[WikiEN-l] What to do about our writing quality?

[SlimVirgin]

On 5/23/08, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> SlimVirgin wrote:
>  > It's a feature of having lots of people edit that articles tend to
>  > lack flow. There are very few editors who actually read a section of
>  > an article before they edit it. People believe that a factoid is
>  > missing, so they stick it in, regardless of what it does to the
>  > structure of the paragraph. It means that every article needs someone
>  > on hand to be endlessly copyediting it, which is a thankless task,
>  > especially where it's a contentious topic, because then you're accused
>  > of POV pushing if you move their factoid to retain flow.
>  >
>
> Most of our articles are neither controversial, nor edited by many
>  people, of course. There isn't much mileage in making points about the
>  style of the most controversial 20,000 articles - if we had the other
>  99% under control we'd be doing a good job.

It's not just the most controversial this applies to. It's any
article, project page, or section thereof that anyone's watching
closely. One problem we had after we'd written the final draft of ATT
as a summary of V and NOR is that some people believed the meaning of
a few crucial sentences had been changed. They hadn't -- they had just
been written differently -- but the change in writing led some people
to feel sure there must have been a change in meaning too, so they
opposed the proposal. This happens a lot with material that people
care about. They guard it fiercely, even if that means preserving bad
grammar, no flow, and words used incorrectly.
>
>  I'm a bit alarmed about the references in this thread to newspaper
>  journalism techniques. Do recall, everyone, that such articles are
>  recycled, in most cases in 24 hours.

I'm not sure I see the difference. For example, the earlier point
about cutlines/captions applies to any publication that uses them. Of
the points raised today, which ones do you feel apply only to
newspapers?
>
>  We should concentrate, mainly, on having articles well organised, so
>  that people can find the information they want. Once that's done,
>  improving readability is an essentially trivial copy-editing function.

Copy editing isn't that easy, Charles. I know we have a few editors
who make it look easy, but that's because they're very good at it. For
most of us, it can be a struggle.