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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:16 PM 5/23/2008, Sage Ross wrote:

>Bauerlein says: "The concern for bias probably underlies the
>neutrality style, but I wish I received a lot more biased,
>opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish, and colorful papers."
>  But there are many situations where the cut-and-dry approach of
>Wikipedia will serve students well.

Depends on what they are studying. NPOV is an excellent concept, but 
I think that most editors on Wikipedia don't understand it, or they 
have an impoverished view of what it is. NPOV does not exclude 
"opinion, argument, judgement, style, and color." Rather, it includes 
them in balance and with accurate framing. The way I've been putting 
it lately is, if you can see something from two points of view 
simultaneously, you've got depth perception.

>   The world has quite enough people
>who take a biased, opinionated, argumentative, judgmental, stylish,
>and colorful approach (to writing, to politics, to their jobs, etc.).

Uff! Where are they? Biased and opinionated, argumentative, and 
judgmental, fine. We've got plenty of these, particularly on 
Wikipedia. I've been doing computer conferencing since the 1980s, and 
I noticed something peculiar then, and it's still happening here. 
There would be a debate, and a flame war would start. And someone who 
was insulted would complain, and then debate would start over what 
had actually happened. And, quite clearly, there were plenty of 
participants and commentors who did not care to carefully read the 
record. What actually happened? It's almost as if nobody cared, 
except a person with wounded feelings, who usually ended up being 
some kind of outcast. I just saw a case where an admin made an 
incorrect decision, apparently misread the record, because what he 
said, that was the cause of his action, was simply incorrect. Later, 
trying to undo some of the damage, he reverts me, so I write him and 
ask him to reconsider. He rejects it with a repetition of his 
original error. I point out the error. He responds, "Take it to 
AN/I." Which I'm not going to do. One of the biggest biases is 
"Whatever I did was right." Physchim62 went down that road, it's got 
some ugly turns in it.

>Even if English professors aren't pleased with the trend, I think
>we'll be better off if the next generation has a higher proportion of
>educated people who take the Wikipedia path to writing and argument.

Actually, there are plenty of people who have worked for years with 
consensus process who know how to do it much better than the norm on 
Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is typical of the next generation, well, time 
to find a hiding place. Wikipedia was great, but certain structural 
problems became locked in. There are great masses of the project 
which are still functioning well, and there is a lot of inertia, but, 
from what I see talking with librarians, teachers, students, there is 
also a building reservoir of disgust with the process. Wikipedia is 
colossally inefficient, it does not respect and value editor time. 
Or, back to this thread, writer time.

>Surely there will still be plenty of clever and opinionated writers to
>write novels and waste ink on the New York Times op-ed pages.
>
>-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
>
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