Properly updating existing articles
May 5, 2017 22:17:38 GMT
dycaite, MortoQueiba, and 7 more like this
Post by Lucy on May 5, 2017 22:17:38 GMT
Here's something that's bugged me and the other staff members for a while. I've been mentally tossing around the idea of creating a video with many different tips and guidelines on writing and editing pages for the site, but since such a video would be a long way off (if it ever did happen), I'll say it here first.
Let's pretend every episode of Doraemon '73 was suddenly uploaded to YouTube (unrealistic, I know, just bear with me). The LMW page still lists it as lost though, so a user hastily updates it by jamming "EDIT: On 5/5/17, all of the episodes were found and uploaded by YouTube user DoraeMan3048" onto the end of the page.
But wait. This is NOT at ALL how you should do it.
Why? Well first of all, it's not necessary or professional to state that it's an edit. When's the last time you saw a Wikipedia page do that? I think people who do this have missed the point entirely of what a wiki is. The whole idea is that pages are updated and changed all the time. Just because it's a drastic change doesn't make that any different. And second of all, everything that came before it still says that the media is lost. Why would you leave it like that? This isn't a blog or a news site, we don't have to keep outdated info to preserve the article's previous state. If it's wrong or outdated, get rid of it. Replace it with the right information. How is it fair to make future users read through 6 paragraphs of things that aren't true and then follow it up with a brief "Whoops, never mind"??
The ultimate thing I want users to take away from this is that an article should FLOW well from the beginning to the end. There shouldn't be any sections that feel out of place. Wiki articles are written by all members of their community, but it should still FEEL like one singular voice. If it's obvious where one author left off and another one picked up, you're doing it wrong.
Think of it like this: if you owned a house and you wanted to expand it, you wouldn't just build another room right against the side wall, or build another floor on top of the roof. It requires subtle structural changes throughout, to make sure the whole thing stands as one unit. And it's the same thing with an article. Go back, read through the whole thing, and make sure everything still makes sense. I'm not asking you guys to write a novel here - sometimes it can be as simple as just changing a couple sentences to past tense. If the opening paragraph says "It has never resurfaced", change it to say "It did not resurface until ____". Things like that. Yeah, it'll take more time than adding "UPDATE" onto the end of it, but honestly, if you can't be bothered to read through the page you're editing, you shouldn't be editing it. Period. Leave it to another user who's actually willing to put in effort.
And yes, if you do some digging you will find articles where official staff members updated pages in the wrong way. But if you do some more digging, you'll notice another thing: all of these articles are very old. Our site standards have changed a lot since the LMW first started in 2012. Those types of edits used to be acceptable, and they're not anymore. I encourage everyone to fix any pages they find that do this. Thanks.
Let's pretend every episode of Doraemon '73 was suddenly uploaded to YouTube (unrealistic, I know, just bear with me). The LMW page still lists it as lost though, so a user hastily updates it by jamming "EDIT: On 5/5/17, all of the episodes were found and uploaded by YouTube user DoraeMan3048" onto the end of the page.
But wait. This is NOT at ALL how you should do it.
Why? Well first of all, it's not necessary or professional to state that it's an edit. When's the last time you saw a Wikipedia page do that? I think people who do this have missed the point entirely of what a wiki is. The whole idea is that pages are updated and changed all the time. Just because it's a drastic change doesn't make that any different. And second of all, everything that came before it still says that the media is lost. Why would you leave it like that? This isn't a blog or a news site, we don't have to keep outdated info to preserve the article's previous state. If it's wrong or outdated, get rid of it. Replace it with the right information. How is it fair to make future users read through 6 paragraphs of things that aren't true and then follow it up with a brief "Whoops, never mind"??
The ultimate thing I want users to take away from this is that an article should FLOW well from the beginning to the end. There shouldn't be any sections that feel out of place. Wiki articles are written by all members of their community, but it should still FEEL like one singular voice. If it's obvious where one author left off and another one picked up, you're doing it wrong.
Think of it like this: if you owned a house and you wanted to expand it, you wouldn't just build another room right against the side wall, or build another floor on top of the roof. It requires subtle structural changes throughout, to make sure the whole thing stands as one unit. And it's the same thing with an article. Go back, read through the whole thing, and make sure everything still makes sense. I'm not asking you guys to write a novel here - sometimes it can be as simple as just changing a couple sentences to past tense. If the opening paragraph says "It has never resurfaced", change it to say "It did not resurface until ____". Things like that. Yeah, it'll take more time than adding "UPDATE" onto the end of it, but honestly, if you can't be bothered to read through the page you're editing, you shouldn't be editing it. Period. Leave it to another user who's actually willing to put in effort.
And yes, if you do some digging you will find articles where official staff members updated pages in the wrong way. But if you do some more digging, you'll notice another thing: all of these articles are very old. Our site standards have changed a lot since the LMW first started in 2012. Those types of edits used to be acceptable, and they're not anymore. I encourage everyone to fix any pages they find that do this. Thanks.
