| Revision as of 02:07, 15 October 2012 editGabeMc (talk | contribs)File movers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers41,831 edits →Truth: add← Previous edit | Revision as of 17:09, 16 October 2012 edit undoMark Arsten (talk | contribs)131,188 edits →A barnstar for you!: new WikiLove messageNext edit → | ||
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| * , where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, we are wasting huge amounts of time discussing this, then our in-house style guide (the MoS) gives '''way''' too much power to amateur editors and fanboys in editing language and spelling, which it does not permit at all in editing content. We have to stop letting amateurs and fanboys (including editors who try to prevent even initial mention of spellings and pronunciations in other kinds of English than their own) terrorise serious and highly qualified editors and general usage on WP by wasting time that could be spent improving content. These amateurs not only make the entire encyclopedia look amateurish and unreliable; much worse, they disgust and scare off serious editors and professional copyeditors. If even in a situation such as this, where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, these amateurs can still waste huge amounts of time of large numbers of serious editors, the MoS has to be rephrased using much stronger language. In addition to talking about avoiding unnecessary use of capitalization, the MoS should say that capitalization is only allowed if a large majority of style guides and secondary sources use upper case. In addition, as said above, most of the few secondary sources that use uppercase are websites designed to promote and aggrandize the Beatles (professional fanboys). As for the names of literary works, like ''The Hobbit'', "The Highwayman," etc., these are set aside from the body text with italics or quotation marks, whereas the name "the Beatles" is (usually) not. Even the Beatles themselves used the lowercase 'the' in writing about their own band. WP is full of many articles with capitalization that violates the MoS and standard English usage and often even ] (for example, many electronics and IT articles, such as the trademark spelling ] despite the general usage clearly shown in the biggest UK and US dictionaries), and this nonsense is aggressively defended by self-declared keepers of these holy grails against people who don't have the energy and time to fight about this for weeks and months on end, even though these people often include professional copyeditors or even large number of people armed with common sense and dictionaries and style guides. --] (]) 09:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC). | * , where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, we are wasting huge amounts of time discussing this, then our in-house style guide (the MoS) gives '''way''' too much power to amateur editors and fanboys in editing language and spelling, which it does not permit at all in editing content. We have to stop letting amateurs and fanboys (including editors who try to prevent even initial mention of spellings and pronunciations in other kinds of English than their own) terrorise serious and highly qualified editors and general usage on WP by wasting time that could be spent improving content. These amateurs not only make the entire encyclopedia look amateurish and unreliable; much worse, they disgust and scare off serious editors and professional copyeditors. If even in a situation such as this, where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, these amateurs can still waste huge amounts of time of large numbers of serious editors, the MoS has to be rephrased using much stronger language. In addition to talking about avoiding unnecessary use of capitalization, the MoS should say that capitalization is only allowed if a large majority of style guides and secondary sources use upper case. In addition, as said above, most of the few secondary sources that use uppercase are websites designed to promote and aggrandize the Beatles (professional fanboys). As for the names of literary works, like ''The Hobbit'', "The Highwayman," etc., these are set aside from the body text with italics or quotation marks, whereas the name "the Beatles" is (usually) not. Even the Beatles themselves used the lowercase 'the' in writing about their own band. WP is full of many articles with capitalization that violates the MoS and standard English usage and often even ] (for example, many electronics and IT articles, such as the trademark spelling ] despite the general usage clearly shown in the biggest UK and US dictionaries), and this nonsense is aggressively defended by self-declared keepers of these holy grails against people who don't have the energy and time to fight about this for weeks and months on end, even though these people often include professional copyeditors or even large number of people armed with common sense and dictionaries and style guides. --] (]) 09:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC). | ||
| == A barnstar for you! == | |||
| {| style="background-color: #fdffe7; border: 1px solid #fceb92;" | |||
| |rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | ] | |||
| |style="font-size: x-large; padding: 3px 3px 0 3px; height: 1.5em;" | '''The Real Life Barnstar''' | |||
| |- | |||
| |style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | I enjoyed reading your comments in '']''. ] (]) 17:09, 16 October 2012 (UTC) | |||
| |} | |||
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Congratulations
