On 12/20/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and interpretations between those sources and our readers.
I'm not saying they should be. I'm saying that the 'populist' view is, if taken to extremes, asking for too much verbatim quoting. If readers raise objections to some basic massaging for readability, they can go elsewhere and see if they really like the original sources that much better. The whole point about writing articles in technical areas is that almost everyone would hate treatments that are really faithful to the initial formulations.
Okay, but we don't need to take it to extremes if people are using common sense. I also dislike seeing lists of quotes because people can't string a narrative together. But as I said yesterday, I feel I'm seeing better editing every day: fewer articles with no sources; fewer with sources misused; fewer that consist of lists of quotes; fewer that are full of personal opinions. I believe that adherance to the content policies is turning the hard core of regular editors into encyclopedists, and the less regular ones are picking up on the changing climate and following suit. And I believe the content policies are strongly supported.
Sarah