On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 5:31 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 7 August 2010 01:25, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Destructionism: The tendency for Wikipedia articles which have reached an advanced degree of completeness and encyclopedic value to be edited in increasingly destructive ways, simply because perfection has already been achieved or nearly achieved, yet articles remain open to editing.
You have an erroneous assumption: that there is perfection or that even a high quality article says all that anyone would ever want to know on the topic.
It tends to proceed in a cycle. Well-written, someone adds more stuff they think is missing, someone polishes the writing once more, someone adds more stuff.
Those who did the polishing get *really annoyed* at the people adding more *stuff*, but it probably benefits the reader. People come to Wikipedia for its breadth of coverage, not its polished writing.
Indeed, some articles decay into mush. I didn't say polishing was easy
it isn't, which is why the people who do it get so resentful.
d.
I don't think you have to have delusional ideas about article "perfection" to understand that at as article quality increases, the chance that any individual edit will improve it decreases.
- causa sui