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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:51 PM 5/24/2008, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
>Yes and this burden sits directly on the shoulders of the writers, not the
>copyeditors.

Since this statement has been repeated, it wasn't some accident of 
wording. We won't build the project by identifying who is to blame. 
Good content is created by "writers" and "editors" working together. 
On Wikipedia, we are all, to some degree, writers and editors.

I personally find it very difficult, or, more accurately, tedious, to 
"write" and source at the same time. When I study a subject, I often 
do a lot of reading and writing, bouncing off of others, until the 
state of knowledge of the field is assimilated for me. Then I can 
truly write about it, usually in response to some specific need. What 
I write, if I'm being careful, is verifiable, but I don't add 
footnotes, because, though I know how I know what I know, usually, I 
don't have specific sources, page numbers, correct names of authors, 
URLs, etc., in mind. So I may add content off the top of my head, but 
my intention is that *all* of it is verifiable. What happens next 
depends on the motivations of other editors.

Here is what I do with the writing of others, assuming I'm familiar 
with the topic, and I tend not to do much editing of articles when 
I'm not familiar. If something is not sourced, but I think it is true 
and verifiable, and I have time, I'll add the source. I don't demand 
that the original author add it. I often don't know who that is, 
anyway, and Wikipedia doesn't have good tools to enable easy 
identification of who wrote what. I do not take out content that I 
believe is either correct, or editable to be correct. I might tag it 
for source if I don't have time to find it myself. On the other hand, 
if it I believe it to be incorrect, and it is unsourced, and it just 
doesn't belong in the article, I'll take it out.

There is no special burden on the original writer of material, but, 
in fact, it seems many editors think so, which is why I'm troubling 
to respond here. The burden of sourcing what is in Wikipedia is on 
*all* of us. The wiki process worked when people respected each 
other, and worked together to extend and clean it up. It is becoming 
more of an adversarial process. "Prove it or it's out, immediately," 
is, quite simply, AGF failure. That a writer put something in is 
prima facie evidence for it. Rebuttable, to be sure.

If I've put in something unsourced, on the other hand, and an editor 
takes it out, I've got no complaint against that editor, personally, 
if nobody then brings it back in with sourcing (including myself). 
But if we don't OWN articles, the flip side of this is that we don't 
have any personal responsibility for them. And when experts write for 
Wikipedia, they may not check watchlists every week. So they don't 
see AfDs, if anyone bothers to notify them. An expert has given 
serious time to create an article here, or to work on someone else's 
article, and then it is gone, with no notification, and for a 
non-Wikipedian, often no clue. All they know is that "someone" took 
it away. And then one more expert thinks that Wikipedia is worthless 
and a waste of time. And this is happening every day.