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

[SlimVirgin]

On 5/24/08, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/5/24 SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com>:
>
>
>  > Yes, it's a big improvement, but in fairness, it's not a major copy
>  > edit. It really is quite difficult to turn an article from something
>  > disjointed and poorly written into a flowing narrative. It's
>  > especially frustrating when the works gets reverted, or more often
>  > chipped away bit by bit over the following weeks and months. When we
>  > see a well-written piece of prose, we should hesitate to wade in
>  > unless we're sure we can improve it, but very few people have that
>  > attitude, maybe because they think good writing is easy, or because
>  > they think it doesn't really matter.
>
>
>
> Actually, I disagree: content accuracy is more important than writing
>  flow, and reverting or even discouraging the addition of new
>  information for the sake of writing flow is very bad practice.

I didn't mean that good prose should never be changed, but it would be
nice to see it improved. Instead, what happens when you get an article
to the point where the topic is well-covered and the writing flows
well is that almost all edits to it after that are a deterioration.
It's rare that an article continues to get better after being
featured, for example, but not unusual for it to deteriorate unless
it's watched closely. When I wrote that people should hesitate to edit
good prose, I meant precisely that -- not that they shouldn't, but
that they should ask themselves whether what they want to add or
remove really does constitute improvement.

Sarah