I like DG's points too, though Delerium I think youre only half right about "coersion" -- and thats mostly due to coersion being a hugely loaded term. I prefer "guidance," and the problem (if there is one) is lack of guidance, and a lack for a system or structure and authoritative guidance, whereby editors of demonstrated ability in certain skills are tagged as such, recognized as such, and given some degree of authority in proactively guiding newbies or those yet-uninterested or familiar with WP principles, processes, and now --with success -- high standards.
If Robert Henry is right (and judging by a number of fine articles now laying in ruins I suspect he is), then WP, should it desire to get finer control on article quality, needs to modify its "completely open" model a little bit. Im as anti-credentialist as anyone, and even I dont think that making this change would be a failure --considering what Wikipedia has thus far proven about the positive nature of human beings working on a completely open project. But now that the project is by any accounts extremely successful, it is a thing of value--one which people naturally want to touch and leave their mark on, whether its a proper mark or not, and whether its truly in the spirit of our principles or not.
I just took a new look at the A_Course_in_Miracles article. After lots of back and forth with Scottperry, an ACIM devotee, Im still not sure if he 1) doesnt get NPOV 2) doesnt care, and just nodded "yes, OK" alot before doing the same old thing. In all it doesnt matter -- the lede of ACIM is completely unacceptable according to my high standards, and I fear that after I rewrite it a matter of Style and Content will become a matter of Conduct and Personality. I have tried to be reasonable, and Scottperry has appeared earnest to accomodate, but in the end the article is still watered down POV crap. (At a first glance)
SV
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Oh goodness yes. We need *good writers* in general.
I have a pile of links on style on my user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard#My_personal_style_guide
I will often see a badly-written article on
something I know about and
do some rewriting with edit summary "tighten
[section name]".
My favourite writing style is still that found in
The Economist:
incredibly tight writing, giving simple sentences
with a fantastic
density of information. They're not interested in
NPOV - some of the
casual opinionation really makes me think of a
friend's summary: "I
love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy
on crack." - but I
think we have a *lot* to learn from their writing
style.
I agree we need good writing, but I think trying to coerce everyone into some common "Wikipedia house writing style" is not going to work, even if we could agree on what it should be (which is not possible). Some people think many of our articles are too chatty and informal, and would prefer we adopt a tone more like an academic work. Others think we're already too academic and should go more for a popular-press type of tone. I like the variety of writing styles myself.
That said, I do often edit for style, but I try to confine myself to clarifying things that are confusing, or changing particularly bad or anachronistic styles. I certainly wouldn't go through and try to make articles conform to my personal style preferences in general, though.
-Mark
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