6

I've been seeing an awful lot of very substantial wiki suggestions, mostly from one editor. Some seem reasonable enough, although hard to verify thoroughly; some are arguably wrong. Either way, approval is basically just a matter of approver whim or impressions, rather than of strict correctness.

(I'm also seeing a lot of excerpt suggestions from the same user. Most of those are less "usage guidance" and more "quick summary of idea", which is of dubious merit.)

In order to make wiki approval more reliable, I can see two approaches. One is to build up wikis in bits and pieces, making sure each suggestion is correct and minimally complete before moving on to expand on the subjects more. So a three paragraph wiki might start out as a sentence or two covering the three points, then expand into a sentence or two for each point, then expand into the full paragraph form. This would allow reviewers to get a better sense of the structure and verify at a deeper level.

The other is to draft tag wikis here on Meta before posting them. This allows comments before the initial wiki revision, which could produce a better basic structure and allow more communication. If this route is chosen for a tag wiki, this question would serve as a good place for such drafts, posted as answers.

13
  • 6
    Might be a bit out of place, but I see it too important not to say it here: PLEASE DO NOT SUGGEST TAG WIKI EDITS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE TAG REALLY MEANS AND PLEASE DO NOT PLAGIARIZE TAG WIKIS, ESPECIALLY NOT FROM WIKIPEDIA. Sorry, I'm not usually in all-caps, but bad wikis are really a nuisance.
    – M.A.R.
    Jan 11, 2016 at 20:19
  • @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.: Yeah. At least these do not seem to be copied from anywhere; they're original, as far as I can tell, and they're usually not blatantly wrong, either.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Jan 11, 2016 at 20:20
  • Nathan for me there are certain circumstances where wrong is as bad as blatantly wrong.
    – M.A.R.
    Jan 11, 2016 at 20:21
  • 1
    I suggest that if someone creates a tag like syllepsis or hendiadys, which isn't that commonly used among non-grammarians, that they also take on the responsibility for creating a suitable description of it. That will nip potential Wikipedia and dictionary plagiarism in the bud because folks who don't understand the tags won't feel compelled to look them up and document them.
    – ColleenV
    Jan 12, 2016 at 2:22
  • @ColleenV: Maybe so. Not sure that would do anything for the suggestions for "auxiliary-verb" &c, though.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Jan 12, 2016 at 2:26
  • There is no point in writing a letter if you are not going to send it. Well, I just edited two tag wiki excerpt, so I don't know if it's me(?) or who. But I think it would be a right practice to tell the user straight away, even if it's me(..."suggestions for 'auxiliary-verb'").
    – Usernew
    Jan 12, 2016 at 5:55
  • 1
    @Usernew: I wasn't thinking specifically of your suggestions (although I skipped that one when it came by); it was just a conveniently mundane example of excerpts that get proposed even when they're not exactly all that unfamiliar to a knowledgeable layman.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Jan 12, 2016 at 6:04
  • hmm.. But like I said, why not shoot this message to the user you are specifically talking about? The problem will persist if the user don't get this message. I mean, what are the odds of him/her coming here on Meta and knowing the problem?
    – Usernew
    Jan 12, 2016 at 6:14
  • 1
    @Usernew: Unless I comment on a random post of theirs or ping them in chat (which I don't think works unless they're currently on), I don't have any good way to call their attention to this. I could toss the link in a reject message, I guess.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Jan 12, 2016 at 6:31
  • This sounds like me. Since I hate causing problems, I'll just stop editing wikis until the overall wiki discussion makes further progress.
    – lurker
    Jan 13, 2016 at 1:22
  • 1
    @lurker: In general, overall discussions don't make progress without specific cases, so I'd strongly recommend making the effort to work through a wiki edit in either of the ways the posts suggests before giving up.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Jan 13, 2016 at 1:35
  • What would be an appropriate amount of time to leave a draft up for review? The tag wikis can always be edited, so nothing is set in stone, so I'm inclined to leave it up for a couple of days, then just add a note to the answer that the draft has been copied to the tag.
    – ColleenV
    Mar 23, 2016 at 16:27
  • @ColleenV: I think that's reasonable. Once a few people have seen it, that's fine.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Mar 23, 2016 at 17:28

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
6

So I just found the definition of compliment in the tag wiki for complement.

If you look over the revision history, we've tried to correct this a number of times and the wrong definition keeps getting put back in.

At this point, I think only two people approving wiki edits is too few. We need at least three, because folks just aren't being careful enough.

And I realize this is not really an answer - I just didn't want to start a second discussion about essentially the same topic.

2

"Labile verb" () usage draft

Labile verbs are transitive when the verb describes a change to the object ("I broke the window.") Labile verbs are intransitive when the verb describes the same change to the subject ("The window broke.")

In some contexts, ergative verbs are the same as labile verbs.

1

Redundancy usage guidance draft (Submitted 3/23/2016)

I've decided that because there are only 25 questions with , and some of them are about duplicating words and at least one is about redundant information, to just lump both senses together into one tag. I'm not sure about the "repeated information" part. An example of that type of question would be Among A Group Of Friends.

For questions about whether the same word appearing two or more times in a sentence is appropriate, or about whether a word or phrase is repeating information unnecessarily.

1

Because there were no strong feelings, I went ahead and added it

We need some usage guidance for ; it is the first of our tags sorted by popularity that has no description. Here is a quick-and-dirty starting point:

for questions about words and word forms used to indicate ownership, belonging, or a similar relationship.

Related tags: (these might need descriptions updated relative to what we settle on for )

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .