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

Mon Oct 10 22:25:43 UTC 2005

Mgm wrote:

---If incremental changes mess up the page's organization the way to fix
it is to implement the changes into the organization, not to revert
and remove them altogether.

I'm also wondering why uninvitedcomany thinks an edit with great
improvements would require him to become a revert warrior. If the
changes are really that good you'll be able to get others to revert
for you.---

I think I described the edits we're talking about here as "unremarkable
-- neither helpful nor
especially detrimental to the article."

Probably the best example is an accurate, though perhaps poorly worded
and misplaced summary of a fact that already appears elsewhere in the
article.  Such prose can't be improved or rewritten, because it already
exists in the article in the proper place with the appropriate wording. 
There is nothing useful to be done but revert the change, even though it
was done in good faith and was factually sound, and even perhaps
well-referenced.

One of the things I've learned about Wikipedia is that the editing
experience differs considerably among subject areas.  There are many
areas of the project that aren't controversial, and that are edited
primarily by disinterested Wikipedians.  It is in these subject areas
-- which include the vast bulk of the articles -- where MGM's
statements are absolutely true.  In other more controversial areas, 
such laudable civility does not hold.  There are parts of Wikipedia
where you can change "a" to "the" and have it seem as though you have
detonated a land mine, so fragile is the editing truce that prevails.

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