On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 5:31 PM, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 7 August 2010 01:25, stevertigo <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Destructionism: The tendency for Wikipedia articles which have reached > > an advanced degree of completeness and encyclopedic value to be edited > > in increasingly destructive ways, simply because perfection has > > already been achieved or nearly achieved, yet articles remain open to > > editing. > > > You have an erroneous assumption: that there is perfection or that > even a high quality article says all that anyone would ever want to > know on the topic. > > It tends to proceed in a cycle. Well-written, someone adds more stuff > they think is missing, someone polishes the writing once more, someone > adds more stuff. > > Those who did the polishing get *really annoyed* at the people adding > more *stuff*, but it probably benefits the reader. People come to > Wikipedia for its breadth of coverage, not its polished writing. > > Indeed, some articles decay into mush. I didn't say polishing was easy > - it isn't, which is why the people who do it get so resentful. > > > - d. > > I don't think you have to have delusional ideas about article "perfection" to understand that at as article quality increases, the chance that any individual edit will improve it decreases. - causa sui _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