Great work on the Pink Floyd article :) Plant's Strider (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's kind of you. Thanks much! ~ GabeMc 00:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- Props to you for wrestling my favorite band through FAC. :-) Ed 06:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks Ed! ~ GabeMc 21:02, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- A belated congratulations from me as well! I've been mostly offline for the past few days so just now found out. Great work, Gabe! Evanh2008 02:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks Evan! ~ GabeMc 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Oh, and thanks a lot for the barnstar! (Still getting caught up on all this stuff...) You really did the vast majority of the work, though. :) Evanh2008 01:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks Evan! ~ GabeMc 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- A belated congratulations from me as well! I've been mostly offline for the past few days so just now found out. Great work, Gabe! Evanh2008 02:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks Ed! ~ GabeMc 21:02, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Props to you for wrestling my favorite band through FAC. :-) Ed 06:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Self-funding
Hi Gabe. I didn't want to step on your toes by changing this sentence: "His net worth of approximately $190–250 million has helped finance his political campaigns prior to 2012." However, it seems like the word "has" ought to be removed, given that the sentence is in the past tense ("prior to 2012"). Cheers.Anythingyouwant (talk) 01:43, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not seeing an issue. Since "has" and "helped" are both past tense ("has" makes it perfect past), they are compatible. ~ GabeMc 01:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- The construction does raise the concern that it seems to be implying Romney had a net worth of $190-250M before any self-funded political efforts, which I am not sure is 100% accurate. The $190-250M estimate is recent, so I'm not sure it accurately reflects his worth in 1994 for example. ~ GabeMc 02:06, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- To me, "has helped" gives the impression that the help may be ongoing. Removing "has" clarifies that it was in the past. The word "has" seems at best superfluous. Does it do anything useful here?Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:13, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- "Has" makes it perfect past tense, without it's just past tense. Since you object, and it may not be adding that much, I've removed the word per your concerns, and I've also tweaked the text string to avoid the false implication that Romney was worth $200M as early as 1994. Let me know what you think. Cheers! ~ GabeMc 02:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Looks good, thanks. I replied at the FAC page regarding your concern about repetition in the lead. Cheers.Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:19, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- "Has" makes it perfect past tense, without it's just past tense. Since you object, and it may not be adding that much, I've removed the word per your concerns, and I've also tweaked the text string to avoid the false implication that Romney was worth $200M as early as 1994. Let me know what you think. Cheers! ~ GabeMc 02:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- To me, "has helped" gives the impression that the help may be ongoing. Removing "has" clarifies that it was in the past. The word "has" seems at best superfluous. Does it do anything useful here?Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:13, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi again, Gabe. :-) Regarding the words "during his business career", I think those words serve an important purpose: they clarify that his church positions were not full time. See what I mean?Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hi AYW, I think the extent of Romney's Church involvement is all made quite clear in the article body, and isn't a specific we should be attempting to explain at that level of detail in the summary lead. ~ GabeMc 04:04, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I've just now made an edit that will hopefully address your concern. Let me know what you think. ~ GabeMc 04:09, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I appreciate the attempt, but I think the removed four words ("during his business career") worked better. They clearly conveyed the time frame along with the fact that he was not a full-time official of his church. The new language may imply the same thing, but the reader has to think about it more, plus Romney was not really in the "church leadership". My understanding is that the church leadership is located in Utah, whereas Romney was merely a part-time local leader of his congregation.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:18, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I've now clarified the "local" aspect of his leadership. Give it a few reads, I think its better now than it was a few hours ago. Give it a chance and tell me what you think. Its more neutral. Why does his active leadership in the local Church need to be tied per se to his business career? Are the two inextricably linked for some reason other than the part-time aspect? 30 hours per week is full-time for many people. ~ GabeMc 04:24, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's better, but this sentence was the subject of extensive discussion at the article talk page, and it might be best to revert and get consensus there first. Otherwise, "active local leader" should probably be expanded to "active, local, part-time leader". He was not really a local leader of his church until he became a stake president, and before that was only a leader of his congregation. "Bishop" in the Mormon Church is very different from that position in other churches, which is why the parenthetical was useful. In contrast, the term "stake president" is much less likely to be misleading because it does not have any contrary normal meaning, and because it is qualified in the lead by saying that it's his local area near Boston. His church role does not necessarily need to be tied to his business career, but that is a very simple way of letting the reader know the years and that it was part-time.