On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 5:31 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7 August 2010 01:25, stevertigo
<stvrtg(a)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