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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:30 PM 5/24/2008, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
>But you're quite happy to burden copyeditors with the requirement to live
>inside university library stacks.  Hardly a fair situation is it.

Wait a minute! If you hired me as a copy editor, paid by the word, 
and then expected me to edit something without access to the sources, 
it would be an abusive situation. But nobody has an obligation to 
edit anything here. "Copyeditors" don't get an assignment to rewrite 
this or that, they can pick and choose what they edit.

Rewriting sourced material can easily distort the material. And I'll 
give an example from current conflict. In the article on 
"Instant-runoff voting," there used to be a claim that "Robert's 
Rules of Order, Newly Revised" recommends "IRV" in such and such a 
situation. This claim, with exact wording, has been repeated all over 
the net, and not just on Wikipedia mirrors. It has shown up on the 
web sites of election clerks explaining proposals to the public. Is it true?

Turns out that what the source actually says is ... different. It 
takes, not only synthesis to turn what RRONR actually says into a 
recommendation, but omission of details from the source. Now, the 
article is under continual pressure from advocates, including COI 
editors. I've taken the claim in the article and rewritten it, using 
exact quotations (because any summary, if it stated the necessary 
details to get it right, would be reverted quickly with a claim that 
it was POV and OR); then comes another editor who helpfully rewrites 
it to make it more compact. And, of course, removes the necessary 
detail, turning what is actually critical of IRV, and which describes 
a method different in a critical respect from IRV, for possible use 
(*not* recommended use, but better than some other alternatives), 
back into the original defective claim that distorts the source. Now, 
in this case, there is a copy of the particular section of RRONR that 
is most relevant on the web. But without a background in the 
principles of parliamentary procedure, it is really easy to read it 
as it has been framed a few years now in the political arena. When 
the source is *not* available, the problem can be even worse.

The specific problem I've just described takes patience to address, 
it is the typical problem of an article where there are editors with 
an outside agenda to promote, which can create long-term POV pushing, 
and, when it is skilfully done, nothing too outrageous, slowly, if 
nobody is watching long-term and willing to keep pushing the boulder 
back up the hill, the boulder rolls down. POV pressure is indeed like 
gravity; if there are real-world interests maintaining the pressure, 
it will have its effect. Unless we get stable versions.

What we need is to develop mechanisms that help us develop content. 
Behind any article should be a wealth of resources. I've seen 
articles where text is added, sources are added, then someone takes 
it out because, perhaps, they say it is unbalanced, then something 
else comes in and out. Over time, many editors looked at sources, 
*but no resource is built*. I'd say that with any article should be a 
sources page, where *all* sources considered by editors are placed, 
with a description of the source and, where relevant, exact 
quotations or URLs to copies of the source. So an editor puts in a 
source on this page. Another editor looks at it, and, yes, the source 
has been fairly represented. Or the other editor claims that the 
source was misrepresented, so the second editor adds quotation or 
evidence on that, etc. The sources page would be NPOV. And it might 
get quite large, with some subjects. Editorial consensus could build 
on what sources are reliable, etc. As it is now, the tide comes in 
and washes out, over and over, leaving only a little behind.

There is somewhere a recommendation that Talk be refactored. Right 
now, what I see, everywhere I've looked, is that Talk pages are 
simply archived. And then the same debates occur over and over, with 
new participants who have not read the old debate, so more time is 
wasted explaining everything over and over. It is *incredibly* 
inefficient, and inefficiency is not fatal when new editors keep 
pouring in. But it burns editors out, in the end, and that stream of 
new users will dry up. I've called it a pyramid scheme. It works as 
long as new blood keeps appearing.