Talk:Requena

Redundancy again

"Built in the 13th century, the church was modified and rebuilt several times, most recently in the early 18th century."

@StellarD: with a comment "The existing structure, minus the foundation, dates from a later time period," you added "First" back at the beginning of the sentence. The church was only built once, then it was rebuilt several times, as the rest of the sentence states. Adding "first" doesn't add any meaning. Redundancy and repetition and saying the same thing over and over and going on and on about the same thing again and again and again doesn't make for interesting or concise writing. Ground Zero (talk) 06:17, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

The definition of rebuild is literally to build again. Removing 'first' here makes the original sentence less clear, i.e. will the visitor be looking at a 13th-century church, or one from a later century? There is no redundancy here – let's not sacrifice accuracy for the sake of brevity. –StellarD (talk) 06:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

The sentence says it was rebuilt several times, so it is obvious that the visitor will be looking at one from a later century. We can assume that readers know what "rebuilt" means as it is a common English word. Ground Zero (talk) 07:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Again, it's about clarity. Without 'first', the sentence is confusing and must be reread to make sense of it; 'first built' is standard English usage. I suppose we could say something like 'The existing structure was built on top of the foundations of a 13th-century church', but that's a lot more words to say the exact same thing. –StellarD (talk) 07:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing at all unclear about built and rebuilt. We use these two words exactly because they have different meanings. We expect our readers to understand common English words. But I can move on from this. There are lots of other badly-written articles that can be improved. Ground Zero (talk) 07:43, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Once again, I fear Ground Zero's "copyedits" introduce a wording that is subtly wrong or that gives a subtly wrong impression. But maybe the difference can be split with an entirely different wording? Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

The first thing that needs to be addressed is: what was the original sentence, and how was it changed? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 18:31, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I see, the word "first" was removed from the beginning of the sentence. I don't see why it should be removed in this way. Is there something in policy that says to do differently? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 18:32, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I cite Wikivoyage:Tone, which tells us to be concise. Because "built" and "rebuilt" are used to tell us the church's history, and the rest of the sentence tells us that the church was modified and rebuilt several times, "built" doesn't need a modifier. Removing "first" doesn't change the meaning of the sentence, Hobbitschuster's comment notwithstanding. But as I said above, I'm willing to move on from this. Ground Zero (talk) 19:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I think generally it's fine to remove those extra words, but I think in this case, it might be better to leave the word "first" just because it doesn't do any harm and it seems that people want to see it stay in the article. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 20:32, 20 October 2018 (UTC)