I too have noticed this phenomenon. It is not limited to biographical articles. It can be observed in any general-interest article where there is considerable public controversy.
The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor especially detrimental to the article. In aggregate, such changes destroy the organization of the article and compromise any stylistic unity that may be present.
Such changes should really be reverted when they are made, with a kind note offered to the other editor.
But Responsible Wikipedians Don't Revert Changes. They compromise, and discuss, and don't bite the newbies, and revert as a last resort. Especially not on articles where there are POV warriors already reverting each other, because in that case it is too easy for a good editor trying to organize the article to be mistaken for a POV warrior.
I ran into this on [[cult]] and [[surrealism]]. In each case I did some real-world research, at a library where they had books (you know, paper ones). Both articles are awful and I have given up because I'm not willing to become a revert warrior for the sake of these articles.
We have a culture of egalitarianism and a culture where reverting changes is strongly discouraged. These are important elements of our culture and I am not suggesting that we weaken them. But if we hope to understand what happens to this class of articles we best consider these factors.
On 10/10/05, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor especially detrimental to the article. In aggregate, such changes destroy the organization of the article and compromise any stylistic unity that may be present.
Such changes should really be reverted when they are made, with a kind note offered to the other editor.
But Responsible Wikipedians Don't Revert Changes.
We have a culture of egalitarianism and a culture where reverting changes is strongly discouraged.
Right, this is a real problem. We've got an RfC going at the moment about an editor accused of reverting too much, when what he was doing was trying to preserve halfway-decent writing, and one of the people who has commented here in praise of good writing has criticized this editor in the RfC for reverting too much, which strikes me as somewhat contradictory.
What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in an article to deteriorate, if not revert? Are a bunch of people who care about good writing supposed to be on hand constantly to carefully tidy up after others, just so that we can avoid wholesale reverting? It simply isn't realistic to expect that. The fact is that lots of editors add material that is badly written, badly sourced, unsourced, and wrong -- and reverting, including repeatedly reverting, is sometimes the only practical way to keep the page reasonably encyclopedic looking.
Sarah
On 10/10/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in an article to deteriorate, if not revert?
Two words: dispute resolution.
The community can make decisions about article quality. What it can never do is condone the open warfare that tends to result from using reverts to enforce policy.
On 10/10/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
We've got an RfC going at the moment about an editor accused of reverting too much, when what he was doing was trying to preserve halfway-decent writing, and one of the people who has commented here in praise of good writing has criticized this editor in the RfC for reverting too much, which strikes me as somewhat contradictory.
It isn't at all contradictory. The use of edit warring by an experienced editor to impose the manual of style in that case has not improved the articles, and it has alienated numerous relatively new editors. We cannot make things better by using bad methods.
On 10/10/05, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/10/05, uninvited@nerstrand.net uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor especially detrimental to the article. In aggregate, such changes destroy the organization of the article and compromise any stylistic unity that may be present.
Such changes should really be reverted when they are made, with a kind note offered to the other editor.
But Responsible Wikipedians Don't Revert Changes.
We have a culture of egalitarianism and a culture where reverting changes is strongly discouraged.
Right, this is a real problem. We've got an RfC going at the moment about an editor accused of reverting too much, when what he was doing was trying to preserve halfway-decent writing, and one of the people who has commented here in praise of good writing has criticized this editor in the RfC for reverting too much, which strikes me as somewhat contradictory.
What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in an article to deteriorate, if not revert? Are a bunch of people who care about good writing supposed to be on hand constantly to carefully tidy up after others, just so that we can avoid wholesale reverting? It simply isn't realistic to expect that. The fact is that lots of editors add material that is badly written, badly sourced, unsourced, and wrong -- and reverting, including repeatedly reverting, is sometimes the only practical way to keep the page reasonably encyclopedic looking.
Slimvirgin's points are well founded, and that's why the 3RR is problematic - at just six edits, it freezes the relationship between the two parties, forcing an artifical stalemate with no real incentive for compromise.
In fact, more often, the 24 hour ban is employed, causing even more rancor and bad feelings for one party. That 3RR is not an entitlement, but an electric fence, brings problems too - it's used inconsistently and extends banning to a whole class of editors that had never been subject to it before. It's the [[Taser]] of Wikipedia, with many of the pitfalls of the supposed 'non-lethal' weapon.
