[WikiEN-l] Being bold doesn't work anymore, or why our prose is so bad.

[K P]

On 9/6/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Against my better judgment, I attempted to improve the wording of a
> particularly badly written article. Last time I did this ([[Spruce
> goose]]), it got reverted. Guess what?
>
> Here are my changes:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bird_strike&diff=156028841&oldid=151904678
>
> And the (partial) revert:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bird_strike&diff=next&oldid=156028841
>
> The reverter seems to think it's important to mention that birdstrikes
> "will result in major injuries or death to the bird" and is
> particularly enamored with the phrasing in "High speeds, however, as
> for example with modern jet engine aircraft will produce considerable
> energy and may cause considerable damage ".
>
> Is it just aviation? Is it just me being jaded and impatient? Or is
> this the reason so much of Wikipedia prose is so crap? Because the
> payoff for trying to fix it is so small, and editors put so much
> weight on every possible detail being retained, at the expense of
> clarity and readability?
>
> Feel free to tell me if I'm totally off base here.
>
> Steve
>
Our prose?  Someone commented this week that we don't have any great
prose writers on Wikipedia. That's not true. We do.  And I've
personally taken one of our best back down to writing an encyclopedia.
 Everyone at FA, including this author, disagreed with me, strongly at
first.  In the end, the author admitted that the FA that we wound up
was both excellent and better suited to the encyclopedia than what he
originally wrote--in spite of losing his brilliant prose in between
the two.  The other FA editors pretty much just started disliking me
and ignoring me.  Still, I'm proud of the article, and its primary
editors are rather proud of the article, too.

Encyclopedias can be well written, but don't expect Joan Diddion.

Steve, good attempt at de-crappifying.  Keep trying.  Can you
translate this into English, "High speeds, however, as
for example with modern jet engine aircraft will produce considerable
energy and may cause considerable damage ?"


KP