Hi, I'd like to invite you to participate in the Guild of Copy Editors July 2010 Backlog Elimination Drive. In May, about 30 editors helped remove the {{copyedit}} tag from 1175 articles. The backlog is still over 7500 articles, and extends back to the beginning of 2008! We really need your help to reduce it. Copyediting just a couple articles can qualify you for a barnstar. Serious copyeditors can win prestigious and exclusive rewards. See the event page for more information. And thanks for your consideration. monosock 04:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

		The Modest Barnstar
		The Modest Barnstar is an award suitable for an editor who makes small improvements which are immensely valuable, but often go unnoticed. Thank you for taking the time to copy edit the Signpost's articles before publication, including my articles in the WikiProject Report for the past couple weeks. We need copy editors like you and it saddens me that some careless words have made you feel unappreciated. It is easy for writers to take copy editors for granted, but your work is important and deserves some praise. I hope you and phoebe patch things up because the Signpost certainly needs you. -Mabeenot (talk) 08:51, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to second that, Tony, for your work there and everywhere else on WP. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 09:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tony, I left you a reply on the talk page, as follows:

I missed your book review, I'm sorry. Sage is right: I really didn't mean any offense; I also really appreciate your copyediting. What I *did* mean is that it's really hard to get people to contribute articles on a regular basis, which is what the Signpost now and has always really needed the most help with. I want you to *have* something to copyedit! And I *want* you to add yourself to the newsroom table! I think you've got my intention all wrong: I'd love to see you as a regular contributor. I'd love to see everyone focused on writing articles (that goes for everyone who has been talking about Signpost reform lately, btw, including me), and after we've managed to put out a few issues successfully sit down and talk about how best to do so in the future (rather than the other way around). This has seemed to be the most productive method of attacking the problem to date. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 18:05, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And, I might just add, I think this is probably a case of us both (at least me, for sure) being a bit irritable and hearing things the wrong way: you've focused on me saying you've not been helping, when in fact you've spent hours helping -- understandably irritating and a source of frustration, and not the impression *I* want to give: I really value everyone who does anything for the Signpost. On the other hand, what I've focused on is your calls for better writing and better management of the Signpost -- with the implication, of course, that the older stuff in the Signpost is not well written and not well managed, which kind of cuts to the quick for me since I've spent the last year and a half writing diligently every week for the 'post (so presumably a lot of the bad writing is mine). You see our mutual problem? I would love to have you as part of the signpost, I really would. Please write that research article you were talking about. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 18:34, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Tony, I would like to try these scripts

• The date-format harmoniser
• unlink-common-terms script

Thanks; Mlpearc pull my chain 'Tribs 01:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for (tentatively) signing up for the July Backlog Elimination Drive! The copyedit backlog stretches back two and a half years, all the way back to the beginning of 2008! We're really going to need all the help we can muster to get it down to a manageable number. We've ambitiously set a goal of clearing all of 2008 from the backlog this month. In order to do that, we're going to need more participants. Is there anyone that you can invite or ask to participate with you? If so, we're offering an award to the person who brings in the most referrals. Just notify ɳorɑfʈ ^Talk! or Diannaa ^TALK of who your referrals are. Once again, thanks for your support! Diannaa ^TALK 14:54, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A reward? I do like sipping brandy occasionally. And hampers of beautiful food! Tony (talk) 15:21, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I liked your copy edits of the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors subpage! Very apt.  :) --Jubilee♫clipman 19:43, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. N-HH talk/edits 16:36, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How many articles have you made this kind of poor edit on? Please stop indiscriminately removing valid wikilinks and breaking formatting. Fences&Windows 17:45, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Every one of the ones I just checked had similar issues. Please don't do this again until you've established that your scripts actually work, ok? I'm going to go revert most of your recent script changes. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:05, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And frankly it shouldn't be someone else that's wasting their time fixing these errors. Script assisted fixing of overlinking is fine and dandy, but when you're doing anything script-assisted you need to check the results to make sure it's not breaking anything. Please do so next time, Tony. Black Kite (t) (c) 18:35, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea why this is happening. Please do not revert them—I'll go through and fix this as soon as possible. Tony (talk) 02:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/St. Michael's Cathedral, Qingdao/archive3.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The article recently passed GA review, and seems to be in good shape. I usually fail miserably with bringing articles to WP:FAC, though (I unsuccessfully tried to nominate Fark earlier this year). Since you're somewhat of an expert over there, would you mind taking a look at this article and letting me know if it has a shot? Thanks! WTF? (talk) 04:52, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I ran through the top bit.

