[WikiEN-l] Re: I demand a daily spot for great writing

[Tony Sidaway]

On 10/9/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work
> entirely
> apart from the FA process.


This is it, really. Articles are making FA with mediocre writing, so there's
no great head of pressure in the process to encourage people to polish the
writing.

I'm sure you've all had enough of me pointing out errors of grammar,
organisational problems such as omitting crucial facts from the opening
paragraph, and just plain bad writing in Featured Articles that I've
encountered on the front page. I recognise that my personal bias towards
very short articles tends to make me perhaps unreasonably dismissive of the
Featured Article process as a whole, but my criticism of the writing quality
in those articles is soundly based.

I could go through Featured Articles and polish them; I'm not a great writer
but I can get rid of the worst errors. There are great writers around,
though.

Until recently, the opener of our article on Language was tantamount to a
felonious act against English. It read in full:

"*Language* is a finite system of arbitrary
symbols<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol>combined according to
rules of
grammar <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar> for the purpose of
communication <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication>. Individual
languages use sounds <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound>,
gestures<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture>,
and other symbols to represent objects,
concepts<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept>,
emotions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion>,
ideas<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea>,
and thoughts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought>."

This kind of writing might win a passing grade in an examination on
theoretical linguistics, but it isn't really useful, or even very
comprehensible, to the general reader.

The opener now reads:

"A *language* is a system <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System> of
expression and communication <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication>.
Individual languages use sound <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound>,
gesture<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesture>,
and other means to express and communicate
concepts<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept>,
emotions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion>,
ideas<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea>,
and thoughts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought>. Expressions of a
language are analysable into words <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word>,
whose meanings <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning> are usually
conventional <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention>. The word "language"
is also used to refer to the common properties of languages."

That isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. The gobbledygook
has been elaborated a little, and some nuances have been expanded. But
there's still some jargon, which is unacceptable in an opening section. For
instance "whose meanings are usually conventional" means, in standard
English, "with meanings usually established by prior agreement and
practice".

Both version suffer from overwikification-nearly all of the sentences
contain wikilinked words. I've spoken to a few people about Wikipedia and
most of them report that a sentence with wikilinks is much harder to read
than a sentence without. This matches my own experience.

Now unless we pick up on improvements in writing style and give them
recognition at the highest level of Wikipedia, I don't see how we'll focus
attention on the quality of the writing in Wikipedia. As I've suggested in
an earlier email, writing quality is especially vulnerable to entropy. While
the quantity and quality of information in an article tends to improve with
editing over time by many people, the quality of writing tends to degrade
under the same conditions.

Now look at the introduction of the article on the same subject in MSN
Encarta. it shows how far we have to go to make a great encyclopedia.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570647/Language.html#s1

That is professional writing. It's not the best, but it's readable,
jargon-free, and provides good coverage. Professional writers do it for
money. We need to find a way to motivate great writers to write into this
palimpsest, knowing that their work may well be slashed to pieces in days,
or even hours. Putting the best writing each day on the front page would be
the least we could do to show them that we value them just as surely as we
need them.