User talk:Sriefmadsakzro

A post facto analysis of your revert..

...yes, this has me rather confused. The gratuitous Latin may have been a bit much, similarly some instances of comma misuse. But taking a bunch of likely-looking sentences to try and improve the surrounding paragraph(s) as part of a rewrite, and having that reverted... is the core issue here.(A thing worthy of the 'minor edit' tag, certainly.) Silverwing235 (talk) 11:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate your willingness to come here and ask me to explain, and I'm glad to see that you could predict some of the issues I took with your edit. (You even guessed that I would object to usage of “Exempli gratia” over “E.g.” or, better yet, “For example”!)

I may respond more completely when I have time later, but for now, I'd like to go through the diff you linked and say which of your changes are (in my opinion) worth keeping. (I might specify some that you should avoid, but I don't know if I'll touch on all of them—if there's one in particular that I don't ultimately mention, and you want me to explain it, please bring it up specifically.)

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✓ Insert “E.g.”/“For example” (just not the full Latin phrase, as you clearly know you shouldn't), but the rest of that paragraph looks alright as it is.

✕ I don't think you should try again to combine any of the sentences of this paragraph. (I would invite you to convince me otherwise, but life is short, and I'm really not in the mood. And again, the rest of the paragraph is fine—in particular, it's structurally cohesive.)

✓ Insert the “also” from your original edit (under “Blocks vs. rocks”).

✕ I don't think it's useful to insert “the” into “... weigh much less than [_] raw forms of construction...”—anyway, it's not necessary.

This is a somewhat subtle point about a clearly minor change, but it is actually one of the reasons I reverted your edit. However, if nothing else had been wrong with your edit, this issue would not have been enough to cause me to revert it. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't still have objected to this particular insertion—it's still not something you needed to do, let alone should have done—but it does mean that I don't think the result was harmful enough to deserve much scrutiny by itself. (I.e., I think you should consider avoiding this kind of change, but I don't think editors in general should spend much time thinking about it.)

✕ I don't think you should try to edit the paragraph “Building a bridge...”—all three of those commas were erroneous (i.e., wrong, not merely unnecessary). If you couldn't find a rule of English grammar which requires a comma to appear in those positions, you should not have inserted them there.

This is something you've been asked not to do, and was the primary reason I reverted your edit. I hope you can see why this strikes me as egregious. If you can't, know that although I wouldn't much mind explaining again (if you ask), there isn't much more to say—you were asked not to do it. As I say, I could still try to elaborate if that is what you want.

✱ In the paragraph “Unlike raw stone or wood...”, the original is fine. Your change (combining the sentences with a comma, replacing “this” with “which”) would have been better if you had furthermore removed the word “also” from that sentence. (Thus, I think you should either leave it be, or implement your change and remove the word “also”).

✕ In the paragraph “Blocks are more valuable than rocks...”, the first two sentences don't need to be combined. The word “having” is clumsier than a full stop there between them; if this needs explanation, I can elaborate.

✓ In the same paragraph (“Blocks are more valuable than rocks...”), your inserted comma was correct, and should be added.

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I think that addresses each of the changes in the diff.

If you choose to restore any of the changes I mentioned, though, make each distinct change in a different edit—and IMO, you should do that with every revision that you make to this wiki. It will enable other editors to refer to the revisions separately, since each revision will then have its own diff. Grouping a large number of changes sensibly requires an editor to exercise judgment, and in this case, I don't think the grouping was helpful.

That said, keep in mind that if a “problem edit” appears in the middle of a series of okay edits, that presents a small annoyance for other editors—thus, before you make an extensive edit which you have an urge to make, you should carefully consider whether you're doing the right thing, and not just the thing you want to do. Boldness is useful when adding content, but copy editing is a special activity in which the rules, while subject to change, are received, and fancy isn't conducive to good results. “Boldness” in copy editing involves being certain of a number of details about the state of the original and how it could be altered (all with respect for “the” rules) for the better (not simply altered).

You can choose to ignore any or all of my advice—you don't need me to tell you that—but obviously, I don't think you should.

Finally—and please understand that this is not meant to be unfriendly, but just a statement about practicality—neither I nor any other editor will be able to give you all the details you need to avoid repeatedly committing the same or similar errors in every edit you make. If you frequently make the wrong judgment about a certain kind of change (as I think you consistently do with the insertion of commas, and often also in combining sentences and other operations involving the placement of new punctuation), then it might be better to simply stop yourself from making that kind of change. Don't make it other editors' responsibility to keep your edits in line.

—οɼѕаk 18:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Based on your edits to block subsequent to the revert, I think some of my points above were misunderstood (for example, the paragraph where you inserted “E.g.:” with other rephrasing). I also notice that I didn't actually cover a couple of changes which ought to be made (such as an or after arrowheads). Since I see now that you have self-reverted, I assume that you are in the process of making other changes, so I'm going to withhold further comment.

The point isn't that the article is perfect as it is—I actually think many of these things should be revised. The point is that that doesn't mean it should be changed in ways that aren't warranted (and definitely not in ways that are simultaneously wrong without making anything better). In particular, any intentional restructuring should serve a concrete purpose (other than to satisfy a single editor's taste or any feeling that something isn't right), as should any superficial alteration of punctuation, grammar, diction, etc., which furthermore should not introduce an error where none existed in the original.

—οɼѕаk 20:56, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

TBH, what you thought was a 'self-revert' was, in fact, an 'editorial pirouette' to deal with your comma suggestion, which had failed to be implemented properly on the first go around. Silverwing235 (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Offhand (not looking), I don't really know what you mean. If it helps, I was referring to this diff (which I linked earlier), which reverted a number of changes you'd made in the several prior edits. Either way, it signaled that you were in the middle of more changes and that I might as well let you finish before comparing. —οɼѕаk 13:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh dear, in that case, I was clearly a bit too subtle on signalling that I was actually done with changes, whoops! Silverwing235 (talk) 14:05, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm again not sure what you mean, since (looking now) it looks like there were additional edits just minutes after that one. Keep in mind, even if an editor replies to talk messages, they're probably not actively monitoring recent changes to other pages. (This side-discussion is a total non-issue, so I'm not going to worry about the resolving the details further. Any remaining confusion can be ignored.) —οɼѕаk 15:55, 23 February 2021 (UTC)