g. forking discussions between public and private fora, escalation of a MOS matter to RfM as if a private two-party dispute, etc.) It's just weird and noisy. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:21, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate your prompt reply – considered you may not have risen – and shall wait for his next move. Cheers! __ Gareth Griffith-Jones (GG-J's Talk) 10:28, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Good articles (Participant Clean-up)

  Stale
 – Discussion halted, and the issue is perhaps now moot.

Hello, you are receiving this message because you are currently a participant of WikiProject Good articles. Since the creation of the WikiProject, over 200 user's have joined to help review good article nominations and contribute to other sections of the WikiProject. Over the years, several of these users have stopped reviewing articles and/or have become inactive with the project but are still listed as participates. In order to improve communications with other participants and get newsletters sent out faster (newsletters will begin to be sent out monthly starting in October) all participants that are no longer active with the WikiProject will be removed from the participants list.

If you are still interested in being a participant for this WikiProject, please sign your user name here and please help review some articles so we can reduce the size of the backlog. If you are no longer interested, you do not need to sign your name anywhere and your name will be removed from the participants list after the deadline. Remember that even if you are not interested at this time, you can always re-add your name to the list whenever you want. The deadline to sign your name on the page above will be November 1, 2012. Thank-you. 13:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for having to send out a second message but a user has brought to my attention that a point mentioned in the first message should be clarified. If user's don't sign on this page, they will be moved to an "Inactive Participants" list rather then be being removed from the entire WikiProject. Sorry for any confusion.--Dom497 (talk)15:23, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Dispute

If you want to stop/put on hold the "clean-up" by all means do it.--Dom497 (talk) 19:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it should be a consensus discussion at the project, not the opening of a discussion topic followed immediately by you proceeding without the actual discussion taking place yet. That's called a fait accompli. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 09:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 18:51, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization). Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 12:15, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution noticeboard

  Resolved
 – Done.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service.RFC bot (talk) 12:15, 29 September 2012 (UTC)