[WikiEN-l] Re: Crappy prose isn't the main "quality" problem

Wed Oct 26 20:26:44 UTC 2005

>From: Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
[much snippage]
>There was an incident a few years back where Lir challenged the commonplace
>assertion that "Nightfall" was considered Isaac Asimov's best short story.
>Arguments flew back & forth until someone dug up a suitable quotation
>with a proper attribution, & ended that minor crisis. However, that event
>illustrated a problem with Wikipedia, in that expressing a judgement or
>making an analysis often leads (or has the likelihood of leading) to a
>revert war.
>
>Most editors aren't interested in getting bogged down in one of those, &
>will write defensively & only set forth facts (e.g., "Hamlet is a
>drama in five acts believed by most critics to have been written by
>William Shakespeare"). Our articles suffer because of this.
>
>Now the obvious solution is to do the necessary research & report what
>important critics have said about the work of literature...
>
>However, for some authors no body of secondary literature exists. For
>example, Mary Gaitskill is an author worthy of an article in Wikipedia;
>but were I to attempt to write an analysis of her works using quotations,
>I'd be forced to use only book reviews many of which are written by
>people lacking authority. 

Very well said, and jibes with my thinking and experience.

Another point is that it is easier to observe that something IS opinion than 
to judge whether it is well-founded, generally-accepted opinion. 

Wikipedia is _replete_ with unsourced but well-founded value judgements that 
are _entirely appropriate_ to an encyclopedia article: "Beethoven is widely 
regarded as the greatest composer of all time;" "Shakespeare has a reputation 
as one of the greatest of all writers in the English language and in Western 
literature, as well as one of the world's pre-eminent dramatists;" Isaac 
Newton is "widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history."

When such assertions are "commonplace" to anyone with a high-school 
education, they are usually allowed to stand. When they are not, sound 
judgements that are well-accepted _by anyone familiar with the topic_ are 
challenged. In many cases, it would be completely appropriate to let them 
stand, at least as placeholders, for a considerable length of time, before 
being replaced with well-attributed quotes. 

In my case, my own run-in was over an article on Harold Robbins' 
"blockbuster" novel, _The Carpetbaggers_. I had written:

"Like many of Robbins' other novels, _The Carpetbaggers_ combined good 
writing, a strong story, and numerous more-or-less-gratuitous scenes of 
explicit sex. The sex scenes were at the extreme outer boundaries of 
acceptability for a mainstream novel at its time of publication; _The 
Carpetbaggers_ was probably the first New York Times bestseller to include 
scenes in which characters engage in fellatio."

Now, I really don't think anyone familiar with the novel would challenge 
this, not even Robbins himself. But this editor insisted that it was "POV." 
When I cited something support he said "I'm assuming that you are citing 
movie critics' reviews. Erm... isn't it a little obvious that those reviews 
are opinions? Wikipedia is about facts, not opinions." (In fact, they were 
Amazon reader reviews and arguably non-authoritative, though representative).

The happy ending was that I was able to find a New York Times book review 
that said the same things I had said, only better. With regard to gratuitous 
sex, he said the plot was merely "an excuse for a collection of monotonous 
episodes about normal and abnormal sex?and violence ranging from simple 
battery to gruesome varieties of murder." In regard good writing, he said "If 
Mr. Robbins had no more talent than a verbose pulp-writer, it would be of no 
importance that the book is aimed so low. In the sections in which he avoids 
the lurid, he writes graphically and touchingly; on these pages, his dialogue 
is moving and his people have the warmth of life."

And the article was the better for it.

But I found the experience quite irritating, and rather Wiki-energy-sapping, 
and I think my original unattributed statement-of-the-commonplace was every 
bit as acceptable as "Beethoven is widely regarded as the greatest composer 
of all time."