I like DG's points too, though Delerium I think youre
only half right about "coersion" -- and thats mostly
due to coersion being a hugely loaded term. I prefer
"guidance," and the problem (if there is one) is lack
of guidance, and a lack for a system or structure and
authoritative guidance, whereby editors of
demonstrated ability in certain skills are tagged as
such, recognized as such, and given some degree of
authority in proactively guiding newbies or those
yet-uninterested or familiar with WP principles,
processes, and now --with success -- high standards.
If Robert Henry is right (and judging by a number of
fine articles now laying in ruins I suspect he is),
then WP, should it desire to get finer control on
article quality, needs to modify its "completely open"
model a little bit. Im as anti-credentialist as
anyone, and even I dont think that making this change
would be a failure --considering what Wikipedia has
thus far proven about the positive nature of human
beings working on a completely open project. But now
that the project is by any accounts extremely
successful, it is a thing of value--one which people
naturally want to touch and leave their mark on,
whether its a proper mark or not, and whether its
truly in the spirit of our principles or not.
I just took a new look at the A_Course_in_Miracles
article. After lots of back and forth with Scottperry,
an ACIM devotee, Im still not sure if he 1) doesnt get
NPOV 2) doesnt care, and just nodded "yes, OK" alot
before doing the same old thing. In all it doesnt
matter -- the lede of ACIM is completely unacceptable
according to my high standards, and I fear that after
I rewrite it a matter of Style and Content will become
a matter of Conduct and Personality. I have tried to
be reasonable, and Scottperry has appeared earnest to
accomodate, but in the end the article is still
watered down POV crap. (At a first glance)
SV
--- Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in
general.
I have a pile of links on style on my user page:
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
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com