But there is an elegant solution somewhere between protecting an article (too rigid) and article rating (too complex) - every article can have a marker indicating the last-agree-upon-version. Anyone can change the marker to point to a particular version in the edit history, in wiki fashion. In effect, it would be the version that "the crowd" considers the most acceptable one, while editing, sparring, major revisions are happening on the 'current' one. If there is consensus that it is generally good, the marker can be moved upon every edit to be the current one. Or if overhauling is being done, the marker can be kept back to an older rev while issues are ironed out. (It removes the angst of having your edits "winning" and being in the current version, and removes much of the 3RR angst.)
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
-- geni
On 10/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit in the "current" version. And it would seem a step in the right direction towards "version 1.0."
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit in the "current" version. And it would seem a step in the right direction towards "version 1.0."
Edit wars effectively devolve to dicking around with the marker, especially under MediaWiki 1.5 in which we keep a single copy of the text and only create a new timestamp entry.
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/11/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit in the "current" version.
No it isn't
-- geni
On 10/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
So people just edit war over the position of the marker.
Yes, that's why it's inherently wiki. :)
But there's less disruption than trying to force your definitive edit in the "current" version.
No it isn't
Care to elaborate?
Saying, "But edit wars will ensue" is obvious, as that is always a risk with a wiki.
-Andrew
On 10/10/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
But there is an elegant solution somewhere between protecting an article (too rigid) and article rating (too complex) - every article can have a marker indicating the last-agree-upon-version. Anyone can change the marker to point to a particular version in the edit history, in wiki fashion. In effect, it would be the version that "the crowd" considers the most acceptable one, while editing, sparring, major revisions are happening on the 'current' one. If there is consensus that it is generally good, the marker can be moved upon every edit to be the current one. Or if overhauling is being done, the marker can be kept back to an older rev while issues are ironed out. (It removes the angst of having your edits "winning" and being in the current version, and removes much of the 3RR angst.)
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
I'd rather see a radical expansion of the the featured articles system. Instead of nominating an article, you'd nominate a version of an article. The standards would be radically lessened from the current featured article standard, of course. As long as an article was well structured, had adequate references, lacked non-free images, was NPOV, etc., it'd pass. No requirement that the article actually be one of "the best", just that it be acceptable for a static/semi-static copy (think CD/DVD distro).
Even if an article failed this process, it'd produce a list of what needed to be fixed.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Anthony
On 10/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikispam@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/10/05, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
But there is an elegant solution somewhere between protecting an article (too rigid) and article rating (too complex) - every article can have a marker indicating the last-agree-upon-version. Anyone can change the marker to point to a particular version in the edit history, in wiki fashion. In effect, it would be the version that "the crowd" considers the most acceptable one, while editing, sparring, major revisions are happening on the 'current' one. If there is consensus that it is generally good, the marker can be moved upon every edit to be the current one. Or if overhauling is being done, the marker can be kept back to an older rev while issues are ironed out. (It removes the angst of having your edits "winning" and being in the current version, and removes much of the 3RR angst.)
The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement, minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.
I'd rather see a radical expansion of the the featured articles system. Instead of nominating an article, you'd nominate a version of an article. The standards would be radically lessened from the current featured article standard, of course. As long as an article was well structured, had adequate references, lacked non-free images, was NPOV, etc., it'd pass. No requirement that the article actually be one of "the best", just that it be acceptable for a static/semi-static copy (think CD/DVD distro).
Even if an article failed this process, it'd produce a list of what needed to be fixed.
Anthony, I agree. It seems that the two ideas go hand in hand. At the very least, once FA status has been conferred, you refer to that exact revision. We have already seen the backslide of a number of FAs.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
uninvited@nerstrand.net wrote:
The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor especially detrimental to the article. In aggregate, such changes destroy the organization of the article and compromise any stylistic unity that may be present.
Simple technical solution: Each article gets a special counter. After X days, or X edits, or not-minor edits, or X bytes changed, or some combination thereof, the article gets added to a special "review" list. This is for people who like to specialize is style/flow/structure/etc of articles. These can then be reformatted/reworded. Calling it "review" might help to suppress edit wars; after all, this is not because of a special edit, but because some criteria say "this might need restructuring". Also, it is not to remove information, rather to rearrange it into readable form.
Magnus