Just wondering: what's everyone's attitude to purely grammatical edits? I don't know enough, frankly, to write informative entries on games and characters but I know a comma splice when I see one and I'd like to get involved.
Grammar Nazis Welcome?
No, no such message is sent out when an article is edited, primarily because the article belongs to no one, but rather the community. As a wiki moderator myself, I personally welcome grammatical and punctuation changes to entries by those who know their English really, really well. Seriously, just do your thing and don't worry about community backlash, because it most certainly shouldn't happen when you're doing a favor for whichever entries you touch. There really aren't enough of your kind here on the site.
I want the articles to be as best written as possible. I welcome all grammatical corrections to pages.
Grammar corrections = cool. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Once you reach 1000 pts (which I don't know if you are or not), if you see a blurb or little article with blatant or small grammar errors, fix it once you see it. It is a benefit for all of us so you are doing the right thing.
"I got an entry denied for doing that once.If you tried doing so around the site's launch, it was probably denied because we were unable to detect those sorts of edits very well at the time. Back in those days, we had to scan the entire article manually for changes if the editor didn't leave a note to us in the little box detailing what was done. What probably happened was that we didn't find what had been changed and that was the reason it was denied.
Therefore I have not attempted since."
"Yep, we want to have a complete encyclopaedia of video gaming knowledge here, and whoever heard of an encyclopaedia with grammatical errors?"Fixed the spelling ;-) Should we go ahead and fix the spelling as well?
We presumably use American English, since this is an American site. But if someone chooses to write an article in British English, Canadian English, or some other variant, I'm not going to go through the article and change it all.
"We presumably use American English, since this is an American site. But if someone chooses to write an article in British English, Canadian English, or some other variant, I'm not going to go through the article and change it all.Neither am I (it would take forever), yet I would go back and correct any changes to an article that I made. It goes both ways.
"
"MattyFTM said:Yeah most of those are ok for his American English..."Yep, we want to have a complete encyclopaedia of video gaming knowledge here, and whoever heard of an encyclopaedia with grammatical errors?"Fixed the spelling ;-) Should we go ahead and fix the spelling as well?ecyclopedia to encyclopaediacolor to colourtire to tyrecenter to centreartifact to artefactpajama to pyjamamustache to moustacheprogram to programmeanalog to analogueI mean, we are using English, correct?"
"MattyFTM said:"Yep, we want to have a complete encyclopaedia of video gaming knowledge here, and whoever heard of an encyclopaedia with grammatical errors?"Fixed the spelling ;-) Should we go ahead and fix the spelling as well?ecyclopedia to encyclopaediacolor to colourtire to tyrecenter to centreartifact to artefactpajama to pyjamamustache to moustacheprogram to programmeanalog to analogueI mean, we are using English, correct?"
Yes, I just love redundant letters!
I'm glad people are actually okay with this. I did it once on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 page and felt kind of bad about it. It seemed wrong to me to basically proof-read someone else's work and get points for it. However, if you're all fine with it, then so am I.
"I'm glad people are actually okay with this. I did it once on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 page and felt kind of bad about it. It seemed wrong to me to basically proof-read someone else's work and get points for it. However, if you're all fine with it, then so am I.
"
It's a service to the website and to the community; no reason to feel bad about it.
What's wrong with correcting grammar? If we are to have a site that looks professional and is taken seriously, then we must have wiki entries written correctly in all respects.
You'll get at least one point.
Points are awarded based on how much you add to an article. If you make a lot of changes, but the size of the article decreases or remains the same, you won't get much points for it.
If I'm looking at a wiki page and the only error I can find is the lack of an apostrophe in "its" when it is supposed to be "it's," I won't bother. But if the grammar is massively screwed up, I think it's best to step in.
I think people's general lack of spelling skills is rediculous.
Ok, I actually hate myself for typing that.
Please believe me when I say that I personally don't care about getting editing points. I don't have an awful lot of spare time these days so there's absolutely no chance of me ever reaching the mystical 1000 either way.
That said, I do find it unfair that points are awarded purely for adding word count. It's something of a disincentive to editors. Person X spends ten minutes writing 500 words of absolute nonsense and is handsomely rewarded. Person Y spends an hour turning it into 350 words of pure poetry and gets a kick in the sack for his efforts.
I'm not sure what the solution is because you can't award points purely on, say, percentage of article changed either; who knows, maybe the changes are crap too. You really need someone making a qualitative judgement on edits. And there's an obvious man-power problem there.
Anyone have any ideas?
"Ha! At the moment I'm on one point. I think I inserted a hyphen somewhere about six months ago ..."Yeah, see that fire extinguisher page? I totally wrote that.
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