If we start from this assessment of stalled articles, then we can think about what kinds of tasks are required for these developmental editing issues on Wikipedia. Seasoned Wikipedia editors do these things already, but we want to highlight these issues in relation to stalled articles to help editors, both new and seasoned, to more clearly see the relationship between these tasks and the developmental editing needed to enhance the quality of Wikipedia. Even though this is written in relation to stalled articles, this section can also be applied to any kind of article and might be useful for anyone aiming to add to existing articles or create new ones. Likewise, we can emphasize again that these kinds of tasks are concrete manifestations of tasks that editors in any situation must undertake to be skilled facilitators of writing.
However, we should also note that these are advanced editing skills; new editors also need to learn a number of more foundational skills for editing Wikipedia which are covered extensively by Wikipedia's introductory materials (we point to some of these in the Resources section). As we discuss in Part 2, addressing stalled articles can be a way of giving advanced writing students a crash course in both basic Wikipedia editing and these advanced skills. At the same time, we would recommend new contributors to Wikipedia and instructors of lower-division writing courses at the collegiate level to cover basic tasks of writing on Wikipedia first to provide a foundation for these more advanced skills.
We are specifically highlighting here
Rather than simply researching content for a topic, the editor who is remedying developmental issues will need to look for information that will help them navigate the community on Wikipedia and the difficulties related to a topic. We thus have two paths of research:
- Researching the article's history and position in Wikipedia: The editor needs to research how the topic has worked on Wikipedia primarily through an examination of the talk page and, most importantly, a careful look through the history of the article. To intervene diplomatically in a page, it will be useful or even essential to know who has edited it recently, who created the article, who still appears to be active on Wikipedia.
Specific Tasks
- Examine the talk page: What issues have or have not been broached here? Be sure to check archives. Is there anyone active here who might need to be worked with? Are there unresolved issues or issues that were already discussed and need to be respected?
- Examine the origin of a page: When did the page get created? We're particularly interested in when it became a substantial article since articles early in Wikipedia's history may not be as substantial as they often are required to be now. Was it started early in Wikipedia's development? Was it started by a student in a class? By many editors or just one?
- Examine the progression of a page: How has the article developed over time? If you scroll through the history, can you see major changes and edits? What were these major changes? Be on the lookout for moments when big changes were made, particularly since there might be recoverable content or past directions for an article that are instructive.
- Examine when and why it stalled: Can you locate when and why an article seemed to stall? These are usually the most recent bold edit, whether it was by the person who created it (e.g., as an essay-like article), a reorganization, or a significant addition.
- Examine what has been done recently: Even relatively stalled articles might have had some recent activity. We're specifically looking for substantial edits that might tell us something about the problems involved, such as attempts to push the article forward that were unsuccessful.
- Take note of who was involved: The edit history and talk page will quickly give us a sense of who is involved, which is often essential for understanding the state of the article. Who created the article, edited it substantially, or edited it recently? Is there anyone who appears to be keeping an eye on the article (they are often the ones moderating edits)? One can easily check if such editors are experienced editors, were students, have particular interests, are active or inactive, or the like by examining their editing history (the link labeled "contribs" next to their name), userpages, and user talk pages.
- Take note of what projects it is involved in: WikiProjects are communities that gather contributors interested in a topic, coordinate and track their efforts, assess articles, and develop standards for that topic. The degree of activity can vary widely, but they often provide an essential resource for particular issues involved, conversations that have been had about issues related to your article, and a way to find related pages.
- Take note of related pages: Every topic does not exist in a vacuum, and Wikipedia explicitly connects topics together. We should take note of related pages in order to see if there is overlapping or related content, see discrepancies between treatments of a topic, and help us see the broader configuration of information across the treatments of a topic. This is particularly important in branching articles (meaning articles that link out to pages related topics), topics with multiple ways one can use a term (usually linked to disambiguation pages) as information related to different sense of a term do not always find their way to the right pages, or with articles related to a more idiomatic sense of a topic (for instance, Friends with Benefits Relationships).
- Find model pages: While there are no set standards on Wikipedia, one can learn a great deal from pages of the same type that have been successful, especially ones that have been certified as Good Articles or Featured Articles, since they have been confirmed by multiple editors as quality articles. They can thus guide interventions as well as serve as a useful comparison to invoke in explaining your rationale for bold edits. While one can simply search for other topics related to the one of interest, the easiest place to discover these is in related WikiProject pages, which usually have a chart recording GAs and FAs related to that topic.
