Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-27/Lazy Virtues

Shouldn't these be parentheses?

"Based on the classroom experiences of Cummings [and many other teachers who have led Wikipedia assignments] . . . " Is this an editor's insert to the article by Ragesoss, or a parenthetical expression written by the author? If the latter, parentheses should be used instead of brackets. If the former, uh, why? Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The brackets, rather than parentheses, were intentional. I meant to emphasize that other teachers' assignments were not discussed in the book, so this was a sort of aside in the midst of a summary of the book. I thought parentheses would not make that sufficiently clear.--ragesoss (talk) 00:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for writing back; I enjoyed reading your review, but brackets are normally used within quotations or for something introduced within the text by an editor — an interposition, as it were. Since it was your personal aside, normally you would use parentheses, and the reader would expect as much. Sorry to be such a dweeb, but I have done editing for a living, and I was a little confused. Keep up the good work! Wikipedia:MoS#Brackets_and_parentheses. My best, sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I imagined it as stepping outside my role as reviewer for a moment...sort like a comment from me-the-editor rather than me-the-reviewer, although I probably never knew the actual rules for brackets before you pointed this out. In any case, clearly it has made things less clear. I'll change it to parentheses. Thanks!--ragesoss (talk) 02:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

General comments

• I really enjoyed all three reviews. I hope that we are able to do similar reviews for other works related to wikipedia as they are produced. Thanks for the good work! --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks! I hope so, too. It depends on the supply of reviewers. I've been comping books that I think would be worthwhile to review (some of which are more directly related to Wikipedia than others) at the Signpost review desk. Feel free to sign up if you're interested in reviewing anything.--ragesoss (talk) 18:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)