I have to hand it to the WikBack. Since I departed, they've made an effort to keep spawning interesting conversations, though it just isn't the same without me.

This thread is pretty funny, though -- in a pathetic sort of way.

How can they go back and forth, back and forth, pondering why good copy editors don't clean up the "bad" articles? Do they not realize that articles actually tend to start off with fairly good copy but are then assaulted by the wisdom of crowds to create a disgusting textual chowder?

Of course, there are also those that just start out bad and only continue to get worse, because nobody in their right mind would waste good quality time trying to improve the output of a blithering idiot.

Greg

Manhattan or New England ???

Oh wait, I forgot, no doubt the ethnicity of the chowder is eternally embroiled in hot dispuke.

Jonny

Nailed it in one. One of the flaws of collaborative editing, for sure.

If you're going to assume that random idiots you found on the Internet can write like experts, why not assume they can collaborate like experts too?

I have a brilliant but heretical idea: why not pay people to copyedit?

No, Krimpet, I don't edit lake articles.

Because it would be a waste of money. People would correct the articles, then others would come along and revert them.

Thank you for lightening my day. There were a few belly laughs in there. The sad thing is that one will try to point this out, perhaps by a few diffs as you have down, and people wonder what it was wrong with it. The problem is that second one looks superficially pretty good. It is properly formatted, has some really nice diagrams and pictures, and passes the hairdresser test straight off. It's only when you actually read it that you realise that something frightful is going on. E.g. the 1066-ish



or the plainly silly



which prompted the belly laugh. But as I say the main problem is not that its frightfully wrong, but a large percentage of people working there will fail entirely to see anything wrong.

[edit]

Oh my God there is so much more







‘Syncretism’ of course is wikilinked, you can see the author’s mind gradually building up the whole sentence with the aim of getting that wonderful blue line underneath that splendid word.







There are a few warning templates, but is there a warning template on the lines of ‘this article is complete shite from beginning to end’? But of course you would be indef-blocked for suggesting such a thing.

[Edit]

Also here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...of_West_Eurasia

is an interesting discussion of the article. Most seem to think it is beautifully written (the hairdresser problem again). The one dissenting voice (datagoal) is rightly bothered by the spelling, but fails to see that it is not the spelling which is the problem.

Indeed. it's only worthwhile for Veropedia articles, or maybe ones about to go for FA.

Welcome to the nightmare, Peter. You missed one of my favorite pair of lines, though:



If you go into further examination of that deletion debate, you'll see that plenty of editor accounts questioned its quality; however, the Wikipedia machine ultimately silenced them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Libertyvalley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Enjoyexist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Datagoal
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...=User:Areateeth

I didn't think that Jon Awbrey was even interested in this article, but they flagged these accounts as "his", anyway.

Greg

I'm pretty sure that I never read this article.

Of course, reading the article would have constituted a WP:Conflict Of Interest and disqualified me from voting on it.

Jonny

Oh no what have you done it's up for deletion again. I'm rather fond of it now. I've saved the edit text down in case they delete it. Do they usually delete the whole history or just blank it?

Oh, oh! We've been outed. Reason for deletion? "People are running screaming from this article, and some are even making fun of it on sites critical of Wikipedia."

Strong Delete Wikipedia Review piss-taking. ~~~~

So how come there's an article on Sub-Saharan Africa but no article on Super-Saharan Africa ???

I'll betcha somebody named Sarah has something to do with it …

Unless of course Super-Saharan Africa = West Eurasia ???

Jonny

Baja West Eurasia.

Baja Humbug!

Jonny

Actually, wouldn't it be Mediterranean Sea?

No, sorry, you can't go home again …

Jonny

Truth be told, I love this article, too. I hope that it stays, since any time I have a conversation with anyone with a college degree who says they love and rely on Wikipedia for anything to do with History, I point them to some of my favorite zinger lines in that article.

Hey, I have an idea! Durova keeps kvetching about ways in which copyediting can be rewarded... How about I offer up a $50 donation to a non-WMF charity of her choice, if she organizes a campaign for people with actual M.A.'s or PhD's in History or related Humanities to copyedit that mo-fo article to such a point where User:Dejvid no longer has more than 50% of the total edits. Extra dollar to the donation for every percentage point BELOW 50 that they can push down Dejvid's edit count. The deal is off if I see any "gaming" of the challenge, such as a large number of individual edits being made just to add a comma. The outcome of the Western Eurasia Article Challenge will be assessed on the day the WMF releases its 2007 financial audit to the public. So, it's a dramatic RACE AGAINST TIME on both counts!

Somebody send this note to Durova, since she's not answering my messages. We'll see if she has the "best interests" of the project in mind, or not. I hope that she does. I can be a "grown-ass man" enough to tolerate a major improvement to "History of western Eurasia".

Greg

Grown-assed enough to accept it with or without Africa?

I'll tell you what, I can be grown-assed enough to let that be the last edit the team of academics decides to make about the article. They can fix the whole rest of the article without a worry about whether Africa's "in" or "out".

Hey, We'Re moving up in the world, from BADSITE to «Site Critical Of Wikipedia» (SCOW) — though I think someone should tack a {{fact}} tag next to that statement in the AfD.

Jonny