[WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia
David Gerard
dgerard at gmail.com
Mon Oct 24 16:13:37 UTC 2005
Cormac Lawler wrote:
>On 10/24/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> (This is something to watch out for when you're overly proud of your
>> writing - if someone adds new information to the article in clunky,
>> horrible prose, you have to resist the urge to remove the blemish!)
> Work with it - the zen of the wiki :-)
I know, I know. I didn't realise explicitly that content beats prose
quality until I was doing an interview where I was asked about prose
quality and content. I answered, thinking out loud, that articles will
tend to go in a quality cycle of excellent prose, then a clunky lump
of important information added, then smoothed out to excellent prose,
rinse and repeat. And that if forced to choose, information beats
elegant prose, though the latter is always a good idea.
In particular, I realised guiltily that I have reverted clunky new
information because it broke up elegant prose. Bad! Wrong! Don't do
that! I swore to grit my teeth and resist in future.
- d.
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