In a message dated 5/24/2008 6:00:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
> Are you are mixing up the meanings of copyeditors
> and proofreaders?>>
---------
You explain what you think the difference is, in the context of Wikipedia.
Then we can pick it apart :)
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 1:50:47 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
it will become more necessary to be careful, regardless of the
heaviness of the burden.>>
-------------
Yes and this burden sits directly on the shoulders of the writers, not the
copyeditors.
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 12:30:11 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
The bottomline is that a close paraphrase is
sometimes necessary, and when its done, it needs to be done with reference
to the source, and should not be copy-edited without the copy-editor also
reading and assimilating the source. The latter happens all the time.>>
------------
That restriction would have a chilling effect on copyediting.
We can't expect copy-editors to read every source merely to fix grammatical
errors.
If the original editor could not be bothered to provide good writing that
would not need copyediting, then that is their fault, not the fault of someone
trying to improve the writing later.
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 2:21:28 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
Sorry, this is getting ridiculous. As several people have said "properly" is
subjective - and as I say above (irrelevant!?) - we don't enjoin people to
write "properly" in the manner you suggest in the first place...>>
--------------------------------------------------
I am not suggesting that people write "properly" in any manner. You are.
I'm responding to your assertion that copy-editors must reference the
underlying sources.
--------------------------------------------------
My whole point is "re-writing" is quite capable of changing emphasis,
wording, tone and context in such a manner that WP:V is relevant. These are
familiar issues, for example, to anyone who's ever had to copy-edit
translations.>>
--------------------------
Sure and the burden to show that, is on those people with reference to the
sources. And they way they show it, is to quote those sources, not just wave
their hands around in mock disapproval of the copy editors job. Not that
you're doing that.
---------------------------
And above all, we do not want to place the burden on writers to come back
and check every contribution they've made...>>
--------------------
But you're quite happy to burden copyeditors with the requirement to live
inside university library stacks. Hardly a fair situation is it.
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At 11:16 PM 5/23/2008, Sage Ross wrote:
>Bauerlein says: "The concern for bias probably underlies the
>neutrality style, but I wish I received a lot more biased,
>opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish, and colorful papers."
> But there are many situations where the cut-and-dry approach of
>Wikipedia will serve students well.
Depends on what they are studying. NPOV is an excellent concept, but
I think that most editors on Wikipedia don't understand it, or they
have an impoverished view of what it is. NPOV does not exclude
"opinion, argument, judgement, style, and color." Rather, it includes
them in balance and with accurate framing. The way I've been putting
it lately is, if you can see something from two points of view
simultaneously, you've got depth perception.
> The world has quite enough people
>who take a biased, opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish,
>and colorful approach (to writing, to politics, to their jobs, etc.).
Uff! Where are they? Biased and opinionated, argumentative, and
judgmental, fine. We've got plenty of these, particularly on
Wikipedia. I've been doing computer conferencing since the 1980s, and
I noticed something peculiar then, and it's still happening here.
There would be a debate, and a flame war would start. And someone who
was insulted would complain, and then debate would start over what
had actually happened. And, quite clearly, there were plenty of
participants and commentors who did not care to carefully read the
record. What actually happened? It's almost as if nobody cared,
except a person with wounded feelings, who usually ended up being
some kind of outcast. I just saw a case where an admin made an
incorrect decision, apparently misread the record, because what he
said, that was the cause of his action, was simply incorrect. Later,
trying to undo some of the damage, he reverts me, so I write him and
ask him to reconsider. He rejects it with a repetition of his
original error. I point out the error. He responds, "Take it to
AN/I." Which I'm not going to do. One of the biggest biases is
"Whatever I did was right." Physchim62 went down that road, it's got
some ugly turns in it.
>Even if English professors aren't pleased with the trend, I think
>we'll be better off if the next generation has a higher proportion of
>educated people who take the Wikipedia path to writing and argument.
Actually, there are plenty of people who have worked for years with
consensus process who know how to do it much better than the norm on
Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is typical of the next generation, well, time
to find a hiding place. Wikipedia was great, but certain structural
problems became locked in. There are great masses of the project
which are still functioning well, and there is a lot of inertia, but,
from what I see talking with librarians, teachers, students, there is
also a building reservoir of disgust with the process. Wikipedia is
colossally inefficient, it does not respect and value editor time.
Or, back to this thread, writer time.
>Surely there will still be plenty of clever and opinionated writers to
>write novels and waste ink on the New York Times op-ed pages.
>
>-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
At 03:13 PM 5/23/2008, phoebe ayers wrote:
> From personal experience with lots of nonfiction writing, I know that
>copyediting something to condense it -- to say the same thing in fewer
>and better-chosen words -- is quite difficult. But it seems like
>that's another aspect of quality we should really start focussing on
>more. A concise and precise article is a thing of beauty.
Spot on. Now, comes a writer and creates that thing of beauty, and it
is concise and precise and all that. Took hours to boil it down to
that. Oh, the writer didn't source it. The writer knew the subject
very well and simply wrote about what the writer knows. And, the
writer knows, anyone else who knows this subject will recognize the
accuracy of this. I'm not talking about someone simply asserting their own POV.
Used to be, this article might sit there, unsourced for years.
Nowadays, five minutes, speedy deletion tag. "Fails to assert
notability." "No sources."
The ladder that built the project is being chopped away. There is
possibly help coming: flagged revisions. Once we have a means of
discriminating between checked and sourced and polished articles and
those which are perhaps better called "submissions," we might be able
to move beyond the whole deletionist/inclusionist madness. We might
be able to stop stepping on the seeds that could be fostered and
nourished with good editing. If we don't, somebody else will.
The copy editor's job is to copy edit for several things, not just
"accuracy".
You're not putting accuracy ahead of beauty. Rather you seem to be saying
that accuracy is all, and beauty is nothing. By beauty I assume you mean
"Writing good English". Whatever good means.
And a copy editor is not adding material, you know this. They are changing
already existing material. That is not the same at all. The burden for what
that material is, is on the shoulders of who added it. Not who re arranges
it.
Will Johnson
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 1:40:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
I am not claiming that the copyeditor is at "fault", merely that that
behaviour should indeed be a concern.>>
--------------
The fix however is not to suggest that each copy-editor should read each
source.
That's a burden that is awfully heavy.
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 1:43:01 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
That of course helps, as you and others have pointed out; there are still,
of course, occasional cases when the single quote does not really provide
the required context, or when taken out of context can be completely
misinterpreted.>>
----------------------------
When you are trying to write for the general reader, and when this
particular (above) is an issue, then it's up to the editors in the article to ensure
that the situation is clear.
After all, our readers do not read all the underlying sources either. If
they are confused or uncertain, if copyeditors think something is amiss, that's
the fault of the writers. It's up to the writers, to clarify. And where
there is an issue, its up to the writers to correct it satisfactorily from
their sources.
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In a message dated 5/24/2008 7:32:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
refero.relata(a)gmail.com writes:
If the original addition is carefully worded to closely
paraphrase a point in the secondary source, a copyeditor concerned about
style might well - and frequently does - come in and change that such that
it is no longer sufficiently faithful to the nuances in the source, since
the copyeditor does not have access to the source.>>
------------
What I do in that case, is go back, and change the wording, and ref with a
full quote in the footnote.
Quoting is always a good trump card for bad paraphrasing.
Will Johnson
**************Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
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