An occasional contributor, mostly copyediting and trying to apply at least some common sense and/or perspective to talk pages. Experience suggests that trying to do much more than that is usually futile when faced with those with more time and commitment to their particular causes. If you like arguing with the stubborn and the stupid, it can be fun. Not sure I do though.
A short essay, for what it's worth ... |
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The main reason Wikipedia is so unreliable as a resource and badly written is not the drive-by vandalism or joke edits by IP editors but because so many of the account-holders and regular content editors are basically ignorant about the areas they contribute to and have no idea how to read and research topics or to construct readable, coherent, concise and genuinely impartial encyclopedic content. And of course some of them aren't even here to try to do that anyway, but instead actively view this place as a playground for scoring political points. This is meant to be an encyclopedia rather than a place to tell the world about either how great or how terrible you think a particular political ideology, artistic endeavour, individual or nation is. Too many people can't tell the difference and often seem to think that a page here can only be "neutral" if it happens to tally with the way that they see the world and will only be "properly sourced" when it relies on sources and commentary favourable to that worldview. Reading WP pages can be painful enough, but trying to make even marginal improvements to them in the face of the above is even harder work. |