User:Opabinia regalis/Puddingstone

Puddingstone writing is the result when a series of Wikipedia editors each add a discrete factoid to an article without regard for organizational concerns such as thesis or narrative structure, yielding an article that consists of self-contained lumps of information held together by a loose matrix. Puddingstone is the natural state of writing produced on a wiki, and active maintenance is needed to prevent its recurrence once it has been eradicated from an article. Articles containing puddingstone writing have the advantage of being generally usable, and possibly even well-referenced, but they lack the cohesiveness and professionalism of an article in a traditional encyclopedia.

Examples

• Wikipedia immediately after ACID.
• Molecular dynamics
• Gene (for evidence that even a single author can produce puddingstone without a solid plan)

Common symptoms

• Many short, stubby paragraphs. Each intrepid new editor thought "Hm, my fact doesn't seem to fit anywhere. I'll just stick it in its own paragraph then."
• Overuse of subsections, subsubsections, and subsubsubsections. When the above editors were a bit more intrepid than usual.
• Mixed referencing styles. Highly correlated with puddingstone writing because such mixing indicates that the article's text had multiple authors who didn't coordinate with one another.
• Mixed British and American spellings. See above.
• Redundancy. The most obvious symptom, so last on the list. If an article states the same fact three times, that means two people added it without reading the article before editing.

How to avoid puddingstone writing

• Read the article before you edit it. You'd think that would go without saying. No one should make a content edit to an article without reading it first. This prevents redundancy and familiarizes editors new to an article with the dominant prose style and referencing standard.
• Write in a single editorial voice. This usually means that a single individual is writing most of the article, with additional information, suggestions, and prose tweaks performed by a small group of others trusted to know the subject. However, the effect can also be achieved by groups of editors working together toward a common, agreed-upon goal, although this works best with editors who have worked with one another before. Organized collaborations should begin with an overall plan or outline for the article's structure before authors start writing, deleting, and moving things willy-nilly. It may sound un-wiki, but some articles just cannot be improved without a single editor informally in charge, and some editors just cannot work productively in collaborations.
• Have confidence in your editorial judgment. All the content policies in the world can't tell you what to write about, how to write about it, or which sources to include. Don't nervously regurgitate every claim in every source you come across, creating a mash of vaguely related sentences alternating with footnotes. If you do not know enough about the subject to reliably judge which claims are worth repeating or which sources are reliable, consider not editing the article.
• Get a copyeditor. One author or many: redundancies, inconsistencies, and awkward prose are inevitable. Get someone who hasn't participated in writing the text to read it closely.

What this essay is not

This essay is not "please don't edit my articles". (They're not mine, and please do.) It is not meant to imply that the wiki method doesn't work. It is not something to smack people with when they edit your articles. It is also not just about writing, but about content.

Disclaimer: this is currently a draft of an essay by a single author writing past her bedtime. Since the essay is about writing, there are surely poor phrases, typos, and other embarrassing goofs in here. Please feel free to edit this essay, but don't turn it into puddingstone!