On 12/20/06, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews(a)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