[WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

[Charles Matthews]

David Gerard wrote:
> Personally I would prefer an article to have all the details on a
> subject and imperfect lumpy writing than be polished with details
> smoothed away. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and I see nothing
> wrong with that being visible. But that's just me, I wouldn't
> generalise it to everyone.
>   
We should undoubtedly stick to doing one thing well. And our "thing" 
does appear to be collation. I'm happy for WP's cancer coverage to make 
it into the same sentence as the NCI's. It argues that some very serious 
work has gone on by well-informed people. For all our guidelines, I 
think enWP does not emphasise writing well; but then trying to bring up 
the minimum standard of articles by the thousand has been more important 
historically (and still is, as far as I can see).

Charles