On 7/24/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/24/06, Berto albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
But despite the occasional cluelessness or error, there are some genuinely interesting bits in there, even for a hardened editor like meself: "Wattenberg and ViƩgas, of I.B.M., note that the vast majority of Wikipedia edits consist of deletions and additions rather than of attempts to reorder paragraphs or to shape an entry as a whole, and they believe that Wikipedia's twenty-five-line editing window deserves some of the blame."
Yeah... structure is an issue. Section edit makes it easy to work quick, but it gives no general structure to the work.I guess we should have people specialising in structuring voices for better readability.
I don't think specialists are the answer here; just like for verifiability, this is too big a task to be feasible for a small group of people, since just about every article could use a better "structure". What is needed is a better general awareness, and perhaps tools. For example, if the edit window is a part of the problem, then why not have the window auto-resize to fit the screen, instead of a fixed width and height? Or perhaps we could bring it to people's attention that the size of the edit box is customizable? &etc.
Better general awareness and a focus on rewriting to improve flow and consistent tone would be a darn good start. But I agree that the tools don't help right now.
I would second the auto-resize edit window screen. I flip up and down to the preview all the time, but the end result of the current tools is that it encourages a lot of small edits rather than a good, overall review and well-visualized update throughout.