[WikiEN-l] Re: I demand a daily spot for great writing

Sun Oct 9 20:36:41 UTC 2005

On 10/9/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work entirely
> apart from the FA process.
>
It's a good idea, Ian. Good writing is given too little attention, and
yet it's the thing most likely to get us respected and read. No matter
how accurate and neutral an article is, if it's badly written, we look
silly. The greater the number of people editing an article, the faster
the writing declines, which means our most popular articles are often
not well written.

I've also noticed that many editors are quite happy to revert a copy
edit if there's just one or two things in it they don't like, without
realizing that a good copy edit is a lot of work and involves making
changes all the way through the article, and is therefore a hard thing
to go back and do again.

I'd welcome anything that brings the issue of good writing to people's
attention and makes editors respect it more.

Sarah