User:Dreftymac/Docs/TemplateSeries

Background

Someone remarked that an article was in quite a messy state. Dreftymac replied with an explanation for how it had gotten that way. This was an unusual case because: 1) a lot of the "mess" came from a particular contributor who was a non-native English speaker; 2) Dreftymac tried to address this while still forging good rapport with this contributor -- even though his contributions were a bit "rough" ... he was enthusiastic and doing quite a bit of work -- precisely the kind of contributor you don't want to discourage on a volunteer project

One question that arises: how do you encourage an energetic contributor who means well, and is willing to do a lot of work, without appearing to "condone" the fact that the contributor nonetheless makes contributions that require too much "clean-up" and constant fixing to avoid violations of "neutrality" and "no original research"?

Someone should clean up this mess

Hello and greetings. Here is some background on these articles:

1. The portions you doubtless recognize as "original research" ("O_R") are largely the contribution of one particular editor.
2. The aforementioned editor (in 2006 anyway) was apparently the only one contributing and watching (what is now these "articles") to any significant degree
3. The aforementioned editor was very prolific and ambitious in adding content (as can be seen)
4. Some of the content was referencable and usable, but a lot of it was O_R, and a lot of it was in very-difficult-to-read non-native English.
5. User:Dreftymac and one or two others noticed these issues, and started deleting and re-writing and citing content (from the ground-up) aggressively and with extreme prejudice against original research
6. The aforementioned editor did not take kindly to this. Conflict ensued. Edit wars raged.
7. User:Dreftymac proposed a compromise. The O_R and difficult-non-native-English parts were supposed to be moved into the User space until such time as the content was fit for inclusion in the main article space.
8. This proposal seemed agreeable to the relevant parties, after much "clearing of the air" and demonstrating that the intent was not to "delete" but rather "improve" content.
9. In the spirit of cooperation, other editors helped reform some content by translating the non-native-English portions into more readable text, instead of summarily deleting and edit-warring. People got together and turned a strident and heated disagreement into a volunteer effort to work together. (Like you, no one is getting paid to do this).
10. Despite all this considerable effort, there is still a lot of content that was never moved to the user space, and the "supplemental" content is still in the main article space. Some of it was, however, migrated to the user space of the editor.

So what. Why does any of this "backstory" matter?

Your "merge and trim" conclusion is definitely correct, so too your conclusion about O_R. The problem: you are not talking to people who don't know what Wikipedia is for. It's quite the opposite. The situation is like walking into the aftermath of a war in the midst of a tsunami and saying to the remaining few relief workers with merest energy and awareness of the cataclysm that went before:

"Golly Gee ... somebody should really clean up this mess!"

But seriously. You haven't discovered anything that a precious few others haven't already observed and addressed (and even strenuously fought over) for months. Your suggestions are all well taken. I suggest (if you have the energy, and you've got some cites, and have read the ones that are already provided, and know which specific portions of the article are supported by cites, and which parts arent, and why) that you feel free to jump right in and help out in continuing to improve the article.

Notes

• I have been putting off intended contributions to those articles because they need a lot of work and require a lot of energy. There is a lot of good material there, but there are also some difficult issues to deal with on some of the material.

Some of the outstanding issues are:

Structure:

• the structure and relationship between articles (article-outline)
• the structure of talk pages (discussion-outline)

Contributions:

• some are difficult to understand because of non-standard English (contrib_eng_readabilty)
• some are problematic because they are original research (contrib_original_res)
• some are difficult to expand upon because of lack of cites (contrib_cites_lacking)
• some are difficult to expand upon because of non-standard terminology (contrib_terminology)
• some are problematic because they "add" concepts that are not completely supported by the cites (contrib_cites_embelish)

Being a little flexible about O_R

Regarding "original research" ("O_R") I personally think *some* level of O_R is not necessarily a "bad" thing in every instance. I think sometimes people are too quick to dismiss potentially legitimate material as O_R. Sometimes, for example, what looks like O_R is just a refinement or summary of existing verifiable material.

Mind reader effect

The problem, however, is that when O_R is combined with non-standard English *and* lack of references, *and* embelished cites, it makes it extremely difficult to guess what the article content is really trying to say, and where it intends to go, and it winds up looking like someone's personal notes. Even if someone makes a good faith effort to build upon the work of another editor, they have to try to be a "mind reader" in order to expand upon the material. Bold text