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:41, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- The lead of the Mitt Romney article's purpose is not to educate the reader on jargon-esque specifics of the subject's religion. Take another read, its getting better. I tell you what, if you really don't like it after I'm done with it tonight, feel free to restore your preferred version, no hard feelings and no worries, sound good? P.S. Please do keep the comments coming, they are a great help. ~ GabeMc 04:48, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- For some reason, several editors thought it wise for the lead to include jargon. I disagreed, but if jargon is to be included then it ought to be briefly explained in the lead so that it will not mislead the readers. I can quote policy about how sentences are supposed to be understandable without forcing readers to click on links, but it's late and I'll be turning in now. See you tomorrow. Cheers.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:56, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- The lead of the Mitt Romney article's purpose is not to educate the reader on jargon-esque specifics of the subject's religion. Take another read, its getting better. I tell you what, if you really don't like it after I'm done with it tonight, feel free to restore your preferred version, no hard feelings and no worries, sound good? P.S. Please do keep the comments coming, they are a great help. ~ GabeMc 04:48, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's better, but this sentence was the subject of extensive discussion at the article talk page, and it might be best to revert and get consensus there first. Otherwise, "active local leader" should probably be expanded to "active, local, part-time leader". He was not really a local leader of his church until he became a stake president, and before that was only a leader of his congregation. "Bishop" in the Mormon Church is very different from that position in other churches, which is why the parenthetical was useful. In contrast, the term "stake president" is much less likely to be misleading because it does not have any contrary normal meaning, and because it is qualified in the lead by saying that it's his local area near Boston. His church role does not necessarily need to be tied to his business career, but that is a very simple way of letting the reader know the years and that it was part-time.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:41, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I've now clarified the "local" aspect of his leadership. Give it a few reads, I think its better now than it was a few hours ago. Give it a chance and tell me what you think. Its more neutral. Why does his active leadership in the local Church need to be tied per se to his business career? Are the two inextricably linked for some reason other than the part-time aspect? 30 hours per week is full-time for many people. ~ GabeMc 04:24, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I appreciate the attempt, but I think the removed four words ("during his business career") worked better. They clearly conveyed the time frame along with the fact that he was not a full-time official of his church. The new language may imply the same thing, but the reader has to think about it more, plus Romney was not really in the "church leadership". My understanding is that the church leadership is located in Utah, whereas Romney was merely a part-time local leader of his congregation.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:18, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The truth
- If even in a situation such as this, where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, we are wasting huge amounts of time discussing this, then our in-house style guide (the MoS) gives way too much power to amateur editors and fanboys in editing language and spelling, which it does not permit at all in editing content. We have to stop letting amateurs and fanboys (including editors who try to prevent even initial mention of spellings and pronunciations in other kinds of English than their own) terrorise serious and highly qualified editors and general usage on WP by wasting time that could be spent improving content. These amateurs not only make the entire encyclopedia look amateurish and unreliable; much worse, they disgust and scare off serious editors and professional copyeditors. If even in a situation such as this, where all known style guides recommend lower case and more than 80% of secondary sources use lower case, these amateurs can still waste huge amounts of time of large numbers of serious editors, the MoS has to be rephrased using much stronger language. In addition to talking about avoiding unnecessary use of capitalization, the MoS should say that capitalization is only allowed if a large majority of style guides and secondary sources use upper case. In addition, as said above, most of the few secondary sources that use uppercase are websites designed to promote and aggrandize the Beatles (professional fanboys). As for the names of literary works, like The Hobbit, "The Highwayman," etc., these are set aside from the body text with italics or quotation marks, whereas the name "the Beatles" is (usually) not. Even the Beatles themselves used the lowercase 'the' in writing about their own band. WP is full of many articles with capitalization that violates the MoS and standard English usage and often even WP:ENGVAR (for example, many electronics and IT articles, such as the trademark spelling Compact Disc despite the general usage clearly shown in the biggest UK and US dictionaries), and this nonsense is aggressively defended by self-declared keepers of these holy grails against people who don't have the energy and time to fight about this for weeks and months on end, even though these people often include professional copyeditors or even large number of people armed with common sense and dictionaries and style guides. --Espoo (talk) 09:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC).
A barnstar for you!
|
The Real Life Barnstar |
| I enjoyed reading your comments in The Wall Street Journal. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:09, 16 October 2012 (UTC) |