[WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

Mon Oct 24 16:13:37 UTC 2005

Cormac Lawler wrote:
>On 10/24/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> (This is something to watch out for when you're overly proud of your
>> writing - if someone adds new information to the article in clunky,
>> horrible prose, you have to resist the urge to remove the blemish!)

> Work with it - the zen of the wiki :-)

I know, I know. I didn't realise explicitly that content beats prose
quality until I was doing an interview where I was asked about prose
quality and content. I answered, thinking out loud, that articles will
tend to go in a quality cycle of excellent prose, then a clunky lump
of important information added, then smoothed out to excellent prose,
rinse and repeat. And that if forced to choose, information beats
elegant prose, though the latter is always a good idea.

In particular, I realised guiltily that I have reverted clunky new
information because it broke up elegant prose. Bad! Wrong! Don't do
that! I swore to grit my teeth and resist in future.

- d.