Is it "user-submitted and -evaluated", or without the second hyphen?

"rant" is kind of a normal word: I unlinked it replaced with quotation marks to suggest unusual usage. Is that right? But geek might be better as an unlinked "enthusiasts", since "geek" is a little pejorative. Please don't link "Wikipedia"!  :-)

I removed "various", but still: "to ask questions to the Slashdot community on a variety of topics". Do the last five words add anything?

US dollars just require the sign alone, and please, don't link it.

Where's your boundary for spelling out numbers. Normally, it's nine/10.

"Rounding out the ten most active articles include an article announcing the"—I don't understand the first two words.

Some US writers wouldn't use as many hyphens as I've added, although some would.

Include "also" only if it's really necessary.

Kept "Valentine's Day" linked, but non-US readers shouldn't have to divert to find out the date. (Put in parentheses after it?)

"where they pay to read the good articles"—"good" is a little strange—I guess someone there is making a value judgement. Why not "selected"?

"certain joke achievements"?

I didn't catch all of the minus signs.

"operating system"—I think if the reader clicks on "Linux", they'll find that out, so I unlinked to save bunching.

My personal pref. is for no dots in US, and all but one of yours was such. Up to you.

OK, now I see it's certain science topics. Unsure whether it's worth characterising what type at the top; the word "certain" is too vague.