Researching the topic to assist in developmental editing: When attempting to remedy these larger issues, one does not necessarily need to be an expert in a topic, but one does have to be informed enough to handle some of the more difficult issues involved. In other words, we should research not just for facts or sources to cite, but also to get a feel for the topic emphasis (what is sometimes referred to as WP:DUE) and structure. To do so, the first place to look is at related pages, where one can often get a broad view of what a topic is about and why it is important. Upon beginning to assess and intervene in an article, more research is likely needed (or at least be pointed to) in order to resolve some of the issues that arise.
One key point to keep in mind while beginning to work with a topic is that research is often required to identify gaps and partial perspectives, including one's own assumptions about a topic. If editors are going to adequately identify and help fix results of systemic bias, sufficient research needs to be done to see the particular issues involved, the range of perspectives needed, the possible controversies, and what options there are for giving topics an appropriate balance.
But if we're going to encourage these kinds of developmental interventions, one needs the audacity to point to such issues rather than just defer to experts. For instance, the Sin article discussed in our Conceptual Issues section brings up points about how scholars of religion treat parallel concepts that resemble sin. What one needs to research is whether and how scholars of religion handle this issue, or else to leave that open and consult an expert on those grounds. Our point is that these grounds are only made visible by a careful eye for the writing issues that have arisen on the article.
While first getting acquainted with stalled articles and the problems mentioned here, one must learn to see a Wikipedia page differently. When we've run the assignment aimed at remedying stalled articles (described in Part 2), this is the most noticeable and instructive aspect of the project: By the end of the project, students are able to see issues and interventions, successful and problematic aspects of pages, more clearly by the time they finish. When one learns to see them, one naturally begins to see these issues and assess them in articles. Specifically, we look to understand the following:
- Does it look like a Wikipedia article? While this is a purposefully ambiguous question, it is an excellent place to start assessment since many stalled articles have elements, structures, or tones that are not appropriate for Wikipedia. What "appropriate" means here is precisely part of why we ask this question: There are and should be implicit and explicit reasons and justifications for how many topics are laid out in Wikipedia, and yet these are not often brought out explicitly in the editing process except in instances in which conflict arises or assessment has been prompted (usually for a GA or FA status). Thus, in assessing what an article needs, one can begin by asking how it looks up against similar other articles.
- Why did it stall? What problems are here? The answer can be obvious or subtle, apparent immediately or only apparent when starting to intervene. Either way, we must be continually trying to understand why and how an article evolved into the form that it did, so that we can help it move towards a more productive one.
- What standards and policies does it interact with? Standards are never ironclad on Wikipedia, but nonetheless, the community has developed many reasonable and relatively consistent standards for organization, focus, tone, and style. For instance, articles on biographies, health and medicine, novels, movies, and music all need similar kinds of information and tend to run into similar issues. Thus, standards are in place to help identify issues, guide content, and assess content. Other issues, such as the policies on fringe theories, biographies of living persons, or promotion (e.g., for companies), are essential for many topics and must be kept in mind through the whole editing process. It is necessary to assess such articles' relationship to such policies.
- What ambiguities are involved? Writing and editing is not a world of certain or even best answers, and Wikipedia is no different. It is therefore essential, when approaching such writing issues, to expect to find ambiguities or other unanswered questions that Wikipedia is implicitly answering in producing an article. If one looks for those first, then one can often locate the most significant issues in advance and intervene more carefully. If there are significant problems with a topic, they will be found in the process of editing anyway. Some of these are conceptual. Some are organizational. Some have to do with what constitutes a neutral point of view or an appropriate source. Some have to do with procedures for promotional content. In each case, the point is to find where there is not a clear and ready answer; that is where discussion but also leadership via knowledgeable editing is needed.
- How might we intervene? As you assess the article, paths for intervention will start to become apparent. It's important to think about these in advance since the projects we're talking about are not simple, but rather need significant rewriting, reorganization, refocusing, and discussion around them, as possible. What and how might an editor intervene?
Readers are encouraged to see how these notes about assessment compare with the current standards for quality developed by the Wikipedia community. Likewise, there is some overlap but also some differences in emphasis to the Wiki Education evaluation criteria.
Wikipedia highlights how much good writing requires additional forms of communication as writers work out what to write and coordinate their efforts. To address stalled articles and other developmental editing issues, certain kinds of communication are essential to push an article towards a more productive state. We can separate these into two forms: direct communication and indirect communication.
