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

[William Pietri]

Ben Yates wrote:
> I mean, hell: this is the one area where I'm actually an expert.  I'm
> a technical writer.  I've been to college for it.  

I think the problem here isn't with writing skills; it's with reading 
skills.

Every good writer I know is a great reader. Most people are, by 
definition, average readers, and so I think they literally can't tell 
the difference between a mediocre article and a great one. When they 
make a change, they make it to the best of their ability, but those 
changes become more and more likely to look like a step backwards from 
an expert perspective.

As far as I can tell, this is a fundamental problem with our current 
model. I look forward to seeing how stable versioning gets implemented, 
as it could help bad writing a little. But it doesn't get rid of the 
fundamental problem, which is that most writing decisions get made based 
on the personal opinions of whomever shows up.

To fix that, I think we'd need to move to a model based more on either 
evidence or authority.

William

-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri