[WikiEN-l] What to do about our writing quality?

[SlimVirgin]

On 5/24/08, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/5/24 SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com>:
>  > On 5/24/08, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >> Actually, I disagree: content accuracy is more important than writing
>  >>  flow, and reverting or even discouraging the addition of new
>  >>  information for the sake of writing flow is very bad practice.
>
>  > I didn't mean that good prose should never be changed, but it would be
>  > nice to see it improved. Instead, what happens when you get an article
>  > to the point where the topic is well-covered and the writing flows
>  > well is that almost all edits to it after that are a deterioration.
>  > It's rare that an article continues to get better after being
>  > featured, for example, but not unusual for it to deteriorate unless
>  > it's watched closely. When I wrote that people should hesitate to edit
>  > good prose, I meant precisely that -- not that they shouldn't, but
>  > that they should ask themselves whether what they want to add or
>  > remove really does constitute improvement.
>
>
>
> I'm speaking more of my own annoyance when I got an article to
>  featured, it was well-written with good flow, and someone added some
>  clunky, badly-written sentence that was ... entirely relevant. My
>  initial urge to remove it as clunky was, IMO, just incorrect.
>
>  I don't see a problem with articles going through a cycle of
>  well-written -> more details -> copyedited -> well-written. Of course,
>  as Ian points out, domain knowledge is important in the copyeditor!
>  (Or at least a talk page note "I've copyedited for flow and structure,
>  please fix any important detail I may have messed up" - an express
>  statement of non-OWNership.)

You're right, of course, but it makes it hard to attract good
copyeditors and writers. If people spend a lot of time getting the
structure of an article right, they're not going to want to keep doing
it over and over like Sisyphus. Having said that, I feel I've noticed
an improvement in general writing quality over the last year or so. I
think the regular editors are beginning to pay more attention to it.