On 5/24/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/5/24 SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com:
On 5/24/08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, I disagree: content accuracy is more important than writing flow, and reverting or even discouraging the addition of new information for the sake of writing flow is very bad practice.
I didn't mean that good prose should never be changed, but it would be nice to see it improved. Instead, what happens when you get an article to the point where the topic is well-covered and the writing flows well is that almost all edits to it after that are a deterioration. 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.
I'm speaking more of my own annoyance when I got an article to featured, it was well-written with good flow, and someone added some clunky, badly-written sentence that was ... entirely relevant. My initial urge to remove it as clunky was, IMO, just incorrect.
I don't see a problem with articles going through a cycle of well-written -> more details -> copyedited -> well-written. Of course, as Ian points out, domain knowledge is important in the copyeditor! (Or at least a talk page note "I've copyedited for flow and structure, please fix any important detail I may have messed up" - an express statement of non-OWNership.)
You're right, of course, but it makes it hard to attract good copyeditors and writers. If people spend a lot of time getting the structure of an article right, they're not going to want to keep doing it over and over like Sisyphus. Having said that, I feel I've noticed an improvement in general writing quality over the last year or so. I think the regular editors are beginning to pay more attention to it.