[WikiEN-l] Article quality deterioration (was: a valid criticism)

Mon Oct 10 18:08:04 UTC 2005

> On 10/10/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes 
> > each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor 
> > especially detrimental to the article.  In aggregate, such changes 
> > destroy the organization of the article and compromise any 
> stylistic 
> > unity that may be present.

> What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in 
> an article to deteriorate, if  not revert? Are a bunch of 
> people who care about good writing supposed to be on hand 
> constantly to carefully tidy up after others, just so that we 
> can avoid wholesale reverting? 
> 
> Sarah

I agree with both Uninvited and Sarah (SlimVirgin) about piecemeal
revisions. It simply doesn't work, much of the time.

The only solution is a periodic full re-write of the article. The
[[cult]] article is a good example. I've given it a full rewrite once or
twice already. The last time, I made sure I found a definition of "cult"
which all sides could agree on and stuck in the intro. The last time I
checked, the definition had survived the test of time: no reverts by ANY
parties in over 6 months. (The article might have been renamed to [[list
of purported cults]] or the like.)

The key is to come up with an intro (in a paragraph or two) which
provides a theme that unifies the remainder (body) of the article.
Anyway, this is the approach that the peace foundations EP is using. I
believe Britannica uses the same approach.

Ed Poor