User:Lord Matt/Editorial Concepts

Please note that in the interests of completeness this page will never be finished

Matt's Editorial Views

The aim of this essay is to outline some of my ideas and opinions on editing the wikipedia. For general guidance you may with to consider Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

Reading ease

I am of the opinion that readers of all levels of understanding should be able to use the Wikipedia. Thus making sentences as uncomplicated as the subject mater allows even if this flies in the face of traditions. The answer of "well, all the other texts use that word" or "most other works are written like that" are not adequate justifications of an encyclopedia to do likewise.

Decrufting text

?This user likes to browse random articles, and make helpful edits whenever they can.

Some texts develop cruft. That is extra words that try to convey additional information. Sometimes this information would better be placed in a separate paragraph and sometimes it is simply unnecessary and reduces reading ease. I am a great believer in removing this cruft when I find it.

Citation Overkill

I believe in citing the living daylights out of a topic.

I see no problem in citing blogs as examples of controversy or community response when they are well written and describe the situation first hand (thus avoiding original research which is not what this site is here for (but blogs are)).

Word Use

Everyone has points of view with inherent cultural biases - recognition is the first step to achieving NPOV.

For maximum clarity it is important to choose the right words to use. While many words might mean roughly the same thing one or more may carry less emotional weight or present the facts in a clearer way.

See also

• User:Lord Matt/Editorial Concepts/Overused words.

Minimal text size

I do not like text for text sake. I feel that sentences should be as short as possible and easy to read (relative to the subject matter). Therefore the minimal amount of text needed to adequately convey the core information and no more is what I aim for.