Well, not much to see here. A month ago I thought it might be good to write an editor log, since no one has really been doing them. So I've been making notes on what I did all month long, and turned up a lot of boring, small tasks that are probably not really anything anyone really wants to read about.
And then, this morning, someone mentioned in the chatbox that there hadn't been an editor log since April, that they didn't know what editors did all day (work at full-time jobs, mostly), and compared the editors to a secret society. Which is a fair cop. So here's what I did in August.
Removed writeups (four). Usually these are first attempts by new users that need changes to meet E2 standards, and usually they are reposted again in short order. This was a sparse month for writeup removals, largely because more and more new users are using the writeup review feature, meaning that mistakes are fixed before posting.
Welcomed new users (two). In the past this has usually involved a simple welcome message and a link to E2 quick start, but these days new users seem to appear with a draft in hand demonstrating that they get basic formatting and linking without reminders. New Users++
Reviewed drafts (ten). Usually this involves basic proofreading, and reminding new users to make links. The editors as a group have been running a bit slow in getting reviews done, so if you do request a review, plan on it taking anywhere from a few hours to a day before getting a response. Editors do not have a shift schedule, and a review requires someone to sit down for a serious read and consideration -- even if editors are on-line, they may just be cruising the chatbox while preparing dinner or deworming the cat. However, we just got a spiffy new nodelet that should make it easier to see who requested a review, so hopefully we'll be getting these done faster.
Moving writeups (11). For example, Centre was moved to Center, Hero With A Thousand Faces was moved to The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Most of these are pretty straightforward. There were more moves than usual this month because datagirl's brain wave frequencies metanode had writeups in alpha, beta, etc. These writeups are now in alpha wave, beta wave, etc. Links in the metanode were pipelinked to reflect these changes. A notable move included combining the FTAA and Free Trade Area of the Americas nodes; this was an unusual case because Purvis (last logged in over 8 years ago) had writeups in both nodes, one done before the Summit of the Americas and one after. These two were combined into one, with an hr tag added to separate the before and after texts.
Reordering writeups within a node (um... lost count. About ten?). For example, moving Flip's writeup to the top of Hajj, to act as a lede, or moving the writeups dealing with the traditional statue gargoyle above the characters named after it. It is worth noting that one of these moves involved my own writeup, Paper Towns, which I moved above a similar review because the other review contained rather important, and unlabeled, spoilers. I checked this change with other editors first, and there were no objections.
Deleted sparse and empty categories of a fled user. This is the first time I've done this, and it is not likely to be common, given that few people create categories without putting things in them. I also moved one factual category to be editable by everyone. And, of course, I created a few more categories of my own, some of which I set free to you all. One category has been moved to the Everyone account for storage; I have no idea if this is going to be something that we do, but we need somewhere to stick 'completed' categories that need little or no maintenance.
Found problems. Corrected minor typos and broken links. The biggest problem was in the formatting of the Elizabethan insults node, which was badly formatted with PRE tags; an editor with better HTML skills than I made it into a fancy table. But I found the problem, so I'm taking partial credit.
Helped with random tasks. Well, not much this month. But for future reference, editors can fix unparented nodes, change titles, help with HTML, and add firmlinks. This month was mostly limited to unhiding a writeup for a user and fixing typos and broken links that users pointed out. Halspal has done a great job of finding nodeshells that have lingering editor cools, so I removed a handful of those.
And I think that that's that. Editors do other stuff too -- node, and vote, and C!, and sanctify, and adjust karma in the chatbox, but you do those too. I also didn't do all the fun things an editor can do -- for example, I did not 'editor C!' anything last month, nor lock a node, nor insure a writeup. But hopefully that demystifies editors for another few months, at least.