Direct Communication
This includes any kind of communication with other users, present or future, in order to explain edits, discuss issues, and handle disputes. On Wikipedia, this includes edit summaries, talk page posts, user talk page posts, WikiProject communication, and, in cases of broader disputes, other forms of arbitration. Here we want to highlight that addressing these difficult issues requires direct communication that does the following:
- Broaches discussion about larger writing issues: While there needs to be discussions about factual issues, perhaps the most productive issues to be broached on talk pages have to do with focus, content, organization, and the more subtle and difficult to remedy issues with Wikipedia policies (especially NPOV and Original Research). For example, refer to this post from the Iliad talk page. Remember that interaction might come much later, as in this case on the Physiology talk page.
- Addresses ambiguity head on: Writers and content matter experts often have strong opinions about a topic and how it should be written. This is more likely to be the case on Wikipedia, where volunteers are usually only going to contribute to articles that they have some investment in. In facing these strong opinions, good developmental editors must embrace the ambiguity of the issues involved, recognizing and helping others recognize that answers are not straightforward in most writing situations. Even in cases of factual accuracy, factual correctness does not always clarify where and how a fact might be articulated on Wikipedia. To appropriately discuss these issues, editors need patience for this ambiguity and, most importantly, a willingness to pose options without presuming that there is one right answer.
- Situates editing tasks within Wikipedia's unique problems and standards: As we have discussed, all of the developmental issues highlighted here are related intimately with Wikipedia's nature as an encyclopedia and the particular standards and guidelines that have been developed to address these issues. Responding to them thus requires an intimate knowledge of these issues and how they apply (or don't apply) to the particular article. Making this explicit in communication helps clarify the issues in relation to familiar issues seasoned editors are used to encountering while also cueing in first time and more casual editors to the relation to Wikipedia-specific issues. It also helps to enhance the ethos for new editors as it makes clear one is interested in working with the standards and practices that are already operating within Wikipedia.
- Carefully explains the rationale for edits: Most editing usually happens with only minimal notation, usually in the edit summary. This may be fine; not every single edit needs extensive notation. However, the issues that we're highlighting here do need some more or less extensive explanation of what is being performed and why. Stalled articles have stalled because the issues related to them are complicated and have not been easily resolved either by one strong editor or by many small edits. While bold edits are encouraged, edits that greatly refocus articles, rewrite content, restructure existing content, remove or resituate inappropriate material, or the like are often met with suspicion if they are not explained. Performing such edits without comment also shuts out other potential writers, ignores the history of the article, and does not leave a record for those who may come along with similar questions or concerns. It is therefore essential that developmental editors spend a little bit of time carefully, yet concisely explaining their edits.
Indirect Communication
Editing itself can be a form of communication as edits can model and assist others in producing better content. Wikipedia policies make particular room for this in their conception of consensus, in which a portion of consensus is arrived at through editing rather than explicit discussion. This is ideal for taking on the role of the developmental editor since one can be bold in directing edits by making strategic edits that serve to guide other editors in response to particular issues identified.
This kind of communication is familiar for editors and teachers of writing, who often must model and make partial edits in order to push writing in the right direction while respecting the autonomy of other writers and content matter experts. On Wikipedia, we can group three forms of this based on who the editor is making space for the following:
- Editing for those who wrote before: A stalled article usually has a decent amount of content; someone spent time writing it and contributing to help Wikipedia. It is therefore respectful and useful to edit in such a way that works with previous reasonable editing efforts. This also helps ensure that if the editor is still around or comes around later, they are included within the editing process. This means working with existing content to the extent that it is appropriate and, when content is inappropriate, leaving a record of when and how it has been modified.
- Editing for those who may be interested now: Part of the interesting but also intimidating aspect of editing on Wikipedia is that others might be editing at the same time or enter in the middle of your work on an article. Bold edits, in particular, tend to catch the attention of other editors, who might be willing to provide feedback or even work alongside each other, whether silently or with communication. It is therefore important to edit in such a way that makes room for this communication.
Editing for those who may come after: If one approaches an article as a developmental editor, one might make significant interventions that do not necessarily produce a perfectly good article. One might run into the need for more sources or expert attention; issues might be too large for one person to take on; unexpected issues might arise; input from other editors might be needed without sufficient time to wait for it; or one might simply run out of time and energy. Part of what is interesting is that Wikipedia will continue to exist, likely for decades more to come, and people with time and interest may come down the line to finish what was started. This is already why Wikipedia includes tags to cue other editors into particular issues.
In addition to effectively using these tags and noting issues on the talk page, editors can make edits that are geared to assisting future editors. This is particularly important for organization and focus edits; often such bold edits create holes in an article, which must then be filled in by those with time or expertise to add the needed content. But it also applies to other issues, such as remedying original research, NPOV, or Wikipedia style; if one doesn't have time to completely rewrite to fix such issues, which can be time consuming, doing a bit of the work oneself provides a model for others to follow. For instance, integrating in research to remedy original research is often hard for experts to understand, particularly if existing content doesn't match this form. However, if more of the content is in a more appropriate form, future writers are more likely to follow suit.
