Why Not Enough Editing Happens

The problem is not technical. It's a question of craft, and social environment.

Editing is difficult work.

Editing pages is difficult, because editing is difficult. You start with a nasty thread-dripping page, dozens or maybe hundreds of different contributors pulling the conversation in a thousand different directions, and you're supposed to find some focus? Whew.

Solution: Keep discussing editing techniques in the CategoryWikiMaintenance pages, point aspiring editors to those pages as necessary. (I, for one, am not sure of the best way to offer advice to co-editors, since so few people are even trying in the first place.)

Editing is different.

How many WikiZens have edited text before coming to wiki? How many have written text? The Writer/Editor ratio reflects that most of us stick to what we're good at. Still, we can certainly expect that people can learn things on this Wiki. Editing could conceivably be one of them.

How many, I don't know, but certainly some WikiZens have such experience, so if the rhetorical question had the expected rhetorical answer of "essentially none", I would strongly disagree. If the expected answer were "few, percentagewise", then yeah, perhaps -- and in fact, wiki can play a role in allowing some such people to learn and grow in those roles, which hopefully was your major point.

Gnoming has little to do with editing. As pointed out below, wiki gnoming is politically tricky. This is completely unlike any other kind of editing. The worst case scenario for an editor outside of wiki is that they have to deal with one writer on an equal basis. The best case scenario is that they have total control of one or several writers. As a result, previous editing experience is simply irrelevant.

What is relevant is experience in negotiation, whether contract negotiation, legal adjudication, or political mediation. The only kind of experience that ordinary people might have in this field is negotiating with their child. And that's assuming they negotiate instead of simply dictating by fiat.

Interesting observations, those are good points.

Editing is politically tricky work.

It's dangerous stuff, or it seems like it. You end up moving around people's text, sometimes changing it, sometimes synthesizing four people's contributions into just one paragraph. Maybe you drop the signature line entirely. This may cause some people to be upset. In my experience, people don't usually get upset. But when they do, it is usually because of personal ego. In one case, I felt that someone was objecting to my editing because of arguing an unpopular position and seeming to feel that my editing was an attempt to put the text out-of-context. Kind of a DisagreeByEditingToNonsense?, or something like that. I kindly argued the point to a standstill, waited a few days, and then continued. Slowly.

Editing is invisible work so one should not edit thinking that there will be thanks or appreciation, however from time to time such is received.

Editing is unnecessary.

Pages are usually good enough. Editing goes against Yagni and DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. Pages may not be perfect, but they were generated through a process that was acceptable to the participants and functioned for them, which usually means it should function for most others. Editing excises the context which is often the most useful part. What is deleted often reflects the bias of the editor rather than the participants.

Yagni and DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork only work if you apply merciless editing.

Not true. It could be the simplest thing to leave something as is.

It could be, but it isn't always.

Pages may not be perfect, but they were generated through a process that was acceptable to the participants and functioned for them, which usually means it should function for most others.

I don't believe this follows. The participants could fill in the blanks left by the dynamic of the generation - those viewing it later don't have that context to draw upon. This should not, alone, be considered to suggest that editing helps in this regard.

The context is in the text itself. It was enough to propel the conversation. Only after editing we are left with dry factoids devoid of motivation.

No, the context is a sequence of contributions, the order of which is lost whether you edit or not.

This conversation is a sequence that has not been lost. Most postings are this way.

per editing is not necessary:

Bad editing is bad, this is true. What's also true is that a page that's very long with discussion is useless to someone that comes later and hasn't been following along. Why should I have to read 100 pages of process to get to the conclusion (either agreement or disagreement where it's clear what people are disagreeing about)? That's decidely un-friendly to the reader. And if it were true that pages with unfiltered discussion were best, wouldn't we just use forum software instead of wiki?