SlimVirgin wrote:
It's rare that an article continues to get better after being featured, for example, but not unusual for it to deteriorate unless it's watched closely. When I wrote that people should hesitate to edit good prose, I meant precisely that -- not that they shouldn't, but that they should ask themselves whether what they want to add or remove really does constitute improvement.
Yes, but that's really a separate issue, I feel. Featured articles, only 0.1% of the articles, are almost by definition a "local maximum" for writing. If you wanted a better article, it might need to be changed around, not just pushed to the top of the slope. (The analogy is with trying to get to a higher mountain peak, from the one where you are now: you are going to have to descend before climbing.)
So I think David Gerard has a point; and FA, our star system for articles, is as usual, a bit misleading as to the general needs of the site. We do need factual content added, as a matter of course. We do not need edits reverted as uncultured in writing terms, when they offer content improvements. We do need, to go back to something Sarah brought up, to parse "major copy edit" as "reorganisation" + "copy edit as tarting up", and in that order.
Charles