It is worth noting that most writers are not used to writing with future writers in mind or with a willingness to leave sections incomplete. However, this editing approach is not only closer to the role usually taken by an editor, it is also more suitable for Wikipedia since it acknowledges the communal editing process that must take place over time.
A bulk of the edits on Wikipedia are occupied with writing new content, adding sources, and administering the website itself. To take on these developmental tasks, the editor needs to focus on particular kinds of editing of the page itself, which we can group into three broad categories: resituating, reorganizing, and rewriting. (For examples of these kinds of edits, refer to the Common Major Interventions in Part 2.)
Resituating
These are edits that refocus or clarify the content of the article. Examples include the following:
- editing the lead to refocus or clarify the focus of the article
- making space for different kinds of content either by adding small amount of content heading in that direction or creating new sections for future edits
- rebalancing the article content to address issues in NPOV, original research, or due emphasis
- deleting content that is inappropriate while keeping in mind editorial biases
- connecting together content that is disjointed
- connecting the article together with related articles (can range from minor linking to major movements of content between the articles)
- moving content from this article to another more appropriate article, including splitting off articles as needed
Reorganizing
Reorganizing articles is a bold edit that intimidates most editors yet will provide the most noticeable and long-lasting effect on an article. Most stalled articles (and many articles more generally) need a bold reorganization. This work overlaps with tasks in resituating in that it requires the editor to think carefully about each piece of content and consider where and how it might be organized as well as what might be added in the future. We can think about this on three levels:
- Global reorganization: This means first and foremost thinking about what headings and subheadings the article should have, both in terms of what content is currently there and what content could be added in the future. In the process one will likely rearrange the order of the sections as well.
- Within and across sections: Looking at each piece of content within a section, one may rearrange material into the appropriate place as fits the topic.
- Within paragraphs: Often the material within paragraphs or even within sentences might be disjointed or out of place as things get moved around and added piecemeal. Alternatively, in the case of an essay-like article, one can see that essay writing styles group information differently than an informative writing genre like Wikipedia. Thus, some rearrangement of information may be needed within the paragraphs.
Rewriting
While Wikipedia discourages needless rewriting, four essential components of Wikipedia create a need for extensive rewriting, even if the content and citations remain largely the same:
- NPOV, Promo, editorializing: Articles written from a particular perspective need intervention on the sentence level, sometimes through subtle changes or deletions of a few words, but sometimes through extensive rewriting. Articles written for promotion need the most extensive work here. Bold edits attuned to the purpose of Wikipedia are often able to condense large amounts of text to just the necessary and appropriate ones. Editorializing and weasel words (as they are called on Wikipedia) are often the most subtle form of modification and can be fixed easily as long as the editor is attentive to them.
- Guides and Fancruft : These are portions of WP:NOT that often lead to need for rewriting. Excessive information of interest only for certain audiences (what, early in Wikipedia's history, was called fancruft, although the term has become controversial) often requires significant reworking and condensing of existing content, for example plot summaries for movies or books. Similarly, some material is written from the perspective of a guide or advice and needs to be rewritten to fit an informatic point of view.
- Original research: The No Original Research policy is quite difficult for many contributors to understand and can lead to the need to significantly rewrite content that is otherwise appropriate. For example, a section talking about the significance of a literary text needs to be written as a report of scholarly research rather than a presentation of that reading of the literature (refer to, for example, the "themes" section of the Iliad article). The surest sign of the need for this kind of rewriting is extensive quoting of sources, but it can also take more subtle forms in which Wikipedia is making the conclusions that should be presented in terms of what has been said by verifiable sources.
- Wikipedia tone (essay-like): In addition to original research problems, essay-like articles or sections of articles contain many other writing forms and styles that take the article out of the informative mode of an encyclopedia. Such articles require the most significant rewriting at the sentence level in order to make the content work as a Wikipedia article.
All the tasks and changes listed here will result in a significantly different article, but it should be emphasized again that there is no one answer for addressing stalled articles. This has only been an exercise in trying to highlight a certain set of problems not readily recognized except by those skilled in developmental editing and writing, and to list out tasks and focuses that would be helpful in alleviating these problems. Given the limited time available to most contributors to Wikipedia and the many ways in which their expertise is needed, we anticipate that pedagogical situations will remain the most likely to encourage such intensive editing and sustained attention. To this end, we have assembled in Part 2 a set of resources geared towards creating assignments with these high-level editing tasks in mind.