David Gerard wrote:
Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.
I have a pile of links on style on my user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide
I will often see a badly-written article on something I know about and
do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten [section name]".
My favourite writing style is still that found in The Economist:
incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences with a fantastic
density of information. They're not interested in NPOV - some of the
casual opinionation really makes me think of a friend's summary: "I
love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." - but I
think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing style.
I agree we need good writing, but I think trying to coerce everyone into
some common "Wikipedia house writing style" is not going to work, even
if we could agree on what it should be (which is not possible). Some
people think many of our articles are too chatty and informal, and would
prefer we adopt a tone more like an academic work. Others think we're
already too academic and should go more for a popular-press type of
tone. I like the variety of writing styles myself.
That said, I do often edit for style, but I try to confine myself to
clarifying things that are confusing, or changing particularly bad or
anachronistic styles. I certainly wouldn't go through and try to make
articles conform to my personal style preferences in general, though.
-Mark