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Guild of Copy Editors 2023 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2023 Annual Report Our 2023 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Introduction Membership news, obituary and election results Summary of Drives, Blitzes and the Requests page Closing words – Your Guild coordinators: Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Association internationale de bibliophilie (AIB)

Hello, thank you for letting me know that you removed the change I made to the page regarding the Association internationale de bibliophilie (AIB). I made my first edit yesterday and do not quite understand what makes it better to remove a change rather than first getting in touch with the person who made it to ask for an explanation. I am a member of the Association internationale de bibliophilie (AIB) and made the change after talking to the Secretary of the Association a few days ago. We both had noticed that the information provided on the Wikipedia page was outdated. I consequently tried to edit the pages in French and English. For reasons I don't understand, I was unable to put the name of the current president (Kenneth Pfaehler) on the French page (I could only delete the wrong information that the current president was Jean Bonna, who stepped down in 2024). I changed the content of the article on both pages to at least provide accurate information about the current president. As far as I know, there is no Internet webpage I could provide to back that claim, but is there anything which could make you think that I made up the information regarding the current president? Jonathan Chiche (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, Jonathan Chiche. If you are a member of the Association internationale de bibliophilie, then contributing to the Wikipedia article in question would constitute a conflict of interest under Wikipedia's policy. The policy states that COI editing is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia and [e]ditors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article's content. If you wish to add updated, accurate information about the president of the association, please follow Wikipedia's best practices at WP:COIEDIT.

Wikipedia also requires that all claims made on articles are properly verifiable, as per the verifiability policy, so the name of the current president must be cited by a reliable source. In addition, Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed, which is what I followed in this case. Therefore, you must find a method of citation that allows other editors and readers of the article to prove that the claim is true, whether that be a publicly-accessible book, website or other form of media.

I hope that clarifies your queries regarding what you should do to enable accurate information to be added, and happy editing!

Regards, ContributeToTheWiki (talk • contribs) 21:31, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for your explanation. I do not have much time to devote to editing Wikipedia and the only reason why I do it is to provide accurate information. The fact that providing the name of the current president of an association for a member of that association constitutes a conflict of interest is new to me. I understand the wish to back articles with citations, but I do not have much time to write for Wikipedia, am not familiar with editing format (e.g. for footnotes) and English is not my mother tongue. I would consequently have had a much more pleasant first experience as a registered user if my edit (providing a factual piece information) had not been deleted almost immediately without even anyone getting in touch with me beforehand to at least inquire as to whether I could provide a reference or who I was (I am perfectly OK to openly state my identity, and I am using my real name here) and how come I happen to have information regarding this association.

For your reference, I also had edited the French version of the Wikipedia page regarding the Association internationale de bibliophilie. Please feel free to delete my edit to revert to an inaccurate version. There are other issues with the (French and English) pages, including inaccurate information, but I am sure you understand that I do not wish to make any edit in the current situation.

Also for the record, there is a page on Wikipedia which I am in an excellent position to judge that it most likely was written by people having very strong conflicts of interest (including financial ones; or at the very least misled by such people, although the first possibility seems much more likely to me), about something which should not be on Wikipedia anyway given its lack of actual significance, a page which is misleading and contains inaccurate information. Now, I *do* have a conflict of interest in this case, since the reason I happen to judge the accuracy of this page is because of my professional activity, which has led me to provide an appraisal of items discussed on that Wikipedia page. Now, I *will not* edit it, although it certainly *should* be completely deleted and should not be on Wikipedia at all in the first place. People who contributed to it certainly didn’t state their real conflicts of interest, and the page misleads everyone one who reads it. What is Wikipedia’s policy regarding that? Does it align well with Wikipedia policy to have a misleading page written by (at least partly, most likely) people having very strong conflict of interest? It certainly seems not to have elicited any deletion, contrary to my edit providing the name of the current president of an association. Jonathan Chiche (talk) 09:47, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Jonathan Chiche, thank you for your explanation. It may interest you to know that another contributor to Wikipedia has, since I last made comment on this talk page, added the information you were previously wishing to update here, along with a verifiable citation.

If you wish to suggest further edits that should be made to update the page and improve its accuracy, please remember you are welcome to propose these changes on the respective article's talk page, so they can be peer-reviewed and, if necessary, supplemented with a reliable, verifiable source. You can do this by following the instructions in the edit request wizard.

Regarding the page on Wikipedia which I am in an excellent position to judge that it most likely was written by people having very strong conflicts of interest, you can let me know what the page is, and either I or another Wikipedian can investigate a potential case of conflict-of-interest or paid editing. Wikipedia has a process called speedy deletion, which can be invoked to suggest that a page be deleted for one of several reasons. In this case, the reason that would be given is A7: no indication of importance. If the page were found to contain unfixable factual errors or were simply not notable enough for inclusion on Wikipedia, it will be deleted, if someone reports the page.

I hope this reply answers your questions adequately.

Regards, ContributeToTheWiki (talk • contribs) 20:40, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for your reply and explanations. I had seen that someone else had found a source and modified the article accordingly. It may however interest you to know that another contributor of Wikipedia, who was assigned as my mentor, replied that they did not consider my updating the Wikipédia page as a conflict of interest, although I am a member of the association, given the nature of my edit. However, I understand the request for sources (the one found by that other contributor is indeed reliable, and I happen to know the author).

Regarding the other page I mentioned, I do not claim there has been any paid editing, but you can have a look at https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E6%BE%84%E5%AE%9A%E5%A0%82 and get a first impression of what this is. Thank you! Jonathan Chiche (talk) 18:56, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

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.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:57, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

June blitz bling

		The Minor Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to ContributeToTheWiki for copy edits totaling between 1 and 1,999 words (including rollover words) during the GOCE June 2026 Copy Editing Blitz. Congratulations, and thank you for your contributions! In solidarity, Miniapolis 17:07, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Jaime Laredo Wikipedia page

Please take a look at the Talk page for the Jaime Laredo wikipedia page. Need help with assessing when it is appropriate to place BLP verification tag on entire page rather than on specific sentences or paragraphs. Thanks, Nome Hodas — Preceding unsigned comment added by NomeHodas (talk • contribs) 14:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your message, NomeHodas.

I believe the purpose of the BLP verification template is less to do with questioning the article's notability and more on emphasising the lack of citations that support substantial claims the article makes. For instance, a very well-known and successful person can have this tag on their article if a significant proportion of the content is unreferenced and hence unverifiable.

In this case, therefore, I think it entirely appropriate that the template is placed at the beginning of the article to alert editors to this fact. As is mentioned in the talk page, This tag is not a "scarlet letter" - it is simply there to inform editors that more sourcing is needed.

Additionally, the number of references an article contains in no way implies its claims are verifiable, and so should not be taken as an indication of whether the template is suitable.

I hope that clarifies the rationale behind the addition of the template.

Happy editing! ContributeToTheWiki (talk • contribs) 21:19, 16 July 2026 (UTC)