[WikiEN-l] Editing a featured article

[habj]

On 5/26/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> frankly there are a number
> of former featured articles which have seriously deteriorated due to
> subsequent unprofessional edits.


In what ways deteriorated? A couple of examples would be great for the
discussion.

Have new facts been added, in a way that is stylistically inferior to the
rest of the article? That can be fixed. Have new facts been added that
really need not be there? They can be removed, when someone decides to take
an overall view of the article - most of the time when people add stuff in
articles, they do not do that. Have important facts been removed? That is
more troublesome, as it is more job to dig it out of the page history. If
the article has in fact detoriorated - who has not someone dug the old,
better version out and replaced the new one, or (probably preferrably)
created an imbetween? unless really all of the new edits were 100% bad.

The better the article, the less chance that a given edit is an improvement
but still - IMHO the wiki way in reality sometimes has to be four steps
forward and three steps back. Not every edit will in itself be an
improvement, but they might form the background to help someone else make
the article better.

/habj