It's on track as far as the language goes, I think. Tony (talk) 11:06, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't think that comment was particularly "narky"? I'd have left pretty much the same message for any editor that was doing the same (and to be honest, it was more a reply to Sarek saying that it should be up to the original editor to fix any errors. Apologies if you took it as such. Black Kite (t) (c) 14:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conciliatory reply on BK's page. It was not easy to discern his meaning. Tony (talk) 10:40, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was searching for "and/or" and came across a comment you made on the Manual of Style "I don't agree with a proscription. "And/or" is sometimes useful, and occasionally necessary." Considering you work on improving wikipedia's prose, I found this troubling. You can read my comment at the bottom of the section for why. Redsxfenway (talk) 06:04, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your concern, but by definition, or is inclusive (choose as many as you'd like). If the phrase is preceded by "either" than it becomes exclusive (choose only one). And/or is simply redundant. There is of course the unfortunate balance we must strike between correctness and understandability. Since "or" is understood as exclusive by most it is easy to be misunderstood. A good example of this is the word peruse, which means to read very carefully. On a related note, I can't seem to find where to get started on the manual of style. Redsxfenway (talk) 18:33, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand your point about "peruse"; can you explain? WRT getting started on the MoS, do you mean you intend to go through it, copy-editing, raising queries? Perhaps roll through from the start? Raise anything contentious at the talk page before (or maybe after, if it seems no big deal). Tony (talk) 10:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks so much for your review of St. Michael's Cathedral, Qingdao. I was wondering if you could go back to the article review page here, strikethrough any objections that have been resolved to your satisfaction, and then add your support vote, if you think it warrants one. Thanks! ɳorɑfʈ ^Talk! 06:20, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I did support. I'll check. Tony (talk) 07:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, there continue to be significant problems with your delinking edits. This time, the script-based edit to [[Wales] ] has removed several instances of linked languages (English, Wels, Italian) without replacing the unlinked text. The result left several mangled sentences in the article that had to be cleaned up by myself and another editor. --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:06, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for continuing to make faulty script-assisted edits as seen here. If you would like to be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any admin can unblock without consulting me if Tony convinces them that he will properly review his script-assisted edits going forward.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:21, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, I've undone this block after a discussion on AN/I. It would be better not to use the script again until the malfunction has been fixed, just in case it happens again. The other admins who commented on AN/I agreed it would be better to disable the script than to see your block continue. I don't know how to disable it myself, but someone else might go ahead and do that until whoever wrote it can iron out the bugs. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to let you know that Xeno has disabled it, but apparently it could still be run locally, though it would not be a good idea to do that. I wonder if Malleus would know how to fix this. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a pretty sorry state of affairs! how exactly is infeffing anyone, let alone a respected long standing editor, who is clearly "upset" supposed to assist a situation. Master SarekOfVulcan seems to be occurring on my watchlist a litle too often of late. You have my sympathy Tony!  Giacomo  21:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SarekOfVulcan needs to be reined in. He's the sort of administrator who gives administrators a bad name, and he ought to be blocked himself to prevent any further disruption. Malleus Fatuorum 22:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the above. How does an indeffing someone as valuable and respected as Tony help the project? Well, I don't think it does. Seems as if SarekOfVulcan is trying to make a bit of name for himself. Aaroncrick ^TALK 22:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding my voice to those believing the Indef to be utterly ridiculous. It was like caging the swan because the cygnets ate the chickfeed. Even though the swan had already sincerely promised to check the cygnets' behaviour. There may well have been one or two slip-ups (e.g. "Founder" to "dounder" and few other strange things here) since making that promise but an indef was totally over the top. A bit more good faith and less finger pointing might not go amiss around here. In my experience, Tony is a thoughtful and highly respected editor: this recent issue with the script is a very rare error on his part and should have been treated that way i.e. with a knuckle-rapping rather than a hanging --Jubilee♫clipman 23:38, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, the indef was applied by Sarek following an incident this morning where the script was applied to the article Wales. It malfunctioned, but was not repaired by Tony. This was after the AN/I discussions of the past few days, and after his assurances regarding checking the output. Per Sarek's posts on the matter, it was never cast as a permanent block. --Ckatz^chat_spy 23:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But Ckatz, how was the block going to help anyone? What's the point of blocking someone for a short while? NO point at all, just causes disruption. Aaroncrick ^TALK 01:18, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ckatz is just upset that Tony is using a script at all, and this is just a continuation of that campaign to prevent him undoing the endemic overlinking 'ratchet' here on WP. There is nothing inherently wrong with using a script to assist his editing, as Tony is doing, except that as a script newbie, I can sympathise that an apparently innocent tweak to code can have unintended consequences. In any event, it seems not to be the same problem at all which went to ANI, AFAICT. I feel this block is a blundering knee-jerk, an over-reaction. You may criticise his scripting skills, but this block is just soooo aggressive, and not at all a suitable solution to the apparent problem. Tony just needs to take care to review his edits before pushing the 'save' button until he is sure there are no bugs in his script. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:48, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Ohconfucius and much of the other sentiment expressed here. A block was not necessary at all. A stern warning and disabling of Tony's script would have probably done the trick. Instead, this block will serve only to increase tensions. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:55, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was an "FYI" post, Ohconfucius. Nothing more, nothing less. Using it as an opportunity for yet another jibe about this fantasy "link it all campaign" rubbish is not helpful in the least. --Ckatz^chat_spy 01:58, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree with the suggestion of an alternate account for delinking and that Tony needs some sort of "script mentor" to sort out all of the errors. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:55, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Ohconfucius, unfortunately there's too many power-tripping/non-thinking admins out there. A thoughtless indef block is likely to lose an editor, as it's happened on far too many occasions before. Aaroncrick ^TALK 01:56, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. An admin acting in the spirit of AGF would block for what? 24hrs? A week? Really whatever time was realistic to sort out the problems with the script. Indef is such a "feck off we'd rather you weren't here", it's hardly sending the right message. Chin up Tony, but sort the fecking script out man.--Joopercoopers (talk) 01:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the malfunction? The script was a TINY part of the edit. It took 30 minutes of manual work to copy-edit, unlink things like "railway"? This is hard to believe. Tony (talk) 02:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC) Ah, it's really quite hard to detect. I will not use the script again until it is proven by a third party to work faultlessly. Tony (talk) 02:06, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Through our experiences together, I have found you to be one of the most helpful editors on Wikipedia. Please keep up the great work, and let me know if I can ever be of any assistance! ---kilbad (talk) 22:51, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]